SCP-9111 is a device that uses a 0~4 numeric language to compute concepts.
It can create things out of ideas, or vice versa.
A story of the last soul on Earth, a language of everything, and a world with nothing left.
Day 0
I woke up to a weird scene – the sky was dark, the ground was barren gray, and I was wearing an astronaut suit.
Was it night? Above my head, a vast collection of stars was shining like a drizzle of gems, as if ready to shower down. I’ve never seen such a bright starry night. But no stars were blinking. I looked into my elongated shadow: it was unusually clear with a crisp edge.
Or was it day? I glanced over the enormous flat expanse of rocks and some patches of ice on it, then at the skyline, and turned back.
Then I saw the Sun hanging low on the horizon, like a dazzling white-hot spot sticking out on the jet-black firmament. There’s no atmosphere.
I sat still for a moment to try to catch any sound of wind outside my suit, but there was only deadly silence. I could hear my breath echoing in my helmet with accumulating terror. The oxygen could run out at any time, and I have zero experience in spacefaring. Where should I go?
I stood up, and felt something tremble under my feet. On where I just sat, a round hatch opened up, revealing a tunnel leading underground. I did not hesitate, jumped inside, closed the door, and clambered down the ladder.
After landing on a small platform, the platform descended like an elevator. Looking up, the entrance was a small opening on the vertex of a huge dome. After I reached the bottom, the ladder automatically folded and drew back to the top.
I could hear the clanking sound now; in a sudden courageous whim, I fumbled with my collar, and after pushing and pulling some latches for a while, I released the airlock, and managed to open my mask. A gush of fresh air came in. I breathed heavily, as if I had just returned from hell.
A diagram showing a part of the expanding lexicon of SCP-9111. Adjacent blocks indicate derivative relations. Black blocks: Abstracts; white blocks: other nouns; Dashes: unoccupied slots.
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-9111 is now contained at the geological South Pole. All restrictions on access to SCP-9111 and the surrounding research center have been removed. During the containment failure, SCP-9111 has reshaped itself and cleared all formerly stored definitions of its linguistic units.
All personnel who discover SCP-9111 should try to ascertain its new internal logic, and, if possible, re-establish human civilization.
Description: SCP-9111 is a device that consists of an ontological abstraction-reification machine and a small mobile controller that allows remote access to the aforementioned machine.
The controller of SCP-9111 consists of:
- A silverish, cubic metal casing;
- A keyboard; A rotary dial with the numbers 0~4;
- An ontology mapping terminal screen; A mechanical number indicator;
- A set of holographic cameras and audio recorders;
- A handle on the top.
Each time a number is entered through the dial, the number indicator, starting from 0, will store and shift the digits from right. If all five slots are occupied (with the exception that all inputs are zero), the indicator will stop responding to new digits. By pressing the middle of the dial, the presenting digits can be transferred to temporary storage. Each transfer will input a "word" to form a command line. Pulling the handle will submit the entire command.
The commands use a pure descriptive language that follows a strict sequential syntax. All words are either logical operators or nouns that describe an object, an event, or a concept. SCP-9111 can be used in a dual manner, according to the direction the submission handle is pulled from:
- Abstract - To summarize a concept of concrete objects and save it to one of its slots, and to logically compute the concepts. More specific concepts can be constructed from basic ones, and can be stored for reuse. Depending on the situation, it may require multiple trials for a concept to be recognized.
- Realize - To establish concrete objects from a concept within a given ambit. This process can include creating, transforming, and eliminating. The exact output is generally an averaged entity of all the subjects used to form the corresponding concept. Due to this nature, those who attempt to use SCP-9111 must select the target concepts with caution.
Day 0
The dome was vertically multi-layered; five circular corridors ran through the inside of the entire dome at different heights. Each corridor was a floor suspended from the wall in midair; on each floor, there were doors with portholes every few meters.
I was standing at the very center of this dome-like room. Looking down, I saw I happened to stand on a grayish contraption. It was SCP-9111, or to be accurate, the controller of SCP-9111. Beneath it, there was a small area of glass floor, through which I could see a much more complicated system of machinery underneath.
The operable interface was roughly a cube shape less than one meter high. At first, I thought it was a numeric lock, then I noticed a small terminal beside it. Attached to the screen were several copies of the descriptive document of SCP-9111; some were printed, some were etched onto small slabs of stone and plastic. One digital copy was stored on the terminal. Besides this file, the terminal contained nothing but a calculator, a notepad, and a button to control the elevator leading outside.
With no clues about how to utilize SCP-9111 after reading the document, I decided to explore the peripheral rooms first.
One room on the first floor contained various specimens of plants and small animals. Most of them were preserved in double-layered jars on a shelf, with a label below indicating the species name.
The museum room.
The next room looked like a science museum: it contained some demonstrations of scientific concepts, including a model of the periodic table. Stacked transparent cubes with presumably samples of the corresponding element inside lined up against the wall; some of the samples were metal bricks, some were bottled up gases. The two bottom lines contained lead boxes holding radioactive material.
The third room was the entrance to a corridor of storage rooms. Many kinds of tools, including axes, knives, ignitors, lamps, crowbars, and some other unidentifiable items were stored there in a clutter.
The fourth room was a lab section, with many long tables and basic lab equipment that were very clean, as if they were never touched by anyone.
A reading room on the second floor.
I ascended through a flight of stairs near the wall. All rooms on the second floor were libraries and reading rooms. There were thousands or even millions of books written in many languages, I only knew a small portion of them.
On the third floor, all doors led to a same room. This room was circular in shape and much bigger than others, perhaps extending over a hundred meters on each side, which contained a multitude of miniature natural landscapes. It looked like an indoor ecosystem simulation.
The third floor.
Walking around the circle, I could see meadows fading into woods, then small rivers, and patches of desert and succulents; on the other side, damp congregations of big-leaf rainforest plants gave way to small oceans and fine sand shores, finally transitioning into frosty conifers and spongy unsullied snow.
These biomes tended to be arid on one side, humid on the other; and so did hotness and coldness. The two axes formed a perfect loop. This little ecosystem seemed very well-maintained, although I didn't find any external energy, air, or water sources that could support it.
All rooms on the fourth floor were empty dormitories with basic amenities, uniformly clean and neat with no signs of human residence.
The fifth floor.
The fifth floor was the topmost section of this dome architecture, with only one door leading to a big room, which was empty, except that there's a life-size projection of the sky outside on its ceiling. The Sun still hung on a very low altitude barely above the horizon, but it seemed to be higher on a different direction.
There was also an underground story, hidden under the transparent floor. Except for SCP-9111, it also contained some foods, construction waste, several utility cars, airboats, and a small airplane.
I spent another few days on the library floor, trying to find some answers to the world's downfall. I rummaged through most books I could read, but not a single book ever mentioned it.
Finally, I returned to the base floor and decided to start my experiment.
Day 4
"The mystery of creation is like the darkness of night. Delusions of knowledge are like the fog of the morning."
SCP-9111 didn't seem to understand any human language, regardless of spoken, written, gestures (either actual sign languages or symbolic casual ones), or input digits (if they were ciphers). I tried to ask it something by directly talking to it or typing my words in the terminal's notebook. It never responded.
I discovered a lever on its pedestal. When lifted, the whole controller could be detached from its bottom part and free to be moved. Bulky as it appeared, SCP-9111 (hereafter refers to the controller) was fairly light to carry. It indeed just resembled a dial phone without a speaker.
I hesitated at the specimen house, but soon found it would be a better idea to test on something of a lower value. I found a crowbar from the storage, and brought it in front of SCP-9111's "eyes", the two holographic cameras.
I asked jokingly in a tone as if speaking to a kid, "Do you know what this is?"
SCP-9111 surely did not answer. I then poked my finger into its dial and dialed "10". I pressed the center of the dial, and the number vanished from "00010" to "00000".
So now what? Had it learned what a crowbar is? With the hope of reproducing another crowbar, I pulled the handle twice. There's no response.
Maybe one sample was not enough; but unfortunately, there's only one damn crowbar in that storage room. A thought suddenly crossed my mind. Would it get a broader idea, like "tools"?
I went back to take a few other rusty tools from the room and placed them next to each other on the floor, in front of SCP-9111. It really started to feel like I was teaching someone a foreign language. I input "10" then "1" again, and pulled the handle.
All the tools disappeared. A misshapen assemblage of wood and metal replaced them; I didn't even see the changing process. That thing was a combination of everything I input: a mallet's head on the top, an axe in the middle of the multi-branched handle, a screwdriver and a utility knife on the other end, and the whole thing - if you squint your eyes - assumes roughly a crowbar's shape.
I let out a sarcastic sigh.
Testing Logs
| Input | Command | Output |
|---|---|---|
| One cup of water. | 0 | The cup vanishes. |
| One cup of water. | 1; 2; 3; 4; 11-1; 11-2; 11-3; 11-4 | No response. |
| Two cups of water. | 2 | The glasses break; a repeated test produced a larger glass of water of the combined volume. |
| Two cups of water. | 3 | One of the cups vanishes. The other does not change. |
| Two cups of water. | 4 | The water slightly churns inside the cup. |
Day 6
Testing on other objects had yielded little value; it seemed that "0" is for eliminating, "1" is for creating, "2" is for combining, "3" is for intersection, and "4" didn't serve a clear purpose; using "0" and "2" together would subtract instead of combine, so perhaps "0" is also a negator. Contrary to what the SCP-9111 document said, I couldn't store the "concept" of something in the multi-digit numbers. Using "2" on chemicals didn't produce a compound; SCP-9111 simply threw them together and waited for them to react on their own. Seemed like it could not create mass from nothing.
With all frustration, I secluded myself again in the library, trying to see if there was any hint. The books were nearly all about the mundane world. A few of them concerned magic, paranormal history, and boring biographies of persons of interest. Only one Foundation book about reality-bending contained something that pertained to SCP-9111 in its last chapter:
…
In the earliest stages of research on reality-bending, the Foundation - and the later established Ontokinetics Division chiefly focused on illustrating the ability itself, as trying to fully identify the nature of such a property that could mold the world at one's will.
The prevalence of reality benders in the global human population is minuscule, but it was considered so high that scholars believed that it will be more fruitful to conduct research on them than on other anomalies. Those researches pushed no further than knowing the very basics: reality bending is the projection of certain kinds of particles driven by EVE energy. After decades, there was still no feasible way to emulate a fully functional reality-bending machine without the support from human body parts, esp. brains.
The main obstacle is the human thinking process. In order to realize a goal, a reality-bender has to envision that goal in their mind; artificial sapient entities are usually fundamentally different from humans in their ways of thought, and particularly, mental abstractions. The ways that humans grasp concepts are wired by evolution and culture. We categorize concrete things into different lexicons, articulate or not, for the convenience of daily lives and social interaction. Those lexicons vary slightly across cultures and languages, but basically stem from a same set of consciousness. Recent progress in linguistics and artificial intelligence has made it possible to replicate such lexicons on computers. This has shed light on approximating reality-bending via nonliving, non-sentient anomalies.
However, this method has its restrictions…
But this lengthy article did not explain why SCP-9111 is incompatible with natural languages, and seems not to recognize human-crafted items. The rest of this book was all examples, classifications, and obliteration of humanoid reality-benders.
I overslept for maybe several days in the dorm I occupied, watching the necessities depleting with my every meal. There was a drinking water tap, and the rest of the food could sustain for a few months. But why weren't there any people? If they all died, why was this place so well-preserved? Was it waiting for my arrival, or was it built just for me? Why did I wake up in a spacesuit on a random place that happened to be on top of here?
Who am I? This question seemed to provoke dread; a flush of unknown anxiety struck me each time I considered it. I couldn't remember who I was. I don't know my name, my age. When looking into a mirror, I saw a very ordinary face, which I could recognize as myself but still felt eerie. I have no prior memory of what this face looked like before.
I was lying on my bed, depressed. If the world was reduced to nothing, where should I start to rebuild it?
At the moment, I had the line in my mind. "Let there be light." But how could SCP-9111 create an entire atmosphere from this little air inside this hemisphere?
Feeling drowsy, I escaped into my thoughts. What is atmosphere?
Atmosphere is a layer of gases over a celestial body's surface, I muttered to myself.
Suddenly, I got an idea.
Day 7
"We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us."
I thought that I figured a photographer. Back in the lab, I placed two pebbles on a long desk, walking avidly back and forth between them and SCP-9111. Each time I changed their distance, then pulled the capture handle for the slot "11". Then, I input a command:
Negate0
-
Distance11
-
Apply1
My hands were shaking. In a blink, the two pebbles crushed together with a loud clang.
It demands basic ideas. The most basic ones that are the invisible building blocks of this universe.
I went on for another few days to chop wood, break bricks, glue paper, and assemble various demo objects for SCP-9111. It didn't take long to make SCP-9111 understand numbers. It's not possible to store all real numbers, and that also makes little sense, so I chose to establish the concept of decimal digits instead.
It was very fortunate that after this, I showed it the periodic table, and it appeared to be capable of producing small samples of all elements according to their ordinals.
It felt like completely another thing now. It's not me who was teaching it human language or science; it's me who was learning its unique language of thought.
For example, it did not easily understand "size" as humans do; when I put stones of different sizes on its tray, it somehow interpreted it as "mass". A command indicating twice greater mass did not always give me a bigger stone; it could be two times denser and heavier, but with indefinite sizes.
How could SCP-9111 get "size"?
I drew two coordinate axes along with a line and a dot, and showed it to SCP-9111. It produced only papers with some ink blots on them; I wasted a dozen sheets of paper before I remembered that it cannot directly understand drawing. Then I cut out a triangular shape and folded it into a paper pyramid in front of it, did the same for a cube and a prism, and pulled for "11".
Let “Dimension”12
-
Be1
Then, immediately, I dialed,
Let “Size”13
-
Be1
-
Distance11
-
Plus2
-
Dimension12
Pull. I fetched a piece of biscuit from my pocket, and:
Double2001
- 2 -
Size13
-
Apply1
Thus, ironically, I also saw a way to replenish my ration.
I put my spacesuit in the dorm I lived in (it seemed to autofill its oxygen tank once put in air), and regularly go to the top floor to see the world outside. One bizarre thing was that the Sun was rotating all day around, and I never saw it rise or set. Then I realized it was polar day.
I had one single thread of hope that if I was in Antarctica, there might be other living humans on other continents, but I have no way to know it.
Let there be air, hence there will be light, the voice inside my head called again.
I went downstairs, listening to the melancholic echoes of my footsteps. I still had much to do.
I was standing on the South Pole with SCP-9111. The compass on my left wrist was spinning idly when I moved around. With a sense of excitement and fear, I squatted down, placed the two jars - one filled with the air underground, one empty (I tried to vacuum it using a cleaner) - on the cold rock, now bathing under feeble sunlight.
I struck "0-2-2300-2-13", which could mean to minus one jar by the other and then multiply the air's volume by one billion times. However, the jars simply remained there; I pulled out my lighter, clicked, and saw no flame.
All similar trials have failed. I drop myself to the ground. I feel my limbs are paralyzed. Please, don't tell me that you can't work out of there, yet it was true. SCP-9111 seemed to lose all function once it left the basement. Yet it didn't require a genius to see that if such an amount of air was summoned inside the base, even if the door was open, it could blow everything to pieces under the tremendous pressure.
I retreated, and didn't eat anything for two days.
A short list of concepts established during this time.
| Definition | Word | Defined by |
|---|---|---|
| Mass | 10 | - |
| Distance | 11 | - |
| Dimension | 12 | - |
| Size | 13 | Distance Plus Dimension 11-2-12 |
| Area | 130 | Distance Plus One Dimension 11-2-2000-2-12 |
| Volume | 131 | Distance Plus Two Dimensions 11-2-2001-2-12 |
| Time (duration) | 14 | - |
| Speed | 15 | Distance Over Time 11-3-14 |
| Density | 16 | Mass Over Size 10-3-13 |
| Process | 17 | Time Plus Time 14-2-14 |
| Numbers | 20 | - |
| Unit digit | 200 | - |
| One | 2000 | - |
| Two | 2001 | - |
| ………… | ||
| Ten digit | 202 | - |
| Ten | 2020 | - |
| Twenty | 2021 | - |
| ………… | ||
| Billion digit | 230 | - |
| One billion | 2300 | - |
| ………… | ||
| Infinitesimal | 21 | Existence Intersects Non-existence 1-3-0 |
| Infinity | 22 | Opposite of Infinitesimal 21-0-1 |
| Element | 33 | - |
| Atom | 34 | Matter Plus Infinitesimal Size 10-2-21-2-13 |
| Molecule | 35 | Atom Plus Atom 34-2-34 |
Day 11
There are two ways to induce madness: being lonely or being hurt. There are also two ways to keep sanity: reading, and acting.
At first, I couldn't rest upon the constant worry and guilt of unable to do anything. Of course I could live here until I die of old age. The warmly-lit, air-conditioned circular passageways and libraries with over a hundred rows of bookshelves could be lovely places for a hermit.
Was this what I desired? I leaned against the highest handrail, sipping from a pack of vegetable juice, and looking down at the spotlighted arena below. SCP-9111 was resting in the center, as quiet as it could be. The serenity here was nearly transcendental, but also moribund. It could be a perfect tomb for me, and for humanity. Would another individual come to life if I died?
Maybe I could ignore the pain if I avoided all illustrated books; any picture could amplify the sting in my heart. Another day, I was sitting at the terminal, typing these words in an inconspicuous scent of ozone, which smelled oddly pleasant. It had become my routine.
Interestingly, I never had a dream since my first day's entry, and while I really couldn't recall my prior life, the lack of dreams here anyway had ameliorated my despair to some extent. My thoughts tended to slip from the material world to abstractions, then to nothing, and then I would fall asleep.
I had overcome the fear of suffocation, and went on the elevator to the adaptation module to open the hatch door several times without wearing my suit; just a very small slit, though. No coldness, just air haling out. A bare second was enough to make me dizzy and my ears hurt for quite a while.
I decided to take a walk outside. The Earth reduced to a glob of rock could sate anyone's imagination of residing on an alien planet, without the need to accustom to low or high gravity.
I tried to attune myself to the truth. Most of the planets in the universe are airless rocky lumps or uninhabitable gas giants. Life is ephemeral; death is eternal.
"Sit still, my heart, do not raise your dust. Let the world find its way to you."
My mind was soothing itself as days passed by. I formed a lulling obsession with Tagore's Stray Birds, which I kept beside my bed along with my paper notes. Today, I returned to my bedroom after another small walk outside; I have learnt to recognize the constellations and watch them drift around in front of the abyss of night, and sat there until my oxygen ran low.
I decontaminated my suit from earth dust, and plugged it into the versatile rack. For safety concerns, I now check pipe joints and valves after each trip. Gazing at the oxygen gauge slowly turning high, I wondered about the exact mixture of the gases inside the air bottle. How did the dock filter out unwanted gases from the air? Was it the same composition as the atmosphere?
I slid into a trance. A philosophical euphoria arose from nowhere. Then the definition happened to me again,
Atmosphere is a layer of gases over a celestial body's surface.
But what is a gas? What is a celestial body? What is "surface"?
I fell silent, ruminating. Gas is a state of matter that…
In an abrupt enlightenment, I jumped up, and rushed downstairs to the library section. Within a moment, I returned with a heavy English dictionary and a few volumes of the Encyclopedia. Opening the pages that smell good of fresh bark, I started to relearn basic concepts as a kid, although I already knew them.
Most celestial bodies are spherical because of gravity…
A sphere is a three-dimensional shape that every point on its surface is equidistant from the center.
Gas is a state of matter that differentiates from liquid and solid by its low density and viscosity, and high expansion and diffusion tendency…
Density is the number or amount of something in a unit area.
Sometimes an answer is so long obvious that you will regret your own foolish sentimentality.
I feverishly probed in Euclidean geometry as my interest lured me through his books. My sleepiness was swept away at once. It appeared that SCP-9111 treated some abstractions as entities, some not. Anyway, I produced two conceptual prototypes - sphere and cube, but couldn't proceed to other polyhedrons as mathematical exertion set in.
This day, I skimmed over the encyclopedia's astronomy section, and scribbled down a few statistics regarding Earth, Sun, and others. I took a frozen cup of water from my fridge, and hurried downstairs to SCP-9111, this time with blithe caution and fear.
I put the cup of ice in the input scope and dialed,
Molecules35
-
Plus2
-
Distance11
-
Apply1
The ice was replaced by water instantaneously. Then I tried the same command on it again. The disposable cup burst in a crushing noise; There seemed to be nothing in a flash second, but a ball of dilute white mist, which was gathering around the ruptured plastic, emerged later. It was water vapor.
Therefore, the three states of matter were defined as 390, 391, and 392. I cleared the operation platform, and continued:
The Seventh Element33 - 2 - 2012
-
Plus2
-
The Eighth Element33 - 2 - 2013
Same as before, the machine produced a sample that was a mixture of solid nitrogen and solid oxygen, which was a block of sizzling and steaming blunt ice. After a while, it quickly sublimated. I repeated the command, this time with specified proportions.
Let “400”400
-
Be1
-
Gas State392
-
of2
-
The Seventh Element33 - 2 - 2012
-
At3
-
Seventy-Eight Percent2031 - 2 - 2012 - 3 - 2040
-
Plus2
-
The Eighth Element33 - 2 - 2013
-
At3
-
Twenty-two Percent 2021 - 2 - 2001 - 3 - 2040
This was a rather long command that I stopped at every word I dialed and recorded each move cautiously.
I went out to check the bolts on the exit door were secure before proceeding to the last command.
Air400
-
At3
-
Spherical Region360
-
of2
-
Radius: 6,500km11 - 3 - 2071 - 2 - 2044 - 3 -170
-
Height: 300km11 - 3 - 2042 - 3 - 170
My hands sweated and trembled worse than ever. It's the first time that I introduced a scope by Intersection that was larger than a few meters. I could hear a ringing in my ears. This time I realized it was not tinnitus.
Looking down my feet, through the thick glass pane, I could see the gleaming main part, or the execution unit of SCP-9111, was visibly humming and rattling, that the noise reverberated in the geodesic dome and sounded omnipresent. This noise occurred every time a Realization command was going to be submitted.
Then I pulled the handle with determination. A faintly discernible clap and roll came in, then returned to silence. I looked above; it seemed nothing had happened. I raced back to take my EVA suit, and went up the exit.
At the moment I opened the hatch, the visor indicated that the temperature was nearly minus 100 degrees Celsius. I clambered up the ladder with unwieldiness, and saw the entire horizon was blazing red, transitioning to dark blue.
I knelt down at the rising sun.
"Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name."
—— Rabindranath Tagore
Day 25
The surface was more tolerating now, though still barely welcoming because of the extreme coldness. It might take months for the Sun to warm up the atmosphere, and in polar regions, that might mean eternity.
I drove the SUV, with my spacesuit, food and extra fuel, to the edge of the Antarctic continent. The 1,300 km journey took seven days due to the strong gravitational wind and another five days for the return. I saw the ocean; the sky was blue, and the oceans still exist, thawing.
The sea near the Ross Ice Shelf.
After the breakthrough, I went over and tried to define every single entry in the encyclopedia in this manner. Now I could create compounds, not merely mixtures, but defined by the chemical bonds formed between shared electrons or between ions.
Nonetheless, creating life was another topic. I knew that without organisms, rock, soil and sea would absorb oxygen and other trace gases over the years, such as carbon dioxide which I added later for future plants.
Another good news was, I discovered the meaning of the logic operator "4". Previously, I only tested SCP-9111 on tangible and solid things. On another day scavenging in the storage section to find something fun to play with, I brought a torch, a chemical one, to SCP-9111, hoping to see if other things could be combined with fire, or if the concept of heat and energy could be constructed in another way. SCP-9111 couldn't target it well, perhaps because the flame was less definite and tangible; then I realized that fire isn't a true entity. It is a phenomenon, a process of burning, or to be scientific, a fluctuating cluster of uprising hot gas that emits visible light.
The torch was burning out. It didn't respond to 1, 2, and 3 without additional materials. Seeing this, I dialed "4". The flame immediately blasted to a larger flame, wriggled, and finally died down.
Recalling that cup of churning water, I tested it again on other objects.
Testing Logs
| Input | Command | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Breaking a small glass pane. | 4 | The glass was shattered, but the pieces drew together as if trying to piece itself back. After a while, all motion stopped. |
| Tossing a stone. | 4 | The stone tumbled and rolled around on the floor. It appeared smaller after it stopped. |
| A butterfly. | 4 | The butterfly was severely agitated, fluttering in the output scope. It died shortly after the experiment. |
So, does 4 have something to do with dynamic processes? Recalling SCP-9111 already contained a "process" concept, I tried it out.
Process17
-
Plus2
-
??4
No response. Perhaps simpler?
Process17
-
??4
No response. Maybe it needed some embodiment. I again brought my favorite guinea pig - a pebble (there were many of them in the basement),
Process17
-
??4
-
Apply1
Boom. The pebble exploded, but not quite in a pure physical manner; its silhouette contorted and morphed in a gust of smoke, sizzling, and became a multicrystal stone; the crystal patterns on the surface were constantly changing shape and color.
The size of the stone was quickly shrinking, while it continued to sizzle, jump, and spin on the floor as if there were invisible propellants attached to it. Finally, it shrank to a diminutive size and disappeared.
The smoke made me cough. I was startled. "4" has to be related to automatic processes. It was fundamentally different from pure thermodynamic motion or physical explosion. It was transformation. Yet, it reduces mass from objects; this could mean that energy was drained from them.
Day 76
I had considered copying all the plants from the biosphere and disseminating their seeds across the continents they should have inhabited in, using my poor ecological and geological knowledge. However, that biosphere did not contain all, not even a tenth of the variety of species on Earth. It didn't even contain any animals except for the necessary pollinating insects.
The specimens in the species gallery were mostly dead, with one stuffed for display and the rest cryo-preserved for storage for each species. Some had samples of organs, tissues and embryos. The Earth ecosystem could sustain itself anyway, I wondered, given that there were acceptable global temperatures, solar energy, oxygen, water, and some nutrients, even if only a handful of species exist on Earth; evolution will reinvent it over millions of years. In either way, I would need a minimal population to start with.
But I soon met an obstacle in my small-scale indoor experiments. I cleared up a spare storage room, laid soil, installed irrigators in it and made a garden for my horticultural tests.
The problem was, SCP-9111 could only produce identical individuals. Although there was no DNA sequencing device in this facility, but over several months, I could observe that all plants exhibited the same traits - same flower colors, same leaf characteristics, etc., even same lifespan. All allogamic plants and all insects failed to reproduce and soon died away within one generation.
Worse still, every execution of SCP-9111 reduced the diversity of those creatures and artefacts I managed to copy; sometimes, all inputs vanished, and were replaced by an averaged thing of all inputs. I produced half a ton of rubbish in the way.
What if I couldn't reinstate those species? Were I supposed to establish the concept of life from scratch, as how I reinstated the Atmosphere?
Day 97
"Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it."
I would call myself insane about this choice, yet, it was inevitable, and I don't regret it.
One of the sunflowers I transplanted from the biosphere has bloomed in my greenhouse. It seemed to have tuned up to the artificial light, and would slowly lift its head every time the light was turned on. Bees buzzed and rested on its petals.
I was back in the lab, peeling sunflower seeds from a floral, while trying to craft something out of a pebble.
Time14
-
Plus2
-
Process17
-
Transform4
-
Apply1
I assumed that "4" was motion, so if it added some time to it, it could last longer. It did decelerate this time. I watched this little thing with intrigue. The pebble's smooth granite surface collapsed, crystallized, forming small clusters of white opals. Those lattices burgeoned and grew out from basalt-like glassy pores, consuming the body. It did not smoke anymore.
The self-expenditure lasted for about an hour. Was this essentially life? Could it last even longer? I wondered, but thought fled from me before I could reflect on what it meant.
Infinity22
-
Plus2
-
Time14
-
Plus2
-
Process17
-
Transform4
-
Apply1
The remainder of the stone suddenly burst into whirling; the floor under it started to melt, as if corroded by a strong acid. The opalescent stone soon resumed its previous size, and didn't stop there. It was growing bigger and bigger into a sphere, while simultaneously rolling and nibbling off the floor under it.
"No," I mumbled. I input "0" in the hope of eliminating it; it had no effect.
I stepped back, and threw an iron stool at it. It didn't help, and made it worse. The stool adhered to it once it touched its surface, then absorbed by it, and the metal transformed into something like appendages sticking out from its bottom. The entity was roughly a meter tall now. It slowly crawled out of that shallow molten pit on the floor and moved towards a nearby table. The way it moved reminded me of curling pages in a burning book.
I rushed to another lab next door with SCP-9111 in my arm and searched hastily through the shelves. Fire extinguisher? Surely it couldn't work. Alcohol blast burner? The temperature wasn't enough to melt rocks. It would burn down all the stuff and probably me to ashes before it could incinerate that thing before it could grow into a behemoth.
I found a bottle of concentrated hydrochloric acid and rushed back. I splashed the entire bottle onto the thingy. Some drops of acid were sprinkled on my arm and leg, burning on my skin. White foam trickled down from the spot of corrosion on it. The entity, now resembling a miniature meteorite with all its dents and scores, squirmed and struggled on the floor, and finally found its way toward me.
I ran away, briefly washed my contaminated area of skin under the emergency eye rinser, and slammed close the door. SCP-9111 was placed safely on a taller cabinet in the corner. There's not enough storage of any strong acid in the lab.
A Hundred Times of2040
- 2 -
Volume131
-
Apply1
As I dialed desperately, my heart was racing; the entity could be heard making strange noises behind the door. Then I realized with mixed feelings that the thing I created could be the first mineral-based life on Earth.
On the other hand, it also rendered all common measures against carbohydrate-based creatures useless.
Holding a rubber pump's pipe in my hand, I dragged open the door.
The entity was right behind it. But it didn't move. Instead, it just stopped there, no longer growing, and was rocking back and forth. Besides, I saw its iron "legs" shrank into its body upon I opened the door.
In a split second, I had the illusion that the entity was looking at me, a human, with curiosity, though it had no visible eyes. Then I realized how funny I must have become in loneliness.
I stamped on the pump. A strong, unpleasant odor of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid came over; it choked me even though I had worn a mask. The appendages were first eroded off, then the adjacent part; the sphere of its body was reduced to a hemisphere, then a lump of morphing rocks, and finally to nothing but a pool of acid and salt, in the bubbling acid foam.
I let out an exasperated cry. Once I thought that life had to be constructed step-by-step from amino acids to proteins and nucleic acids, then cells and tissues, and that must be a very long, tedious, unpromising work. How could I imagine this?
Life is a self-sustaining system. Life isn't just transformation; it must pursue transformation.
First, I granted it eternity. Once such a goal was endowed, it would seek everything to continue its existence, or metabolism, no matter what it takes. That is the true meaning of life.
Day 294
Using SCP-9111's new seed, I had revived some well-preserved specimens in the house. Some of the small animals died shortly after revival, but some made it. I placed most of them in another garden I specifically designed for this use.
The world had become warmer. The last time I went outside for a walk, my suit said it was closer to 70 minus degrees. Closer to the annual average temperature of Antarctica. Clouds and ice crystals started to form on land, too.
Most plants have ripened, and I could readily harvest them for seeds. I still could not resolve the problem that SCP-9111 couldn't produce any diversity, but it's acceptable at least for autogamy plants and some microorganisms.
Airplane in the Base.
I spent half a year to learn how to pilot a plane. Luckily, those ones in the research base did not require so much manual operation as I thought. My first destination, also the closest one, would be South America. I plan to breed some species of bushes and grass first, then trees. Perhaps one day I would see the rainforest return to reality. Who knows? That could be centuries or millennia.
My plane hovered over a large expanse of barren brown. If I were on a satellite, the view that the Earth had become an orb of blue, gray, and brown, instead of blue and green, must be astounding. And also, with its mighty pale blue crown seen from space, the Atmosphere. Outside, you could see the stars as they were in my eyes on the first day I came to be…
Relay fuel sites were mandatory for farther expeditions across the world, but fortunately, that won't be a problem since I could construct some basic mechanics for replacing damaged parts in that plane. Maybe I could build more planes over the days. Maybe I could even build an infinite fuel tank. But that would still be a long wait, a wait for years.
Rivers and streams meandered through the wet soil as I trailed along it, leaving damp footprints, this time collecting some soil samples. That would be great if I could build some campsites in the area where I dispersed seeds and saplings, but I knew I didn't belong here. Before long, I would no longer need to wear spacesuits anywhere on this planet.
I looked above and removed my sun visor. The sky appeared so blue, profiling against the dark land; and as the clouds soared by, I imagined them to be white birds.
Day 1370
Three years had passed. I set my feet on as far as the opposite of the globe. The rainforest had started blossoming, even without large trees, and it's now a totally different view from my plane each time I fly over. Brown mottled by green slowly became green mottled by brown, and soon it would be my time to start a second round of fertilization.
I developed a few hobbies besides gardening: carpentry, drawing, writing, and linguistics. This could also include learning, if learning in general is a hobby too.
What's more, I've got myself a cat. It's not the only one in the preserve, so I was less guilty of keeping them to myself. Apparently, whoever preceded me had left more of these fluffy balls than other creatures here. There were a few dozen preserved whole cats and dogs of different ages and breeds, and over one thousand embryos in the cryo bank. I would guess that they were pets of those predecessors.
However, there weren't any human specimens or embryos. Other primates had their place, though; it made me wonder why. No matter who wrote in the document "the goal is to re-establish human civilization, if possible", were they aware that there's no way to do it? According to the Bottleneck Theory, a minimum of around 1,000 people is required to reconstruct the whole civilization.
In these years, I had tried countless times to communicate with possible survivors elsewhere - using radio, light, meteorological balloons, or leaving hints on the lands I've been to. I had even tried telepathy magic and divination in some books (I did not seem to be a thaumaturge), but I never received a response. In the worst scenario, I was the last soul on Earth. But I had to admit that, over the years, I feared someone else to appear. From the beginning, the existence of other humans had always been a mere abstract idea to me, and so had the urge to revive the civilization.
I once read a science fiction about a sole person, who voluntarily accepted the responsibility of overwatching and documenting human legacy, wanders on the remnants of the world for sixty years, and tries to build an archive or museum that was intended for extraterrestrials. I sorely empathized with them.
However, my emergence was not voluntary, and I was already in the best museum of humanity that I can imagine, except that it was unspoken, and couldn't be easily understood by aliens. So, I started to backtrace and file the lexicon of SCP-9111, and made it into a visual diagram to show how it developed over time.
And at the same time, I started to translate my favorite books into different languages.
Day 1533
"These little thoughts are the rustle of leaves; they have their whisper of joy in my mind."
The first bunch of trees and bushes that I planted had both sprouted, along with the migration of the first lot of lab-grown animals. I was sitting on a small hill near Cape Horn. It was summer again, and the air was, nonetheless, a bit chilly. Yet the winds coming from the little woodlands were refreshing.
A pine forest on sand dunes.
I was trying to write poems,
"The sun looks like a vibrant tropical flower. It is peering through the crevices fluttering within the lush canopies of my green denizens.
A quiet oceanic blue settled all over the Sky and Earth, singing the lyricless melodies of summertime over the eternal millennia."
I was still learning, but it's soul-nourishing. It made me feel grounded that I was no one but a child of this world.
A cabin was set under the hill, serving as my temporary residence. But wherever I was, I knew that I did not belong; this fact was not sorrow but bliss.
Over the years, I was still questioning the justifiability of my actions. What life has to offer, if it is inevitably a mixture of happiness and pain? Ultimately, is it pain masked under enjoyment, or enjoyment masked under pain? A magpie flew by, pecking some insects that I couldn't see on a sapling. If lives are bound to die, do I really have a point to create them in advance?
"I'm not a god," I spoke to myself, "I find beauty not in creation but in the pre-existing blueprint of creation. I do not want the right to justify others' existence in its own sake."
I frequently recalled the stone creature that I gave birth to and killed. If I weren't interfering, would it really be immortal? Would it devour the whole world?
Nature is beautiful, yet it is an arena for rivalry. For most beings, it's rivalry over material. And for humans that once were not scant of living materials? It's rivalry over power. Power concerns concepts. Morality, laws, politics - to dictate or define how things should be, and what is right and wrong.
If SCP-9111 is made by humans, then it's the crown of power. If it's not, it's a way to get that crown.
A dawning comprehension was shedding on me regarding my origin and the apocalypse. I went up to pack things, and prepared to go back to the Antarctic Base.
Testing Logs
| Input | Command | Output |
|---|---|---|
| One apple. | Double Size2001 - 2 - 13 -1 | A twice bigger apple. |
| One apple. | Double Mass2001 - 2 - 10 -1 | A bigger apple with exactly twice greater mass. |
| One apple. | Double2001 - 2 - 1 | No response. |
| Syrup of a mashed apple. | Give Life to 42 - 1 | The amorphous entity was terminated by incineration. The ashes did not show signs of animation. |
| Syrup of a mashed apple. | Give Infinitesimal Life to 42 - 2 - 21 - 1 | Minimal self-sustenance. The entity was hibernated via cryo-preservation. |
| A tissue sample from an apple. | Double Size2001 - 2 - 13 -1 | A conglomeration of undifferentiated cells. No anomalousness observed. |
| An apple sapling. | Double Size2001 - 2 - 13 -1 | An apple sapling with more twigs. |
| Two apples, one green, one red. | Establish the Concept of "apple"12345 - 1 | One red apple. |
| Two apples, one green, one red. | Establish the Concept of "apple"12345 - 1 | One red-striped yellow apple. |
Day 1540
"In death the many becomes one; in life the one becomes many."
I've noticed this pattern since the first day I tested on crowbars and hammers, but never bothered to look into it: SCP-9111 wouldn't establish concepts for concrete things directly, but when this was attempted, it tended to merge or reduce all inputs into one.
I once thought "1" was for adding, but that was different from the rest. When all inputs were similar enough, dialing "1" would produce an averaged output; when the differences between all inputs were irreducible, SCP-9111 would compromise between them and produce something similar to an Addition or Intersect, but that's actually a conceptual merge.
Additionally, those outputs seemed to be relevant to my perception of such concepts. When I thought that an apple should be red by default, it produced a red apple; when I thought that it was somehow biased, it produced a mottle-colored apple for me instead.
There shall be a reason that SCP-9111 only accepts basic, logical concepts. Those concepts are generally immutable in human consensus. Every language I know contains most of those concepts. But there's no concrete consensus over what an apple should definitely be like. Those kinds of words vary by language, and that's one point of learning them. Just like there were different shades of hues in different languages; some had fewer, some had more. They don't usually agree.
On the opposite, one human-related concept could map to different things. There was a word for the color between green and blue across multiple languages, yet they referred to slightly different nuances. The character "青" usually means blue in Japanese, but it could even mean black in Chinese, depending on the context. There's no strict equivalent in English; the word "cyan" or "aqua" tends to be a more vibrant, saturated color than the previous two.
Human minds tolerate ambiguity. What if one decides to construct something real on the basis of that ambiguity? What if you must pin down the ambiguity?
Now I think I see why SCP-9111 "reshaped" itself to avoid direct conceptualization. It's a mercy.
Testing Logs
| Input | Command | Output |
|---|---|---|
| A Rosa multiflorababy rose, a Brassica oleraceacauliflower, a Dorotheanthus bellidiformis Livingstone daisy . | Establish the Concept of "plants"12345 - 1 | An unknown plant that assumed a succulent's stem, fractally branching, and a lotus-like floral part. |
| Ditto. | Intersect3 | A lump of mixed organic matter. |
| Ditto. | Add2 | A plant with each graft from listed plants. |
| Ten butterflies of the same species. | Establish the Concept of "butterfly"12345 - 1 | One butterfly of the same species. |
| Ten butterflies of different species. | Establish the Concept of "butterfly"12345 - 1 | One butterfly of an unknown species. Not found in entomology handbooks. |
Day 1541
And that's it.
I redid tests of the same nature and got a multitude of plants, tools, and small animals. I placed them in my storage and cultivated them, hoping to see what would happen to their growth and breeding.
All cross-origin products had died shortly after, save for one. I was routinely euthanizing them. Instead of "0", I input the command "0-1", a self-contradictory command that had never had effect, on that one; it reverted to all the input creatures I used to form it, despite that they all died, perhaps of overconsumption.
This command did not work on intraspecies instances. For example, the surviving butterfly; it's simply gone without returning to the ten individuals I've immolated. Would this be my own fate?
Non-existence0
-
Existence1
Day 2641
The transplanted oaks flowered. However, around sixty percent of them are infertile. I foraged some acorns for timber for my cabin, now a small but cozy stone villa.
Day 2926
The moose and beavers are thriving. Hopes that the earthquake didn't affect them too much.
Day 3812
A storm whooshed off my plane. Have to construct a new one now.
Day 7019
My cat died. I buried them with a silent memorial.
I was feeling the age too. But I still had the strength to haul trolleys for my gardens or to spend several nights translating books I love. More than half of a bookshelf in the Alcove 4 was filled with my notes and drafts now. The whole Floor 5 was rebuilt as a holography sandbox, where I could clay and play with reality.
Maybe there's a way to rejuvenate myself through that anomaly, but I don't feel the need. Death only terrifies by its sudden visit. I never feared something that was slow and procedural.
I knew the day would come; I was just waiting for the day I could properly rest.
Day 17560
I have spent my entire life on it.
Morning, I run into the sunlight, downhills the drifting clouds storm by,
I watch the sky fade from red, orange to bluey white;
Day, I leap through woods of birch and fir,
I read the meadows to see what they confer.
I was old, and it would soon come my day of departure.
Days before, I was waddling my way along the foot of the Himalayas; those places were mostly still untouched by life. How I wish I could bring that gizmo here. This was a good place to rest.
The mountains.
My memory was faltering as well as my body. Through the years, I've been constantly losing the sense of self, but the restraints of flesh would remind my soul of it. My back ached for all the days plowing in the furrows. My eyes had blurred for the countless long nights staring at pages and pixels. My lungs hurt in the prickling cold air on the plateau.
I had read in books about wars, famines, and starvation, although I was born in an era without too many of those things, or to be precise, most part of me weren't victims. Nevertheless, the world had suffered. Yet sufferings were born from relentless rivalry. Rivalry came from you and me, the distinction of self.
That was when I realized why 0 - 1 undid conceptual merges; the paradox of substantiality had broken the boundary of a concept.
It's time to mark an end. I will leave together with the pity.
Everything0 - 1
Addendum: SCP-9111-A was considered to be neutralized.