Day One
Today, Vamer showed me the draft for the general clearance version of the file. I told him it left a lot out, but he argued the only people who needed to know more would learn it all once I start adding my logs to the locked version.
So if you're from the Anthropology Department here's where I'll record everything we learn about SCP-7457.
Day Two
The cave system we found SCP-7457 in is big. Very big. We've identified several chambers, all with a purpose. There's sleeping quarters (where we pitched our own tents), storage rooms, and even one that appears to have been dedicated to practicing medecine, judging by the tables and crude tools. It's where we're keeping the field agents who discovered SCP-7457 first. Those who survived, anyway.
Another one of the rooms serves as a mass grave, filled with bodies of both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. Most of them died from blunt force trauma. Just another case of one tribe wiping another out.
It is weird that the Homo sapiens tribe took the time to bury the bodies, but didn't settle in the cave. Maybe SCP-7457 has something to do with that.
Moreau isn't letting anyone inside SCP-7457's chamber until his team comes up with a way to protect us from its effects. Since Vamer was brought in because of his specialisation in ancient arts, he's pretty much just twiddling his thumbs for now. Me though, I already have plenty to work on.
Day Four
SCP-7457 wasn't the only anomaly we found in that cave. None are as noteworthy though: a stone rod that makes fire when you strike it against wood, a bone knife that can't cut through other bones, a wool pelt that doesn't seem to degrade over time or get dirty… They'll probably all go on the AO list.
Day Nine
Moreau finally whipped up something that'll let us work on SCP-7457 itself. Those goggles he made filter out any and all memetic effects, and we'll be able to adjust those filters to allow individual ones to come through.
For now, when looking at the walls, all we see are black squares upon black squares. But the chamber itself already holds a lot of information. It's much, much bigger than all the other rooms. We think it served as a communal area and mess hall. Clearly, SCP-7457 held a great importance to these people.
Day Twelve
Today we took a direct, unfiltered look at some of the paintings. I blacked out for 13 hours and when I woke up, one of the field agents had been reduced into a distorted broken mess, and one of Moreau's men smelled like fish. I'll have to ask regional command if they can spare us some Ds.
Day Seventeen
Progress has been slow and steady. Moreau is cataloguing all the effects we come across, hoping to find some pattern while his team roll out innoculations for the ones that have been tested. Vamer is studying some of the "safe" paintings to find out what tools and materials were used to make them.
I found an altar near the middle of the room (we couldn't see it before we cleared out one of the paintings, it was obscured by the filter). No signs of Akiva radiations or their residues. If these people didn't worship SCP-7457, maybe it was just a place to gather?
Day Nineteen
Vamer and his team sucessfully restored one of the paintings today. Before, it used to switch people's perception of what was edible and what wasn't for 63 hours. Now, it makes people smell through their mouth for 41 hours.
This proves that the damages done had an impact on the effects, but that due to SCP-7457's makers being Nehanderthals, the effects are still twisted for modern humans. Unless Nehanderthals actively wanted to smell through their mouths. Times were weird back then.
Day Twenty-Three
With more paintings restored, Moreau insists that there's a pattern. According to him, all the individual paintings are components of a bigger whole, their memes weaving and merging into a unified core complex. We've designated this hypothetical core SCP-7457-1, but we won't be able to confirm that it actually exists until we've catalogued all its components.
While Moreau busies himself with his -1 theory, Vamer and I have been studying the paintings themselves, not their effects.
They seem to mostly fall into three categories: warnings, instructions, and scenes of people enjoying life. There are a few stranger ones that Vamer thinks were made for comedy, references to in-jokes we'll never get.
Day Twenty-Eight
Vamer… Vamer is getting transferred to that Site in Middle-Normandy. A low-activity assignment to let him recover from what happened.
Moreau is going to increase the security checks for any personel leaving the Outpost. It stings, losing such a large part of our staff, but we must keep going.
Day Thirty-Six
It cost us 5 more D-Class and one more researcher, but we have finally catalogued every painting and their effects.
And yet, we are no closer to understanding SCP-7457-1. Moreau has shown me his research and I agree that it should exist, but it seems we need more time to figure out what it is.
I'll have to let Moreau's team work on it alone while I return to the main Site. I need to visit Medical about my newly-developed heterochromia and Mathematical to deliver those bear corpses.
Day Fourty-Four
SCP-7457-1 has no relations to the colors or categories of the paintings. The most productive thing I have done all week was trimming down the Description's list of effect.
Day Fifty-Two
Progess! I decided to look back over everything we've gathered so far and found something that we had missed. The corpses in the burial room did not actually all die at the same time.
While the majority of them, including the ones bearing battle injuries died around the same time, some of the corpses died later, spread across a few decades. Those later corpses are all Homo sapiens, suggesting that their tribe did in fact settle in these caves, but left after some time. This is a lead!
Day Fifty-Five
We followed the lead and found the Homo sapiens tribe. They had a pretty big settlement some kilometers away, where they thrived for a few generations before migrating further away. And in one of their ruins, we found several copies of the same painting. It got filtered by the goggles when I put them on so we know it's memetic too. We'll call the first ones SCP-7457-A and this one SCP-7457-B.
Day Fifty-Six
-B sounded so promising. According to Moreau's analysis, it's a condensed form of -1, adapted by Homo sapiens without any individual effects on top. And from what I've gathered from the site, it was also very important to the people who lived there.
And yet it does nothing.
I've had a new D-Class brought in, one without prior exposure to -A. Had her sit and stare at those paintings for hours and she didn't feel anything. Even though -B has no visible damage and was made by the right species.
Are we doing something wrong?
Day Sixty
Moreau's gone paranoid. He believes -1 is a slow-acting and undetectable effect, like the one that got Vamer. He has taken his team back to the Site and shut himself off in one of the E-Class holding cells. Says he doesn't want to be a risk to anyone else.
I could study all the ruins and remains I can find, but without an expert in memetics, I'm no closer to understanding -1. Maybe it's time I called in some outside help.
