SCP-3001 ⨷ Red Reality

The SCP Foundation's archives are crammed with horrors that would make even the most hardened soul shudder. Flesh and blood, metal and concrete—most things can, in theory, be defeated or at least avoided. But what if one day reality itself simply... broke? Worse still, what if you were flung into an alien world so twisted and terrifying that death seemed like the only way out—except you couldn't even give yourself that mercy?

Welcome to the terrifying alternate reality of SCP-3001.

The Foundation has tangled with its fair share of alternate dimensions, but what happened to Dr. Robert Scranton at Site-120 redefines what it means to be trapped in a nightmare. Co-managed by Scranton's wife, Dr. Anna Lang, Site-120 was dedicated to researching SCPs with dangerous reality-warping capabilities, aiming to prevent future containment breaches. An admirable goal, if a bit overambitious. On January 2, 2000, their ambition finally caught up with them.

Scranton and Lang had already gifted the Foundation with one of its most valuable tools in combating reality-bending SCPs: the Scranton Reality Anchors. Their follow-up, the Lang Scranton Stabilizer (LSS), was poised to be an even greater success—a triumph for the couple and a boon for the Foundation. But, as is often the case with the Foundation, things went south faster than you can say "containment breach."

It was just another day in Reality Lab A when disaster struck. Scranton, along with a few researchers, was running routine tests on the LSS prototypes. The blinking red light above the control panel suggested everything was fine. But, as anyone familiar with the Foundation's work knows, just because everything's going according to plan doesn't mean you're safe.

Unbeknownst to Scranton, something was rumbling beneath him. Without warning, a sudden burst of seismic activity rocked the entire base. Researchers clung to whatever they could as the world shook around them. Scranton, in a panic, grabbed the LSS control panel just as the quake overloaded the circuits, kicking the machine into overdrive. There was a blinding flash of light, and when the dust settled, the doctor was gone—erased from reality as we know it.

The quake had caused a catastrophic malfunction in the LSS, ripping a hole in reality and dragging Scranton into the void. His wife and colleagues were devastated. They assumed, somewhat mercifully, that the event had killed him instantly. After all, most Foundation employees don't get the luxury of a quick and clean death. But Scranton wasn't so lucky. His story, like SCP-3001, was just beginning.

How do we know what happened next? In the hellish dimension where Scranton found himself, the LSS control panel he'd been clinging to had followed him, continuing to record audio. Not that he realized it at first. To him, he was simply plunged into darkness—absolute, suffocating nothingness.

At first, Scranton was bewildered. One second, he was testing his latest invention; the next, he was nowhere. Being the rational man he was, he tried to compose himself, hoping his eyes would adjust to the darkness. They didn't. The blackness around him was thick, almost tactile, like a shroud he couldn't tear away. Still, he refused to give in to despair. He started walking, reasoning that either he'd find his way out, or the Foundation would find him. No need to panic... yet.

If only he knew that the Foundation had already written him off as dead, with no rescue mission on the horizon. Still, he walked, hoping against hope. But SCP-3001 doesn't play by the rules of conventional logic. He walked for days—maybe weeks—but it made no difference. No matter how far he went, he was neither closer nor farther from anything. Not that he could tell; in total darkness, there were no landmarks, no bearings.

For eleven agonizing days, Scranton wandered, his hunger and thirst growing unbearable. Yet, death remained elusive. This place had its own twisted rules, and dying wasn't as easy as it seemed. It dawned on him that surviving here might be worse than dying.

To keep his sanity, Scranton recited facts about himself, over and over: "Name: Robert Scranton. Age: 39. Birthday: September 19, 1961. Favorite color: Blue. Favorite song: Living on a Prayer. Wife: Anna." But the words began to lose meaning, turning to gibberish in his mouth as the terror grew. Just when he was on the brink of losing it entirely, he noticed something—a small, glowing red light. The LSS control panel. Where had it come from, and why was it still working? He didn't know, but it was the only familiar thing in this alien void, and he clung to it like a lifeline.

As the days bled into weeks, Scranton made a chilling realization: you didn't need food or water to survive in SCP-3001. This place had an anomalous effect on its inhabitants. He theorized that this was no longer his home dimension but a separate pocket dimension—a void, featureless and suffocating. The LSS's red light became his only companion as he continued his futile exploration, now more aware than ever that he was getting nowhere.

Weeks turned into months, and Scranton's pain only grew. He wasn't sure if he was moving at all or if reality was warping around him. The space-time continuum seemed to be broken here, where the movement was defined more by intent than by actual physical displacement. The laws of reality he had spent his life studying were shattered, and his theories about low Hume fields suddenly became very, very relevant.

Humes, for the uninitiated, are units of measurement for the "strength" of reality in a given area. SCP-3001 had the lowest Hume field ever recorded, making it a phenomenally unstable zone where reality as we know it barely existed. This is why starvation and dehydration tormented Scranton but didn't kill him. It was also why the worst was still to come.

Dr. Scranton was trapped in this dimension for years—years of unrelenting darkness, pain, and isolation. The LSS control panel, with its small flashing red light, became his only friend. As time dragged on, he held entire conversations with it, his mind unraveling as the dimension's effects on his body grew more pronounced. The low Hume field was slowly diffusing his physical matter, his body thinning and becoming less substantial, but never mercifully letting him die.

In his haunting audio logs, Scranton described his hands as thinning out like spider webs, his body slowly dissolving into nothingness. As his Hume level decreased to match that of SCP-3001, the boundaries between his flesh and the LSS console began to blur in a horrific fusion of man and machine. The Lang Scranton Stabilizer was anything but stable.

Before he lost himself entirely, Scranton pieced together what had happened. The LSS had created a wormhole—a Class C broken entry—into a paradoxical pocket dimension between layers of reality. He had slipped through a crack into the void, and now he was trapped in a fate worse than death.

How do we know any of this? It was all a cruel accident. Almost six years after his disappearance, a freak occurrence during the testing of another reality-bending technology caused the LSS to reappear in Site-120's reality labs. The only trace of Dr. Scranton that it brought back was the blood and viscera coating the console—much to the horror of his still-grieving wife, Dr. Anna Lang.

To this day, Dr. Robert Scranton, once one of the brightest minds in the Foundation, remains trapped in the nightmare of SCP-3001. Whether he's still alive after twenty years in that dark, low-hume hellscape is unknown. But for his sake, we hope he's long dead. Because few fates are more horrifying than the alternative.

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Item #: SCP-3001

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: To prevent further accidental entries into SCP-3001, all Foundation reality-bending technology will be upgraded/modified with multiple newly developed safeguards to prevent Class-C "Broken Entry" Wormhole creation. While knowledge of SCP-3001 is available to personnel of any level should they wish to learn about it, research and experimentation with SCP-3001 and its associated technology is strictly limited to personnel of Level 3 and above, with special clearance designation granted from Sites 120, 121, 124, and 133.

Description: SCP-3001 is a hypothesized paradoxical parallel/pocket "non-dimension" accessible through the creation of a momentary Class-C "Broken Entry" Wormhole.1 While believed to be an infinitely extending parallel universe, SCP-3001 is almost completely devoid of any matter and has an extremely low Hume Level of 0.032,2 contradicting Kejel's Laws of Reality with the relation between Humes and spacetime. This phenomenon causes matter inside it to decay at an extremely low rate, and damage that would otherwise prove fatal does not impede any biological/electronic function; simulations suggest an organism can lose more than 70% of its body's tissue and still operate normally, as long as at least 40% of the brain remains. However, prolonged exposure will cause said matter to gradually approach SCP-3001's own Hume Level, resulting in severe tissue/structural damage as the matter's own Hume Field begins to disintegrate.

SCP-3001 was initially discovered on January 2, 2000, at Site-120, a facility dedicated to testing and containing reality-bending technology. Dr. Robert Scranton and his wife Dr. Anna Lang were Head Researchers at Site-120, and were developing an experimental device, called the "Lang-Scranton Stabilizer" (LSS).3 Dr. Scranton was transported to SCP-3001 after unexpected seismic activity damaged several active LSS in Site-120 Reality Lab A.

Initially presumed dead, Dr. Scranton has survived in SCP-3001 for at least five years, 11 months, and 21 days. During this time, he was able to record his experiences and observations within SCP-3001 through a somehow still functioning LSS control panel, which was also brought into SCP-3001 with him through the Class-C "Broken Entry" Wormhole. These recordings were later recovered upon the panel's sudden return, an unexpected side effect from testing improved reality-bending technology; these logs are the basis of the SCP-3001 study. Despite new technologies being developed, retrieval and re-integration of Dr. Scranton have been unsuccessful. His current physical and mental states, if he is still alive, are unknown.