<Begin Log>
[Camera turns on, and the holder appears to be outside at night. Lighting is very poor, but Agent Tofflemire can be seen to be standing on the step in front of SCP-4040.]
Agent Carol: (off camera) Robert! Robert, how long have you been standing there? Jesus Christ, Robert whatever you're seeing isn't real! That's not your friend being tortured!
Agent Tofflemire: That's not what I see anymore.
[An enormous humanoid entity begins to rise from SCP-4040. Due to the poor lighting, few details are discernible.]
Carol: Holy Hell!
Tofflemire: Get out of here while you can Alice.
Carol: Robert, run you idiot! (Agent Tofflemire remains unresponsive) Robert!
[The entity grabs Agent Tofflemire with its right hand, and reaches for Agent Carol with its left.]
Carol: Jesus!
[Agent Carol attempts to flee, but is grabbed by the entity. She and Agent Tofflemire are pulled into SCP-4040. The camera shows them to be in a state of free fall. Both attempt to speak on several occasions during this period, but due to the rushing wind, no conversation is audible. After approximately thirty minutes, they collide with what can be presumed to be the bottom of SCP-4040.]
Carol: Ahh. What the hell? That didn't kill us? We're alive? Robert, are you okay? Tofflemire, report!
Tofflemire: (laughs) "I've been falling for thirty minutes!"
Carol: Ugh. You're fine. Shit, the camera's even still working.
[Agent Carol points the camera at herself and clears her throat.]
Carol: This is Agent Alison Carol of Mobile Task Force Sigma-10, reporting in. When I awoke to take my shift guarding SCP-4040, I found Agent Tofflemire standing upon its front step, staring into it in a trance-like state. Robert, do you want to explain that?
Tofflemire: Well, after you went to sleep and I was alone, a lot of weird thoughts started running through my head. I don't know if it was a direct effect of SCP-4040 or just the kind of thing that happens when you're alone with something like it, but I had to know what was down there.
Carol: And why didn't you try to run when that thing came up?
Tofflemire: Because… we needed to fall down SCP-4040 to move the plot forward.
Carol: What? I think maybe you being alone in front of it without anyone else to keep you grounded led to an exaggeration of its derealization effect. To whoever is watching this video, I would advise sending the next SCP-4040 sweep in teams of four, so that guard shifts can be taken in pairs.
Tofflemire: Alice, nothing but the Goatman has ever come back out of this pit. No one's going to see that video.
Carol: If the frickin' Goatman can get out of here, then so can we! On your feet agent! We need to assess our surroundings.
Tofflemire: We're at the bottom of a bottomless pit. Roll Credits.
Carol: There's no light other than the camera's little LED, but I don't see any sign of whatever it was that tossed us in here. The ground appears to be ordinary dirt, so I honestly have no idea how we're still breathing. We were actually falling for half an hour, and assuming we were falling at terminal velocity that means we're roughly a hundred kilometers underground.
Tofflemire: I guess that means the Goatman can climb at about 2 kilometers an hour. I doubt we can climb that fast, and his body doesn't need food or rest. We'd die of thirst before we'd reach the top, and we'd probably fall from exhaustion long before then. We're stuck here Alice.
Carol: Robert, this isn't just a pit, it's an anomaly. For all we know… wait, do you hear that?
[The sounds of a person digging with a shovel, along with breathing and grunts of exertion, can be heard in the distance.]
Tofflemire: Holy crap, there's someone else down here! Hello!
Carol: Hello!
[Agent Carol and Tofflemire head towards the source of the noise. Roughly a minute later a man in a soiled white dress shirt and suspenders comes into view. This entity is designated SCP-4040-01. Without ceasing digging, it looks up at the agents.]
SCP-4040-01: Mornin'.
Carol: …Good morning. I'm Alice, and this is Robert. He and I are with the S&C Plastics company -
SCP-4040-01: (chuckles) You know, just because I'm at the bottom of a pit doesn't mean I've been living under a rock. I know what S&C Plastics is, agent.
Carol: Lots of people around here do. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by telling you a bunch of hogwash. Could you tell us who you are, and what you're doing here?
SCP-4040-01: You mean you don't recognize me? That's disappointing.
Tofflemire: I recognize you sir. I've seen your statue in the unforbidden dog park. You're Jackson Sloth.
SCP-4040-01: That's right sonny. I'm Sloth, and this is my Pit.
Carol: You're the Jackson Sloth, founder of Sloth's Pit? You've been down here for 130 years?
SCP-4040-01: What's the date?
Tofflemire: July 1st, Canada Day. 2018.
SCP-4040-01: Then no. I've been down here 127 years, six months and six days.
Carol: Digging a pit?
SCP-4040-01: (briefly stops digging and looks up) It's a metaphor (resumes digging).
Carol: How are you still alive?
SCP-4040-01: I'm imaginary, just like this pit and all the monsters in this town.
Carol: Sir, you're not imaginary. We can both see you, and you're showing up on the camera.
Tofflemire: Sir, do you know this pit isn't just a hole in the ground? It's impossibly deep, no one can find it twice, it messes with people's sense of reality -
SCP-4040-01: I know exactly what this place is son. Grab a shovel, the both of you, and I'll tell you a bit of history.
[Agents Carol and Tofflemire turn their attention to two previously unnoticed shovels propped up against the pit wall. Carol sets the camera down where it can record them, and both agents assist SCP-4040-01 in digging.]
SCP-4040-01: Since I was a young boy, I've always had a very intuitive sense of how the imaginary was real. The stories we're told and tell, the things we dream and fear, all of that affects our thoughts and feelings, and thus our actions. Reality is affected by the imaginary, and thus the imaginary cannot be said to be unreal. Do you follow me?
Carol: We call that pataphysics.
SCP-4040-01: Well, I had a gift at crafting narratives that would shape reality in the way I wanted. Nothing impossible, or even all that fantastical, but I could nonetheless create narrative seeds that germinated in the minds of all who heard or read them. Not every seed would sprout, and not every narrative would grow the way I had intended, but through trial and error, I got better at creating successful seeds and more influential narratives. That's how I got so many people to follow me out west to create a lumber town, and also how I convinced them to settle in Wisconsin once I realized just how far out Oregon was.
Carol: It kind of just sounds like you were a good orator.
SCP-4040-01: I might have said so too, until Christmas Day, 1890. I was in my study, scribbling away in my notebook, trying to conjure up a narrative for Caroline that would make up for having to spend Christmas in the hospital, when I crossed some invisible line that should not have been crossed. The collective force of all my narratives reached some sort of critical mass and collapsed in on themselves. My house, everything in it and most of the land beneath it became imaginary. The disappearance sparked a wave of rumours, all of which this place lapped up until it became the bottomless pit people said it was.
Carol: You're saying that the Bottomless Pit that swallowed your house is some kind of pataphysical singularity? And by singularity, I mean a -
SCP-4040-01: I've been keeping up with the sciences young lady, and I think that's a perfect term for it. And just like a collapsed star still generates enough gravity to distort nearby space, so too does this pit generate enough narrative force to seriously affect reality in Sloth's Pit. It creates narratives so strong they can sustain hundreds of tulpas and violate the laws of physics with ease. Six impossible things before breakfast, eh Alice? If only I could have created narratives like that when I was still real!
Tofflemire: What about that monster that pulled us in here? What was -
[The pit shakes as an agonized groan reverberates from up above.]
SCP-4040-01: Don't speak of it. It's not real, not yet, but with enough story it will be. Best to just ignore it, and dig. But now that you're here, I might take a short rest if you don't mind.
[SCP-4040-01 sits down on a nearby boulder, and wipes its forehead with a handkerchief.]
Carol: Sir, do you know if there's any way out of this pit? We know the Goatman climbed out once, but if this a place where imagination shapes reality -
SCP-4040-01: Not just imagination, stories. Stories shape reality. The Goatman climbed out because that made his story better. It showed everyone what a relentless beast he is. You climbing out of here though? That would break suspension of disbelief for most people.
Tofflemire: What would you suggest then sir?
SCP-4040-01: Oh I'd just keep digging if I were you. After all, you know what they say. If you dig deep enough…
[The ground beneath Agents Carol and Tofflemire begins to crack. It breaks open and both agents, as well as the camera, fall straight down.]
SCP-4040-01: (shouting from above) …You'll dig through to China!
<End Log>
Agents Alison Carol and Robert Tofflemire were later recovered in the Shunan Bamboo Forest in China, after falling out of a newly opened sinkhole. Later attempts to locate this sinkhole were unsuccessful.
The fence Agents Carol and Tofflemire installed around SCP-4040 was not found upon subsequent encounters. However, the sign installed by Agent Tofflemire remains by the front step.
Two controlled descents using Buckminster filament and an electrical winch by later expeditions into SCP-4040 have failed to discover a bottom to the pit, even after passing the 100 km point where Carol and Tofflemire logically would have landed. Later expeditions to SCP-4040 also failed to encounter SCP-4040-01 or the entity that pulled Agents Carol and Tofflemire into the pit. However, field personnel have reported that the previously indistinct whispering emanating from SCP-4040 has become coherent. They report the voices repeat the following verse indefinitely:
