SCP-9229 - O Sancta Simplicitas!
Author: BlackMonday &
Rendi
Theme modified from Turbo Vision by JakdragonX and
Croquembouche
Center of planet. Sitting on nukes. Pull the trigger? Hope logs help.
Iapetus flyby photography.
Item #: SCP-9229
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: The Cassini-Huygens probe's mission profile is to be altered by Foundation agents embedded into ESA to avoid Iapetus flybys. Any future missions to Iapetus are to be discouraged and, if necessary, sabotaged.
Update 1990-20-09: See O5 Conference Log 1990-20-09 for further containment details.
Computer plot of gravitationally anomalous regions, p<0.02. Note the layer-cake arrangement.
Description: SCP-9229 is a construct of unknown origin occupying approx. 70% of the volume of Saturn's satellite Iapetus. Preliminary gravity gradiometer data indicate a layered structure.
Discovery: SCP-9229 was discovered in 1981 during Voyager 2's flyby of Iapetus, when its magnetometer and Foundation-embedded gravity gradiometer1 gave readings that didn't match the natural satellite's predicted composition. The magnetometer data was promptly covered up by a Foundation deep cover agent, and the gradiometer data was used to reconstruct the structure's approximate shape.
Due to large communication lag between Earth and Iapetus and the broad possible range of work required, a drone exploration proposal was denied. Instead, a multidisciplinary research group was assembled. The group, designated GOODBUS, consists of:
- Mikhail Grigoryev, Doctor of Sciences in Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Rostov State University
- Manfred Owens, PhD Biology, UI Urbana
- Rebecca Owens, PhD Mechanical Engineering, MIT
- Stepan Davankov, Doctor of Sciences in Philological Studies, N.I. Lobachevsky State University, Bachelor of Memetics, SCP-YU Internal University of Čačak
- capt. Buster "Bus" Williams, former Apollo program reserve crew, Bachelor of Sciences, USMA
GOODBUS publicity photo, 1987. Davankov (upper-right).
As the fastest non-anomalous2 way to Iapetus, the Advanced Interplanetary Orion mission profile (originally developed by NASA) was chosen. Despite the ship being completed in record time, the project encountered difficulties with the procurement of shaped nuclear charges, needed for propulsion. As a result of Foundation involvement in USA/USSR arms control treaties, the problem was resolved by 1987. The GOODBUS vehicle was launched the same year.
NOTICE FROM THE FOUNDATION RECORDS AND INFORMATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
The following segment was compiled automatically into the object’s file during transit and has been kept for archival purposes. The GOODBUS vehicle was equipped with an experimental conflict-management tool that logged any crew conversations associated with prominent cortisol spikes (detected via implant). Mission time is not indicated, only local ship time.
14:00:00 SPIKE: GRI
14:00:00 [knocking, vibration]
14:01:04 BUS: Lady and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, we are officially on course!
14:01:08 MAN: Don't get too proud, Williams, that was the autopilot.
14:01:11 DAV: Oh, you Malvolio. Your job isn't to decrease morale, Manfred.
14:01:13 REB: Come on, let him have it! Airplanes also fly by wire, but you don't bother the pilot, do you?
14:01:14 [vibration]
14:01:14 BUS: Alright, that'd be the second periapsis boost executed—
14:01:16 [irregular breathing]
14:01:17 BUS: Lookit, lookit, what's up with Greg over there?
14:01:17 DAV: For the last time, he's Gri—
14:01:18 GRI: [indecipherable]
14:01:18 BUS: Oh, goddamn—
14:01:18 [shuffling, breathing]
14:01:18 DAV: Mikhail, what is happening with you?
14:01:19 [clicks, static, shuffling]
14:01:20 REB: Command, come in, come in.
14:01:20 DAV: Thanks, Owens, I'll take it. Command, Golf-Romeo-India appears to have some medical emergency, await details.
14:01:23 BUS: I've seen this.
14:01:24 DAV: Please, louder and into the microphone.
14:01:24 MAN: What is wrong with you, Gorby? Greg's babbling over here.
14:01:25 BUS: He's not babbling, he's—
14:01:25 BUS: Hold his shoulder, Fred.
14:01:26 BUS: —Right, he's a vet.
14:01:27 MAN: What does that have to—
14:01:28 BUS: Rebecca, we need sedatives, remember where the cabinet is?
14:01:29 MAN: We all had the same training, what sort of question— [inaudible]
14:01:30 BUS: The sedatives, Becky, quick.
14:01:32 BUS: Met a West Point buddy of mine, what was it, ten years ago? We were in a bar, there was a TV—
14:01:35 BUS: —playing M*A*S*H, and his eyes went the way of the—
14:01:37 BUS: —and it was so bad, damn awful it was, nobody expected him to—
14:01:40 BUS: —is this injectable, Becky? Please, where does it go—
14:01:41 MAN: Williams, I'm the only one with med knowledge here, and Beck, give me that.
[loud shuffling]
14:01:50 BUS: I still wonder what he was looking at, that evening.
14:01:15 SPIKE@0
22:23:35 SPIKE: REB
22:23:40 [inhale]
22:23:41 [exhale]
23:12:08 SPIKE@0
08:14:36 SPIKE: BUS
08:14:36 MAN: —Look, Williams, you have to take it off. It's bothering Beck.
08:14:41 BUS: Oh, so it's all "Williams" again. Why does she care? Not like I'm Greg or something, huh?
08:14:46 SPIKE: MAN
08:14:48 MAN: What did you say?
08:14:49 DAV: Stop. Besides, Command says take it off, you have to take it off.
08:15:00 MAN: Yeah, and how did you even get that magazine up here?
08:15:07 BUS: None of this is Command's business. Always Command this and Command that, that's you, Gorby.
08:15:15 DAV: Already asked to not call me that.
08:15:17 BUS: Yeah, go cry to Command. Y'all ruskies the same, Soviet slave mentality gomers.
08:15:20 SPIKE: DAV
08:15:20 DAV: Don't talk to me about slaves. We're all under orders, I am at least important. I have a good position and a good education and a Swiss passport waiting for me back on Earth and I don't even count as Soviet anymore. And you just drive the ship. Tell you what, you're our galley slave.
08:15:30 BUS: Still not takin' the poster off. Go scatter.
08:15:34 MAN: What's a "gomer"?
08:20:12 SPIKE@0
01:26:23 SPIKE: MAN
01:26:23 [breathing]
01:26:30 [footsteps, inaudible]
01:28:57 [paper tearing]
01:28:57 [footsteps]
02:02:43 SPIKE@0
20:05:31: ALL CONNECTION LOST
27 hours post-connection loss Foundation telescopes spotted bursts of light on Iapetus with signatures corresponding to shaped nuclear charges. An unexpected solar flare was promptly falsified by the Department of External Affairs to cover the incident up. 74 hours in, connection was re-established by calibrating to ultra-longwave radio.
74 hours worth of compiled material was received in rough chronological order, along with telemetry from the crew's implants and a brief message, which are as follows:
| GRI | No vitals |
| MAN | No vitals |
| REB | No vitals |
| DAV | No vitals |
| BUS | Heartbeat steady |
Center of planet. Sitting on nukes. Pull the trigger? Hope logs help. Quick, please -Bus
The data was immediately screened for memetic hazards based on the unusual beginning message, but none was found. It is now presented in full:
This on? Command, hear this. Mikhail Grigoryev, recording for posterity. Rebeck was here, said the antenna got busted. What sort of engineer diploma she has? Yes, is her job, but damn woman can't do anything right. 'S been stuck for three hours now. It'll work in my hands.
Rebecca Owens on record, saw Grigoryev leaving the radio booth a little while ago. Heard some of it, too. The walls are jinxed, I swear they flip from cardboard to completely inpenetrable to sound at the worst moments. Anyways, back to the radio, no hands were applied (Ugh, Greg's such a… We can't swear on these, correct?), he just stood around the display for a bit and breathed over my shoulder. Yes, and about the display, I now have visual confirmation that something happened with the curtain array. Freddie was kind enough to give the shuttle a whirl, but I could've easily just repositioned the outer cam, so… I'm not actually sure why he did that. I'll be callous and classify the damage as anomalous. Full report is done already, but the gist of it is that the array didn't use to be a perfect grid (compensating the ship's shape, that is) and now it has somehow is! We'll have to recompute the whole signal geometry, could take days. Owens out, wish us luck.
Captain's log: Stable Iapetus orbit entered. Becky's hogged the central computer, so relocating to paper again. So much for my Kirk dream. She said there's an optical character hootenanny somewhere in there, though, that'll be of use.
Rebecca Owens on record, and it's not getting better anytime soon. Same structural damage manifesting on wiring inside the ship. Bus wants to shuttle down already and deal with it later, I'm inclined to agree. Not like we were doing anything anyways, we'd need the mainframe and all the resources are still allocated to fixing the signal.
Captain's log: I'm on the surface of an alien planet and nobody's looking at me. Nobody would even know. Not on TV, no nothing. To think, farther than anyone not even in the reserve, but in the actual crews. If I went to space back at NASA, I wouldn't've even known we can go this far. Well, isn't that something out of nothing.
We've set up camp in Turgis crater (the big one, yes), Gorby got really into the naming part, as he does, so I'm writing this from Provisional Site-Yod. Wish you were here!
God, the view from the plains is just like a matte painting. That's the only place in Saturn's system where you can see the rings, you know? All the other moons are in the rings' plane. Feels like an honor.
I'm getting so sappy, this' supposed to be professional.
09/19/1990 Everyone has severe diarrhœa, incl. myself. Assuming food contamination for now, issued rehydration solution.
Still 09/19/1990 Assumption was correct, latest food batch unusable, but no pathogens detected. It looked like prions on the microscope, but in actuality was different, the proteins have "symmetrized" (neologism, but paints a picture). Obviously undigestible. Will attach readings later.
09/1920/1990 Just throwing out there, could be the same anomaly that got the antenna, just on a micro level. I wonder if it'll eat our plastics next. - M. Owens out.
09/20/1990 Oh god it's so much worse, t. b. d.
07:06:33 SPIKE: MAN
07:07:03 MAN: Gorby, I may have pulled an all-nighter there, but—
07:07:10 DAV: Right back at you, Reagan. That nickname was old even a week before launch. I'm not even that—
07:07:16 MAN: Gorby, where the fuck is your birthmark?
Stepan in Hume detector harness.
09/20/1990 Davankov's forehead birthmark is gone (see attached image).
Visual examination reveals pores arranged in symmetrical patterns. Told him about the anomaly's effects, seems undistressed.
Captain's log: Spacewalked into Turgis today. Command, two years ago, said to investigate the middle first. So we did. They got a good hunch, smack-dab in the geometric center was a brass plate. Clearly not probe debris, one good look gave me a headache. Brought the scans to Gorby, Fred was still examining him. Hope he'll be alright.
Captain's log, supplemental: That ain't a plate, it's a door sign.
Translator's note:
The brass plate contains a message in three paragraphs in an advanced, highly recursive and abstracted form of English. Even the headings were several sentences worth of length. The text did not pass an initial cognitohazard check, but that was found to be a false positive triggered by the its sheer intricacy. After stripping unreadable parts, the remainder was fully comprehensible and grammatically correct. Contents suggest that is intentional. A scan of the full text has been forwarded to Command, or will be, once the radio is online. -Davankov
I. The Circumstance
Taking into account you having already found this message, a choice is presented. A veritably unjust choice, where neither of the options is true, not to us. You, dear reader, are between a rock and a hard place on this heavens-forgotten hardly-rock. From your side, standing upon an ordered century’s worth of experience, the choice may appear obvious, our morals – peculiar, decadent, even. I pray it is so, for there is a lesser pain in choosing what you perceive as a lesser evil. To not bore the altered audience and, indeed, some twelve non-altered readers, onwards, away, away from the introduction!
II. The Complexity
Consider chaos. In a closed system, the most probable state is the most uncertain one. A man is simpler than a mash of molecules by virtue of being structured. You, dear reader, if of a certain sort, could attribute that to a godly act, however profundity (yet!) lies in evidence, not mere reason. The truth of man is that his home is not a closed system. I trust you to divine that the enormous engine you stand in opens the system of the universe. As with all, the engine takes its toll, what the wise are most proud of: their complexity. Complexity of customs, sophistication of studies. And what a magnificent engine it is! Such sundry sensations overflowed me when the first draft was presented to me, its electron-thin pen strokes, sadly, irreplicable in your revision of the world.
III. The Crucible
I do not believe this solution is right, but we are tyrannised by circumstance. I will spend my days, as atonement, in the churn of the engine, performing final checks, until simplification to nothing brings my task to a stop. I am assured it will not take long.
Best wishes,
Post Scriptum
ACTION PROPOSAL #32
M. Grigoryev
Since, somehow, Manfred here declared a great big mass of our food as uneatable, I've recalculated the ship's Δv. We have three shaped charges to spare. My proposal is simple: crack open the mechanism's hatch, look what's inside. I've already found the optimal bomb placement.
| CREW | YEA | NAY |
| M. Grigoryev | x | |
| S. Davankov | x | |
| M. Owens | x | |
| R. Owens | x | |
| B. Williams | x |
Manfred Owens recording. I was wrong. Our food supplies have symmetrized not partially, but completely. In my initial samples I see organics turning to elemental carbon and releasing everything else. We aren't going to survive unless you send us a supply package. Anomalously, I don't care, you either get cross-contamination or all your researchers die of hunger in a week, with no research at all. Much as Grigoryev's a prick, I wouldn't eat him.
Stepan's pores are gone. Face swollen like a bad allergy. Insists it's all good. Really wants in on the exploration. I've asked Bus to stay in the shuttle with him while we look around.
Beck insists the radio will be recomputed in a day or so. She wouldn't lie to me. Hope this sends. Owens out.
Rebecca Owens on record from the shuttle. We went in, the nukes went off without a hitch. Speaking of that, Turgis might actually be a hatch, I've spotted rows of hinge-looking devices on the inner side, all melted shut. Observation confirms the layer-cake model, there is a notable trend with depth: the first layer was chiseled rock pillars, we then passed downwards through pulleys and gear systems. All the guts of Iapetus are slowly turning. At time of recording, I see hundred-storey boilers before me. Williams's maneuvers through the moving environment is impressive without an autopilot, I'll give him that.
Captain's log: We appear to be have reached the center, it's almost zero-gee here. All the gears and circuits have become too intricate to see long ago, they converge and intersect in branch-looking things. I see them as holding hands surrounding the middle.
Stepan's really not doing great, his fingers look webbed now and his nostrils have filled. He's breathing from the mouth now, God, how he's wheezing. Fred wanted to cut through, but had the wisdom to scan beforehand and nope, it's all solid cartilage. Don't think he'll make it. Don't even know how to help. Everyone else is outside, so that's why I'm writing all this. I should be talking to Ste
09/20/1990 Skin grew over his eyes. Nose and mouth receding into the skull. Little and ring fingers fused together, fusion of other fingers in progress. Attempted tracheotomy, windpipe completely smooth -> unable to vocalize.
09/20/1990 Unauthorized euthanasia performed by Williams. Gunshot startled everyone on board.
suppl.: Retreating to the surface. Fred said he noticed his pores disappearing too.
9/20 Thing influenced thinking. I'm sick, Beck's sick, Greg's sick. Bus not because he didn't go out.
Greg called Beck a "bitch" for voting for his idea. Then aneurysm: organs moved to middle of body. -M.
Beck here. Fred died. Can't see. Please. Please. Beck out.
Captain's log: I'm blowing this damn thing to smithereens. Been ferrying the nukes to the center. It won't take this kind of damage.
Captain's log, supplemental: But if message's true? Entropy kills everyone everywhere. That a worse choice? Command will know better.
supplemental: radio went on thanks beck calling command
The data was forwarded forthwith to the O5 Council, based on evidence of utmost importance and potential K-class scenario risk. An emergency conference was scrambled to make the final decision.
NOTICE FROM THE FOUNDATION RECORDS AND INFORMATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
The following transcript has been sanitized for 4/9229 release.
— ████████████, RAISA
<O5-03> I would like to direct attention to our unknowingness, neither reassuring nor comforting, our impossibility of "single-source" trust, primordial guidance in the decision for the Universe's survival. We should be suspicious of the categorism of the message, of the distinction between the heat death and cold, cruel life. What of the make-it-simple-machine, could the situation be driven to worseness? We have not the slightest idea of its work principles (make, manufacturer, material conditions, etc.)
<O5-10> And, of course, the question of its use's optics (hysterics, cleanness, alternatives) remains. Even in the (hypothesized) case of truthfulness, our goal is to protect (secure, contain relegated). If there is a profound (DEEPWELL-noticeable?) difference (abnormality) in the world post-activation, would it remain protected? We possess (haunting, grasping at straws) a set amount of time and must make use of it fully (amen, amen, amen).
<O5-07> The narrative has been lost[1], we are in posession of no time [2]. If we aren't to act now[3], we might not have a chance to send another crew. Who will be to blame[4] if there's nobody left?[5] We have about ████ hours until catastrophic entropic[6] damage gets inflicted and circa two minutes until the communication lag exceeds Williams' projected lifespan[7].
<O5-13> Exactly, which is why it must be destroyed now. There's no decision here, we die as ourselves.
<O5-07> That is completely unrelated[8] to what I said[9], and really, this is a display [10] of poor justification[11].
<O5-13> I'll have to remind you who's responsible for fortification procedures here. I'm going to give you a choice: either everyone remains themseves, or no one—
<O5-01>
<O5-13> Apologies.
<O5-01>
<O5-04> Excellent addition, kÿak, 01. However, and this may sound loud, hlaszno, there are faster ways, Ways, to the satellite, tanamgzavri. Though their usage, ūtiļ, merits discussion—
<O5b0t> Voting is open. 55 seconds have been allocated for choice.
<O5b0t> Voting has been closed.
<O5b0t>
| ID | YEA | NAY |
| O5-01 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-02 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-03 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-04 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-05 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-06 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-07 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-08 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-09 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-10 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-11 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-12 | ██ | ██ |
| O5-00/O5-13 | N/A | N/A |
<O5b0t> Results are in. The order is in power immediately.
