On the 11th December, 2014, the newest SCP Foundation Site, 114, vanished, taking with it two members of the team who would have been assigned there. This was put down to an accident with a new piece of technology, named the MSDD.
Thirty-two and a half years later, on the 4th June 2047, Foundation communication satellites received a weak radio signal originating from what appeared to be deep space. The signals were moderately distorted, hypothesized to be due to long-term interaction with cosmic radiation. However, the messages transmitted were decipherable.
The transmissions can be found in full below.
Note that the messages are classified using system time, not at the times they were received.
Whoo.
Woo. Hoo hoo.
Wow.
Heh.
Fuck.
Shit. Hoo.
Wow. So…
…I'm gonna die.
Right. I think this terminal is online…
…yes, there's a little red light in the corner.
How do I begin?
Ahem. Hello, nobody. My name is Matthew Conway. I am - I was - a Level 2 Research Assistant at the now-defunct Site 114. I've worked for the SCP Foundation for two years now.
And I'm never gonna work for them again.
See, Site 114 was going to be this high-security facility, where the Foundation kept all of its most dangerous things. 682, 239, even Able. Yeah, I know. It's actually a really shitty idea. But it seemed like it would work. The thickest walls, floors, and doors ever produced. Constant surveillance. Any behavior slightly out of the ordinary would be logged, reported, and if necessary, dealt with.
And as part of these procedures, the Foundation demanded we install something new - something called a Molecular Spacial-Displacement Drive (MSDD). In the event anything bad broke out of containment, the MSDD could be activated from Surveillance, and the entire facility would be skipped across space to a habitable exoplanet. Then, the staff on hand would do their best to recontain it, or, failing that, just wait for it to wander outside, then skip the facility back and change destinations.
Rumor has it that they got the idea from this weird parallel-universe thing that had something similar in it. But instead of just dumping a Site full of shit into a different dimension, they thought it would be better to make it be able to make return journeys too, thus saving on costs.
Personally, I thought it was a stupid idea, just like the Site itself, but they gave me some hefty paychecks, and hey, who am I to turn down a bribe?
Now, on to the juicy stuff. It was about 9 p.m PST and we were all packing up. It was three days before the Site was going to start having the Keters keetered in, and we were performing routine maintenance and integrity checks (i.e. setting off bombs in containment chambers to make sure they could hold). We were all having a gay old time. Just as we were leaving, I heard an alarm go off in the Surveillance room, so I told the others to wait for me and went to investigate.
Yeah, yeah, I know, never go into a Facility, even an abandoned one, alone. But anyway, I went upstairs, and one of the screens was flashing. All of the others were black, but one was flashing white words on it: "MSDD FAILURE". Now, if there's one thing we learned while building this place, it was DO NOT FUCK WITH THE MSDD. But, me being me, I assumed that someone had cut a cable accidentally and it didn't have power, or something. I went down into the server room - where they keep the MSDD - and had a look. It all looked fine.
When I turned to go upstairs, my foot snagged on one of the ethernet cables, which pulled a hard drive out of its casing. Suddenly, everything went ape shit: alarms blaring, lights flashing, a cold mechanical voice saying "CRITICAL FAILURE" over and over again. I stuffed the drive back in again, but the alarms didn't stop. Luckily, I noticed a trailing cable at the back, and plugged it into the drive, which made everything shut up.
Proud of myself, I backed away to make sure nothing else had happened, and walked backwards into the MSDD. Now, I feel I should mention, there are more safeguards on this thing than there are on the 001 slot, so I did not flick a switch or anything like that. I literally just walked backwards into it, knocked it slightly, and there was a massive BANG followed by a soft whump.
After inspecting the MSDD for any signs of damage, I assumed that the bang had been the systems rebooting or something - hey, the Foundation's weird sometimes - and went back upstairs. I thought I'd better check the surveillance room to make sure that warning had gone away, but when I got there, all of the exterior and interior cameras had activated.
As best I can tell, I'm on a different planet now. I guess I must have activated the MSDD on accident when I knocked it, but if that's the case then it's stupid. Why build something so important to be so volatile? It just doesn't make sense.
One would have thought that the planet would have been at least habitable, right? Given what I just said about the MSDD's construction and intended purpose, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that. But no, I don't even have that luxury. Unfortunately, one of the workers was caught just on the edge of the device's radius, and I can see her corpse from the security cameras. It could have just been the journey, but I don't think so, and I sure as hell don't want to find out first-hand.
There is, however, one small thing that will help me immensely: we hadn't fully configured the locking system when everything went down, so I don't need to worry about being restricted. I've got free roam of the facility.
I'm going to log my thoughts here because writing things down has always helped me think them through, and I figure unless I occupy myself somehow I'll go crazy. So be prepared for a lot of reading, whoever you are!
Anyway, I'd be dead by now if there were any leaks, surely. But I'd better go and do an inspection before anything ruptures.
Conway out!
FUCK.
SHITFUCK.
..huuuueeeeeegh
my hnads ae shaking too much t type
I've calmed down a bit now. So, you may have guessed, I found a leak.
All of the windows on this place were built to be airtight. Obviously, if they were going to be sending it into space, then they'd need to be. But I guess one must not have been installed correctly, because there was a hairline crack between the window and the wall.
I found it as I was walking up to the cafeteria. It was the second to last place I was going to check, and by that point it was actually pretty large. I knew, by the time I'd gotten to the nearest janitor's closet to grab some duct tape, the facility would have breached.
So I reacted on instinct. I fucking floored it to Surveillance - that's where I'm typing from, by the way - never have I run so fast before - and slammed my fist on the blast door manual controls. The blast doors shut just before the hole broke open - seriously, it could not have been any closer. Thankfully, the blast doors did seal the breach, so now only the corridor to the cafeteria is out of order. I've also turned off the heater in there, because sending heat straight outside is a stupid waste of power.
I'm glad I found it when I did, because holy shit, if the entire facility had done that it would have been like being in the middle of the most powerful tornado ever.
I don't know what brought me here. Probably just a freak malfunction of the MSDD. I reckon I'll probably be sent home soon. We'll be fitting all the alarms tomorrow - smoke alarms, breach alarms, carbon monoxide alarms. Statutory shit. Better than being stranded here though.
Well, I'm not home.
I'm surprised, honestly. These things tend to have a period of about a day. Perhaps tomorrow?
In the meantime, I'm going to see what I have to work with.
I have a major problem.
So, you remember that in my last log, I reported that the corridor to the cafeteria had breached? Well, turns out that there is no other way to access the cafeteria, other than that corridor, without going outside. And going outside would be like committing suicide, judging by what just happened.
Yeah. The cafeteria, my only long-term source of food, is currently inaccessible. In the event I can't get back home, I'll need to secure it, otherwise I'll die within two weeks. Thank Christ for small mercies, though - I do know it's still secure, because all the dainty little flowers on the tables are still alive. If I get up there, I'll be fine,
I just have to find a way to get to it.
I'm a massive idiot!
What brought me here? The MSDD!
What can get me out of here? The MSDD!
So what am I going to do? Manually activate the MSDD, and get the fuck home!
ASS.
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver 1.4.5
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: status SMDD
ERROR: File 'SMDD' does not exist or is unreachable
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: status MSDD
MSDD Status: Online
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: activate MSDD
Activating MSDD...
Activating MSDD...
Activating MSDD...
Activating MSDD...
ERROR: Device cannot be activated
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: prompt error
Prompt "Device cannot be activated"?
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: y
"Device cannot be activated", t232s = < min
For those who don't speak nerd, I just asked to activate the MSDD. When it wouldn't let me, I asked why, and it said "t232s = < min". What that means is there isn't enough fuel to get back home.
The MSDD is powered by liquid fluoride and thorium salts. There's an awesome article cited in the theory paper: basically, you start off with Uranium-233, which decays and releases a neutron. The neutron can be absorbed by thorium in solution, which decays to protactinium, then to uranium-233, which can be extracted and added back in. It's similar to a fission reactor, but waaaay cooler generates less waste.
It takes thorium tetrafluoride in solution as its fuel, and I don't see any way to generate that in this shithole. So I guess I'm stuck here. Fuck.
Incidentally, before I forget, the Site itself is powered by a combination of two different fission reactors - a "breeder" reactor, which cultivates fissile fuel, and a "light-water reactor", which actually provides the power to the place. Basically, magic. So I don't have to worry about power on that front, as the two working together should provide enough power to run the facility for upwards of 350 years.
I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that my dying out here is a very real possibility. It's not a very nice feeling, confronting your own mortality. But I'm doing it, at any rate.
Matthew Conway, Level 2 Researcher. Studied for four years at uni for a BA in computer science. Was recruited by the Foundation in 2012. Level 2 application essay: using virtual environments to test infohazardous anomalies. 94%.
I'm calling it now: I'm going to die here. I'm going to die on this planet. I will be the only man in human history to die within the atmosphere of a planet that is not Earth.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up.
Fuck no.
Though this alien planet might give me the chills, and adversity looms against one lonesome man,
I'm going to use every one of my skills to survive for as long as I fucking well can.
Time to make a list of everything I need to survive.
- Food
- Water
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Oxygen
- Heat
Let's get the easy ones out of the way first. Heat is no problem, because there are heating coils powered by the magic generator of convenience in all the radiators. So as long as I have power, I shan't be freezing to death.
Sleep? No problem. I think there's a mattress in one of the containment cells; it was going to be used by one of the humanoids. Even if not, there isn't any rule saying I need to be clothed now that I'm not on Earth, so I can sleep on those if needs be.
Exercise too. I'm sure I can do laps around the corridors.
No, the big ones are food, water and oxygen. There's quite a lot of food upstairs, but I can't get upstairs because, if you remember, the corridor's breached. But that wouldn't last forever. No, I need to grow my food. Good ol' farming. I have about three days' worth of food on hand, which I can stretch to six days, and from then on out I'll be starving. So I've got about week of sapience to work out how to reach the cafeteria.
Thankfully, if there's one thing the SCP Foundation loves, it's health supplements. I reckon that's probably because they don't want anybody who's stuck indoors 24/7 to turn translucent via lack of Vitamin C. They may not be tasty, but all I need to actually grow is calories. Vitamins and stuff, I can all get through tablets.
Water is a problem. BUT! I specifically remember those assholes on the the ethics committee getting on our asses about water storage. They made us put in five giant tanks filled with water, so I might not have a problem there. We shall have to see.
Now. Oxygen. This is the big big one. You can get oxygen in many different ways, but probably the best one for me is going to be growing shit. No, not growing shit, growing plants. I read somewhere that the average human being needs roughly 60m2 of crops to be able to survive and breathe in space.
The armory has a hazmat suit in it, and inside that hazmat suit is a nifty gadget called a "rebreather". The rebreather separates the carbon dioxide from my breath, and it needs to be hooked up to an external oxygen tank to function.
This means that there are three tanks of oxygen in the armory, and should things ever get desperate, I can use those. But I'll save them for emergencies.
I'll need to start working on those crops pretty soon.
My dad was a farmer. Well, no he wasn't, but he grew herbs in a pot. Well, I say 'grew'; it died after two days. But still… farming genes.
I spent today mapping the areas available to me. I'll see if I can scan the map onto the system and attach it to this log.

As of my last recon mission, this Site has:
- 12 containment chambers, all made of the toughest materials the Foundation can procure
- One server room, hosting the Site's OS and related files
- Four janitorial closets, each stocked with cleaning supplies, a mop, and a vacuum cleaner
- Three dormitories for on-site personnel, each consisting of 4 sets of bunk-beds, meaning that a total of 24 personnel could sleep at any one time.
- One armory (more detail on that later)
- One surveillance room (which has become command for me)
- Two sets of toilets each of both ladies and gents
- One cafeteria and adjoining kitchen, rendered inaccessible due to an air breach
- One rec room, containing several bookcases, game tables, and other stuff I didn't check out
- Two labs, filled with sciencey machines that I'll probably never use.
There's also a vehicle bay, but I haven't drawn it because I would have run out of paper. It's on Level 1, at the end of the horizontal corridor.
And that's everything. There are only two other things that I think I should mention. One is the fact that every door out of the facility is either marked "DO NOT OPEN IF NOT ON EARTH", or is an airlock, which makes my job massively easier. The second is the armory, and how batshit crazy it is.
Do you have any idea the kind of stuff we have in there!? Well, actually, surprisingly few guns and shit, mostly frags and EMP grenades, rocket launchers, things meant to take down specific SCPs. But there are some really awesome weapons in there! Like chemicals designed to burn holes in things. Really strong acids, probably for 682. I wonder if they'd work on these walls.
Huh. I shall have to test that.
Also, slightly worryingly, there's a metric fuck-ton of explosives. Like, insanely many explosives. But not even normal explosives - breaching explosives. Meant to tear holes in solid material. I'm not joking about this; I may as well be stuck in space inside a multi-million-dollar time bomb. If I ever make contact with the Foundation, I'm going to give them a serious talking-to about their incendiary management.
I have a plan. I'm going to try and breach my way into the cafeteria using those chemicals. I can just about reach the ceiling if I stack up some crates. Since I can't use the hallway, I'll be going straight through. If I can't corrode my way through, I'll think of something else, but right now that sounds like my best shot.
I would use some of the explosives, but I don't know how big they blow, and I can't risk breaching the walls. That would just be… no. No.
Once I've accessed the cafeteria, I'm going to make sure the freezers are still operational, then check to see how much food I have access to, and how long it will last me. Once that's been done, I'll get started with how to farm in space.
Actually, I have been thinking about that, and I've come to the conclusion that I need to use night soil. What's night soil? Human shit. Shock, horror, etc. The problem is that there's hardly any shit here. All the toilets chemically treat waste, so there's nothing I can use there, and I've only needed to shit twice so far. Both times I've done it in one of the chambers, which I plan on using for my farm.
But I can think about my farm when I have more food.
Bad news: the acid can't breach the walls. I threw some of every single acid at a dividing wall between two chambers, and nothing budged. I think there might have been a dent, but then again it could have just been some absurd specification.
So I'm back to square one. How do I access the cafeteria…
Okay.
I know what I need to do.
Inside the armory is a hazmat suit.
Hazmat suits are mostly airtight.
So is duct tape.
If you apply duct tape to a breach, it can seal it.
I'm going to fill a hazmat suit with air, then leave it in one of the airlocks, open it, and see how long it takes to deflate.
It took all of one minute for the air to escape. Almost all of looked like it came from the seam between the transparent face-plate and the plastic covering.
I'm going to tape over that and see if that improves things.
Okay, this is good. It took half an hour to lose all of its air.
(This is obviously with the rebreather disabled)
The next step is to identify smaller leaks and patch those. In order to do that, I need colored gas of some kind. I wonder where I can get that…
What the fuck am I DOING!?
I'm typing this on the terminal in the lab. Currently, there is a canister of tear gas hooked up to the suit, and it's slowly inflating. Once it's fully inFUKC
Sorry about that. I panicked slightly when I saw how much the suit was bulging. Anyhow, it's full, so now I'm going open the airlock and see what happens.
Success! The tear gas is leaking out slowly from several small areas which I can clearly see. Once the suit's deflated, I can patch it up and then I should be able to go!
I patched it all up, filled it up with even more air, then popped it in the airlock. An hour and a half later, it still looks as though it has most of its air! Somehow, I've managed to create a spacesuit.
But it still might not be enough. I don't know how close the planet is to the star it orbits, so…
…actually, I can check that! I need to see whether the heaters or the cooling system is doing more work, and from that I'll at least know roughly how close to the star I am.
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver 1.4.5
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: list +c
Listing connected devices:
heater 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | main
cooler 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | main
camera 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | main
lights 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | main
doors 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | main
speakers 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | main
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: heater main
Heater Main
Consumption: 3500W
Cutoff: 21^^o^^C
Usage: 2956.3W
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: cooler main
Cooler Main
Consumption: 3500W
Cutoff: 23^^o^^C
Usage: 10.2W
So that means it's highly likely we're out beyond the habitable zone of the star. This means that there probably won't be too much solar radiation, but still enough to merit caution.
It's just occurred to me that I won't be going outside with this suit… at least, yet. I'm not actually sure I've told you my entire plan.
I'm going to use this suit to enter the breached area of the corridor and seal it up as quickly as possible. The reason I need the suit is that a) I need air, but also b) I don't know how dense the atmosphere is, so it might be that I would explode if I just stepped out there.
It has also just occurred to me that I'm probably going to lose air doing it, but I can see the crack through one of the cameras, and while it's pretty big, it isn't unmanageable. So as long as I get in there as soon as possible and patch it, I should be okay.
Wish me luck!
Okay, I'm all set. The suit's right next to me, and I have prepared a suitable breach sealant. Admittedly, it's five sheets of paper duct-taped together, but if my calculations are correct it should hold for long enough for me to think up a more permanent solution.
Here I go…
It worked!
As soon as I opened the door, I sprinted over to the crack and stuck my seal over it. All in all, I reckon I only lost a tiny amount of air, and now I have access to a whole load of food!
I'm going to spend tomorrow inventorying all the food I have. The Foundation like to overprepare, so I might have more than I think.
But today has been extremely productive, and I'm very happy indeed.
Conway out!
There are seven different freezers, each filled with meal packets. They don't mess around. Admittedly, they do look like cheap ready-meals, but hey, I'm not complaining.
Each freezer contains seventy ready-meals. This means that I can survive for seventy weeks, since I planning on having a different meal for every day of the week. I'm sure I can survive on one meal per day if I bulk it out.
Also, I was right about those water tanks! Each water tank has a radius of 2 meters and a length of 25 meters, and all five are completely filled. Thus, I have roughly 1600 liters of water.
Humans need three liters of water per day to be comfortable, according to one of the books in the lab. So that water should last roughly 530 days. Only problem is, crops need a lot of water. The upside of that is that I'll need less water to drink when I eat the crops.
It would probably be a good idea for me to find something to farm first. I'm jumping into this a bit headstrong.
Okay.
I've had a search around, and I've found…
…nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Zilch. Nada. Nothing that I can possibly plant or grow.
In other news, I duct-taped the fuck out of that breach. I cannibalized a D-Class uniform from the armory - weird place to put them, but whatever - and strapped pieces of the fabric alternately with layers of duct tape and card. I think it's going to hold from now on.
You know, the best thing would have been potatoes. Potatoes, the starch kings, full of calories. But no such luck. The closest thing to potatoes were some chips in the Tuesday ready-meal (fish and chips).
This is actually a huge problem. If I can't find a way around it, I have an ultimatum. I'm going to sleep on it and see what comes to mind.
I wonder if those table flowers are edible.
Having just spent five minutes hunched over a sink, trying to get the taste of stem out of my mouth, I can confirm: they are not.
Hmm. Wait a second…
Sunday's ready-meal is a roast dinner. Sadly, it's a roast with mash, so no tatties, but as a part of that roast dinner there's some uncooked sweetcorn. I seem to remember hearing that sweetcorn is actually quite high in calories.
It's a very long shot - it's a very long shot indeed. But I see no alternatives.
After some investigation, I've found a roll of aluminum foil. There's also some more duct tape, bringing the total to about fifteen rolls.
I plan on covering the inside of my incredibly makeshift spacesuit with tinfoil to ward off some of the harmful space rays. It's not perfect - hoo boy, it really, really, REALLY isn't perfect - but I suppose it can't do any harm. Then, I'll secure it all with duct tape.
Then, I'll do the same, but with 2 D-Class suits. Because I'm willing to bet space is cold. I'ma need all the insulation I can get.
It's a good thing I kept those oxygen tanks, because the rebreather can't function without a tank of aux gases. I'll be using those for my trips.
The reason I'm doing this is simple - I need dirt. There's no dirt in this facility yet, and I'm going to need about 3 cubic meters of the stuff to grow corn in.
Here's my math: the average human needs roughly 60m2 of leaves in order to generate enough oxygen to survive. Since the Foundation folk weren't unduly worried about oxygen - they were planning on sending Site Skeeball to planets with an atmosphere containing sufficient amounts of oxygen anyway - they didn't bother installing an atmospheric regulator. This is what the folks in the business call a problem. The way we get around this problem is by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen using you guessed it, plants! For some reason, the Foundation likes all their lights to be as close to sunlight as possible (like the vitamins, probably so that people who have to stay inside all the time don't turn grey), which is a massive help for me.
Sixty square meters of leaf space is quite a bit, actually, so I'm going to take some measurements once the first one grows and work out how much room I need. For now, I've invented a number for the mean surface area of a leaf, and that number is 133cm2. Assuming that most maize plants have six leaves (again, that number came straight out of my ass), that's 800 square centimeters of leaf per plant, which doesn't seem too ridiculous. Then it's a simple division to work out that I'm going to need 750 maize plants. Well, it's not like I was going to be doing anything else anyway.
Immediately there's a problem. 750 maize plants, getting, say, 20ml of water per day, will single-handedly exhaust my water supply in 106 days. But I'll get back to that.
Maize… well, actually, now that I think about it, maize and sweetcorn are two different things, but they're both corn, so I'm going to use them interchangeably, and screw you if you disagree, I'm the one stuck in space here. Maize is usually planted in grids, with each plant 75cm away from its nearest neighbor (according to a biology textbook I found in one of the labs). I'm going to get creative with my planting, and pack them even more efficiently, in triangle-like formations. Now, this sort of thing isn't typically done, because a) having maize plants too close to each other increases competition for food and water, which means that b) the soil dries out and becomes arid and infertile.
But amazingly, and somewhat counter-intuitively, this little piece of knowledge is entirely unnecessary, because of one detail: the MSDD. When it teleported the facility away, it also teleported a bunch of dirt, as its area of effect is, as one might suspect, spherical. This means that there's a virtually inexhaustible supply of dirt out there.
The problem with that is that, after being exposed to a planetary atmosphere of unknown composition and insulation, it's highly likely that all of the bacteria present in the soil are dead, rendering it inert and unusable. However, I don't think that really matters, not when I have a pile of shit in the corner!
No, seriously. If I use my feces to grow the corn, then they'll grow way faster.
So that's that! I'm going to be growing corn. I'll need to get quite a bit of dirt from outside - my Fermi estimation gave me 3 cubic meters - but other than that, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work!
…what's that? Water? Well, yes, that is a bit of a problem. But first of all, everything here is a closed system. No matter is lost or gained, at least, now that I'm shitting on my crops. So theoretically, as long as I come up with a way to distill my piss, I should be golden! Secondly, note that earlier I mentioned that humans would need 60 square meters of crops to breathe and eat. That's without anything else. If I have two ears of corn per day, along with my meal, it should push me along nicely without actually requiring as many crops as the textbook says.
But the main reason I'd need so many crops would be for oxygen - that is, to breathe. This Site is very big - very big indeed - and it's full to the brim with air. But air doesn't last as long as people think it does, which is bad news for me. As a matter of fact, I reckon I've used about a tenth of all of the air in this place, which means that I don't have all that much left. Well, I do, but… never mind.
Wow, I've done a lot of writing today. Tomorrow I'm going to go outside - and get that dirt if it kills me!
…which it may well.
After two days of backbreaking, freezing, and pants-wettingly terrifying work, I have successfully retrieved three cubic meters of dirt. On a whim, I composed a slide with the dirt, and put it under the microscope. Turns out that the microbes present in Earth soil aren't all dead! Some survived the voyage, and still live within the dirt!
This, I'm assuming, is because the surviving bacteria were extremophiles, and are comfortable with low temperatures, little to no oxygen, and high levels of solar radiation. I, on the other hand, am not an extremophile.
Actually, that reminds me. I need to do a spectroscopic analysis of the composition of the atmosphere here. I'm gonna be really pissed if it's 20% oxygen.
I'm going to plant 10 corn kernels. If any of them germinate, I'm gonna fill the two containment chambers outside my door with dirt, and keep trying with frozen corn until something happens - preferably, that they begin to grow. Once that happens, I'll use the grown corn to plant, as that'll give a much higher chance of sprouting.
I'm also going to piss and shit in a box, to make it easier to accrue manure. I'll mix that with some dirt and spread it all over the plants. Sure, it's not the best, but nothing here is.
Tomorrow, I'm going outside. I'm gonna explore. I only want 10 minutes. Just to get some samples I can analyze and check out the available resources.
Conway out!
So a few interesting things have happened.
As I said, I planted 10 corn kernels. We'll just have to wait and see on that one. But then I went out onto the surface with a few sample flasks, and found something odd.
It's a sort of brown-ish pool. It stinks to high heaven of cleaners - like bleach, or cleaning cloths. I got a bit of it in a tube, then sampled the air, then dashed back inside. All in all, that was the most fucking terrifying thing I've done since I got here - even more so than the dirt. Had my suit ruptured while I was getting the dirt, I could have sprinted back in before anything really bad happened. But this time, I was too far out. Thankfully nothing did go wrong.
Anyway, the brown liquid is ammonia. This is good news. Ammonia is often used in farming as a source of nitrogen, so if I get some and mix it with my crate o' shit then it may well make it go way further!
I forgot to take any samples of the surface rock, but it was white and dusty, so I'm going to go ahead and assume I'm on a planet made of cocaine.
Less good news is the result of the air sample.
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
Mass Spectrometer
Sample 2 Results:
81.3% nitrogen
12.1% hydrogen
3.3% carbon
3.3% oxygen
What I think this means is that the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, partially methane, and partially carbon dioxide.
So I can't breathe out there. Shame, really.
'Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the Site,
It's fucking CHRISTMAS!
And, by way of a present, one of the corn stalks has grown!
It's not huge, but I can definitely see a little sprout through the dirt. This is fantastic. I now know I have a reliable way to produce food!
Since I know it's growing, I can afford to waste a little more water on it. Actually, no! I'm going to stop watering my plants, and piss on them instead! Piss contains all sorts of useful chemicals, and it's only slightly toxic in large quantities, so I may as well piss directly on them instead of into the ShitCrate 9000.
I've had a few other ideas, too. When I did a similar analysis on the air inside the facility, this is what I got:
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
Mass Spectrometer
Sample 3 Results:
77.8% nitrogen
18.8% oxygen
2.7% hydrogen
0.7% carbon
Trace% argon
There's an awful lot of carbon in this air, which means there isn't as much oxygen as it may seem. Similarly, that hydrogen is going to be water vapor, which is where my idea comes in.
So the atmosphere typically contains between 0.5-1% water vapor. It looks as though we're pushing the upper end of that here, so there's going to be a pretty large amount of water just floating around, eh?
I'm going to have to brutalize one of the freezers to do this, but if I hook up a cooling circuit outside of the closed environment, water should condense onto it. That's why, when you heat something up, water vapor appears on glassware; it's cooler than the flame, so it condenses.
That's what I'll be doing tomorrow. Condensing water into a bucket.
Not much to report today. As I said, I hooked up the water condenser, and it seems to be mostly working. It certainly cools the room down.
But I have a bigger problem now. You may have noticed that 0.7% carbon from earlier. That's way too much fucking carbon. I'm likely going to die of carbon dioxide poisoning before I run out of oxygen.
Fortunately, I have a solution to this problem!
Roughly five years ago, a chemistry student won a large, anonymous grant from the Foundation when he created a miniaturized apparatus for extracting and collecting carbon dioxide. The device was developed to use heat energy to power a reaction over a catalyst too long for me to remember, which split 2CO2 into C2 and 2O2. This was the tech they used to keep people alive during all the Foundation's space excursions, most notably the Peregrines.
It's a deus ex machina, right? Well, there's a slight problem. The device was made bigger and bigger, but never implemented into any systems beyond Peregrine, simply because there was never any need.
Well, except for one.
Standard SCP Foundation fire extinguishers.
It actually makes sense. Since the Foundation operates over so many Sites, it would be inefficient to manually refill every single fire extinguisher after a major conflagration. So why not just create self-refilling fire extinguishers? It's the perfect plan! It didn't even need to crack the gases!
The major problem is that there's nowhere to store the carbon dioxide, other than spewing it right back into the air. I could use one of the water tanks, but the issue with that is they're linked in parallel, so each tank drains 1 liter for every 5 liters used. No, I'm going to have to get creative.
Wait a second.
Inside the armory are high-pressure canisters of CS gas, and that shit ain't being passively refilled. I used one to test the suit.
What if I open one outside, then take the empty canister and fill it up using the fire extinguisher, then…
…wait. No, because then it would fill with nitrogen.
But if I discharged the CS canister outside, then entered the airlock and created a near-vacuum, then discharged the fire extinguisher into the CS canister…
…no, because my suit wouldn't be able to handle the pressure and would probably burst.
Hmm. I wonder how the airlock works.
I found some schematics.
So the airlock uses an automated system which logs which door has been opened, and either vents gases back into the Site while venting outside gases in, or vents gases from the Site into the airlock while venting outside gases out. Vent vent vent.
This raises an interesting question: How does the airlock distinguish between gases outside and gases inside? Answer: it doesn't. So every time I go outside, I take a little more methane in, and every time I come back in I lose some oxygen.
Basically, I can't fuck with it at all, because it's all self-contained.
But I don't need to, because I have had another idea!
The main problem with my initial plan - take it outside, blow it in there - was that there was no way to prevent backflow from the carbon dioxide, which would make it spew back out. And I don't want to waste oxygen - in any form.
However, who says I need to move it into another canister? I can just fire the extinguisher over the plants, and, because CO2 is heavier than air, it should sink to the bottom quite rapidly.
I said writing things down helps me think! I'll give that a shot tomorrow.
The fire extinguisher worked like a charm. I sprayed it up, then did two analyses of gases high and low in the chamber. The top one was pretty normal, but the bottom had a disproportionately high level of carbon in it. This should really help the plants grow!
Now I'm just killing time before my shart plants grow. I figured out how to patch my phone into the speaker system, so now I get my daily exercise by running down the halls to the tune of "Don't Stop Me Now" or "Eye of the Tiger". Really livens things up a bit.
Happy new year, bitches!
I threw myself a party. I went mad and had 1 and a half meals. I ran around. I blasted music through the PA system. I took a massive shart.
Today was fantastic.
You know, being a Level 2 Reseacher gets me quite a bit of access within the Foundation, but I feel like it's slightly too restrictive. Time to get my hands on an O5 account.
Specifically, because I want to know if the MSDD can be hooked into the base's main power supply. I know that earlier I mentioned some theory papers, but the actual schematics are locked away behind that sweet, sweet O5 barrier. If there is a way to hook it up to the reactor, then it's out of this shithole for me!
I'm going to hit O5-5's account, because he was the most involved with this project, so it's more likely he'd have the relevant documents backed up.
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
C:\Users\Staff\2\ConwayM: logout
Logging out...
Username: O5-5
Password: [I left this space blank]
WARNING: INCORRECT PASSWORD. ACTIVATING MEMETIC KILL AGENT DESIGNATION 86
Like N^N^Newborn infants, Long FFor the pure spiritual milk , that by it yyou may grow u^p into ssssssssalvation
Well then.
I tried various arbitrary combinations of usernames and passwords for a little over two hours, but nothing seemed to stick. All I got was that stupid 'error' message. Bloody kill agent doesn't even work.
Related: the Foundation's speech-to-text synth, combined with the site-wide PA system, has made me laugh so hard I've fallen off my chair.
Just imagine. A sparkling new facility. Immaculate surfaces. And playing over the intercom: "DICK. DICK. DICK. DICK. DICK. DICK." in a male, modulated, robotic voice.
God, I love being me sometimes.
The following message was received simultaneously, with a frequency matching a secure channel confirmed to have been used by the archaic MTF Alpha-1 "Red Right Hand".
URGENT: ATTEMPTED ACCESS OF O5-5'S ACCOUNT AT [INVALID HANDLE:gps_position].
MOBILIZE AND CONVERGE UPON LOCATION.
Well, I might not have O5 access, but I can still read the majority of SCP logs on the intranet. They only bothered to upload the logs of the SCPs that would have been kept here, though. That's 682, 239, 1048, 1500, 871, 096, 498, and 076. Yes, 076 - it was to be his 'summer home' when he wasn't fucking around with his pet Task Force (which, by the way, is the worst kept 'secret' in the Foundation).
None of them can reach me here, though. Let's get reading…
Why didn't they just shoot 682 into space?
Oh, wait…
God, 498 was a bit risky. What if the Site had skipped away, then the D-Class pressing it died? Well I s'pose it might have deterred any of the world-fuckers from returning to the building.
Same with 871. A universe filled with cake… hmm, doesn't actually sound too bad.
I went out and picked up some ammonia, then mixed into the box o' crap in Chamber 9. Should help bulk out the fertilizer. I also took some dirt and threw that in, because it was becoming too liquidy for my tastes.
I wonder how close this Site is to Earth right now.
Site 114 has what's known as a "wave-modulation electromagnetic signal transmitter", or a "radio". Electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light, so to make contact with Earth would require, at least, 4.2 years there and 4.2 years back. This is assuming I'm on the exoplanet orbiting Proximai Centauri, and somehow I doubt that.
So I'm unlikely to ever receive a reply, even if I was broadcasting…
Hang on. I'm not even broadcasting a signal! Time to patch into the communication array on the roof and shoot a radio signal into the ether.
The comms array uses a short-wave radio frequency, because nobody ever expected to need to communicate with the Foundation once the Site was away, so all they installed was the standard apparatus for communicating with other Sites.
Normally, the ionosphere reflects short-wave radio frequencies, which enables the signals to reach anywhere in the world. This is good for intra-Site comms, and it's also good for me, because somehow, being this far from the star, I doubt that the planet has much of an ionosphere.
So, in lieu of anything else to do, I plan on sending a short-wave radio signal randomly into space. It's basically just what Earth is doing, but they have both far more broadcasts and far more receivers.
Note: All prior transmissions had been received continuously. However, from this point onward, the
dates of reception match the dates of transmission, albeit with a delay of approximately 11,500 days.
I woke up at 3:12, judging by the terminal clock, and suddenly I knew how to get into the O5 account.
Let's take another look, shall we?
WARNING: INCORRECT PASSWORD. ACTIVATING MEMETIC KILL AGENT DESIGNATION 86
Like N^N^Newborn infants, Long FFor the pure spiritual milk , that by it yyou may grow u^p into ssssssssalvation
All looks pretty normal, right? Except for the fact that the "memetic kill agent" did diddly squat.
Look at the warning. There's all that weird Biblical shit, but above it, in the actual confirmation message, the italicized letters spell "ROM".
What does that mean? Well, remember what I just said: "weird Biblical shit." What if Rom is short for Romans?
Romans. One of the 66 books of the Bible. But why refer to a specific book if you're not going to give me a reference?
So, it seems, I'm back to square one.
Bollocks.
I did another check on the carbon dioxide levels in the facility.
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
Mass Spectrometer
Sample 4 Results:
78.1% nitrogen
18.9% oxygen
2.8% hydrogen
0.2% carbon
Trace% argon
The concentration of CO2 is still increasing, sadly. But with these plants on the go, I'm not too worried anymore.
What's that? How do I know it's increasing?
Well, if you remember, the fire extinguisher is sucking CO2 out of the air, so for the levels to remain the same my breathing must be occurring at roughly the same level.
So! Water is mostly under control. My bucket is now full of water, so I've turned off the cooling coil - don't want to dry out all the air in this place. Food is looking good. Oxygen seems mostly under control, heat is fine, I'm sleeping well, and I'm getting exercise so my muscles don't atrophy. Speaking of, it's time for me to go to sleep.
Life is pretty awesome right now!
Oh.
Oh, that's good.
They did give me a reference. "Memetic Kill Agent Designation 86". Time to find a Bible.
Romans 8:6 - "For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace."
So is that the password? Let's find out.
Username: O5-5
Password: for_to_set_the_mind_on_the_flesh_is_death_but_to_set_the_mind_on_the_spirit_is_life_and_peace
INCORRECT PASSWORD
Hmm. Let's try a few different permutations.
Username: for_to_set_the_mind_on_the_flesh_is_death_but_to_set_the_mind_on_the_spirit_is_life_and_peace
Password: O5-5
INCORRECT PASSWORD
[…]
Username: fortosetthemindonthefleshisdeathbuttosetthemindonthespiritislifeandpeace
Password:
"When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim’s body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep."
Wahey! Progress!
But what the hell is this? Some kind of cryptic crossword clue?I have no idea what this could possibly lead to. Time to go back to sleep.
I'm bored.
There aren't any games on the system aside from Minesweeper, and I've played that to death. The rec room is boring because everything needs 2 people. Pool, table tennis, even fucking charades.
The only thing to do is to read, and that isn't a problem, except for the fact that the bookcases are 90% trash. Twilight? Seriously?
So far, the only things I've found that look vaguely readable without causing profuse vomiting are two collections: Sherlock Homes and H. P. Lovecraft. I'm going to start with the Sherlock Holmes stories, because the TV show was awesome and I like mysteries.
The language Conan Doyle uses is way too hard for me to digest. Let's check out the Lovecraft stories then, shall we?
Oh yeah, I prefer these. Call of Cthulu actually made me pretty tense, though after what I've read in terms of modern horror literature it just feels kind of saturated. You know… not unoriginal, just overdone.
I'ma keep on reading!
Today I woke up and felt like doing some science.
I walked outside, took a small rock sample (it was mostly powder) and walked back inside. I then ran it through the MS machine:
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
Mass Spectrometer
Sample 5 Results:
48.1% oxygen
40% calcium
11.9% carbon
Trace% iron
…which fits the empirical formula of impure calcium carbonate.
So I'm in space on a lump of chalk. Wonderful.
There's no organisms in the chalk. I put a slide together, but it's just this weird arrangement of crystals and gaps. I also took some of the explosives and blew a hole because scieeeence. This gave me access to some of the lower minerals.
The second strata (as I've decided to name it) is absolutely fascinating. One of the rock fragments I found has the following composition:
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
Mass Spectrometer
Sample 6 Results:
53% silicon
47% oxygen
Trace% iron
…meaning it's silicon dioxide, or silica. Thing is, it looks more like a metamorphic stone, which would suggest that the planet has some sort of molten core.
A molten core is believed to be the main reason why Earth has a magnetic field (which is just one of the components which made Earth habitable). I can test this out with a magnet, a needle, and some fluid.
And since I'm in the science groove right now, I may as well.
Compass created!
I filled a cup with water, stuck a magnetized needle into some Styrofoam from a packing crate, and dropped it in. The Styrofoam sank after a few minutes, but before it did, the needle definitely swung around! I dropped it in several times, and one end always swung around to point one way!
This means that the planet has a magnetic field! And I'm safe from any rogue solar flares that might have cooked me alive otherwise.
To celebrate, I'ma set off some fireworks. Pyrotechnics has a tendency to make one feel better.
At The Mountains Of Madness, man… whoa.
It's just occurred to me that this planet doesn't have a name yet. I mean, it might have a designation, like B-K-11876432786 or something, but if I'm here, then I need to give it a name.
Arseyface.
Spingle.
Truncated Chalkball.
Fuck.
TwingeHaven.
…I think it's probably a good idea never to let me into the IAU.
I have a name.
This planet shall henceforth be named…
…Tartarus.
Tartarus. The Greek underworld. The pit of damnation. I don't think there could be a more appropriate name for this shithole.
We have a major problem:
I'm almost at the end of the Lovecraft stories.
So far, At The Mountains of Madness has to be my favorite, though The Dunwich Horror is another good 'un.
I've never really been able to get into horror before, but perhaps, because I'm constantly confronting the prospect of death, I can take my hands of the terror train and just enjoy the literature. Lovecraft's writing is good, and I'm so starved of entertainment that I'd probably get a kick out of literally watching paint dry.
HOLY SHIT. Okay.
So I was reading through, just like I was doing yesterday, and I found out something which astounded me.
You remember that weird line that popped up once I put the Bible verse into O5-5's account?
Well, it's the first line of H. P. Lovecraft's short story "Ex Oblivione"!
It's a really poignant piece of prose about death and the human condition, but I don't see how it relates to this weird little password puzzle.
Hm.
Username: fortosetthemindonthefleshisdeathbuttosetthemindonthespiritislifeandpeace
Password: hplovecraft
34 184
And lo, Matthew Conway is once again stumped.
It's like, for every step forward I take, I get pushed back three more. Five - fucking - numbers. Where do I go from here?
It isn't a line reference, and I don't think it's a letter reference. I do think somehow it relates to "Ex Oblivione", because it wouldn't make sense to drop such a specific reference to a relatively obscure piece of fiction, only to never address it again.
I'm going to go to bed. Good fuckin' night.
I wonder if they've released Season 2 of Rick and Morty yet.
What if the numbers are word and character counts?
After some brief scouring (since I had literally nothing else to do, as the crops are still all growing), I found that the final line of the story had 34 words and 184 characters in it:
"So, happier than I had ever dared hoped to be, I dissolved again into that native infinity of crystal oblivion from which the daemon Life had called me for one brief and desolate hour."
Username: fortosetthemindonthefleshisdeathbuttosetthemindonthespiritislifeandpeace
Password: sohappierthanihad[…]briefanddesolatehour
Username valid. Password accepted. Enter, O5-5.
WOOHOO!
The only problem is that I have no idea how to enter.
Ah well. Progress. Conway out!
Waaaaaaaait a second.
Wait just one second.
"Username valid. Password accepted. Enter, O5-5." A perfectly normal phrase, right?
What if it was a set of instructions for how to access the account?
Username: valid
Password: accepted
O5-5
Welcome.
…but again, I've not been actually been given access. I've just been given a new word: "welcome". Surely that can't be a clue?
Okay. Time to give this another go.
Username: O5-5
Password:
WARNING: INCORRECT PASSWORD. ACTIVATING MEMETIC KILL AGENT DESIGNATION 86
Like N^N^Newborn infants, Long FFor the pure spiritual milk , that by it yyou may grow u^p into ssssssssalvation
Username: fortosetthemindonthefleshisdeathbuttosetthemindonthespiritislifeandpeace
Password:
"When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim’s body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep."
Username: fortosetthemindonthefleshisdeathbuttosetthemindonthespiritislifeandpeace
Password: hplovecraft
34 184
Username: fortosetthemindonthefleshisdeathbuttosetthemindonthespiritislifeandpeace
Password: sohappierthanihad[…]briefanddesolatehour
Username valid. Password accepted. Enter, O5-5.
Username: valid
Password: accepted
O5-5
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
C:\Users\Admin\O5-5:
…
…and I'm in.
So I guess the real password was doing them all in order? That's… actually really clever.
Honestly, I kind of expected more. The crescendo of music, the flashing lights, anything really… but the facility is still cold and empty. Thankfully not literally cold - the heaters are still working, thank Christ - but the kind of cold the Foundation exudes.
Man, the Foundation reeealy like their backups, don't they? I can get logs of just about anything I want on this account, including the 001s. Time to start reading!
oh god why did I start reading
Having O5 clearance means that I am privy to all of their private emails. I can snoop on exactly what's been going on within the Foundation before I, ahem… left.
And some of the stuff on here is black-mail worthy. When I get back, I will practically own the Foundation. O5-5, your days are numbered.
O5-3.
Regarding the 'accident', it would be a terrible shame to lose so many assets in such an awful
disaster. At least we would have fewer, ahem, 'problematic' entities to contain. Nobody would need
to know the full truth except us. This is, of course, if Project Monovia even succeeds.
O5-5
I have no idea what they're talking about, but so long as they don't know that… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeowch. Is the whole of Wikipedia on here? That seems… excessive.
Maybe it's because they needed to have a certain amount of data on-site, so that in the event that one of the Keters caused a problem that nobody knew the solution to, they could look it up.
I reckon there are about 200 drives in the server room. Each drive will be a 1TB SSD, meaning a total of 200TB of storage. Let's rule half of that out for useless intra-Site diagnostic bullshit - 100TB. One of the Wikipedia pages entitled "Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia" estimates that, as of Feb. 2013, the total size of all pages and history logs stored on the platform was 10TB.
So it isn't out of the question.
Hey, I forgot to even look for the schematics of the MSDD amidst all this excitement. Time to go and do that, I guess.
Oookay. So the thorium reactor is built in to the device, as best I can tell, which means that it's going to need a hell of a lot of modifications to get it working. Also, the MSDD needs so much energy that it would take the Site's measly fission generator up to 10 days of continuous power generation to build up enough juice. And that's with every rod in, and all the power generated being directly sent to the device. The Site needs 6 of the 10 rods to be inserted to generate enough power, and this gives 1 days' worth of leeway while the uranium is being re-enriched (I think; this is not my area of expertise, I'm just reading off the design documents). Were I to insert all 10, then they'd become depleted in 11 days' time, and there would be just 40% of the necessary power in the MSDD.
I'd need to devise a rota. Let's say I insert one more rod, with the sole purpose of being used to power the MSDD. It would take 100 days, and reduce the catastrophic reactor failure margin down to 18 hours, but it's something. 2 more rods, it would take 50 days, and the margin comes down to just under 12 hours.
What's the catastrophic reactor failure margin? Say something goes wrong with the reactor; I have this long to notice and shut everything off before shit gets wild. 18 hours may seem like a long time, but when you're sleeping and reading for almost all the time, time tends to move rather quickly. And this is the time before the alarms go off, let me make that clear.
At the moment, the CRFM is 24 hours. So really, once every day I should be checking the reactor readouts, making sure that everything is working according to the schematics, and that there isn''t any uncontrolled power generation.
In fact, I think I am going to do that.
There is, however, another option. One that would be simpler in some aspects, and way, way harder in others.
I could attempt to generate anther fuel cell.
Hold on, hold on. I know what you're thinking. Nothing, because you're a computer terminal. But I know what I'd be thinking. "That's insane! Where are you going to find thorium here!?"
This is the worst part. Thankfully, for whatever reason, the schematics for the MSDD had a fuck-ton of HTML attached, which constituted everything you could possibly need to know about operating it. This includes the history of the reactor, the prototypes, and, most usefully, how the fuel is created.
Thorium is pretty abundant in the Earth's crust - for a 'rare' earth metal, that is. One of the most prominent ways it's generated is by refining monazite. Monazite is (thanks HTML!) actually a general term for four 'sub-strains', half of which don't even contain thorium. Thorium's just sort of along for the ride, but this means it's the first to jump ship when it's being refined.
So if I could find that, then I could go through an extremely long and intensive set of extraction procedures that probably wouldn't work anyway, all in a futile attempt to create half of a fuel cell!
This is, of course, all contingent on my being able to find a sample of monazite even containing thorium in the first place. Which seems somehow unlikely when I'm flying through space on a fucking lump of fucking chalk.
Fluorine, on the other hand, is really common. Really common.
Where the hell am I going to find fluorine!?
…
Interestingly enough, I think I might have an idea about that. Remember earlier, when I said that there were all kinds of groovy acids in the armory, ready to throw at 682 if it ever got loose? Well, one of those acids is hydrofluoric acid, which I believe I can react with potassium to form potassium fluoride. If I then electrolyze a mixture of HF and KF, then I think I can get fluorine gas! I'm going to have to electrolyze it into a CS canister, though, since fluorine is known for eating through the majority of substances.
That's all well and good, I hear myself cry, but where can I find potasssium? Well, I'm glad I asked that, because I just happen to know the answer. Note that I don't actually need potassium, I just need potassium fluoride. I can perform a special chemistry magic show, known as a "displacement reaction" - remember that from high school? - and replace the chlorine in potassium chloride with potassium fluoride.
Shiiiit. This plan… it's not even a plan. It's a set of sentences that sound good together. There it literally no way this could work.
…right?
Holy shit, it worked!
I'm utterly amazed. There's no way anyone but me could have pulled it off.
I pissed on a corn stick perfectly from 30 paces! This should be an Olympic sport; I'd be the champion.
It's time for me to start actually planning what I want to do.
First of all: names. I need to name my two plans. The plan for generating anther thorium fuel cell, I think, shall be Project Zeus, because both Zeus and Thor had access to lightning, and the two could be considered the equivalents of one another in their relative mythoi (which is a word, according to the rec room dictionary).
The plan to hack the device open and splice it into the main power grid shall henceforth be Project Prometheus, simply because the above description reminded me very strongly of Frankenstein… the modern Prometheus.
So I need to choose between Prometheus and Zeus. Of course, Prometheus was chained to a rock by Zeus and had his liver torn out for years on end by a crow.
Maybe I should go with Zeus.
I've decided.
I am going to go with Zeus, for multiple reasons. One, if it fails, I can fall back on Prometheus, whereas once that puppy's cut open it's unlikely I'll be able to salvage it.
Two, I actually took chemistry in high school, whereas I didn't take electrical engineering. Sure, I fixed a radio once, but all it needed was a dot of solder and some wires to be cut. This, I'd imagine, would be infinitely more complicated.
Three: I actually know where to get the materials for Zeus, but I dunno where the hell I'm going to procure a length of wire and a soldering iron from in the middle of Site 114.
So that's decided.
Of course, now I need to actually work out what Project Zeus is.
I have exactly one capsule. The top has a rubber seal, and when it's inserted into the MSDD, this seal is breached by a syringe of some kind and the contents extracted. It doesn't need to be in any specific format, just poured in as a liquid. And, I'd imagine that it would be quite forgiving with the concentrations, as it's merely the decay that powers it, not any chemical reactions.
I need to fill that capsule with thorium tetrafluoride. The radius of the empty part of the container is a neat 2cm, and it's 10cm long, giving it a volume of 22*10=4*10=40π, or ~126cm3. That's how much thorium tetrafluoride I need to generate. It's a molten salt solution, so it'll need to be hot, but "the capsule has been annealed to reflect the majority of energy, and the subsequent layers reduce heat loss to a negligible level", according to the essay cited by the schematics. If it goes in hot, it'll stay hot. Basically a thermos.
126cm3 of thorium tetrafluoride salt, at a density of 6.3g/cm3, will weigh 793.8g. ThF4 has a relative formula mass of 232+4*19=308. Now comes the guesswork; it has been quite a number of years since high school chemistry, regardless of what I said earlier. I think I need to divide 793.8 by 308, which returns 2.57727272727272.
Ah, I remember! The relative formula mass gives a number, and that number is how many grams a mole (science measurey amount) of that substance weighs. I'm going to need 2.58 moles of thorium tetrafluoride.
Why does this matter? Well, it's important that I have enough of the ingredients. 2.58 moles of thorium tetrafluoride means I need 2.58 moles of thorium, and 5.16 moles of fluorine gas (since the gas is F2). 2.58 moles of thorium will weigh 2.58*232=598.56g. I need over half a kilo of thorium. Fluorine, however, will weigh 10.32*19=196g. When I add 598.56 to 196, I get 794.56, which is really good news, because above I said that the thorium tetrafluoride would weigh 793.8. I've been rounding, but this goes to show that I'm mostly right, at least right now.
Let's assume I get my hands on 600g of thorium - probably within at least ten kilograms of ore. Bearing in mind how long it took me to get in the cubic meters of dirt, this is going to be funnnnnnnnnnnnn. I'll then need to separate it from its compound. In order to do that, I need to:
- Grind the monazite down to an impossibly small powder
- Mix it with extremely high concentrations of sulfuric acid at temperatures of up to 180o
- Add in a volume of water TEN TIMES GREATER than the original mass of ore (fuck me)
- Filter out all of the wacky side chemicals
- MORE FUCKING WATER. Seriously. 6-7 parts water to the monazite sulfate.
- Add ammonium hydroxide to neutralize the acid
- Filter to get, drum roll please…. thorium phosphate!
The article goes on and on and on about how to get all the other compounds out of there, but that's where I'm going to stop. I'll essentially be guesstimating how much I need, but ten kilos should do the trick for a starting point.
Of course, first I'll need to find a deposit of monazite. Which is easier said than done. I've decided that I'll find a cave, mark the entrance, then take copious volumes of mineral samples and analyze them. If they have thorium, fucking wow, and if they don't, next cave.
This could take a long-ass time.
Fluorine is actually comparatively easy, which is saying something. In order to generate fluorine gas, I'll need to electrolyze a mixture of hydrofluoric acid and potassium fluoride. I can get potassium fluoride by dunking potassium carbonate in hydrofluoric acid. You can get that - so sayeth Wikipedia - by spraying carbon dioxide at hot potassium hydroxide. And I just happen to have a jar of potassium hydroxide in one of the racks in the lab!
I think that's because it's commonly used to neutralize acids, but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? Once I've actually generated the fluorine gas, I'm going to need to hold it in the actual fuel cell, because fluorine has a tendency to set so-called 'fireproof' materials on fire.
So yeah. My entire plan could fold in a million different ways, but the first hurdle is that I need to find monazite ore.
Hey, look, something relevant:
To The O5 Council:
I have decided to embed a series of clues to my account's password within the locking
procedures. At first glance, this might seem counter-intuitive; surely we do not want
anybody but ourselves to access our accounts? But the clues I have generated are
so obscure that I highly doubt anybody would be able to get far in without alerting one
of us. Also, do not forget the standard O5 login procedure: there is no possible way
to solve all of the clues before the requisite arrival of α-1.
What is the reason for this? As the Council-member most frequently exposed to
antimemes and cognitohazards, it is entirely possible that one day I will wake
up and not remember anything about myself. In order to stimulate recall, I have
utilized auto-cognitive therapy to embed a series of trigger phrases within my
mind, and all of these phrases can be found in my userfile. However, should I
forget my password, I would have no access to them; therefore, it seems prudent
to subtly hide clues within messages that would normally be construed in a manner
consistent with typical nomenclature, so as not to arouse suspicion.
I recommend that you do this, too. Especially O5-11, ever since that incident with
the silver chair, and O5-5, since you never can seem to remember why you keep
going to Yellowstone. But for you all... hide it well. I took the liberty of hiding the
directions within the supposed 'memetic kill hazard'... maybe you should pursue a
similar idea.
O5-2: we must meet. I have information you may find relevant to our current
predicament.
~O5-8.
So I guess O5-5 did take his suggestion on board. If I ever get home, I'm going to find him and hug him.
This isn't good.
So for as much as I looked, I haven't found any caves, let alone any monazite.
However! I'm no geologist, but I have found some extremely telling calcium formations. There's a few weird spires and dips, but the best part is there's a channel a few klicks 'west' from here which looks as though it might have been cut by a liquid stream.
I'm not saying that there's water here. But I have found evidence of some liquid on the planet… ammonia!
Remember when I found the ammonia pools earlier? I used them to bulk out my fertilizer. What if they reacted with specific rocks, and created geological features very similar to those found on Earth?
My sleep schedule is utterly fucked. All the terminals have timestamps on them, as do the camera feeds, so I can deduce that, Earth time, I went to bed at 4:50 and woke up at 14:12.
It's actually been worrying me a bit. I'm doing almost nothing beyond daily activity (which has become starjumps to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", which I have in my music library for some reason), so sleeping so soundly for so long is very suspect.
Good news, though: I reckon it won't be long until my corn comes in! There are one or two very tall stalks, and I can see yellow poking out from underneath the leaves.
I've been writing on the walls in marker pen, just to fuck with anyone who comes across this place.
"SITE 114 IS CURSED"
"it is free"
"And May he Return Aaaagain so to set us free from earthly sin."
Aliens, come at me!
I have my first corn cob!
Instead of eating it, I cut it in half. I plucked the kernels from one piece, then planted them at intervals, along with some of the ammonia from outside.
The other half?
I used out to bulk out half a meal. This way, I might be able to survive for double the time as before on my food.
I've harvested quite a few plants. I never used to like sweetcorn much, but fuck if it isn't good to eat fresh food after surviving on frozen packaged shit for so long.
Still, now isn't the time to get cocky. I sowed another containment chamber with shit, dirt, and fresh kernels, which should do me for a while.
When all's said and done, I now have 500 corn plants, which is an absolute bitch to water every day. And I'll still need about two hundred more to sustain myself.
DESERT!
There's a desert thirty klicks north of the Site!
Why is a desert important? Well, my naive terminal, let me tell you.
Monazite can be found either as crystals, or as 'sand' - that is, a fine powder. I took a sample, ran it through the MS:
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
Mass Spectrometer
Sample 8 Results:
53% silicon
47% oxygen
Trace% iron
Trace% potassium
+ Trace% 12 other elements
A mixture, clearly, but mostly silica - which, IIRC, is the same as the chemical composition of the second strata. It's disappointing, though; it would have been brilliant if there'd been monazite deserts on this planet.
Oh my God.
How had I never gone round the back of the Site before?
I'd been planning on doing some recon on the desert - problem is, it takes me 3 hours of brisk walking to get there, so I'd only have about an hour to look around before I'd be too exhausted to make it back.
I'm also down to halfway through the second oxygen tank, meaning I'm going to have some problems if I keep going out.
But! This is all beside the point! Because, as I left the Site, it suddenly struck me that I hadn't actually been all the way around it before. The MSDD teleported an entire sphere of dirt, meaning there would be a platform of sorts built out of dirt.
As I walked around it, I stumbled across something phenomenal.
A Land Rover.
A fucking Land Rover!
Sadly, one of the windows had been slightly open, so there was no air inside it. But still… a Land Rover!
Even better, the keys were in one of the cubby-holes. I have a car now!
I'm amazed it didn't buckle under the pressure. But then, Jaguar have always made good cars.
Alright, so things aren't quite as good as I thought they were.
My initial thoughts all revolved around "Oh, wowzers! Now I don't need to walk anywhere!" But, of course, the Land Rover uses a diesel V6 engine. V6 engines "inject" fuel into glow plugs, and the fuel only ignites because of oxygen… in the air.
Even worse, my initial spectrometry implied the air contained methane, so, even if there was oxygen in the air, it would likely detonate the entire atmosphere, and to call that a disaster would be the greatest fucking understatement of all time. I doubt if even the Site would survive an exothermic atmospheric collapse. But thankfully this isn't relevant, otherwise a bunch of other problems would also be irrelevant.
So, the car's out of bounds for now. But I did roll it over to the front of the Site - surprisingly easy, actually - in case an idea comes to me.
No more going out for a while. I'm slightly worried about my oxygen supply in the rebreather, especially because it's essentially non-renewable. Until I fix that, or come up with a work-around for it, Project Zeus is on hold.
My water supply is also depleting at quite a rate, now that I have the extra plants to contend with. The bucket condenser is now a permanent feature in the plant room. I'm using it with precedence over the water from the tanks. However, the amount of water I use each day is decreasing (I'm keeping track).
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
C:\Users\Admin\O5-5: status tank
Checking status of water tanks...
37% full.
Plus, the more I water my plants, the more water I introduce into the air. Lately, my bucket hasn't been big enough, so I did some, ahem, manual reconfiguration, and now it's about double the size.
My bucket overfloweth!
When I was younger, about 16, my dad's car broke down. It was a Honda Accord, 217 horsepower, 7200 RPM with a 4-cylinder engine.
He took the opportunity to explain how cars work - the fuel is injected in, and the explosions generate forces that rotate a specifically shaped crank-shaft. Anyone who's performed self-maintenance on a car will know this.
I've come to a conclusion that I need to find some alternate method of generating torque. I cannot use the engine of the Rover, otherwise I will die in a cloud of fire (which, to be honest, sounds like the most metal way to die, even if it isn't strictly true). But what can I use?
Most modern electric cars use lithium-ion batteries, and consume inordinate amounts of power for relatively little torque. If the charge ran out, I would be stranded in the middle of a wasteland. Well, more stranded than I already am.
I like this! I like stating facts. It helps distract me from my current predicament.
Plus, I don't actually have any lithium-ion batteries, nor any electric motors powerful enough to make a car run across any sizeable distance. So that's out of the window.
Generating torque… generating torque…
…wait a second.
Who says I need to drive the entire Rover?
Since the inside of the car isn't pressurized, I'll need to wear my spacesuit anyway. This means I can remove everything except the driver's seat, the seatbelt, and the driving mechanisms. I reckon that's easily 75% of the car that can just go, instantly.
Even better, since it would do absolutely nothing in this oxygen-deprived atmosphere, the engine, fuel tank, and injection system can all go.
Headlights? Eh, those might actually be useful. I'll see how intertwined with other systems they are; I might have no choice but to remove them.
I made the journey to the crater in 3 hours. My average walk speed is ~4km/h, so that's 12km away. If I drive the Rover at 30km/h, that's a round trip of under an hour, which, regardless of oxygen consumption, is a massive, massive advantage.
But again… how do I generate that torque?
The answer was right in front of me the entire time.
I was so blinded by the Land Rover that I missed the most vital piece of equipment there…
…the bicycle.
Actually, there were two. Both mountain bikes; both with multiple gears. I don't like bicycles, but they might just be the key to saving my life.
I can use the bicycles to travel on my scouting missions. Then, when I find monazite, I'll scrap the Rover and convert it into a trailer. See, this will make it infinitely easier, because I was worried I'd need to pedal the entire car, which wouldn't have been fun. But just a bicycle, I can handle.
Hmm. I wonder…
Good news: I've worked out how to get the Rover inside!
I'll need to wheel the Rover around to the vehicle bay. Now, the vehicle bay is full of precious, precious air, and I need as much of that as I can get. So how am I going to get this air into my airy airy base?
Vacuum cleaners.
It's gonna take a hell of a long time, but if I burn a hole through one of the weaker sliding doors with some of the exotic acids in the armory, then stick the nozzle through that and turn it on, it should manage to suck in a bit of the air. It's better than nothing.
Better get started.
I set the vacuum cleaner on at 15:21 last night, and it's now 7:47. I wonder how much air it's retrieved?
Let's find out.
Fuck.
Fucking… fuck.
The vacuum cleaner actually did quite a good job. When I opened the door from the outside, there was quite a loud "whump" noise as the atmosphere flowed into the vehicle bay. I rolled the Rover in, then realized I'd been a massive idiot. Instead of air, I now had a vehicle bay filled with methane and carbon dioxide. Not ideal.
What was I to do? Well, I moved one of the carbon dioxide-absorbing fire extinguishers into the vehicle bay, which should soak up some of the CO2. Sadly, this wasn't the biggest problem. Methane is not something you want lingering in any substantial quantity in your atmosphere.
So how did I solve this dilemma?
Fire.
Methane is flammable - precisely why I didn't want it in my base. Therefore, went my train of thought, if I allow small amounts of oxygen into the vehicle locker, then very carefully lit a flame, then it might be possible to burn off most, if not all, of the methane. It would generate CO2 and water, thus reducing the problem to one previously solved.
While I was mulling this idea over, I turned the vacuum cleaner off.
But then I had a better idea. Why should I need to even be in the same room?
The vacuum has a 'blow' function. There's a funnel in the kitchen. I have enough duct tape to mummify myself multiple times over. So, I made a makeshift nozzle, placed a lighter close to the nozzle, vented a tiny amount of air into the room - enough to start a flame but not enough to blow me to kingdom come - then turned on the lighter and boom.
At the time, I had no idea what had happened. However, in hindsight, it's obvious: pressure. As soon as I turned the vacuum cleaner off, oxygen-rich air began to flood into the room. By the time I got round to the other side, the air was already primed to ignite. Even worse, the force of the initial explosion - which, I can deduce, hadn't burned off all the methane - dislodged the vacuum cleaner, sending it flying backwards into the facility. This provided an even bigger vector for ignition fuel to enter the ignition chamber.
So, in reality, there were two explosions. One, the first, which paved the way for the second, bigger, longer, more catastrophic one. And it was the second one that tore a hole in my arm.
As the rest of the methane ignited, my dear, dear Land Rover stood firm; however, the majority of other components in the room did not. Something slammed into my side with the force of a thousand Unrelenting Forces. When I heard the brittle 'snap', I knew something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Aside from all the fire.
The bone of my left forearm was sticking out of my skin.
I fell over. It hurt. Moving, even the tiniest amount, sent wave after wave of sheer agony through my body. It felt like my blood was on fire and I was burning up from the inside out. Wow, did that hurt. The pain's gone slightly now, but it's still enough to be really distracting. Fuck.
Thanks to my initial resilience testing, I knew that the containment chambers could stand the force of up to three hundred tons of TNT. They then used the excess material to shore up the remainder of the walls, explaining why I wasn't freeze-dried alien fodder at that moment. Still, the metal door had been blown out of its frame, and was lying, propped up, against the Land Rover, which, miraculously, was still entirely intact. Not even the windows had broken. There was clear evidence of deformation in the vehicle admission door, but it hadn't ruptured, nor had it moved out of position.
All okay? Well, not quite. While the flames hadn't set anything on fire, the explosive force had been diverted down a small opening in the bay. It had previously been blocked by a grate, but this had gone flying across the room like a startled starling. A quick check revealed that this opening led to the reactor room - positioned, as it was, directly beneath the bay. I presume that it had been some kind of emergency escape hatch for excess steam, since the reactor used highly fissile material and was "prone to unexpected bursts of superheated steam" (quoted from the blueprints).
I dragged myself upstairs, utterly failing to ignore the torment my arm was subjecting me to, and threw myself into the wheelie chair in the surveillance room, and performed as many diagnostics on the reactor, making sure that nothing had broken. Everything seemed okay, so I turned my attention to the next problem: my arm.
At least something had gone well: it wasn't my dominant arm that had snapped. I could afford to lose my left arm… well, you know what I mean, I couldn't afford to lose any body parts.
But my God did it hurt.
My medical supplies consisted of: two first-aid kits and a book on first aid. You'd think, having so many explosives in one place, the Foundation could shell out for more health supplies than you'd find in the average phone box. Still, better than nothing. I forced the broken bone into place, then strategically waited for about ten minutes for the screaming to end. Once that phase had passed, I examined the place at which the bone had pierced the skin.
The more I looked at it, the more my heart sank. It hadn't been a clean break, as I'd hoped - there were multiple pearly-white bone fragments lodged in the meat around the wound. The first-aid book advised me not to try and move the bone back into position, and wait for the ambulance to arrive, but fuck that. Carefully, I took some tweezers, and, in what might quite possibly be the worst lucky-dip ever, used them to extract the splinters. They're on the desk in front of me right now.
Following that, I used some dinky little wipes to swab the blood off the wound. The book suggested elevating the arm above the heart, and packing the wound with ice, so I've set up my bed in the cafeteria and let my arm dangle into the freezer.
It is… 21:21. The bleeding still hasn't stopped. I think I might be about to die.
I'm an idiot.
COVER THE WOUND. I forgot to COVER THE WOUND.
Pretty much as soon as I tourniquet'd the arm, the bleeding stopped. I went back and put it on ice, waited an hour, then undid the tourniquet. After a few leakages, the bleeding stopped again. I daubed some iodine tincture around the wound, then wrapped it up in a standard bandage and now I think I'm going back to bed. Even getting up to type this made me feel like snakes were ripping my shoulder apart cell by cell.
As soon as I woke up, I checked the wound. Unwrapping the bandage, I felt a definite sense of foreboding. But, aside from being an aperture into the volatile flesh and blood that powers my body, it looks okay. Nothing's rotting… yet. We shall have to see. It still hurts… heh.
Fun fact: The O5's account has a shit-ton of fun programs preinstalled on it, which I can access and play with. There's a 3D modelling tool, something approximating Paint, a music notation tool, even a few more games! Aside from Minesweeper, I now have Tetris, Blackjack, and, ironically, Solitaire. That should keep me going for a little while.
Since I can only use one arm, I think I'm going to play Blackjack for a bit.
I don't want to leave again until I have both arms working. Unfortunately, this could take some time. So Project Zeus is even more on hold now.
I shot icy carbon dioxide into the air in my little greenhouse. My plants will probably appreciate that. They seem to be getting along quite well, actually. The 'second wave' will probably start to proffer corn at any moment, since there was only a week-long delay between me planting my first corn plants and the majority of the others.
It's been way more than a week since my first cob, but a lot has happened. A lot. And 90% of the 'second wave' haven't actually finished growing yet. Maybe the ammonia stunts their growth in high concentrations.
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[…]
This continued to broadcast at one-second intervals.
The following transmission was a series of compressed audio files. Transcripts are provided below.
"Take On Me" is playing in the background; Conway can be heard singing along to it. Unnecessary lyrics have been removed.
Conway: …shying away, I'll be coming for your love, okay?
Take… on… me… (take on me) Take.. me… on… (take on me)
I'll… be… gone… in a-Alarms suddenly begin to sound. Conway drops the phone.
Conway: What the fu-
Alarms are still going.
Conway: Phone, you with me? Good.
Conway: So I was doing some karaoke, using the PA system, then all these alarms started to blare! There's a screen in the surveillance room, and that might tell me what's going on. I've never seen it active, except for displaying the message "MSDD Failure", right at the beginning of all this. I'm running there now.
Conway scales a flight of stairs, then pushes open the door. Though no video was received, multiple Site-114 technicians were able to confirm that the screen would be displaying the image shown beneath.

Conway: "Catastrophic Reactor Failure"… oh no…
Alarms are still going in the background.
Conway: -the wrong button. Recording now? Good. Now I'm going to have to say it all over again.
Footsteps - it's clear that Conway is on the move. Doors hiss open.
Conway: While the reactor diagnostics are run from Surveillance, I don't think I'll get much from them - remember, it is "Catastrophic". I'm heading down to the server room, because there's a little window into the reactor chamber.
Conway: Okay, here we- oh GOD!
Conway drops the phone again. Recording ends.
Alarms continue. There's a new sound - a hissing noise.
Conway: Okay, so, right. Right.
Conway: It looks as though the explosion a few days ago scorched one of the control rods. Specifically, the apparatus for inserting and extracting it. I'm guessing that the automatic extraction system essentially 'dropped' the rod, which has led to an uncontrollable neutron chain reaction between fuel rods.
Conway: This is… not… very… good. I can see steam rising from the reactor chamber. While the reactor is prone to bursts of steam, it isn't anything near this. They're short, sharp, and sweet. This is a bloody cloud.
Conway: Alright. Think, Matt. How does a reactor work?
Several seconds of silence, in which it becomes clear that the hissing is growing louder.
Conway: Okay, I have a plan. Step 1: get the hell out of dodge.
Conway begins to run, doors slamming shut behind him.
Conway: Step 2: override automatic controls. Standard protocol for a catastrophic reactor failure is to insert the control rods completely, which should shut down any and all reactions. However, if the problem is with one of those rods, then there should, if I remember the briefing correctly, be a second set of controls, manually activated and operated, that actually control the fuel rods.
Conway: Here we are. Surveillance. The hub of all electronic operations. Let me load up the OS… aaaand… there. Now, where's the option?
No sound, save for alarms, the clicks of a mouse, and a few keyboard presses, until Conway speaks again.
Conway: Also, I wish these alarms would shut up. Maybe there's a comm- ah!
Alarms abruptly cut out.
Conway: Aaaah. Silence. Right.
More clicks.
Conway: Bugger. The manual activation is listed as one of the Site operations, which are all numerical. There should be a reference sheet somewhere around here…
Frantic shuffling of papers.
Conway: ARGH! This is REALLY not good. Like, "I think I'm dead" not good. At this point, the only recourse is to randomly try numbers. 1… nope, according to this prompt 1 is meant to trigger the MSDD. 2… nope. 3… wait, what's Monovia again?
Conway: Oh, yeah - that thing in the O5 email! Strange. Wonder what that is. It looks like it's counting down from 432,000. Well, I guess I'll find out.
Conway: 4… nope. 5… no. 6.. no, no, no, NO, ARGH! I can't stand putting my life in the hands of chance! I need to do something.
Heavy breathing. The hiss is becoming audible.
Conway: Oh, God, no. No, not that.
Conway: Anything but that.
More heavy breathing. Yet another noise becomes audible: a ticking.
Conway: I'm out of time. I need to choose: death inside, or death outside?
Conway: I'm going to go with an exterior death. Time to suit up.
Recording begins with a scuffle - seemingly, Conway attempting to secure the phone inside his hazmat suit.
Conway: -sting, testing, test… there we go.
Conway: I'm currently in the airlock. That ticking you heard was a Geiger counter. It has automatic priority over the PA system, and it kicks in when I tell it to. It was ticking, and that scared me. It shouldn't tick. At least, not as much as it was.
Conway: At the moment, the radiation levels are acceptable. So long as no radioactive material leaks from the reactor, it should return to base levels quite soon. But if they rise too high, I won't be able to go back inside the facility without constantly wearing my hazmat suit.
Conway: External controls for the reactor can be reached by a hatch at the back of the Site. Problem is, their nickname is the Christ Board, because going near it pretty much guarantees death due to radiation poisoning. It's right in the line of radiation.
Conway pauses.
Conway: I can think about that later. Let me make it round there first.
Conway: Okay, phone, I'm here. I can see a small, yellow-striped button which I think might be the button to pull out the rods.
Conway sighs.
Conway: I guess this is it. You're never going to hear this. I'm going to die here… alone, in a wasteland in the farthest reaches of space, a drop in the great ocean of…
Conway: … hang on. A drop in the great ocean of space. A drop. I cannot believe this; my skewed phraseology might just have saved my life. Who says I need to press the button? I can just drop something on it!
Conway: Thank God, there's a bit of rock over here! It must have been from when I set off those explosives to get the rock samples. Now I just have to position it over the button… careful now… aaand…
Conway: …no. No. NO! IT - SODDING - MISSED! I don't have time for this! Come on, come on…
Conway: There aren't any more rock shards. That one was the only one. Going down to retrieve it would be tantamount to bathing in uranium.
Conway: What do I have that's heavy enough to push the button? The dirt won't be - MY SHOES!
A scuffle, as Conway removes his shoes.
Conway: I don't think my feet are receiving any blood now, but nevermind. Dropping…
Conway: DAMN. Well, I have another shot…
Conway: NO! NO! NO!
Loud panting. A new alarm springs into life in the background.
Conway: I have nothing else. Goodbye, phone.
Conway: Phone… PHONE!
Conway: I'll explain what's happening once I get you back.
A lot of rustling, then silence, except the alarms. Conway drops the phone - his rebreather-enhanced breathing fades away as the alarms grow louder, before finally the phone impacts against the control panel, ending the recording.
I'm typing this - which, in and of itself, is a miracle.
In case you didn't get the audio transmissions, there was a "catastrophic reactor failure", resulting in an uncontrolled chain reaction between fuel cells. The only way to fix this involved going to the control board at the back of the reactor, exposing myself to unequivocally lethal doses of radiation.
I'd suited up, and was getting ready to essentially commit suicide when a ray of inspiration hit me: why need I go down there when I can play target practice with some rocks and shit? So I started dropping things down the shaft - a rock, a shoe, another shoe - and quickly ran out of things.
I was ready to give up when I realized I had one more chance - the phone. I'd been recording my thoughts and feelings on it ever since the alarm interrupted my karaoke, and, in order to not feel so alone, I'd taped it to the inside of my spacesuit. Problem is, the hatch was outside my suit.
How did I solve this? Well, when I removed my shoes I had to pull on these special toggle things to stop all the air escaping down my legs. In order to get my phone out, I'd need to open the toggles, which would result in death via asphyxiation as all of my oxygen-rich air escapes from the suit. Note that I specify that the air would be oxygen-rich.
In my mind, I knew that I'd be risking death, but seriously - have you read about anything else I've done? So I pushed my phone down to the bottom of the suit, undid the toggle, and felt my body begin to expand outwards. As soon as the phone hit the floor, I toggled it back up again, then disconnected the oxygen tank from the rebreather and backfilled the suit with oxygen.
This was, in hindsight, a bad idea. High concentrations of oxygen have a tendency to cause death in organisms, but only if exposed for a long time. Earlier, I estimated the atmospheric density of Tartarus to be about a third of Earth's, ergo I needed to maintain pressure within the suit lest my muscles come away from my bones. Oxygen was the only gas I had on hand.
My eyes began to water, but I picked up the phone, held it over the hatch, took aim and fired. It fell, and I had no method of checking its progress until I heard it impact the control panel. The arms activated, pulling the fuel cells out, and the radiation threat was over. The Site's batteries held enough power to keep it running for three days, which should be enough time for me to isolate the faulty rod and exclude it from the power rotation.
I stumbled back around the facility, threw the airlock doors open, and as soon as the room filled with air I opened the toggles and let the air equalize. No longer did I feel as though my lungs were filled with acid. No longer were my eyes streaming. No longer were my ears ringing.
There were still a few problems, however. When the reactor shuts down, Site 114 enters 'dormant' mode, which means that all non-essential processes would shut down. This drastically reduces the efficiency of the heaters and coolers, as well as the lights - all three of which are instrumental in my survival. Also, my boots would now be irradiated.
You may have noticed that the transmission dates skipped a day. After I broke my arm, I'd been trying to send a log once per day, to get into a routine. But after the reactor disaster, I just went to bed and slept. By the time I woke up, it was today.
I went outside again, wearing my 'indoor shoes' - the ones I'd been wearing when I got taken here by the MSDD - to pick up my phone. Sadly, when it landed on the panel, the screen broke, but the internals all seemed fine, so when I plugged it in at the terminal it was a simple matter of extracting the audio files and compressing them, to be broadcast along with this message.
If you've only received this message, sorry. You're missing out on some stellar voice-over work, courtesy of Matthew Conway, Level 2 Research Assistant and Level 99 Disaster Survivor.
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It's… 05.14 AM. Sweet. My sleep schedule is still completely wazzoo.
I had a glance at the readouts from around the time of the meltdown. It was CRod 4 which malfunctioned, as it was directly underneath the vent from the explosion. This led to a severe increase in neutron flux between FRods 4 and 5, which was what made everything go whacko jacko.
Fuel Rod 5 is now in storage. Fuel Rod 4 is still inserted, because the control rods either side still work, so there's no danger of a repeat. This means I've had to alter the rod rotation, and my CRFM is down to 18 hours. Which means, if I decide to attempt Project Prometheus, it'll take even longer to charge. And I need to start checking the reactor diagnostics semi-regularly. I'd set an alarm on my phone, but it's slightly buggered at the moment, and isn't really fit for anything other than playing music via the command line.
The facility is now running at optimum levels again. I harvested some of my corn, and ate well. I think everything's okay at the moment.
Fingers crossed.
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Monovia Initiated - 274 460 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 274 459 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 274 458 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 188 461 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 188 460 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 188 459 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 188 458 seconds remaining.
Okay. All systems seem functional.
There's only been one minor mishap. Some of the steam must have gotten into one of the hard drives in the server room, because the heaters have been on the blink. When I woke up, the temperature had dropped to 6oC.
So I patched the controls for the heater into the same loop that controls the cooler (another awesome advantage of having the O5 account - I can manually alter most of the code running this Site) on a -1 loop. Instead of the two running simultaneously, when one stops the other starts.
This, I think, will result in a slightly higher energy consumption due to small fluctuations in the temperature being over-corrected. But it's a slight price to pay for my survival.
I neglected to mention - I'm now more terrified than ever. I can barely sleep for fear of something happening in my sleep. Every tiny sound, from the 'click' as the heaters tick off, to the incessant dripping from the condensing circuit in the plant room, to the hiss of the CO2-absorbing extinguishers, will make me jump out of my skin.
I did actually finish Lovecraft, and that hasn't helped. To be honest, the 001 stuff didn't scare me at all - like, seriously? The Sun started melting people? Psh.
But I've made a pact. I drew a symbol on the wall - a circle with three dots inside it, connected by curved lines. I'm not dying until the symbol is removed from the wall. I'll attach a rough image of it that I made in Word.
That gave me motivation to survive. I'm not dying yet.

Monovia Initiated - 102 461 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 102 460 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 102 459 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 102 458 seconds remaining.
My arm is slowly getting better. Every day I treat the wound, and the new flesh is looking better and better. I can almost move my fingers again without feeling crippling pain.
The corn is still growing. I have about seventy-five ears in the freezer, but most of the plants are just about to produce another ear. So I think I'm going to have 175 ears in about a week's time. I could probably harvest them now, actually, but I may as well wait for them to get as big as possible. It's not like I'm running low on food - each of the freezers are still pretty much full, actually.
I eat two-thirds of a meal per day, along with two ears of corn. That tends to do me when I'm not going outside; the meals are actually quite big. When I go on expeditions, I go wild and have two meals with no corn.
Thrilling, I know. But I need to type something, otherwise I'll go mad.
Monovia Initiated - 102 461 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 102 460 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 102 459 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 102 458 seconds remaining.
Today marked my first expedition outside the base since I broke my arm. I went out, took some explosives with me, and packed a small hole with them. I then detonated them.
See, within that hole was a very interesting little hole - almost like it had been cut out by an apple corer. I thought I could see something underneath it, so I lay down and had a look.
There was an absolutely mesmerizing cave beneath the hole! Filled with amber crystals, catching the light and throwing it around like a disco ball on steroids. My oxygen tank was becoming quite low, so I played a lucky dip, broke off a weak one, then scuttled back to the Site.
Here are the results:
---
SCP Foundation OS: Ver. 1.4.5
Mass Spectrometer
Sample 10 Results:
41% oxygen
27% phosphorus
13% cerium
8% lanthanum
5% neodymium
5% samarium
2% thorium
+ Trace% 3 other elements
THORIUM.
THERE'S THORIUM HERE.
I cried. I actually cried when I saw that reading.
But still… 2%. 2% thorium isn't ideal. I really hope there's a crystal branch richer in thorium.
For the first time, I feel like there's the tiniest probability of me surviving this.
Monovia Initiated - 10 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 9 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 8 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 7 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 6 seconds remaining.
Monovia Initiated - 5 seconds remaining.
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Monovia Initiated - 0 seconds remaining.
Sending detonation signal..
…
…
…
…
…
ERROR: SITE-114 WARHEAD NOT FOUND. DETONATING SUPPLEMENTARY EXPLOSIVES.
…
…
…
…
Signal received.
They say all good things come in threes.
Well, I guess bad things come in threes too.
First, the methane explosion crippled me. Second, the reactor meltdown crippled my power.
Third, Project Monovia has killed me.
I was outside when the explosives went off.
See, the thorium crystal I got two days ago was one of about five close to the entrance hole. And good ol' Matthew Conway wasn't going to be satisfied with collecting ten kilos of crystal scrabbling on his side like a tripped toddler. Not when he had explosives at his disposal!
Each stick of explosives has a manual detonation cord. When you pull on it, you have five seconds to get the hell out of dodge before you get blown to kingdom come. One stick wasn't enough to clear a sufficiently large hole, so I got a second one ready. I worked out where I was going to place it and put it gently down. Everything was going perfectly to plan.
As I psyched myself up to pull the cord, I heard a noise. It sounded extremely murky - like it was underwater, kind of. But it was recognizably the "about to blow" noise. The one that the dynamite made.
It took me one second to place it. The remaining four seconds were spent running in utter ablative fear. But it wasn't enough. I barely cleared the crater.
The blast hurled me off my feet. It was even more powerful than the vehicle bay fiasco. Around me, rocks and crystals fell from the sky, pattering too gently to cause serious damage. But the explosion had left me dazed with a ringing noise in my ears.
Then the second stick went off.
My suit was yet again subjected to an extreme explosive force. Honestly, it's amazing the fucking thing hasn't melted yet. I went rolling back down into the crater, over countless outcroppings and sticky-outy parts. I don't think the hazmat material was meant to stand up to such an onslaught, but at the time I didn't realize anything was wrong. Possibly, the pressure difference had caused my trousers to form a rudimentary seal. Either way, I eventually came to rest face up at the bottom of the crater, thoroughly bojangled.
The moment my head stopped spinning, I hauled myself to my feet. This caused the seal to break, and a telltale hiss began to permeate the suit's atmosphere. That tiny rip was going to cause many problems if I didn't handle it very quickly. The hazmat material had torn, but the inner lining (an ex-D-class uniform) was helping to limit the damage. Regardless, air was escaping, and this was a Bad Thing.
In hindsight, I should have kept some spare tape within the suit, but with the gift of hindsight I shouldn't have ever left the facility in the first place. Anyhow. It sounded bad, but I couldn't actually see the tear. I had to kind of retreat inside it to reach it, which changed the tension within the suit and made it lose air faster.
What did I have to repair a tear in an airtight material? Very little. Then I remembered my earlier patch job. Somewhere near the zip at the back was a tiny flaw in the suit that I'd dealt with back when I was fiddling round with CS gas. I'd found the corresponding points on both the inside and outside of the suit, and covered them both with tape.
However, I'd later learned that you only need to fix the outside of the suit - in fact, covering the inside alone was a bad idea, because I worked out that the pressure difference alone may be able to tear it away. It's the difference between reaction forces and tension (adhesive) forces.
I carefully pulled away the inside portion of the duct tape. Bear in mind, if this didn't work, I'd have double the amount of suit breaches and be no better off. But it did work. The tape came away (with a lot of pulling on my part), and it fixed easily on the inside of my pet breach.
Remember what I just said? Covering the inside of a suit alone is risky strategy. But I had nothing better - nothing better at all. It just about stayed in place as I scuttled back to the facility.
The worst was yet to come.
I hurried back to the Site, to find one of the walls ripped open. Bad didn't even begin to cover it. There was no air visibly escaping, which either meant that only one room had been depleted of air, or the entire facility.
The moment I stepped inside, I felt my testicles retract. It was so fucking cold. Unbelievably cold. Well below freezing. Well below freezing.
I stepped out. Amazingly, it was less cold outside. Gathering myself, I plunged in again, and sprinted to the surveillance room, still wearing my hazmat suit. By the time I got there, I felt my mental processes slowing down as my core temperature dropped dangerously low. My gloved fingers fumbled inelegantly on the keyboard as I keyed in the heater command. I couldn't even tell if the command had been recognized…. my visor had steamed up. I typed it three times before I passed out.
I woke up. First surprise - I was alive. However, there was a problem, in that my oxygen tank had depleted in the roughly ten minutes I had been unconscious. I didn't have time to stagger downstairs and grab the third, and final, tank. Knowing that I had seconds before I passed out again due to asphyxiation, I made a decision. I unzipped my suit and stepped out.
There was air inside the facility. The walls and floor were covered in water - presumably it had been ice, which had then melted due to the flash freeze. The computers were fine. The reactor was fine.
What wasn't fine were my crops.
The massive drop in temperature had frozen my crops. When I tried to pick a cob, it crumbled into icy shards in my hand. They were utterly inedible.
Now, had it just been the corn, then I could have replanted the kernels from the roast meal again. But it wasn't that simple. The cold had killed the bacteria in the soil, too. The ones from my shit.
The soil is utterly infertile.
I'm fucked.
Today was a day for repairs.
I mended the tear in my suit. I repeatedly struck the armory doors to disable the electronic opening. I confronted the paralyzing existential terror that's been lurking in a dark recess of my psyche for the past…
In these logs, I try and be as upbeat as possible. It helps to reinforce my chakra, or whatever the fuck the gurus say these days. I try and focus on logging my positive thoughts.
But it's breaking down. I can't stop thinking about how close I am to death ever day. And even my naturally mad character can't defend my frail soul against such a vicious onslaught for too long.
Pretty much the only things that are keeping me sane at the moment are my primal survival instincts, and the thought that someone might eventually read these logs.
However, in indulging these dark thoughts, even that last hope is being sapped away. The probability of the Site's radio being picked up from Earth is basically zero. I'm screaming into a chasm in the slimmest hope that someone's listening.
If, perchance, you are reading this, I don't want a medal. I don't want anything to be named after me. What I want is one thorium tetrafluoride fuel cell to materialize somewhere around me in the next five seconds. The time is currently 06:31:53 03-15-2015.
Fuck. It didn't work.
I've done some more thinking.
So Project Monovia was… rigging the Site with explosives, for some reason. Okay, cool, whatever. But these walls are made of the strongest metal money can buy. How come a bunch of non-anomalous explosives were able to breach them?
I went and had a look at the ruins of the armory. It was mostly what you'd expect - a massive hole in the side. But then I noticed something odd.
One of the warped pieces was strangely shaped. It had two parallel grooves in it. These grooves ran all the way up the side of the wall, stopping almost exactly where the breach stopped.
Does that mean that this was sabotaged?
Going inside yielded another odd detail. I noticed that the wall connecting the armory and one of the containment chambers had similar grooves, except they ran along the join between walls. So was that wall meant to cave in as well?
Thinking some more led me to a horrifying realization. Remember earlier, when I was taking the rock samples? Well, I took out about 75% of the explosives, leaving the remainder inside for any future explosions (I used some of them to reach the thorium cave). So the explosion could have been 4 times biggf
wait
FUCK!
NO!
NO!
MY FLUORINE!
okay
remember i said i needed thorium tetrafluoride?
well, i have thorium
but the fucking fluoric acid was in the armory
project zeus is dead
i killed it
I need to think this through again. Things have changed.
- Food
- Water
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Oxygen
- Heat
Exercise is alright. My current regime seems satisfactory - starve myself and do no exercise. Don't try this at home, kids.
Sleep… I've mentioned this, and you'll know that my sleep schedule is batshite, but it seems to be working. My body clock is drifting quite severely, and since I don't have a point of reference anymore, it's probably fine.
Heat? I found out what caused the Big Freeze of yesterday. Basically, the force of the explosion rattled some of the server racks in the basement, and a few of the drives fell out. When I patched the heating controls and cooling controls into the same loop, I didn't realize that the heating controls were held in one drive, the cooling controls in another, and the script relating them to each other in a third. The controlling script and the heating script drives both fell out, and since the command wouldn't parse without manual intervention, it threw itself into overdrive and dropped the temperature to a nippy -52.9oC.
Thankfully, the manual controls for the heating coils were stored in another drive, so I was able to restore the temperature. Otherwise I would have just frozen to death. It was obscenely cold. I've jimmied the heaters to run on the same drive as the control script, and if the control script can't be fetched, then the 'manual' controls should kick in.
And now I return to the perennial problems of food, water, and oxygen.
Water, I think, is okay. I have about a fifth of my tank water remaining, but the amount I use reduces every day. I'm approaching saturation. This is, after all, a closed system, albeit a rather large one.
Food and oxygen. Which is worse? Well, both have been affected by the crop deaths. The freezers contain enough food to last fifty-seven weeks, which might seem like a lot, but that's my ultimatum. I have until then to come up with a plan. Oxygen, on the other hand, is a lot more pressing. I currently have no mechanisms for either extracting CO2 from the air or turning it back into oxygen.
…an idea has just occurred to me. I'll write it down on this top-secret official document, and pursue it a bit later.
Oxygen is short-term. Food is long-term. Though long-term doesn't really account for much now.
Now that the dirt has defrosted, I'm going to start planting corn again. Hopefully I'll get lucky with some of the freezer corn, just like I did last time. But that won't work.
I'll die of carbon dioxide poisoning long before the crops grow. I've checked and double-checked my working, and it's flawless. I'll need to get creative.
Time to pursue that idea.
My symbol is still on the wall. I still have hope.
This is fucking bullshit.
Absolute bullshit.
Fuck.
I cannot believe that I'm actually considering this.
So many things are wrong with this.
…I'm gonna do it.
Did you know that when you heat things up, they separate into their components?
If I heat carbon dioxide up enough, it should become carbon and oxygen. So I'm going to give it a go.
I'll need a way to get it in, and a way to get it out, as well as something to get it in and out of.
It'll need to be able to withstand immensely high temperatures - my Wiki cache submits 2000o as the magic temperature.
…I want to test something.
Right.
Thank God for the Land Rover. Its owner can't have been too car-savvy, as the guttyworks are covered in rust. This is exactly what I want. I used a kitchen knife to scrape off some of the rust into a small plastic container.
Then, I had a quick look around for the aluminum foil I used to accessorize my spacesuit. It was exactly where I left it. I cut it into small bits, then cut it into smaller bits, before finally pulverizing it using a pair of scissors and a fork. I added these bits to the rust.
Et volia! Homemade thermite.
For those uninitiated, thermite is a combination of household components that burns at an obscenely high temperature. It might just be enough to decompose the carbon dioxide.
But where am I to put my thermite? I need something that is capable of containing ridiculously high temperatures. Where am I going to find such a thing?
What with the ease I solved the other problems, this took a surprisingly long amount of time. But the answer came, eventually.
So my fluorine's gone. That means I can't do Project Zeus. I'm still extremely salty about that, but hey ho. This means that there's a spare fuel cell kicking around which I have no use for. A fuel cell designed to hold fluorine, a notoriously uncooperative chemical. So I think that might work.
…wait, no, it's too small.
Fuck.
While I think, I'll return to thermite production. I have about a coke-can's worth, which won't get me far.
Okay! I have my answer!
Have you ever heard of an autoclave?
They're used for industrial processes where the temperature and pressure needs to be above the norm. Things like the Haber process - wait, what the shit? I haven't thought about that since we learned about it in 11th grade! My God, it's been a long time. I can still remember the optimum temperature and pressure, too. Wow.
…where was I? Oh, yeah! So the autoclave in the lab has a computer attached, and I can't get the direct communication from the computer to Surveillance without some nifty satellite work. Not that I should need to; I'm only using the chamber.
The maximum temperature setting seems to be 120oC. I'm gonna need to go, what… 17 times greater than that? And for quite a while, too. Hm.
Can't hurt to give it a try, eh?
Right. It's on its end - it looks like some sort of drying cylinder, the type I used to use down at the pool. I have a small pile of homemade thermite at the bottom. Now, how's best to approach this…
Spraying cold CO2 at the thermite might put it out. But then, the thermite combustion reaction doesn't actually need oxygen, so I needn't worry about integrating oxygen into the atmosphere. So, if I could warm up the CO2, then it would probably work!
I'm chuntering. Let's try this.
I'm a fucking idiot.
Thankfully, not in such a staggeringly self-annihilating fashion as the earlier mishaps… it's just that I have no way of checking whether or not the carbon has decomposed.
…hm.
My 11th Grade chemistry has all come flooding back, and I have the beginnings of an idea. See, if you bubble carbon dioxide through a solution of calcium hydroxide, it turns cloudy. And remember what I determined this whole fucking planet is made of?
That's right. Calcium carbonate. I'll need to go and get some, heat it, then add water. Once that's in solution,it becomes known as limewater. I'll take some of the sample of the gases from within the autoclave and inject them into the limewater, and if it turns cloudy, I've failed.
Whew! This is some MacGyver shit. I'm going to bed.
I'm trying something new. So what you're reading right now are my typed-up notes. I'm writing this on a notepad right next to the autoclave. Heh… this is my version of live-blogging.
So. Remember I said that writing things down helps me consider them? That's what I'm going to do right now.
I need carbon dioxide, and I need thermite. The thermite needs to undergo its redox reaction, which should, in theory, create a high enough temperature for the carbon dioxide in the chamber to thermally decompose into carbon and oxygen.
Then, I need a way to check if the reaction has worked. This, as has already been mentioned, shall be using limewater. I've already prepared it - I went out and got some of the CaCO3 from the planet's surface, threw it into the 'clave with some of my thermite, then pippetted some water on to it. Finally, I got the calcium hydroxide in solution. I have an assload of water, since the mega-freeze condensed all of the vapor in the air, and when it re-evaporated I souped up my apparatus for water reclamation to try and get as much of it as possible.
Limewater is out of the way. I've put Clingfilm over the top to prevent atmospheric CO2 from tainting my sample. I also made a shit-ton of it, so I'll have enough for all subsequent tests.
…ah! I just had an idea about the CO2. See, I was worried about some of the gas escaping when I spray it in - the exit velocity would be not insignificant. However, there's an alternative!
I can put it in while it's solid!
I have one freezer that's full of dry ice. The freezer isn't integrated into the wall, so I'm going to attempt the laborious task of hauling it down two flights of stairs and plugging it back in.
Pause for drama.
Okay, pant, I'm… pant …back.
Gimme pant a second.
…yes, I wrote those. I want to memorialize how hard that was.
I think I'd rather have gone outside again. That's how exhausting I found hauling that fucking freezer down all those stairs.
But now it's here, and it's plugged in. It actually seems like it might be airtight.
Plan: I'm going to pack the autoclave with dry ice. I'll then add a centimeter-deep layer of thermite, drop a match in there, then shut it ASAP and lean on it. Finally, once I feel lucky, I'll open it up and take a syringe of the gas within it, bubble it through some limewater in a test tube, and see what happens.
It had better fucking work after all this. Wish me luck.
…eh.
The thermite worked fine. The interior temperature monitor gave a temperature reading of 1872oC, which isn't quite hot enough. Sure enough, my limewater turned cloudy.
Bugger.
Also, there's something I didn't factor for. When thermite gets sufficiently hot, the metal melts, so now I have a puddle of cooled metal on the floor of the autoclave. I think, in future, I'll need to pour it out before it sets - I need as much space in the autoclave as possible.
I think I'll try again, with a bit more thermite.
IT WORKED!
At least, my limewater isn't cloudy. Infer into that what you will, but I'm inferring the hell into my survival!
Yesterday's success has inspired me. I resowed my dirt. I actually do have a shit stockpile, which I'm trying to use as sparingly as possible. I'm hoping my 'clave should tide me over until the plants start again.
I claved twice more this morning. The first time I was unsuccessful, but the second one looked as though it might have worked. Problem is, I'm now out of thermite. It took me about an hour of scraping to get enough rust for these four trials. It's gonna be a bitch getting enough for any more.
I spent pretty much the whole day making thermite. It's not a slow process, it's just tedious. And you get piss-all by way of a product.
I'm glad that whoever's Land Rover this is wasn't very concerned about keeping it in tip-top condition. So that's the take-away from today's log: always make sure you neglect your car.
I wouldn't have posted today, but I want to update you on something a bit worrying: I have a headache.
I've had it for four hours now. Nothing I do seem to help. I took some paracetamol, and that eased it up a bit, but it's back with a vengeance.
I hope I'm not coming down with something. That would be really shitty.
Speaking of bad things happening to me, my arm is still healing. I can almost use it now.
I'm trapped in the facility.
I was bored. I wanted to head out. The Site was beginning to feel slightly claustrophobic. So I suited out, just wanting to go for a walk.
The airlock, as I think I've said before, merely equalizes the pressure. It doesn't actually sort the gases. Also, it wasn't meant to be constantly operated as an airlock for so long. Somewhere within the Site's algorithms there's probably an "if" loop: "if mod(number_of_skips) = 1: airlock(); else: door()", basically telling it to only work as an airlock if it ain't on Earth.
You might have been able to work out what's happened already. The airlock blinked on, my suit began to bulge, and in my head I counted to twenty. Usually it takes about that long to equalize.
But not this time.
My suit continued to bulge. The pressure outside continued to drop. The cycle wasn't stopping.
I didn't have time to think. I could hear the duct tape peeling. So I leapt forwards and opened the door into the facility. Air came flooding in, knocking me backwards, but the pressure immediately equalized. The airlock continued its cycle, but its cycle dumped the air back into the facility so it was a perfectly safe and pointless exercise.
From surveillance, I deactivated and reactivated the airlock. It just carried on cycling the air. What I currently have instead of a front door is an immensely power-hungry fan.
Actually, that's not quite true. I can leave the facility if I need to, but when I do, I can't come back in.
There are quite a few doors that will open, but none of them are airlocks. Thinking critically, if I need to leave in a hurry it would probably be best to lock the cafeteria's blast doors and sacrifice that roomful of air.
Roomfull? Roomful? Room-full? Anyhow.
Headache still here.
Probably here to stay.
Fuck.
There once was a D-Class named Jason,
Whose tests were all met with frustration,
On his very last day
They sent Able his way
And called the whole thing "termination".
Today was one of those days where I woke up and just felt like dying.
But then I remembered my symbol. I went and looked - sure enough, it's still on the wall.
I'm going to muster my thoughts. Be back soon.
Alright.
Project Zeus is dead. I have no fluorine, and even if I did I wouldn't have the sulfuric acid necessary to extract the thorium. So I have no choice but to turn to the back-up: Prometheus.
I'm going to Tim Taylor the MSDD open and connect the Site's nuclear power station directly into the superposition core. Problem is, it'll need a hell of a lot of power to work. So I'd better start doing that quite soon.
There are, however… complications.
Remember I mentioned that the CRFM was down to 18 hours? Well, I worked out that leaving one rod out would drop the CRFM to 2.5 hours, and the power would charge the MSDD in 25 days.
It's a good thing I'm familiar with code, because this is my most ambitious project yet. I'm going to need to generate an "if" loop, then define two variables to be the predicted and actual reactor power output. If the two differ by, say, 1 standard deviation, it'll set off an alarm, and I'll come tearing in and see if it's worth investigation.
You know, it's interesting that this wasn't already implemented. It would make perfect sense to have this set up in a place which runs on power generated by a nuclear reactor, but hey ho. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Site was rigged to explode.
In order to manually charge the MSDD, I'll need a few things.
- A soldering iron.
- Solder.
- HV wire.
- A physical copy of the blueprints.
The blueprints I'll just copy out by hand. I have a pair of compasses, a pencil, etc, so that will take some time but it won't be arduous. The other three, though…
First, the wire. The Land Rover had in it a compartment filled with various emergency tools - a flashing sign, a first-aid kit, and, most importantly, a set of jumper cables. I'll be attaching these to the terminals and running the power through them.
A soldering iron. This is just any piece of metal which can achieve heats hot enough to melt and shape the solder. Thing is, soldering irons are designed to be used over and over, whereas mine would only need to hold its heat for a short period of time.
Somewhere, amidst all of the scaffolding, there's a long and thin iron scaffolding rod. I'll be putting that into one of the ovens, and that should heat it up enough. I read about it when I was younger. Violet Baudelaire did something very similar with some fire tongs. God, I miss home.
Aaaaand solder. Normal solder is made off… oh, I know this one… tin, usually. And lead. But some people got pissed off at the lead solder because it had lead in it, so now the standard is tin.
I can't really makeshift this, as it's pretty specific. Where can I find tin in this place, eh?
I passed a few asteroids on my way out to that desert. Some of them looked metallic. I wonder…
Never mind!
I found a roll of solder in a kit on the desk in the server room, along with a soldering iron.
Ex machina.
It's 11:32 PM.
I've spent the entire day copying out this diagram in meticulous detail. So I'm going to run through my plan once more before I go to sleep.
Here is what I know. The core of the machine is made of two SRAs. But not just any SRAs! No, these two are special. What some genius back on Earth managed to do was to fit two SRAs on top of one another. Not laterally - dimensionally. They inhabit the same three-dimensional space, but oscillate across a four-dimensional plane.
These SRAs also have special insanely high-capacity batteries fitted. They're configured to accelerate and multiply power generated by the thorium reactor (and fuck if I know how), so it'll take a lot longer to charge them from the light-water reactor. These batteries are designed, when the MSDD is activated, to overvolt and deliver a fuck-ton of power to the SRAs. Such a massive spike in power causes a glitch in of one of the pair, causing it to absorb all of the reality from the nearby area - including itself.
This reality is then deposited directly out of the other side, at the second anchor. Depending on how much power is provided, it can transport up to the entire facility at once. I won't need all that power - I'll be standing right next to it. But the problem is that the power multiplication only works for the thorium, so any and all power generated via alternative means will need to be raw.
Here I leave the warm, comforting embrace of the documentation, and enter the realm of "dear God I hope this works".
I should think a five-meter radius would do the trick. According to the documentation, the thorium fuel cell is enough to transport a 150-metre diameter, and the power-multiplier is roughly seven hundred times. Wildly estimating, I predict that I should need to run the reactor for about 25 days to generate enough power to take the 5m sphere.
Have I already said that? Probably. I'll need to solder the jumper cables to the points on Magellan (that's what I'm calling the first SRA) and then somehow plug them directly into the reactor power output, which is out by where I dropped my shoes and the rock.
Fuck, I remembered something I need to do but forgot it.
Anyhow. That's the plan. Tomorrow I'll go outside and examine the reactor power grid.
Conway out.
I discovered something. You can actually access the box from the server room. There's a door which is so hard to find it may as well be Waldo.
I found 2 connections which should do just fine for charging the MSDD. I had to deinsulate one of them, but I didn't kill myself, which is always a bonus.
Of course, there's then the problem of getting in to the MSDD.
For some reason, I just assumed that it would pop right off. But there actually don't seem to be any points at all where I can unscrew the lid, or prise it open, or anything.
I suppose performing maintenance on the MSDD wouldn't have been very high on the list of 'things Site-114 needs done'. But this is a stumbling block. It would be good to know how to open it.
Especially since the sooner I get this thing up and running, the sooner I get home. Assuming all of the rods in the reactor are inserted, it should take roughly 20 days to charge the MSDD.
Other news: I did a bit more claving, for want of anything else to do. It's becoming quite fun.
I finally got the lid open. I took a screwdriver and inserted it into a tiny fault at one of the corners, and I have it laid out in front of me.
The points at the end of the reactor are covered, but, for some reason, the inside reminds me extremely strongly of when I built my PC tower. Mapping relative computer parts to specific parts of the model, I quickly deduced the location of the SRA.
Well, that and the fact that it had "Scranton" written on it.
I plugged in the soldering iron and got to work. Eventually, I finished. Not very exciting. And there's no way of knowing if the SRAs are charging.
However, the computer tells me that there's a massive power drain. This is… promising.
Only 17 more days until the MSDD's charged!
I am going out of my mind. There's nothing to do anymore!
fuck
fuck
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
what
no
what
okay
calm, matt. calm.
#not calm
there's a note. can't photograph it because my camera's on my phone and my phone's halfway to hell rn
i didn't write it
"clave +3 sra inline chamber slip correct /2solder in l corn"
The fuck does it mean!?
No, wait.
Hang on. Calm, Matt. Calm.
What can I deduce from this?
1. I am not alone.
2. Whatever's here with me knows how to write.
3. Whatever's written this knows what 'claving' is.
4. It makes reference to an SRA.
5. Corn? Did it have something to do with Project Monovia?
That's, uh… quite a lot, and yet it tells me nothing about anything.
"clave +3 sra inline chamber slip correct /2solder in l corn"
I feel like it's trying to tell me something. Let's see…
"clave". Well, that's easy enough. It's making reference to the autoclave, and my thermal decomposition experiments with thermite. Maybe it doesn't like them?
"+3". No idea.
"sra inline chamber slip". This is where it starts to get good. I went and cracked open the MSDwhatsit and jiggered the hoo-hah. The superposition core had slipped a fraction, and I don't know what that means but it probably isn't good. I moved it back, but it fell down.
Then, I remembered the rest of the message. "correct /2solder in l corn". It didn't mean sweetcorn, it meant the left corner. I applied two dots of solder underneath the casing, and it moved right back into place.
So who- or what-ever wrote this letter… likes me?
Hhhhhuh.
I've searched the entire facility systematically from top to bottom. There is nothing in here.
This leaves me with two options:
1. It's outside.
2. It's invisible.
Given that my hazmat suit is still in place, and its note was in English, I'd say it's more likely that 2. is right.
I've written a reply. We'll see tomorrow.
THERE'S ANOTHER ONE.
So this one is markedly less subtle and cryptic. Three words. Ten letters.
"what are you?"
What am I?
I don't know anymore.
Grrr. The corn isn't growing. The corn isn't fucking growing!
I'm gonna die. This is how I die.
My symbol's still up. Fuck it. Fuck that accursed circle for binding me to life in this hellhole.
What did I call it? Tartarus? How fucking apt.
bored
boredboredbored
mr. invisible hasn't replied.
doo de doo de doo doo
hey, gess the tune.
da-da-da-DAAAAAA, da-da-da-DAAAAA
dadadadadadadadaDADADADA… dadadadadadadadaDADADADA… DADADADA (dadadada) DADADADA (dadadada) DA DA DA DA DA DAAAAAAAAAAAAA
..i can't fucking spell his name aymore. beetlehaven or whatever the fuck.
Have I been skipping logs?
Strange
I don't remember skipping any days.
I'm rerereading lovecraaft
oh the horror, in the corner
around and around and around he goes
where he'll end up next, nobody knows
the cat and the mouse, those mortal foes
both flee from him wherever he goes
the quartet of terror returns
my music library has been run into the ground. i swear, if I hear ricky goddamn martin singing about the fast life one more time i'll disembowel myself with a kitchen fork.
did we start the fire? I'm not quite sure
i feel like I'm insane
there's pressure in ym head
it wants to get out, it wants to be free
why
why god
my symol's still on the wall, I can't die yey
the walls are closing in on me
they draw closer
and closer
hello, mr invisible
what a nice day it is
My memory's fading. I'm getting worse.
Day after day. I swing in and out of lucidity, catching the light at increasingly shorter intervals.
Please. To whoever's reading this.
I don't know how, I don't know why. I doubt I ever will. But I'm going insane, and I'm fully aware while it's happening.
I've survived for so long. I feel like I've had my run. Fuck the Foundation, fuck Tartarus, fuck my primative, susceptible brain for succumbing to the endless and all-consuming ocean of madness. Fuck the Universe.
fuck me.
He! Will! Wear! You! Down!
we have seen the enemy and he is is
the enmy is is
hahahahahahahahahahaaA)___
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twele thrteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seb
Conway here. Don't infer anything into my rambles.
When my brain goes… down, it generates line after line of stupid and nonsense phrases. Most of them somehow relate to my chee r
up up and away we go
teehehe
isn't it weird that "iambic pentameter" fits a dactylic meter?
like, that never made sense to me
When my beacon of sanity breaks through the ice of whateverthefuck'shappening, I ctrl-a and delete everything in the command line. But I know for a fact that not everything gets deleted. So you've probably got line after line of mu demenyd rmblings.
It's like a sinusoidal wave function. I go up, and down, in equal measure. Down I go, then up later.
down I goooooooo
when the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep.
the last days are upon me
but I fear sleep
I'm not me
It pretends to be me, it talks well, it is me, but not me, it isn't me, i'm me, please, don't believe it
don'tttttttttttt
believe it
don't
believe me
don't
help me
don't
help me
true untrue true untrue true untrue true untrue true untrue
My peaks are getting lower, my troughs deeper.
The notes are everywhere. They cover the walls, they cover the floor, they dance before my eyes as I drift into the irradiate refuge
of sleep
How do you cope with the knowledge that you're going insane>
you don't
i can#t
i don't fear death
I don't know what fear is anymore
literally
a dead expession, turns of phrase
ring empty in my hollow skull
i know that numbered are my days,
that finite time precludes the null
to fight the light that scorches thought
to grapple with your own demise
to stall the fall of all to nought
is but a futile exercise
Matt Conway's a level 2 research assistant
his hopes of surviving are just non-existent
all crops in the chambers were frozen to death
so the clock's ticking down until his final breath
he isn't a poet, but rhyming ain't hard
i can feel my consciousness slipping from my grasp
my name is matthew conway
i'm a level two researcher at he scp foundation site-114
i've worked for them for eight years
and i'll never work fr them again
my name is matthew conway
my name is matthew conway
my body is disappering
my mind is disappearing
it's all going
going
gone
cadences, where things appear to end but don;t
but the third man said no, no, no I won't give you my grain, and the first man left, knowing that it was a lost cause.
joseph stalin, malankoff, NASA and prokofiov
rockefeller, campanella, communist block
roy con, one pair-on, toscanini, dankron
dyen byen foo falls, rock around the clock
einstein, james dean, brooklyn's got a women's team
davy crockett, peter pan, elvis presley, disneyland
bardo, budapest, alabama, cruise jet
princess grace, peyton face, trouble in the suez
carbon dioxide
decomposes
into oxygen
and carbon monoxide
why, me, you, ffuc
breaking apart the
dioxide
made
monoxide
whih causes amnesa
ehehehehehehehe
symbol stol on wll
the death of the author
how… ironic
I can see you all
typping from floor. This is he end
ican feel myself dying
tell my girlfriend I love her
fuck who am I kidding I don't have a girlfriend
if I did she'd think i was deeeead
the fuck's this ink doing on the wall?
don't worry, I rubbed it out
ehe he he heeee
life is funny
shame I'ma stop laughing forever soon
do I want to die?
I don't think so
i see it all
and it is five
55555555555555555555555555555555555555544444444444444444444444444444
zz\\\\ /\ \/ \/ \/ \/ |\/ \/| \/ \/
twence forthward, thereon
uh uh uuuuuuuuuuuuuddd
aaaaaa__
V V V V V
hjdlhdsfhc
thats the word my head mkae shwen I hit the keboard withb t
randoooooool lrpessing keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiis
jlgyucyhj. p'o98g76fcghcghcgbn,v
you'yve lost that burning feeling
it's coming
-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_aaaaaa
it's
here
it's heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
do not go gentle into
old age must
burn
rage
dying