NOTICE FROM THE FOUNDATION RECORDS AND INFORMATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
By order of the Ethics Committee, the following unredacted entry on SCP-6018 is kept on file in defiance of the Ghaggar-Hakra accords with the United Nations Global Occult Coalition. Distribution to unauthorized individuals will result in immediate termination.
— Maria Jones, Director, RAISA
Entry point for the joint GOC and Foundation expedition into SCP-6018.
Item #: SCP-6018
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: Access to DNA samples from extinct specimens are restricted to laboratories compliant with the Ghaggar-Hakra accords. Following the confirmed extinction of a species, all samples of its DNA that are viable for cloning or other forms of replication are remanded immediately to the SCP Foundation or Global Occult Coalition. Use of the region's sole exit is limited to one person per year and requires the consent of the O5 Council and the Ethics Committee.
Description: SCP-6018 is a separate region of space overlapping with Earth over 7.2% of its freshwater sources. The anomaly's interior is a multi-biome region capable of supporting all forms of life regardless of species, environment, or native planetary epoch. All flora and fauna that exist within SCP-6018 are non-anomalous aside from their anachronistic existence in the modern day. Such species include those still extant including Oryza glaberrima (rice), Elettaria cardamomum, two species under the genus Psilocybe, and Homo sapiens.
Entry into SCP-6018 is accomplished by one of two methods: the ressurection of a species from extinction and the extinction of a species from the natural world.
Addendum 6018.1: Expedition Log Part 1 of 6
Chaparral biome within SCP-6018 that demonstrates signs of occupation by an agrarian society.
Date: 2045/07/07
Location: Joint Base Command, Northern Rajasthan, India
Exploration Forces: G.O.C. Provisional Exotic Environment Survey Crew "Clever Girls", S.C.P. Foundation Provisional MTF Unit Theta-209 "Magellan's Leather"
Team Leads: U.N. Security Council Liaison Colonel Uche Nwaokocha, S.C.P. Foundation Senior Researcher Dr. Jack Bright
<Begin Log>
Feed opens from Bright's head mounted camera as the expedition crew assembles atop a temporary platform on the dry riverbed of the Ghaggar-Hakra river. In front of them pulses a bulbous sack of reflective plastics and off-color artificial placental tissues. Bright pans the camera around to show the joint crew's gear of radio equipment, server towers, drone bays, and mobility rigs all in the non-reflective jet-black of carbon nanocomposite.
At his side stands Colonel Nwaokocha of the U.N. Security Council's Uncontacted Cultures Preservation Unit. They smile down at a pair of GOC mechanics demonstrating how to perform jumps on the six-legged and wheeled mobility rigs. The MTF crew joins in and soon five of them are bouncing. Theta-209-Tango comes up behind them and shakes his head at the sight.
Theta-209-Tango: That's enough grab-assing, now it just looks like y'all are strapped to toilets in a bouncy castle.
Nwaokocha: Let them have their stupid, harmless fun. It's productive to their morale and mine. Not to mention it being the best use of military equipment I've seen in the field.
Theta-209-Tango: I'm not cleaning it up when one shits on the castle floor.
Nwaokocha: The only shit on the floor is going to be from our healthy, newcorn unicorn. Get the medical team to induce, though, we do have a schedule with the Indian government to keep.
Theta-209-Tango: Gladly, colonel.
Nwaokocha: Well, Doctor, we wouldn't be here if not for your Foundation. Any last wor-
Bright Interrupts with a scoff.
Nwaokocha: I'm going to choose to take that as a sign of your hope in our retrieval. This is the best time to set the tone for everyone's mission. Do you have nothing to give me? When half this team is from your organization which the Security Council introduced me to a month ago? It would help with out collective morale if we went up there together and eager.
Bright: That half would be horrified if they saw me give a speech while smiling. I'm a human crash-test dummy to some of them and a maniac to the rest. Neither wants to see me grinning on the brink of an anomaly. Let me do my work if you want me to be useful.
Nwaokocha: I've read your dossier, Doctor. That anomaly you wear makes you immortal, not static. I don't care if you give a damn about me but at least attempt to show one at them? You know, "fake it 'till you make it"?
A Foundation researcher uses a scalpel to break open the surrounding sinew of placenta before a G.O.C. medic cuts open the capillary-coated plastic underneath. A newborn Indian rhino spills onto the grated floor in a glob of amniotic fluid, blood, and meconium.The medical crew readies to sever the last tie to the churning mass of metal, plastic, and flesh. The Colonel addresses the team over the sound of the newborn baying in the flood lighting hanging over the platform.
Nwaokocha: Svalbard today and, with hope and our goodwill, Ghaggar tomorrow. If we have one mission statement, let it be that. I want to find the peace my grandfather found in sleeping by locust song. I want my family scattered from their old village to know that again too. I have no reasons beyond having no other option but to take this as a second chance for us. A chance for your loved ones, for many of you, to save the things our grandparents watched die.
The doctors sever the umbilical cord, an aura of light forms around the medical crew, and the luminosity overwhelms the camera.Feed reopens to a lush river basin amid general confusion as survey crews rush to bring gear back online while shallow currents sweep around their ankles. The rising sun peaks over mountain ranges running to their northwest, blanketed in a cornucopia of old growth forests cascading across their foothills. Following the runoff-fed rivers from the mountains and towards their west looms distant sub-tropical rain forests.
The colonel bellows over the mobile task force attempting to ward off an approaching herd of Indian rhinos. The colonel flashes a strobe light as they grab hold of the resurrected rhino and prostrates before the herd. Nwaokocha leaves the baby on a dry patch of seasonal grasses and motions Theta-209 to back away. Colonel Nwaokocha remains prostrated until the herd retreats with their newest member.
Bright: You were expecting us to open fire there, weren't you?
Nwaokocha: If you won't be a help, can you at least not be a pain in the ass? Yes, my counterparts in the GOC have made your Foundation's reputation a topic of strenuous attention during my briefings. Yes, I am capable of self-doubt and had some there. Jumping to the assuming the worst just isn't productive for either of us, Doctor. I'm leaving you to your work, just like you asked.
Bright: I'm going to need something to work on, then. First item on the schedule was tribal contact.
Nwaokocha: Your Foundation's data says 52km due east. We can head out after the soil analysis is done. One thing first. (Nwaokocha turns back to the expedition camp.) Fan online?
The G.O.C. team gives the thumbs up and a member runs over with a rectangular device approximately the size of surveyor's palm. Colonel Nwaokocha holds the machine aloft as it pulses green in the early morning light.
Nwaokocha: Put this in your neck-piece with that… I don't actually know what you would like me to call that.
Bright: 963. Or thing that kills you if you touch it. Or the thing holding me hostage to this (Bright strains a grin) totally wonderful world. It's still before breakfast so I'm going with the latter. Now what the hell is that glowing green thing?
Nwaokocha: First it is an example of behavioral algorithms being used for the greater good, for once. More seriously, it is a narrow intelligence construct, this one is the Flora/Fauna Analysis Network or Fan.nic.
Bright: Is it alive?
Nwaokocha: Please tell me you don't care more about this than the crew.
Bright: It is very important to me for it to not be alive.
Nwaokocha: (Turns towards the expedition crew) Ace, is Fan alive?
Surveyor CG-12: If you are talking in the biological sense, absolutely not. If you mean if it possesses self-awareness then also absolutely not. If you mean in terms of raw intellectual capacity then I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer that one, colonel. It does try to simulate human behavior in its predictions using a variety of neural networks copied from artificial and natural sources.
Nwaokocha: It will act as our interpreter, our black-box recorder for all mission data, and even stream that data over radio to joint command when in range.
Bright: You've tested radio in here?
Nwaokocha: We got busy after your Foundation extended the olive branch of 6018's file. We'll have two way radio contact for the next 24 hours before it cuts out. I meant what I said back there before entry. You gave use the legend, we'll give you the compass. We're here to map out reparations for our species's sins together.
The Colonel approaches the Doctor and presses Fan.nic into the metal enclosure until snaps shut. The closure snaps shut and the feed pans back up to face Nwaokocha.
Bright: 52 kilometers?
Nwaokocha: Due east, and we got less than 12 hours before command gets the first upload.
Video transitions to a thick jungle with momentary mono-cultures of bamboo pockmarking the macau, leech, and biome. The feed moves to focus on the rumbling foliage where Colonel Nwaokocha emerges alongside Theta-209. Behind them is an individual of male sex dressed in a skirt fashioned from bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa) leaves and hog tied to a bamboo tree. The subject is of smaller stature, approximately 135 cm in height, and covered in a coat of thin, brown hair with a forward curving spine. On their stomach, painted in dark red ink, is a wasp hovering over a fig flower. Bright rushes by the panting MTF crew, causing the native specimen to turn away from the doctor.
Bright: Are they injured?
Nwaokocha: One of yours is. Saul!
Theta-209-Tango: Sorry, colonel.
**Nwaokocha: Don't apologize, you made the right decision on that grappling restraint. We've responded to a bad first encounter with our best foot forward. All that is left is to follow through on our good will.
Bright: Did you catch what kind of weaponry he used on you?
Theta-209-Tango: Yeah, field surgeon had to pull it out of me. (Theta-209-Tango opens his hand to show an iron spear point.) Threw about ten of these before we could even locate the fast bastard.
Bright: Someone's been busy here. Like a dedicated blacksmith busy. Iron this well shaped is a bit beyond mud forges. But first we have our specimen. I'll need to document facial structure.
Nwaokocha: You'll be safe, we won't hurt you, and I'm sorry.
The colonel grabs hold of the subject's face and forces it to turn towards the video feed to expose its flattened visage, wide nose, and protruding mouth. The individual weeps with panicked breaths as the survey equipment subjects him to a barrage of camera flashes and x-ray scans. Nwaokocha releases their head the moment CG-12r gives a nod.
Surveyor CG-12: Fan's got it. Best guess is Homo rudolfensis but that is only at 37% certainty. We'll get working on the full genome map.
Bright: That was fast. Does it give you its napkin-scribbled math and the ashes of its last experiment or is this a more modern lab where you just trust the digital oracle's wisdom?
Surveyor CG-12: Preaching to the choir, doctor. I'll do my science in the dirt where the worms are cute and possibly parasitic and I wonder if we are going to see those zombie ant cordyceps fungi?
Bright: You want pictures of those cordyceps attaching to giant crabs?
Theta-209-Tango: We have a captive here, doctor.
Bright: Right. Homo hobbitus here. Do we keep him around or-
Nwaokocha: Absolutely not. This place is here for us to mulligan all those mistakes that happened under our ancestors' watch, not repeat them. (Nwaokocha crouches down to eye level with the prisoner.) Uche. I. am. Uche. You?
Captive: Tham! Muhadre simbala ewe Tham! Pahadme! In nonell Muhadre simbala ewe Tham un Mala un Revan in valan hileen!
Fan.nic: Tham! Drinker knows me Tham! Graceful! Tell not Drinker of knowing Tham, of Mala, of Revan, not dwelling orchard!
Surveyor CG-12: Confidence reads at 12% Sumerian with 8% Sanskrit. The "other" category keeps growing. One item of interest. Muhadre, or Drinker/Imbiber. Seems to be a proper noun. Fruit-Spirited-One is the best literal guess.
Nwaokocha: Saul!
Theta-209-Tango: Yes colonel?
Nwaokocha: Free him.
Theta-209-Tango: You can't be serious, after he tried to skewer my liver with those damn spears.
Nwaokocha: I very much can be and am, Tango. Do you really not think some of your team wouldn't react the same in his position?
Bright: We are in his position. Humanity's back is against the wall of multiple climate change induced extinction events and still hog-tied to one planet. We can't afford perfection, colonel. But we can afford all that nature asks for which is "good enough".
Nwaokocha: Good enough is what got half our acquisition list in here. Good enough doesn't work for endemic species. We already destroyed plan A back home when the methane deposits bloomed, we can't do the same with plan B. Cut Tham free. We've already tagged him and even this is making me feel dirty.
Theta-209-Tango severs Tham's bindings and the native takes off through the thick underbrush. The jungle fauna swallows his figure into the backdrop of dripping fauna, birdsong-filled canopies, and a haze of insects life. The colonel pulls out their radio transciever amid rising cries from kakapo and bush moa.
Nwaokocha: Initiate external linkup for final update before exit contact.
Receiver: Patching through… You're live.
Nwaokocha: Colonel Nwaokocha of the Ghaggar-Hakra expedition reporting in. Currently at the border of our first biome transition. Fan's at over 8,000 distinct anachronistic species and counting. We've made contact with one instance of native hominid life. Subject indicated reverence or fear towards a figure known as "Drinker". Subject freed and currently at a velocity of 4.8 meters a second towards the southwest.
Command: Acknowledged, colonel. Seek additional subjects and confirm presence of existing civilization or nomad-tribal hierarchy. Rendezvous at the exit point within 72 hours.
Nwaokocha: Order confirmed.
Bright: Exit?
Nwaokocha: Command thinks they've found a way out. We have three days max to find a drunkard before that. Ideas?
Bright: If you were tied to a branch by a kind of ape you've never seen before and you're reaction was to beg them not to talk to someone else, would you run towards that person upon release?
Camera feed reopens to show a wide, muddy river spanning a width of 142 meters before giving way to a chaparral1 biome on its northern bank. A steppe biome and mountains beyond it are visible in the background. The gentle hillscapes are populated with a patwork of extinct bushs, isolated fig trees, and vulpine predators tracking herbivores sleeping beneath the topsoil.
Dr. Bright turns to face the colonel as the collective crews plop onto the ground for a moment's respite after four hours of sleep and 18 of travel on foot. A lone surveyor launches an aerial drone to scout ahead as the rest collect their breath by the riverside. The drone dips as it transitions to the lower air pressure of the biome beyond them.
Nwaokocha: Drone data from the autonomous expedition becomes sparse past here.
Bright: And the river?
Nwaokocha: We'll prep some buoy probes and scout downstream. This will be a goldmine for Fan if it's freshwater.
Bright: Crossing it, Uche.
Nwaokocha: Colonel please, we have to maintain some decorum here.
Bright: And yet Tango is Saul.
Nwaokocha: What was the name of the surveyor who photographed our first hominid?
Bright: I have no idea.
Nwaokocha: How old are you, Doctor?
Bright: Eighty six going on 25.
Nwaokocha: That's a lot of names.
Bright: … Why are you doing this? The whole overly polite "Doctor and Colonel" bit. You're just coating shit-talk in candy.
Nwaokocha: I'm sugarcoating you for them. We still aren't sure if this exit is genuine and they can't afford cowboy science like you and your generation could. Even your organization is putting the best foot forward here. If you can't find your motivation in that then can you at least get it from the 57 young soldiers, engineers, and scientists who accepted this mission?
Bright: Some people are ready to throw their lives away.
Nwaokocha: Doctor, look outside yourself and that choker. We can't afford for you not to. I like being able to recite the names I carry and don't give me that "you'll change as you get older" excuse. We have an opportunity here to do something right. The first opportunity to work in harmony with something unpolluted by generations before us. We can't afford to not be idealistic with it.
Bright: Why did your superiors insist on me being sent?
Nwaokocha: Don't.
Bright: Why did you really put Fan into my pendant?
Nwaokocha: Doctor, don't.
Bright: Why did all these promising young minds agree to strand themselves here?
Nwaokocha: OK! I get it! They'll never see a butterfly back home. They'll never get to know a beach without plastic. But if even a shred of this place makes it out, someone else just might. If you don't like how your own soldier view you then this is the best time to change that by leading them out of here with something to show for it, Jack.
Bright: That's Doctor Bright.
Nwaokocha: This isn't productive to getting our data out of here.
Bright: And yet you provoked this. I'm not some straw man for the past you have every good reason to hate.
Nwaokocha: No, you are an old man still making decisions for young lives. Maybe that is why your task forces whisper about you when you pass, doctor? You haven't even sat with them during break time. I've been trying to be compassionate about your situation, I understand it is going to cause detachment. But in your own words, I can't afford to accomodate you perfectly, only good enough.
Bright: What kind of decisions am I making here? Do tell how this one immortal ape can alter the course of our entire damn species? DIssociating is easy, trying to make all my time feel meaningful against all those same complaints you have isn't. I can deny missions, colonel. I had to consent to your oh-so-reformed Security Council's insistence. So stop trying to make me or my work look pretty because it isn't, this place isn't, and I'm sure as shit not.
Bright stands up and proceeds towards the nearly complete bridge across the clouded waters full of pigme river rays. The colonel follows him onto the attached row of inflatable bridge segments and part through the working members of Theta-209. Bright jumps across the gap spanning the last block of open river and falls into the shallows. River rays leap from the water and pelt the doctor as he waddles over to the bank. Colonel Nwaokocha leaps after him as the expedition crew flock to the edge of their floated pier and watch their superiors wade across. The colonel overtakes Bright and mounts the embankment before offering a hand to the doctor. Bright grabs hold and is hoisted to dry land.
Nwaokocha: I can't believe that, but I can apologize for how I acted and I do. Your name carries a lot of weight, Jack and yes, Uche is fine.
Bright: Our atrocities weren't born in a vacuum, Uche, we learned and inherited them from nature around us. This place is proof of that, not a contradiction of it.
Camera opens after 38 minutes of transit to show the remains of a drone downed by a wooden crossbow bolt with an iron tip. The video pans up to show the steppe biome an estimated 28km away. On its foothills are a dotting of stacked cylindrical structures carved into the hillside. From their vicinity billows up the white smoke of controlled burning onto the otherwise unblemished atmosphere.
Bright: Well, this looks even more refined.
Nwaokocha: We're on the right track then. Is it's SSD still intact?
Bright: Nope, it's leaking whatever that gooey black stuff they make hard drives out of these days is.
Nwaokocha: We'll have to let the folks from Origin get what they can from it.
Theta-209-Tango: We're not going to have time, Colonel! Drone five is picking up a group of hominids heading in our direction about nine kilometers out.
Bright: Details on their numbers; armaments?
Surveyor CG-12: It's some sort of procession, 12 in total. They're carrying an individual on a palanquin of some kind. What spears they have look ceremonial.
Theta-209-Tango: More coming up from behind the procession. Looks like they are attempting to camouflage themselves. Not a lot of good versus infrared sensors. Counting 56 hiding out there and I think we've found our crossbowmen.
Nwaokocha: We need to avoid a conflict here.
Bright: We're not in any realistic danger here, are we?
Nwaokocha: We're not here to play Columbus.
Bright: Wasn't suggesting so. How do we approach the welcoming parade?
Nwaokocha: I don't have much experience to go off of here. Back home we knew what kind of culture we were dealing with. We kept our distance while dealing with people like the Sentinelese and just tried our best to make sure they can keep doing their own thing despite sea level rise. For more welcoming groups like the cargo cultists, we sent small groups of doctors and anthropologists to address any immediate needs and threats to the continuation of their way of life. I don't know which to expect here.
Bright: Humanity falls smack dab between chimpanzees and bonobos as far as our temperament goes. I don't expect other hominids to be any different, especially given our acheological knowledge of homo sapian-neanderthal interaction. Between their crossbows and their loins, either way they might try to-
Nwaokocha: Ok, I get the picture there. I'm going to assume we can at least use traditional negotiation tactics. That means we need a gift if we expect them to share something besides arrows. They are using iron consistently and we have plenty of that in our ferroslug packs. Do you have any actual machine shop experience or are you really the experimentalist you claim to be?
Bright: If you are going to try motivating me with challenges, just promise you don't have gold star stickers to pass out at the end. Let me enjoy my hobbies without your evangelical positivity hovering over me.
Nwaokocha: I promise not to micromanage.
Bright: You'll also have to get permission from Saul as Theta's lead.
Nwaokocha: I am painfully aware there. They don't look at you in fear, Jack, more as an idol for their worldview and the Foundation's. They aren't kind to themselves in that lense. I need to ensure their morale just as much as yours if we are going to approach these people and this place with all the same generosity they have shown us.
Bright: They have experiences and reasons for those views, justifications that have kept the going. Just like me. Getting so obsessed over how they can change it when it is the only that keeps their world together isn't going land well.
Feed clips to Colonel Nwaokocha's camera as they dismount their mobility rig alongside eight members of Theta-209. The camera pans to show them on a rocky outcropping overlooking the surrounding chaparral where the native village stands as a sole disturbance on the otherwise sheer cliff face. The incline to cliff is etched into three tiers of occupation with the bottom most protected by a semicircular wall.
Theta-209-Tango: Dr. Bright is sending the confirmation on our gift's completion. Him and four members of CG-12 are en route. ETA of twenty minutes.
Nwaokocha: And our guests?
Theta-209-Tango: Still about thirty minutes out at their current speed. Their crossbowmen are moving around us to our north and south but holding off from a pincer position.
Theta-209-Marco: Permission to find better ground?
Nwaokocha: Hold positions. The less they know about what we can see the better.
Theta-209-Tango: They must have seen us first given their archer's positioning, colonel.
Nwaokocha: Let's give them every reason to boast, Saul. It's good data.
Theta-209-Tango: And bad security. Assumptions make for good shovels.
Nwaokocha: We should probably address something while its just us soldier here. I know I am in somewhere out of my element and I know I have been far too belittling of those of you long since adapted to that ecology. It isn't productive for your to be working outside of your element as much as I am right now. Permissioin for better ground granted.
The surveyors and Dr. Bright arrive as the sun hangs low in the sky behind them, hanging over last hours of light for their first day in the anomaly. To their north, the distant figure of the approaching palanquin shimmers in the afternoon sunlight like a golden pin on the horizon. Bright holds the printed combination of the two organization's insignia up and attempts to bend them.
Nwaokocha: That looks like gunmetal.
Bright: Relax, its pig iron. I'm just trying to see if they have steel on the horizon. Remember your Clarke-isms. Can't have them assuming us to be wizards.
Nwaokocha: They may be expecting them. You don't come out of an UISP2 without being called a shaman at least. They know about the drones, they probably knew about the autonomous expedition too considering their data immediately stops at this biome.
Bright: Should I ready our bag of tricks?
Nwaokocha: I'm not here to contaminate their culture. If anything, our culture needs more of theirs in all likelihood.
Bright: You're making a lot of assumptions about people know nothing about besides their weapons.
Nwaokocha: I know what our side brings to the table in that assessment. Its hard to be worse than rampant refugee and resource crises from a disaster we had a century's forewarning about.
Bright: There is the Gen Z nihilism I knew was in you.
Nwaokocha: Oh I know I have far too many reasons to be in as exactly as shit a mood as you but where would that take me? I'm not envious of your life either, Jack. I know I will probably die seeing my work still undone. I have been disappointed and know I will be again but I can't get weighed down by that because it only leads down. So yes, I'm going to fight that weight.
Video advances to show the ruby-tinted tapestries of the approaching palanquin made from carved marble. It is carried upon two rows of four persons in yellow garb with another two to either side carrying polearms with iron heads shaped like fig saplings. The individuals making up the procession are of various gender presentations, skin tones, and statures but bear a noticeably protruding brow line as a commonality. At the top of the palanquin and behind thin red veils, a figure sits up.
Figure Behind Curtain: Simbala ewe. Simbala sho. Simbala van. Simbala ewe Mu-Adre, un Cho-Ban, un Intel-Vah. Girt-Fo in Shum Hileen.
Fan.nic: Know me. Know you. Know all. Know me as Fig-Drinker, of Sage-Smoker, of Fungus-Eater. Spermed-flower of Mother-tree.
The figure turns towards Bright and his pendant calling out in response before they rise. The Drinker parts the curtains to expose their deep-olive complexion and clean-shaven masculine face featuring a prominent brow. On their forehead and balding scalp, tattooed in rust-red ink, is the image of a vagina with a fig sapling protruding from it.
Fig-Drinker: Sho, to yant. Quan girt sho?
Fan.nic: You, with shackles. Who breeds you?
Subsequent translations omitted. Further entries for hominids native to SCP-6018 are transposed with Fan.nic's best estimated meaning.
Bright: (Whispering to Nwaokocha) I think he expects my owner to answer that question.
Nwaokocha: It may be mistranslated, Fan's still operating at 15%, he may have also said it in concern. (Towards the Drinker) I am. In peace with him and hopefully to you, Fig-Drinker. I am Uche, of Cornwall, of United Kingdom. Here in generosity to know Fig-Drinker and all who follow.
Fig-Drinker cocks his head to the side as they examine the colonel. He parts the tapestries to expose their lanky frame and protruding belly clothed in a red linen robe that extends midway down their thigh. An earthenware jug hangs from their right side which jostles as Fig-Drinker descends the steps of the palanquin. Theta-209-Tango and Theta-209-Marco advance in response before halting at Colonel Nwaokocha's glare. Fig-Drinker approaches Nwaokocha before placing a hand over the colonel's heart. Fig-Drinker and the colonel stare at one another with equal confusion until Nwaokocha reciprocates.
Fig-Drinker: What grain do you corn? Your sapling is fat.
Nwaokocha: Barley and we are working on him.
Fig-Drinker: I would like to as well. I'm eager to test his weight and render it under my own, with your lease of him unto me, of course.
Nwaokocha: We can come back to that later, do you accept our peace and give peace in kind?
Fig-Drinker: I have already. You felt the heat of my home burning within my chest. You know the peace of wood aflame and ashes cast on planted ground. You know the center of my mass and the totality of my weight. You stand on your own weight and so I must acknowledge the peace such balance grants.
Nwaokocha: We would like to know your people and learn your ways and give you this in hope that you accept our learning. Might we see the place where your weight rests and see how you stand upon it? We are in search of many beasts and plants and have much to offer in exchange for your wisdom alone.
Bright prostrates himself on his knees before Fig-Drinker with their molded insignias held aloft. Fig-Drinker plucks the gift from Doctor Bright's hands and holds it towards the setting sun. Fig-Drinker tosses the gift towards one of his guards without looking. One member of the detail manages to catch the item and the rest flock to test the high-carbon relic. The leader motions Colonel Nwaokocha up the palanquin steps. Nwaokocha follows but stops for a moment to look back upon Bright now facing the ground on his hands and knees.
Nwaokocha: Might my sapling join? It is important for him to be within my… weight.
Fig-Drinker: I would hope so! I still must know of your talking green as well. Come, we will talk which beasts and grains my garden might be felled in offering to you. You have already brought to us much in sight alone. Saplings and aspirants crossing ground at high speed on enslaved river striders. Beetles of metal shell and blackened bile. Now you stand before me with metals that make my smiths whisper as we speak. I am very interested to see how you apply your weight, generous Uche.
<End Log>
Addendum 6018.2: Expedition Logs Part 2 of 6
Date: 2045/07/09
Location: 168km west of Camp Origin
Depiction of a Dodo bird both live (left) and roasted (right). Mural found on the wall of a Dodo coop within Root Ascending.
<Begin Log>
Video opens to the deep amber glow of the rising sun shining behind the foothills extending east of the northern range. At the mountain base and at regular intervals up its slope are painted structures carved into rock-face. To their west, the barrier of a temperate forest biome shimmers from morning mists transpiring out of the plentiful flora before cascading against the otherwise invisible barrier. Nwaokocha and Bright watch the waiting crowds at the entrance of the village from the palanquin's edge. Upon numerous pillows and mats, Fig-Drinker sleeps with an audible snore.
Nwaokocha: When we park, get Ace and Lee on comms to ensure that Origin is vacated.
Bright: Think we'll need the manpower?
Nwaokocha: I think we'll need the data. We're here for more than just hominids.
Bright: I would hope so. I miss bananas. Speaking of, do you smell that?
Nwaokocha: You mean the manure or the baked goods?
Bright: Both, really. We got a full blown agrarian society here. Bread in the quantity they are carrying implied specialized bakers. The manure tells us they have domesticated animals. Smells like poultry.
Fig-Drinker's eyes flutter open to the sound of the villagers chanting his name in the distance. The jubliant toss birdsead and whole oats into the are as their leader rises along with their cheers. He catches a flatbread tossed into the air and crams it whole into his mouth. Nwaokocha and Bright bend over to each pick up one to see a spread of goat butter and fig jam smeared inside them. The oversized red garb of Fig-Drinker hangs over them as he waits for them to partake.
Fig-Drinker: I am graceless, generous Uche. Please, partake of my contrition wrought from wheat stalk and brought through the tandor by those I move. Come and let us set eye on those who live off of my generosity.
Nwaokocha: Without offense. I am humbled before your land and am graced by the ease under which our generosity finds kinship. What may we know this place as?
Fig-Drinker: Root Ascending is what the lessers call my home. Here they partake of my land with shackled goat to break the ground and clipped bird to render it fertile. Here they live in the shadow of my Father and Grandfather. That paternal line left suckling fat flowing from Mother's roots into fruit for those under me, as I will one day be planted when this garden bores me. Here they pile their hopes of rotting like their hearts rot, like my Mother's hearts rots.
The background shows the gentle rolling of the chaparral behind them, before them stands the tiered city. Mountain runoff is diverted off their paths and down carved channels into the irrigation troughs for each layer. Two fig trees tower over the others on the topmost layer. A waves of fig petals flow off their branchs and down on to them with the mountain wind. Bright flags down Surveyor CG-12 and Theta-209-Tango while the colonel and Fig-Drinker wave to the oncoming horde of inhabitants.
Bright: We get word of anything interesting from Origin yet?
Theta-209-Tango: Ground fungi.
Surveyor CG-12: Interconnecting ground fungi, which in-of-itself isn't anything novel. Old growth arboreal preserves show evidence of rudimentary communication via an underlying network of fungi. But these, they cross biome borders. Not all of them are everywhere but collectively, they might be connected to everywhere in here.
Bright: And are we sure that this is anomalous in nature?
Theta-209-Tango: Potentially giant fungus brain, Doctor.
Bright: Again, my questions is… Did you two ever hear of the Pando? In old Utah?
Surveyor CG-12: Yeah, the extinct clonal colony of quaking aspen. One organism naturally covering almost 45 hectares of area. One, Doctor. We're talking about a multitude of fungus species facilitating communication between various kinds of life across biome boundaries. This whole place is like one big patchwork of old growth forests.
Theta-209-Tango: Quantum-paired drone telemetry shows that distance scales differently in here too. This may connect to areas far beyond home-side's borders. Wherever that exit connects to, we won't be in India anymore.
Bright: It might not just be our Ghaggar. Let's focus on getting Origin moved to Forward within 18 hours. Let them handle the mushrooms for now.
The palanquin comes to a halt just as the crowd overtakes them. The common castes of Root Ascending, clothed in hemp robes of yellow or green, preoccupy the two with a barrage of greetings, gifts, and embraces. The two shirk off from the crowd with grateful motions until they rejoin the joint forces behind them. Camera turns back with Bright to face Fig-Drinker and Colonel Nwaokocha waving to the cheering crowd from the palanquin's edge. The feed hugs the marble flooring as Bright remains prone until he crawls up behind Nwaokocha.
Bright: They are informed, your eminence.
Nwaokocha: You know Fan isn't on unless I signal it to be.
Bright: Forgive me, I am without shame or care my-
Nwaokocha: The river, Jack.
Bright: Sorry, Origin's moving and their data is best summarized as fungus letting plants talk to each other which is apparently normal but not because space here is weird? So we are going to need Ace and Lee to parse that but first is… whatever they are going to do to us.
Nwaokocha: Feed us before something called "Girt-Tyn". Fan?
Fan.nic: Girt-Tyn: Seed-Pluck.
Nwaokocha: I'm guessing it to be some sort of coming-of-age ceremony.
Bright: That is a very generous interpretation there, Uche. They clearly have a caste system, don't be surprised when that comes with all its bells and whistles.
Nwaokocha: Fig describes them as a bit egalitarian. Their saplings are selected for Girt-Tyn based on feats of hunting, animal husbandry, craftsmanship, bountiful harvests, basically anything that helps them collectively. Yeah, the saplings are the ones doing most of the manual labor and I recognize that no culture is perfect but I can at least take the small victory in there be some method for them to advance in their society.
Bright: I heard a bunch of excuses right after "most of the manual labor". Fig isn't exactly helping me form a charitable outlook towards his society's caste relations either. If he is half as much a creep to them as he was to me back there then I worry for what "feats" some of the aspirants in his entourage did to get there. I know a good way to find out, though, you go catch up with Ace and Saul.
Bright springs out in front of Fig-Drinker and catches a flatbread in his mouth as he stumbles an attempt at a dance. Fig-Drinker leans in until his shadow overtakes the sun above Bright as he inspects every move. The cult leader stops him with a press onto Bright's head until he falls back onto his buttocks.
Fig-Drinker: You dance like lead.
Bright: Pardon? Uh… Mighty Drinker?
Fig-Drinker: Heavy. But weight is purpose, both spry and fat. I want to weigh on you, sapling, until I can feel exactly how much sustenance I can strain out of your plumpness. I am curious about how someone with such capacity ends up in shackles so humiliating.
Bright: I'm as good as any for you to test yourself. You can't crush me. Uh, I wouldn't dream of challenging your weight, bountiful Fig, merely that I am under the powerful grace of my lead. I would dare not challenge theirs. You will find the patient to take wrath last but with the greatest zeal.
Fig-Drinker: I would not gather such from their demeanor, it speaks of meekness. Like weight grown by barley and lentils rather than oxen-tilled wheat and long-tracked ibex. With such in eye, I must gather from you. Your shackles, your "Fan", you. Where do I cleave to make your trimmings from Uche's generous muscle?
Bright: Simbala ewe. I am nothing more than what can ponder "I am".
Fig-Drinker: I am what I can move. I am they who listen and move for me. I am the tree that rises up to feed me or falls to warm me. I am the throne that carries me and I am the warriors that carry it. What moves your Uche?
Bright: A hope that I can only compare to stale bread. Better for the sling than the soul's stomach.
The palanquin jostles for a moment as Fig-Drinker takes a drink from his jug. The throne turns to face its stairs towards the village gates and Fig-Drinker saunters towards Nwaokocha. The colonel awaits the two of them at the stair's apex and motions for Fig-Drinker to lead with a bow. The surrounding villagers filter out into limestone buildings of modest dimensions and utilitarian design. The stonework of the structures are decorated with a variety of painted carvings representing animal life native to SCP-6018.
Nwaokocha: What was that about?
Bright: He was just coming on to me with all the paleolithic homo-eroticism of truck-stop bathroom graffiti again.
Nwaokocha: You know that you don't have to… well…
Bright: Keep contemplating that, please.
Nwaokocha: Let's just focus on the data. We will have to deal with these people on a regular basis if we are going to use 6018 as an extinction fail-safe.
Bright: And there we have the actual reason we're here. Not for the past, but to make sure we aren't totally screwed in the future.
Nwaokocha: I can prepare for the worst while I work towards the best. It isn't just blind and lame hope that I'm trying to peddle here. Now if you are done trying to go on your own pessismistic crusade, we have brunch to enjoy.
The trio proceed with the expedition crew tailing behind them. They pass by multiple huts made of limestone brick, earthen mortar, and thatched roofs. Several of the structures have attached gardens and coops possessing a collage of extinct and extant flightless bird species. They ascend a staircase that elevates them 12.3 meters up the oncoming cliff face partitioning the tiered village. The new level of occupation is predominately dedicated towards the mono-culture production of crops for grain and recreation.
Fig-Drinker motions them up another flight of stairs carved into the hillside up to the courtyard surrounding the village's temple. The camera feed halts at the sight of an orchard of fig trees growing from corpses whose remains are stuck in a meditative pose. At the edges of the mortuary grove, malnourished individuals sit in the same lotus position with their mouths opened towards the sky.
Nwaokocha: Uh… Graceful Fig-Drinker, your funeral rights are interesting.
Fig-Drinker: They are travelers, not corpses.
Fig-Drinker pulls them down a row of trees before taking a knee before one cadaver and the elder fig tree that grows from it. A wreath of sage leaves encircles the skull buried into the trunk of the tree and its roots are decorated with lit candles. Down the row from them towers one of the two larger fig trees casting a shadow over the rest of the orchard. Sage grows in its shade and topaz-bedazzelled aspirants sleep off stupors from smoked flowers on the oversized arbor's wide branches.
Fig-Drinker: A flower that was spermed by my father. She travels far.
Nwaokocha: Where does she journey to?
Fig-Drinker: Down with the flow of death and at the speed of life until she sprouts once more in another garden.
Nwaokocha: I am humbled by the scope of your rights. It would have been of great help to me in dealing with the passing of my mother. I wish yours safe travels.
Fig-Drinker: She and I are not in root. I am rooted to my Mother. Bountiful and blind, but here within grasp of her child. I couldn't draw such weight off the sap of a tree so narrow in canopy. You shouldn't insult your weight so much as to pile it with such rotted kindling.
Nwaokocha: And those on the edge. Those who aren't "traveling" yet?
Fig-Drinker: Do you bear alms?
Nwaokocha: I come with food and clean water.
Fig-Drinker: Travelers sit here when they are done with eating. Their mouths are only for making distance.
Fig-Drinker rises and motions towards a pack of elderly tribe members flanking either side of the grove. They place mushrooms, pour wine, or blow smoke into the waiting mouths of the barely living as they pass. The Drinker proceeds back out of the rows towards the looming tower in the shadow of the cliff into which it is carved. The crew follows suit and soon they are seated around a long table. At the rear of the dining hall and opposite it's burning fireplace is an open gap in the wall to view the various murals on the cliff face behind them.
Twelve roasted dodos are paraded into the candle-lit interior alongside a plethora of steamed grains and vegetables. Colonel Nwaokocha sits at the center position of the table just opposite Fig-Drinker. On the floor behind them is Doctor Bright along with a myriad of villagers each clothed in a simple hemp robe stained green. Fig-Drinker takes a stand as the last of the food finds its place on the table and hoists an earthenware cup filled with wine aloft. Colonel Nwaokocha does the same and the rest join in a toast beneath ceilings of extinct leathers and before a table heaped with long extinguished fuana. The colonel grimaces at the sight of Fig-Drinker pulling a breast off the closest roasted dodo with his bare hands.
Fig-Drinker: May our bounty find one another. May our roots intertwine. All to grow closer in purpose and breeding. As Mother-tree is rooted to all, we grow in hopes of rooting to one another.
Bright: Mind passing scraps to the family dog if you aren't going to eat?
Nwaokocha: I'm just finding this… a bit historically distasteful.
Bright: It's farmed bird and we've ate nothing but rations for two days, Uche. Shut up and enjoy your dodo.
Feed opens from the colonel's helmet camera to show them approaching a group of tarpans3 tied to a fence-post. A green-clothed villager rushes ahead of them to connect two of the equine to a wide chariot. The initiate bows as the leader boards the carriage and motions Nwaokocha to follow. Dr. Bright and the joint force team struggle to mount their lesser chariots behind them. Feed skips to show sunset dyed plains giving way to a valley of thick temperate forest. Over each remaining hill, Nwaokocha gets another peak at the beacon of green light on the horizon ahead. Behind them are a group of green-garbed villagers running on foot in pursuit of them.
Nwaokocha: Do you not want to wait for your saplings?
Fig-Drinker: They will make it if they are ready for Girt-Tyn.
Nwaokocha: And if they aren't?
Fig-Drinker: Then the life that rises from their corpse will be ready. I am curious. How do you spread your weight so that they all obey with such vigor yet so little application?
Nwaokocha: They believe in why we are here. They are in root with how I apply my weight because we apply it in unison towards one end. We hope to learn from and bring home some of the life that this place has made possible. Our home is a squandered garden. We miss things like the flowers and cicadas that call your domain home. Under our shared generosity we might be able to achieve that.
Fig-Drinker: Even the river leeches? Or the worms that take the child's eye as their apple? Or even worse, them. (Fig points at the stampede of saplings trampling over one another in pursuit.) The worm at least makes a home of the youthful outlook. They are prone to make only grief and more death. They have to be goaded into salvation by heaping their greed and lust for more unto me. To dig their roots down, they must ingratiate themselves to the dirt. For the worm, such is instinct, not a shame.
Nwaokocha: There is no shame or blame in either. I've seen failed farms lead to dead fathers and hungry sons. Watched those desparate sons set obvious targets for their anguish to flame, churning towers of oil and wealth. I've seen that heat draw the wrath of kings and their armies until our own homes were ash just like their treasuries. Just like worms finds a home in the child left on the edge of society's concern, anguish breeds in neglect for that child's parents to. So I'll take them all. The leeches, the worms, and especially your saplings. I can't survive in a world where they are lost causes. Yes, their weight can burn your childhood to the ground, but I can't build that up alone.
Fig-Drinker takes a long draw from his jug in response. The mounted crew pass through the biome barrier and their steeds pick up speed with the heightened oxygen in the air. One hour and 42 minutes of irrelevant chatter and travel omitted. Video refocuses on a bright, green light shining above the forest canopy ahead of them as the group dismount their steeds and wait on the straggling saplings. The forest is thick with life which diversifies exponentialy as it approaches the pulsing aurora ahead of them.
Fig-Drinker: It is Mother's light. Stolen from death and granted onto life. A triumph over defiant sun and foolish wasp. Drawn in patience like you, generous Uche. It is my honor to demonstrate my weight over the errant parasite and the blooming fig. Let us move to Mother's embrace and know the length to which her roots will find you. That is where my saplings might pluck their seed.
Theta-209-Tango: Colonel, we're picking up comms from the outside again. Current triangulation shows the source to be just past this Mother-tree of theirs.
Bright: It's command. Or at least me and Saul's command. It's broadcasting on Foundation encryption protocols.
Nwaokocha: Sounds like the exit. Saul, take Lee and Ace to scope it out. Feel free to break out the mobility rigs once you are out of sight.
Theta-209-Tango: Roger.
Nwaokocha: First though, any update on those… ground mushrooms?
Surveyor CG-12: Apparently we don't have any kind of next-of-kin so to speak of them in known biological record. No signs of ancestors in Earth's fossil record, no descendants still kicking it. Although that is to be expected. Fungi microfossils are as rare as old growth forests back home.
Bright: They could be endemic to here although I am interested in how.
Nwaokocha: Elaborate.
Bright: There is no evolutionary pressure here unless this place knows extinction as well. We're in the garden of natural selection's losers, after all.
Nwaokocha looks back over to Fig-Drinker waiting under a canopy of woven bohdi leaves carried by his initiates. The colonel turns back towards Doctor Bright for a moment as Tango and CG-12 depart to their respective tasks.
Nwaokocha: I need to ask you something about that exit but let's focus on reestablishing contact first.
Bright: And tend to our drunkard. Fan's working on a behavioral analysis of him to better read his body language, so keep our star in frame. It's a bit hard for me to do that while averting my eyes and groveling.
Nwaokocha: It's only another day or two, Jack. But I do appreciate it. You aren't as heavy, in the words of Fig-Drinker, as your personal dossier implies.
Bright: And you said nothing when he called me fat.
Nwaokocha snorts and smiles in response before turning back to join Fig-Drinker. They proceed along a forest path as a pair of Fig-Drinker's saplings clear the trail ahead with machetes. Oversized dragonflies speed by in the high-oxygen environment. The vegetation grows taller and decorated with increasing signs of old wounds and ancient clawmarks.
Nwaokocha: My apologies, my saplings are as needful as they are obedient.
Fig-Drinker: Everything is needful. Impatience over such would be a waste of my good spirits.
Surveyor CG-12: Colonel, Doctor. We think we've found the tree you are heading towards. We've set up camp just one kilometer to its north.
Theta-209-Tango: Drone coverage shows us to be in the clear too. No signs of pursuit or stalking crossbowmen. Marco and I are about to get a visual on the possible exit.
Nwaokocha: Good news. Get a radio pole up there ASAP and let's see if your Foundation will pick up the phone. Report back with any updates. We're almost to the Mother-tree on our end.
The group clears a layer of thick fern growth to expose a grassy clearing with a fig tree of redwood proportion growing from its hilly apex. The trunk glows with a bright green light but they look without apparent discomfort. The cult leader saunters over towards the brilliant trunk and behind him rush a multitude of panting saplings. They carrying textiles, bundles of food, bladders of wine, and multiple smoking implements and set them in a spread before Mother-tree's radiating base.
The colonel joins Fig-Drinker in scaling the hill towards the tree. As they do, Nwaokocha's feed picks out the patter of luminescent lines moving up and down the trunk, pulsing in brilliance as the gargantuan fig tree glimmers. The camera feed lowers towards the tree's root base to show a faint green shimmer emanate from the soil in tune to the pulsing glow.
Fig-Drinker: A good time for Girt-Tyn. I love interrupting a defiant sun's slumber. It shines upon Mother during the seed plucking regardless of hour. A glorious sight and terrible sensation but no plant can grow on its own light alone.
Nwaokocha: Another feast?
Fig-Drinker: Not for us.
Nwaokocha: For your saplings?
FIg-Drinker: They'll get their feast back home. This feast is for him.
Fig-Drinker stops just shy of the Mother-tree's base and points back down the hill towards a group of saplings. They carry a tree log with someone tied to it. The camera feed zooms in as Fan.nic confirms it to be the first hominid they encountered inside SCP-6018.
Nwaokocha: Tham… How?
Fig-Drinker: To be meek is to have bountiful honesty and shriveled power. They hunt on my lands and bow before my roots to Mother. I only had to send word to his fathers and a fortunate child would be delivered. His fate was to be our wasp the moment his great-grandfathers came to me in desperation like your village burners. On the weight of their consent I build this garden with their progeny.
Nwaokocha: What's going to happen to him?
Fig-Drinker: What's going to happen to your sapling? The one so curious of the defiant sun?
Fig-Drinker takes a swig from his jug as a flash of light explodes from the background to their north. A burst like the sky breaking under the heat of a exploding asteroid fills the audio and sends everyone but Fig scrambling. Saplings take cover behind the gargantuan children of Mother-tree growing along the outskirts of her clearing.
Nwaokocha: Tango! Come in!
Theta-209-Tango: I'm green. Lee though… I blinked with the flash and he was gone. I think I can reach his last location. One minute. What? I… But my friend… I understand.
Nwaokocha: What do you understand? Do you have a visual on the exit?
Theta-209-Tango: I didn''t have the hubris necessary to die with him, colonel. I know now my place among his ashes, though. They are all I have left of him. I understand that now.
Bright: Saul. You are going to be OK but I need you tell me exactly what it is that you understand.
Nwaokocha: I need to know what you understand about this, Jack. No more games from your Foundation and no more trying to shit on anyone's hopes here. What in the bloody hell can you tell me about this exit?
Bright: All I know, all I've ever been trusted to know, is telling me that you aren't going to like how that exit works. Ace, make sure that Saul makes it back to Forward and don't get curious.
Surveyor CG-12: Don't worry, doctor. I'm already picking up his tracker and he is booking it away from there.
Nwaokocha: And the radio?
Surveyor CG-12: Signal was knocked out for a moment with the flash but it is coming back. Won't be long before we can test outgoing comms.
Nwaokocha: Get that done first. Have a drone tail Tango. We have to get some of the specimen data out of here.
The saplings set Tham down before their blanket bearing a spread of brews, grains, fruits, and dry-cured meats. Fig-Drinker takes a lotus position on the opposite side of the feast as Tham is cut free from his second captivity. The much shorter hominid immediately bows at the sight of Fig-Drinker while sneaking glances at the saplings forming an enclosing circle around the two.
Fig-Drinker: Eat, drink, smoke. We shouldn't let foolish funerals detract from your greatest moment.
Tham's hands hover over the bounty before him before grabbing hold of a split papaya and biting out its flesh. He eats with the abandon of malnourished needs before unimaginable bounty until his stomach expands with his gluttony for the provided feast. Tham finishes the fruit before grabbing hold of a dried leg of boar. His left hand holds the bone of the animal in position for his ravenous consumption as his right finds the nearest cup of wine.
Fig-Drinker: Tell me your name, fortunate child.
Tham: I am Tham, of Mala, of Revan.
Fig-Drinker: And why do you breath? Why do you eat of my orchard's fruit? Why do you slay the beasts of my forests? Why are you?
Tham: My parents put me here. As theirs did. Bred into this garden.
Fig-Drinker: As was I. It is not how you are planted, it is how you grow. You have grown strong off of my orchard, your tribe has too, but neither offered anything in return. I say this not as an accusation but as an admission of my and my Mother's generosity. Would you like to know the mortar from which my charity is built? All you must do is look above your breeding and take it. It is everything you were born for and more.
Fig-Drinker smiles as a flower blooms on the Mother-tree branch immediately above them approximately 15 meters up. Tham continues to eat and drink with increasing ferocity only interrupted by draws from a lit pipe filled with sage.Tham lurches back against the luminescent tree trunk and lets out a loud belch. He stares up at the flower growing above him with increased attention.
Tham reaches up towards the flower and is lifted into the air. The flower grows until he is encapsulated by it's petals which close up around him. Another light bursts from the north and shines in a concentrated beam on Tham and the flower. Colonel Nwaokocha lurches while Tham screeches for a moment and the flower shrivels around him in the radiance. The sounds of bones crunching and meat searing replace Tham's screams as the flower shrinks in size.
After three seconds, the light begins to fade and the flower takes shape into a fig. The last burning rays sever the fruit's stem where it falls into Fig-Drinker's palm. Bright and Nwaokocha jump as the saplings rush past them to line up before Fig-Drinker. Their leader breaks open the fruit and places a single seed into the waiting mouths of each present initiate. Once complete, Fig-Drinker pulls out his jug and shoves the meat of the fruit into his brew.
<End Log>
Addendum 6018.3: Expedition Logs Part 3 of 6
Photo taken from the border between Root Ascending's chaparral biome and Mother-tree's temperate forest biome.
Date: 2045/07/10
Location: In transit to Root Ascending
<Begin Log>
Video opens from Bright's viewpoint using night-vision to show Colonel Nwaokocha riding alongside Fig-Drinker once more. Fig-Drinker stands tall at the forefront of their chariot as the colonel looks off the side. Ahead of them burns the bonfires and distant cheers of the waiting village. Both Bright and the colonel perk up as CG-12 returns on the radio.
Surveyor CG-12: Saul's back at forward. Started coming to about 50km out from the exit point.
Bright: Let's not call it the exit yet. Radio working?
Surveyor CG-12: We've been broadcasting across a wide spectrum of frequencies to see if they pick up. So far no bites.
Nwaokocha: Jack?
Bright: Give it to Saul. He should be carrying encryption keys, not the right keys but an unauthorized access attempt will heighten their attention.
Nwaokocha: Ring harder, Ace.
Surveyor CG-12: On it.
Nwaokocha: Jack, do you really think that is the exit?
Bright: It wouldn't surprise me if that qualifies as an "exit" by the O5's standards.
Nwaokocha: They really told you nothing about it? You were practically born into that Foundation and they told you nothing? If they never trust you why would you spend your time with them? You claimed you had agency, does it not cover you packing up your bags and leaving?
Bright: You said it yourself, I was raised in it. I've watched many things change in the world around me. I've grinned at the screeches of dial-up modems as a child and grew up knowing its future in the labs of my father. But the Foundation? That never changes and I tried for a good three decades. But right now, that stubborn behemoth is the only thing left of my childhood. Screaming internet connections fall to the wayside, fathers die, and old labs get decommissioned with napalm. There's a grocery store on top of it now. It's nice, still has those little sample cups of cheese and sausage.
Nwaokocha: I would love to see it sometime. Does it have those tanks with the live lobsters?
Bright: Yeah, that a problem?
Nwaokocha: I'm more concerned with if they are sustainable than I am with them being in the tank for the last days of their life. Kept in there knowing the only way out is by that giant hand pulling you out of the water to god knows where. I like watching them for those lobsters that just refuse to get it. That lone lobster crawling atop the others and reaching a leg up out of the water towards that lid.
Bright: Why did they send you, Uche? Why send someone so attached to home that they actually want to go back to that mess. There are GOC officers that would jump at the chance to get stuck in places like this. Plentiful food, no pollution, no global warming.
Nwaokocha: I'm here because the Council trusts me. They trust me to set the best foot forward for an Earth at last ready to do the same. We found something hopefully unblemished by humankind and even here I see something familiar metastasizing. Meek villagers in huts just waiting for Fig to find some reason to knock them down… this isn't productive. It won't do us any good to give up on this place while we're only two days into it. We have to focus on crew moral and data acquisition. Something has to make it home. We've confirmed an abnormality, maybe we can work with that.
Bright: Well the best person to ask about that is our murderous drunkard. He talks like he knows how things work with the tree.
Nwaokocha: And about the light. He warned me before the flash and Lee's biosigns going offline.
Bright: We need Ace and the surveyors' data but I may have a hypothesis. We will also need that jug of his.
Nwaokocha: I can't do that Jack. It's clearly sacred to them.
Bright: Sacred to him. The tribe has gone through at least two other junkies before him.
Nwaokocha: I'm not looking to contaminate this place with anything resembling the shit we are trying to save ourselves from. They've already seen us cross ground at inhuman speeds, extend our eyesight to the realm of birds, and translate our gibberish into something they understand in nigh-real time.
Bright: And they responded in kind or did you forget about Fig-Drinker tricking Tham into getting turned to fruit. Yeah, humanity has some nasty survival habits. Guess where we learned that from. Besides, I'm only asking for a sample from it. Whatever is left of Tham can survive that light.
Nwaokocha: And you think we can get that from him? I figured you of all people here would pick up on his proto-toxic brand of sex and power dynamics. Do you really want to threaten what might as well be his genitals in a jar? We can't be setting this precedent, Jack.
Bright: Our wizards have finished their staff measuring competitions. We have tech. They have the fruit of their Mother-tree. They're about to bask in the afterglow of blowing their mystical load so that gives us a chance to at least try.
Nwaokocha: Let's not make this any more… charged than what Fig already makes it. He certainly doesn't appear to be immune to intoxication. He's leaning heavily on the chariot already and we have another feast ahead of us. It will give us something to compliment Ace's soil and root samples from the Mother-tree and I suppose they wouldn't miss a few milliliters.
Bright: Sounds like a plan. I'll coordinate with forces here to ensure we have an escape path back to Forward. You keep Fig pre-gaming.
One hour and ten minutes of travel omitted. Feed reopens from Colonel Nwaokocha's position to show them arrive at Root Ascending's gates. A crowd pours out from the gates to meet their children with newly fashioned yellow-dyed linen robes. Fig drinker pulls his steeds to a side with drawn out tugs that necessitate the use of several younger saplings to calm the tarpans back down.
Fig-Drinker descends the chariot with a wobble and Nwaokocha follows behind just behind him as the villagers part around the two. The cult leader motions Colonel Nwaokocha in the direction of the cropping level where a series of wood piles are stacked between the rows of grain and tarp-covered vegetables and mushrooms. Freshly re-clothed graduates are paraded atop hemp mats by their friends and relatives until each party finds their own unlit bonfire.
Nwaokocha: Are we so fortunate to find you on such an important time in your year?
FIg-Drinker: We hold them on auspicious times. Normally at harvest but your heart and gift made for this opportunity. Your generosity will light these fires tonight.
Nwaokocha: Please tell me how.
Fig-Drinker: Do you not know how to light a fire?
Nwaokocha: Yes, but I would like to see your traditions. To know how you stoke the flame that forges your plow blade and cooks your food. The methods of my home for fire are far too fertile in smoke and disease.
Fig-Drinker stops and approaches the side of the central rode until he happens upon one still unlit bonfire. A yellow-clothed adult of feminine appearance and approximately 20 years of age sits before a bunch of kindling at the base of the wood pile. She holds her hands in a cupped position over her heart until a spark of flame comes to life. She and her entourage scream with joy at the sight before she accidentally extinguishes it in her jubilation. The newly promoted youth is coached back into a meditative position and breathing pattern by her confidants as Fig-Drinker motions Nwaokocha on towards the orchard level.
Fig-Drinker: Generous Uce, how were you bred so heavy into this place? You hold weight over armies like the dodo rancher does his hens. Far too concerned about what could crack beneath your needs.
Nwaokocha: I don't live on my needs alone. I take part and give in part to the collective efforts of my people. I see such generosity in you, Fig-Drinker, unless you can eat every fig in that orchard yourself. Not that your weight would require such a boon. By the efforts of my people they willed me and those with me into this place.
FIg-Drinker: But they are not here. In here you stand by the effort of your weight alone. You pile those under you until you are stacked high and heavy. You carry those ashes you spoke of. Those rendered out of your childhood by towers of golden oil. You stand with their weight at heart and act meek in the face of your saplings taking root behind you. People like us deserve better, gentle Uche.
Nwaokocha: What did you endure to live with such heft? You speak with the wisdom of those lone trees standing amid the bushland of your garden's stoop. Rooted in ashes of your own. We are here to help, to grow into the gifts your garden can offer together. I refuse to let your generosity and heavy spirits to be compromised by things underwhelming to you. Here, a fortification for our mutual goodwill.
The colonel passes a wine bladder to Fig-Drinker and uncorks one themself. Nwaokocha grimaces as they take a long draw and swallow. The cult leader smiles and reciprocates as they scale the stairs to the mortuary orchard. They cross the grounds where a multitude of new aspirants argue over where it would be best to plant themselves. The two come to the temple entrance where Fig rushes ahead of Nwaokocha and pops his head through the curtain shielding the temple interior.
Fig-Drinker: (to someone on the other side of the curtain) Yes all of them. Wake them with the salts if you have to. (turning back to Nwaokocha) Might we expect your lessers? I have yet to see that rust-topped barley-hound of yours recently.
Nwaokocha: One moment. (into the radio) Jack, are we live with Forward yet?
Bright: We've been communicating for about five minutes now. Fan's compiling a report with it's processor pylon now.
Nwaokocha: And home?
Bright: We got back confirmation of receipt and a return message: "Standby"
Nwaokocha: Well at least we know they can hear us.
Bright: Sual's suggesting that we bring some forces to the village outskirts for our extraction. He has a team ready but it will leave Forward running on autonomous mode.
Nwaokocha: Give Saul the go ahead.
Bright: ETA is 57 minutes. I'll get the remaining first-contact crew to your position.
Colonel Nwaokocha grins back towards Fig-Drinker as the two wait right outside the bonfire-lit interior of the temple. The flicker of the interior fireplace casts shadows of the occupants on the wall of the cliff behind the structure. Two individuals drag a four legged beast across the floor before cutting it open. Colonel Nwaokocha watches the enlarged images tear out and portion the entrails. Nwaokocha jumps at a tap on their shoulder and spins to face the doctor and the eight remaining crew members from the expedition team.
Bright: Sorry, you were a bit preoccupied.
Nwaokocha: Just wondering what is waiting for us behind that curtain.
Bright: I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this one. How was your college life? Go to any parties, shack up with any-
Nwaokocha: Doctor, we aren't going to… fraternize with them. We're trying to avoid contaminating this culture any more than we already have. We just need the video data for Fan. It has cultural value to anthropologists back home.
Bright: It's for the cultural value, mom, I swear.
Fig-Drinker beckons them in as the feed steams momentarily and clears to show a line of older aspirants carrying pots of hot water. They round a corner where an immediate hissing sound is followed by the more clouds that shroud the area. Fig-Drinker enters the mist and disappears from view. Colonel Nwaokocha follows after him and soon retracts at the pile of partners amidst the obscuring clouds of vapor.
A lanky form waves towards the guests at the opposite end of the repurposed dining room. The feed records the surrounding relevant data captured in the colonel's peripheral vision as the crew advances.
Fig-Drinker: Uche! Eat, drink, pair! We have plenty of ibex and wine for all needs.
Nwaokocha: Gracious Fig, we are quite tired from the long journey and stuffed already with your bounty. We have no need for further… fulfillment besides those of our curious minds and depleted stamina.
Fig-Drinker: If my loins and the company of those loins under me isn't among your idea of luxuries then please, have at my saged sight and sweated wisdom. If not by seed of my endowment then by the rainwater of words will my generosity germinate.
Nwaokocha: How did your weight come to this land? Was there a land before it?
FIg-Drinker: I come from lands like the ones spread before me now. (Fig moitions to the mate beneath him) And by ways such as this I was applied unto these people.
Fig-Drinker pulls off his tied off segment of ibex intestines.
Nwaokocha: That's alight. I think I have your answer.
Fig-Drinker: You have lit a fire!
Nwaokocha: About that, what kind of fire was that earlier?
Fig-Drinker: What makes you warm? Even a fever elicits heat. Why shouldn't we? Their new seed is nothing but kindling bound beside the heat of their foolhardy hearts. Ready to pile themselves for the soonest spark so that their lowly seed might take root in equalized ruin. The only glory in that bonfire is that first, radiant trunk liberated by lightning. But come, lose yourself in their pile and travel by the warmth of another.
Nwaokocha: I've already traveled enough for my life. I am here to make my home something I can again take root in. Your ways have impressed me, in many a way. I am left in awe of what you are capable of, without exception. I am left only with the question of what you expect your buried fruits to grow into? What could such an act offer you? What liquor is worth such a death?
Fig-Drinker: It is the method of travel that most pleases me. It is my weight spread across this land and so it conforms to my print in its mud. It contours around my desires and sprouts into my vices. Even Mother takes on the pride of her favorite son as her body grows to reflect my inheritance. So long as I continue to bring pollen to her flower on the backs of feckless wasps, it will continue to be. It is most difficult to move myself from dirt so molded around my roots.
Nwaokocha: I… will have to learn from such a lofty expectation for someone so engorged on this place. I and this land don't deserve the charity of knowing you. If there is one truth you have pressed into me, let it be that at least life offers us the means to numb such a painful disparity between my home and yours. A toast for the body burned to make tonight happen! The dead back on Earth buried at sea and at home! Those lying in fig wood outside! For them, we deserve this toast.
<End Log>
Addendum 6018.4: Expedition Log Part 4 of 6
Date: 2045/07/11
Location: Guest Hut, Temple grounds, Root Ascending
<Begin Log>
Surveyor CG-12: Colonel, Doctor, home just picked up the line. Patching them through.
Nwaokocha: Come in command. This Colonel Nwaokocha of the Ghaggar-Hakra joint expedition crew. Please respond.
Operator: (over heavy static) Attempting download… interference outside… cannot… expedition data… highest priority. (The operator cuts out followed by a repeating sequence of beeps.)
Bright: Dammit.
Nwaokocha: What’s this code mean?
Bright: It’s telling us the number for the field manual to follow. “Recovery of Vital Asset”. I'm guessing that means the data.
Nwaokocha: Just the data? Ace, can we not send back some kind of request for clarification?
Surveyor CG-12: Home looks to be trying to reconnect on their end but interference from the exit point keeps spiking with every attempt. I can try but I doubt it will make it through.
Nwaokocha: Please do. Saul, how is our extraction route looking?
Theta-209-Tango: There are a few bowmen out hunting but that is about it. Even the village guards appear to be sleeping.
Nwaokocha: Standby, we’ll let you know when we have the specimen.
Bright: Remember Uche, we're only two days into this anomaly. Even if this doesn't work doesn't mean it's the end.
Nwaokocha: You can prep me for failure when we are in the process of failing, Jack.
Bright: Things go afoul. That is entropy tearing at us and nature both. It can go foul over generations like with FIg or it can go foul in a night, but it rots all the same. Our plan sounds fresh now, especially if that sound I here is Fig snoring, but we watched how quickly he rotted in front of us at the tree.
Nwaokocha: Let me do my work, doctor. I'm not here to convert you to the gospel of optimistic humanism. Don't try to force a pessimistic pisstake of nihilism here. Yes, Fig is a blight on this place that deserves better. Yes, he also has every right to be here. I've accepted that duality as truth. I just haven't accepted that it is a permanent one.
The colonel and Theta-209-Sierra take the lead with Dr. Bright bringing up their rear as they stalk across the temple grounds. Nwaokocha dips their head past the curtain barrier of the entrance and ushers the rest through. The crew wrinkle their noses at the smell of the temple interior as they step over piles of passed-out participants. On the far wall is an alcove cloaked in linens that ripple with every snore from Fig-Drinker within.
Bright and Nwaokocha approach the sleeping cult leader draped over sacks of grain. The colonel first attempts to slide Fig's jar out of his grasp but only results in pulling him off the burlap cushion. Despite the movement, the Drinker snores again and Bright pulls out a long, thin syringe and a reinforced specimen containment jar. Colonel Nwaokocha creeps over and pulls at the jug’s cork which loosens before audibly popping out. Fig-Drinker’s eyes open simultaneously. Fig-Drinker launches up from his back and wraps himself around the colonel. He remains attached despite the colonel’s efforts and strikes Nwaokocha in the head with the jar repetitively. Colonel Nwaokocha flings Fig across the room where leader hits the stone wall and lets out loud squawking cry that rattles the leather ceiling above. He collapses into the fetal position and cradles his brew like a child between swigs.
Fig-Drinker: You only had to ask, peaceful Uche! I drank of your goodwill, taste and see mine! It is the right of us above these waiting woodpiles to drink of it! Be waterlogged on every drop of what our might makes ours! Mother-tree placed this fruit into MY palm because I am one that breeds under MY own weight alone!
Nwaokocha: It’s in your hand because you goaded Tham into dying for it. You are a wad of fat cut from other people's strength. A man who breeds by the weight of those he exploits.
Fig-Drinker: Mother doesn’t care about how I breed, only that I breed. She would have taken me into her soil as a shriveled failure on birth-sodden mud if I could not bring wasps to her flower. Or worse, render me living under the weight of someone like me.
Theta-209-Tango: Colonel! Infrared is confirming individuals waking up across the village! Looks to be almost 60% of the population. Should we move in?
Nwaokocha: Not yet but get the mobility rigs ready.
Bright and Sierra rush him and attempt to force the syringe into his still-full mouth. Fig-Drinker responds by swallowing before shattering the syringe between his teeth. The colonel crosses the room and lifts Fig-Drinker by his vestments. The crew in the temple lobby rush into the room as the yellow-garbed occupants of the building rise from their slumber. Nwaokocha drops Fig-Drinker to the ground and squats down in front him before taking out their pistol.
Nwaokocha: Let. It. Go. Fig. I will shatter that jug and have them suck it from the bloody ground if I have to. No thing and no one is beneath either of us. If you find yourself immovable it is only because you haven't stepped out of your garden in ages. I don't know if someone so engorged as you even can travel. This garden doesn't dersve you, Fig.
Fig-Drinker: You cannot move me! I am the one who brought foolish wasps to patient flower! I tricked the defiant sun into shining on lesser beast! I-
A gunshot interrupts and makes Fig-Drinker wince. The feed pans down to the shattered remains of the jug and the purple liquid cascading from its jagged edges. Bright pulls the wine up into the syringe and deposits it into the jar without any interference from the now despondent Fig-Drinker.
Nwaokocha: I’m sorry, Fig. You made me do it.
Fig-Drinker: Why? Why not just strike me down? It would have come under your weight.
Nwaokocha: That isn’t my wine to drink and you aren’t my abuser to kill.
Fig-Drinker: Who’s am I then? The slaves, saplings, and other weightless?
Nwaokocha: It sounds like you already of a list of people to answer to. I suggest you start there.
A flaming villager dashes at Sierra who knocks them back with the butt of his rifle. A second light bursts through the doorway as another cult-member spontaneously combusts. Bright passes the sample jar to CG-08 after she hurdles through the window an he takes up the rear of their retreat with Nwaokocha and Sierra.
Fig-Drinker grabs on to the colonel's pant legs in a weeping mess as a geriatric aspirant steps into the room with his arms wide and giving a toothless smile. Colonel Nwaokocha kicks at Fig and fires a pistol round into the ceiling but neither respond to the threat. The yellow-clothed elder wraps his thin arms around Nwaokocha and goes aflame. Bright rams his shoulder into the old man who collapses to the ground as he burns. Sierra frees Nwaokocha with a series of kicks to Fig-Drinker’s nose before hoisting the colonel out the window. The video vaults after them and soon the entire team is sprinting through the mortuary orchard.
The orchard around them lights up and the smoke grows dense around them. Branches bristle and harden as they pass, slowing their advance as multiple passages are blocked by combusting cultists and thickening fig bramble. They emerge atop the 12-meter tall drop separating the temple level from the farmland below. Bright immediately leaps towards a nearby hut’s roof and the rest follow as Fig-Drinker bellows from the temple entrance.
Fig-Drinker: Spread wide and let them know the warmth of your embrace! Wake your rotted mothers and sterile fathers! Our guests would make a mule out of our forest! Strip humiliated cousins of their branches for torches, render our forefathers into barricades for the entrances, we must not let a gift such as what was given be squandered!
Theta-209-Tango: Permission to ready use of force, colonel? They are getting a bit rowdy and are starting fires.
Nwaokocha: They are the fires, Tango! How many are at the gates?
Theta-209-Tango: At least three hundred. They haven’t spotted us yet but we don’t have long until sunrise and they are starting to pile logs by the village gates. Again, permission to ready firearms?
Nwaokocha: Let’s exhaust every nonlethal option we have, first.
Bright: Uche, it might be time-
Nwaokocha: Time for what? Killing puppets right after they just started the next phase of their lives? These are people, Jack, just like those back home.
Bright: And just like home, these people are ready to tear some heretics to pieces on the word of a guru. This village didn’t end up here because humans are somehow magically different from the animals we corner. We have all the sadism of a zebra drowning its competition’s children and so. Do. They.
The ground shakes as a larger tree on the orchard level explodes into a shower of lit kindling that propagates along the roofs of the village. Fig-Drinker calls over the confusion with anomalous volume as winds spread the buring thatch to dry chaparral. Aspirants flock to a mushroom covered fig tree approximately 85 meters in height and slice at its base with axes and repurposed plows. The gargantuan trunk tilts and crashes down onto the aspirants in its shade and slides down onto the agricultural tier of Root Ascending.
Fig-Drinker: Yes! Set Father's flame upon their slothful virtues! Send Grandfather unto the fallow rows of fair Uche's ambitions and light it! Ash has no weight of sin. Ash has only the potential for your children's weight to grow! So pile yourselves, ambitious and meek alike! Pile yourselves and burn!
Bright: It might be time to let go of this happy ending you are dead-set on forcing. It's only making this worse on the crew. If you won't let go of it then at least act like you can and accept the that it is time to minimize the mess.
Nwaokocha: I… this isn’t productive. We have one more level to go and about 130 meters until we are in range of Theta-209.
Root Ascending on fire. Photo taken by Theta-209-Charlie of the Camp Forward extraction team.
The team sprints across the road to the shelter of a wheat field. They continue south with their heads kept low until halfway to the end of the cropping level where a yellow-garbed youth walks out from a hut yawning. They look at the ten of them before taking in the sight of their homeland on fire. The 17-year-old holds their arms wide as wheat strands spark to flame at their fingertips. They sprint and leap at Bright before a loud crack fills the audio. Their body lurches in the air and flame spews out of either end of a new fifteen-centimeter hole in their torso.
Feed pans to Theta-209-Sierra still holding his smoking Gauss rifle aloft. The cries of the villagers grow as they converge towards the source of the sudden noise. A hail of crossbow bolts descend on them and brings Sierra to his knees. The camera jolts and turns down to view one lodged in Bright’s left calf. The doctor grunts as he pulls the arrow free and limps over towards rest of the crew transporting Sierra.
Theta-209-Sierra: I had to, colonel.
Theta-209-Tango: Confirm shots fired, colonel! Do we have permission to escalate?
Sierra groans as Bright and CG-08 attempt to pull him back towards the rest moving towards the next ledge. A group of crossbowmen line up on the lip of the orchard level. Gusts flow between them that push against the expedition crew and flattens the field of grain. Structures compromised by flame collapse while the still burning infernos are stoked with the sudden influx of oxygen and Fig-Drinker appears behind his archers.
Fig-Drinker: Drink it. Drink it and know the actual weight of those under your lead. Wasps only fly because they have no fat of their own.
Nwaokocha: I can’t. I won’t. We need it to get them home.
Fig-Drinker: You would use Mother's fruits as oats for your tarpan?
Nwaokocha: It would be a better use of them than you just turning them into piss.
Fig-Drinker: You don't know that. You haven't seen the light of Mother within the flame of your own heart. You haven't seen your and my small part in this cradle. You walked onto this garden with a thought of power against a force so fundamental to us. You thought you would be different and you've seen your assumptions crumble under the weight of my discarded leaves. You are not prepared for my trunk to fall. Even Mother's trunk will fall one day. You can taste her and know it too.
Nwaokocha: I know it's going to run down. I know I am fighting for a hope in the middle of the very place my troubles started in. I'm not born in a vacuum and niether are you. But I can make the best of you. I can pull the same lesson our kind learned in failure out of this place. So press me into the mud you claim. Go deeper until it claims me then choke on your own burning pride. Plant me and watch me grow from your ash.
Colonel Nwaokocha rises and holds their arms wide as the wounded are pulled away. Another loud crack rings out and Fig-Drinker ducks as the crossbowman to his right explodes. Nwaokocha turns their feed to show Bright holding Sierra’s Gauss rifle.
Sierra lies lifeless on the ground next to him as CG-08 dashes towards a helping hand reaching out from the final precipice. Bright fires again in the direction of Fig-Drinker. The ground beneath his target loosens with the blow and sends the cult leader tumbling down to the ground below. The pair turn and run as the remaining crew ahead of them are lowered down the last ledge.
Bright: Come in Forward! How is our escape path?
Theta-209-Tango: We’re pinned down fifty meters outside the gate! Request to-
Nwaokocha: Granted.
Theta-209-Tango: Understood.
Bright: I’m sorry, Uche.
Nwaokocha: Sorry isn’t productive right now. Get them out of here once we're down there. I'll lure fig, he's after me anyway. We have something to prove to each other.
Gunfire comes over the audio as Theta-209 and the survey group return fire on the residents standing between the nine of them and safety. Bright and Nwaokocha wheeze as they reach the ledge overlooking the chaos. Below, the team is trapped behind a dodo pen as the native inhabitants fire arrows and send waves of ignited elders at them.
The colonel readies to jump before the camera heaves forwards with a push from Fig-Drinker. Colonel Nwaokocha hits the ground below with a crack as their femur snaps. The feed looks back up to show Fig-Drinker holding Dr. Bright over the gap by SCP-963’s and Fan’s protective casing.
Fig-Drinker: How do you fly, fat wasp?
Nwaokocha: Put him down, bountiful Fig.
Fig-Drinker: You feasted on my fowl and grain, witnessed a triumph over the light of foolish gods, then snub my roots, Mother's roots. And now you call us bountiful? The parasite that finds the fig flower knows its needs are met for the rest of its life.
Bright: (between gasps) How… the hell… do you even know what a tree could want with you?
Fig-Drinker: Intent grows along a branch like progeny. Taste it, Uche, and see Mother’s intent for you. Taste it or your sapling’s blood and ash will nourish my new orchard.
Bright: You. Can't. Crush. Me.
Fig-Drinker's face goes red as Fan.nic translates his declaration. He whips Bright around his head by the chain and launches him in the direction of the evacuation forces. Bright's body strikes the ground at the center of Theta-209 with sufficient force to kill four MTF members and break the task force's choke-hold. Fig-Drinker looks back down to Colonel Nwaokocha.
Fig-Drinker: Do you have any more flame-headed wasps?
A barrage of crossbow bolts follows his question and the crew scatter. CG-08 helps Nwaokocha limp in the direction of Theta-209-Echo and Delta towards the crater made by Bright's landing. The MTF pair open fire on a pack of bowmen attempting to flank the retreating evacuation crew until a squad of saplings douse the two with wood alcohol. Nwaokocha and CG-08 retreat into the safety of a nearby segment of hut walling left standing as the Task Force members burn.
Nwaokocha: Do you still have that sample? (Surveyor CG-08 thrusts the containment jar into the colonel's hands.) Run.
Surveyor CG-08: Where? Forward is empty, the exit is a death ray, and half the chaparral is on fire!
Nwaokocha: I don't know.
Surveyor CG-08 flees the camera's view and Nwaokocha downs the jar's contents. The colonel looks up towards the sky and rises from the ground. The video warps as Nwaokocha's helmet fuses into the increasing luminosity of their skin before the camera burns out. Feed swaps to Bright's still-intact helmet camera positioned to face Root Ascending's temple and the mountain beyond.
The remaining crew of the joint team run back in the direction of Forward while Colonel Nwaokocha comes into view as a 100 meter tall glowing giant. Each step Nwaokocha makes leaves a wake of flame as they attempt to skirt around the remaining villagers. The colonel's attention turns towards the laughing FIg-Drinker standing on his grandfather's trunk at its apex hanging over the village base. The cult leader stands atop a stack of aspirants piled to the point of overflowing off the 25 meter drop down to the burning center of their civilization.
FIg-Drinker: Pile it! Pile it! By all my weight, I pile it! Give me but one flicker of your hope and I will burn this pile! For one glimmer of your Mother! One scratch at your Father! How patient a storm cloud! How meek a bolt of lightning! I have been blind to the potential Mother might find in lands where life can only stumble! Give me but one spark of you and I will scar your glory across this land!
Nwaokocha backhands Fig-Drinker, sending the cult leader flying towards Mother-tree to the west. The colonel looks out at the growing bushfire across the chaparral biome then down at the villagers curled up with their children in the choking fumes and searing heat. Nwaokocha covers their eyes and collapses onto their knees before the stack of aspirants now on fire.
A pair of figures on mobility rigs pop into frame as the heap of bodies panic and ignite. One of them stops to grab hold of something in Bright's crater before the other ushers them on. The two speed off as Fig's pile explodes and sends a shockwave of flame across the surrounding biomes.
<End Log>
Addendum 6018.5: Expedition Logs Part 5 of 6
Remains of Camp Forward and the chaparral biome.
Date: 2045/07/11
Location: Ruins of Camp Forward
<Begin Log>
Video opens from Theta-209-Tango’s helmet camera to Theta-209-Tango and Surveyor CG-12 staring down at it. Behind them is a cascading hillside coated in burn mark and charred trees like a sea of charcoal. Smoke stains the sky above into a deep rust red color and drifts in a haze above them.
Surveyor CG-12: Do… do we put it on him now? He's going to wake up soon.
Theta-209-Tango: You can go behind that boulder while I do it, if that makes it easier.
Surveyor CG-12: No. I tranqued the poor fella, I can at least watch this happen.
Tango uses two sticks to pull SCP-963 into view and drapes it across the subject the helmet camera is strapped to. The feed shakes upon contact and rises as Tango and CG-12 back away. The video turns about to show a vast expanse of scorched shrub land and charred prairie animals. A path of still-burning ground marks a line through the destruction and towards the river to their south where the blaze continues to feed the strangled sky.
Bright: Where’s Uche?
Surveyor CG-12: They, I’m guessing it was them, just walked off towards the river after they shielded us from the fire. How are you feeling?
Dr. Bright looks down to the thick matting of hair covering his body and back up to Tango and CG-12 who now stand considerably taller over him. He pats his own face for a moment before rubbing his lanky hand across his flattened brow.
Bright: What kind of Tolkien shit is this? You couldn’t find me one villager?
Theta-209-Tango: There aren’t any left.
Bright: Ok, now I really need to find Uche.
Surveyor CG-12: About them, they drank the wine.
Theta-209-Tango: We were planning to go out looking for others. The crew up at the foothills radio pole are hopefully still up there so that is where we are heading.
Bright: Any word from home?
Surveyor CG-12: The wildfires took out most of the equipment down here on the plains so we have no idea. We still don't know if that is possible even if we can somehow get it radio running again. We did get Fan's last analysis from the servers before they melted, though.
Bright: Let me guess, ground fungi?
Theta-209-Tango: Ground fungi, Jack.
Surveyor CG-12: All kinds of them, for environments that never existed across Earth's history either. All converging at Mother-tree. Or at least this one. They facilitate the growth of saplings they are compatible with and all of them are compatible with the Mother-tree or trees. Fig mentioned traveling to other gardens.
Bright: We can only hope the other Mothers don't have such little shits for kids as ours did. I need to do some traveling of my own, though. Someone's got to pull Uche together after all of this.
Surveyor CG-12: Jack, you may not know what to do with what you find but if you find Uche, or what’s left of them, let them know we made it. What few of us there are left. The colonel deserves that much.
Theta-209-Tango: And home deserves this. (Tango places Fan.nic in Bright’s hands.) I don’t know how you are going to make it through the exit, if it even is one. But I know Lee and those we lost at the village would have wanted us to try.
Doctor Bright holds the program and its housing to his chest and nods at the two before heading off towards the river. Footage reopens to show Colonel Nwaokocha sitting with their legs in the water as the jungle beyond burns. Bright shields his face from the heat and a strong wind keeps the fumes of the forest fire going southward as he approaches. Swirling about a patch of turbulent water at Nwaokocha’s feet floats the bloated remains of an infant Indian rhino.
Nwaokocha: How’d you sleep?
Bright: As well as I can when dead. What happened to you after you drank it?
Nwaokocha: For a moment, I saw things from around me and my place in them. One homo sapien with enough hubris to think they can change the fabric of their own species. I saw the hope I could plant, the hope I wanted to plant. All I needed to do was pluck him. Swallow that unchewable chunk of hope stuck in my throat and pull that thorned weed from OUR garden… Then I saw fox teath thrashing infant voles in the earthen dark and the errant duckling crushed under its mother's foot. I saw what survival is in that drink and I'm not sure I can live with it, Jack. I can't understand how you do.
Bright: I don't get a choice in that matter. So I'm taking a page from your book and at least being productive about it. Ace and Saul are alive, a few others, too. We can build a radio, I can forge the components, we can try to make contact again. If that works we can at least get Fan home. They can build the DNA from its data. We can still make your change happen. We're still here to make it happen.
Nwaokocha: Let them enjoy their time, Jack. They are going to live, procreate, and die in here. New growth from old ash. They jumped the garden's locked gate and fertile soil molded to our weight upon it. They are a part of this garden now and the gardener isn't going to just let them out. All we can do is let them enjoy their time.
Bright: (Bright points to the rhino corpse bobbing about in a circle.) That kid ours?
Nwaokocha: She didn’t smell right.
Bright: So that herd that took her… We can still try to get Fan through the exit. We can try to trick the gate light, I have just the body to-
Nwaokocha: Don't, Jack, this isn’t productive.
The river water steams as the colonel lowers the rest of themselves into it. They push the rhino downstream and wade two meters in before Bright splashes in behind them. He struggles to stay above water with his shorter stature. The doctor stops just short of Nwaokocha as the waters around the colonel come to a boil. The colonel cups their hands over their heart and a flame sparks into being. They lower the minute fire towards the churning waves of the river as the fires beyond them wane.
Nwaokocha: Go, Jack. Go and enjoy your time. You'll have nothing better to do given enough of it. Why not start now?
Bright: I'm not going to do that while you're about to snuff out your last chance to make something good come from this. We can't lose that. I can't lose that. We can make something positive come from that flame.
Nwaokocha: This fire is burning crude oil and sanitizing napalm. I can’t become another Fig-Drinker, Jack. I can’t let my generosity grow to choke out any more innocent saplings than it already has.
The infernos before them peter out as Nwaokocha lowers their flame into the water. A cloud of steam erupts around the colonel and blocks them from view. A luminescent hand shoots out of the mist and grabs hold of Doctor Bright. Vapor explodes past Bright as the last of the colonel’s flame goes underwater. The appendage around him lurches for a moment and flings the doctor in the direction of Mother-tree at high speeds. The camera captures one frame of the haze as it clears and the last of the fires fade out to show no signs of Colonel Nwaokocha.
The camera reopens to the green shimmer of the Mother-tree dominating the sky above the now canopy-less forest biome. Bright pulls himself off the ground and inspects his hominid body for signs of harm. He pauses to take in the field of scarred, branchless trunks before proceeding up Mother-tree’s still-lush hill. At its apex, the doctor spots a crater amid the landscape surrounding the untouched tree. Bright looks into the hole and spots Fig-Drinker’s mangled corpse. Glowing roots entwine with the cult leader’s entrails, mud mixes with his remaining bile and blood, and a 12 centimeter wide cauterized hole sits where his heart would be.
Bright: Thank fuck.
Bright turns his back on the crater to see an entity of radiating green light sitting at the base of Mother-tree. The being pulses in tune to Mother-tree and tendrils reach up from the dirt to unify with the skin of its humanoid feet. Bright sits next to it and the radiant figure holds SCP-963 and Fan.nic in its hands.
Green Entity: I'm surprised you can still walk with anchors tied to your neck.
Bright: What’s going to happen to us?
Green Entity: You mean them. You know what's going to happen to you. One way or another you will find yourself back at your start. Back at the Foundation. Your friends trapped here are going to do exactly what both Uche and you described. The land will conform to their mastery over it. Their children will tame it and try to reach out like their parents did. Their grandchildren will be bowing around this tree until one finds a way to eat the fruit. Then they will pile high until something like their ancestors comes here again to burn the overgrowth away. You'll ask me these same questions and I'll give you the same answers.
Bright: Why let us suffer out there when this place exists? What sin is worth such a denial?
Green Entity: It's not sin, it's growing up. We leave our childhoods behind for a reason. This universe is filled with examples of brutal, ignorant beauty teeming in its waters and dashing innocents on its rocks. Species that can give a damn about it, though?
Bright: You can take your tender childhood metaphors and play catch with the dead using them. You're talking to someone stuck in life so why not let me be stuck here? You can send Fan back on its own. Let Earth have that and me have this. I'm just one ape. Please.
Bright lurches for a moment as the entity pulls him into an embrace. The doctor cries for two minutes until he calms and the glowing green figure pulls him back up to his feet. The being points Bright towards the exit point beyond a burnt hillside to his north and places a hand on Bright’s back.
Green Entity: It isn't productive to keep hating things out there. Yes, the universe wants to wind down. It wants people to die and rot in the ground along with everyone they ever cared about. It's in the backs of the mind of even the most mindless of organisms. Like a collective, childhood memory of standing over the grave of your first pet. We can confirm it. We can lament it. We can call ourselves naive to question it. Yet I still see your species out there testing it. They're going to need people like you for that. Not because of your anchor, but because of the man that lifts it.
The camera races forwards as Bright is launched above the hillside and at a circular opening in space. Light pours out from the aperture which flares as the doctor shoots through it and out into a desert. Bright strikes a sand dune and the feed goes into a spin. The video comes to an end as Bright’s body collides with a guard post bearing the SCP Foundation’s insignia.
<End Log>
Addendum 6018.6: Expedition Logs Part 6 of 6
Location: Overwatch Command
Date: 2045/07/12
<Begin Log>
The television in Bright's medical room flickers on to illuminate the sparse surrounds of sterile medical equipment, cat-scans of Bright's host brain before and after use of SCP-963, and the day's date scribbled onto a dry erase board by the nurses. On the screen a darkened figure sits at a desk and leans in towards the camera.
O5-1: How are you feeling, Jack?
Bright rolls over in his bed to face the wall.
O5-1: We can order a new host for you, if that would-
The doctor interrupts by slamming his open palm onto the metal frame of his bed and rises to a sitting position.
O5-1: Excellent. I just need to ask you a few questions not covered by the report that GOC program gave us.
Bright: Where’s Fan?
O5-1: In capable hands. Now, about how you left the anomaly, can you tell us what happened in your own words?
Bright: No.
O5-1: Are you unwilling to? Was it a condition of your contact with the light?
Bright: Because I have no idea.
O5-1: Ok, do you have reason to believe the program might have missed something? Something that only a living being would experience at the exit point?
Bright: Everything was exactly as shit as it looked.
O5-1: 209-Tango appeared to have some kind of conversation with an unrecorded voice at the exit point. You didn’t hear anything on your way out?
Bright: Nothing that I needed to be told.
O5-1: (O5-1 nods to a figure out of frame to their left.) Thank you, doctor. We’ll let you know when your debriefing period is over.
The television turns off and Bright sits alone on his bed. He stares up at his reflection on the black screen. Bright holds the position without movement or sound for seven minutes before he reaches for the television remote and sighs.
Bright: This isn’t productive.
<End Log>
