SCP-2000 - Deus Ex Machina

Dr. Lola Bergman was an accomplished senior researcher for the SCP Foundation. Her years of hard work studying anomalies and dedication to the Foundation had earned her a Level 3 security clearance, allowing her to access a bevy of secret information across the Foundation's vast network.

As a researcher and scientist, Dr. Bergman was the naturally inquisitive type. She wanted to know everything there was to know about the strange and esoteric universe around her. That's why, when she heard about the file for SCP – 2000, one of the organization's best kept secrets, she was hooked.

The only problem was that just to view the file, you had to be on the O5 council or have a special subset of Level 4 clearance known as 4/2000. Unfortunately, Dr. Bergman was only a Level 3. But you know what they say: The forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest. Dr. Bergman had given the Foundation years of service.

What could the harm be in breaking the rules and getting a peek behind the curtain just this once? Through somewhat deceptive means, Dr. Bergman managed to get her hands on some 4/2000 clearance credentials, and decided to access the file on an encrypted personal device. They'd never even know. But as she entered the credentials, she found herself suddenly looking at an image.

On its face, nothing, an image of a dirt road in a field, with tiny white text reading "…Remember us…" But this was a powerful cognitohazardous image capable of causing immediate incapacitation.

The next thing she knew, she was laying on the ground, unconscious. When she woke up, she was no longer a doctor at the SCP Foundation. She was on a street corner, unable to remember her own name, let alone her history.

All she could do was murmur something about a secret under Yellowstone National Park… Dr. Bergman's years of service had meant nothing in the end. SCP – 2000 is an anomalous asset so vital to not only the Foundation, but the entire world, that so much as attempting to access it without the proper clearance leads to immediate termination.

But what's really hidden under Yellowstone National Park? And why are the Foundation higher-ups so intent on keeping it a secret, even from most of their own ranks? Of course, Yellowstone National Park itself is no stranger to anomalous activity. The entire national park is technically an SCP known as SCP – 1422. While it has since been neutralized, SCP-1422 caused all members of the SCP Foundation to have no awareness of Yellowstone National Park prior to 2007.

But the true nature of SCP – 2000, the secret hidden under Yellowstone National Park, is not only stranger than SCP – 1422, but also – depending on your perspective – either profoundly relieving or utterly terrifying. But before you can truly understand the purpose and gravity of SCP – 2000, or the Deus Ex Machina, we need to talk about the end of the world. In Foundation parlance, K-class scenarios are events which have drastic implications on the state of society, normality, or even life.

The most dangerous and feared of all of these are XK – Class Scenarios, which are, for all intents and purposes, the apocalypse. There are a worrying number of anomalies capable of bringing about an XK Class scenario if the Foundation ever dropped the ball on their protection or containment.

While the Foundation believes that prevention is always preferable to the cure, what happens when prevention doesn't work? What happens when our worst fears are realized, and the end truly comes for us all? The answer is, SCP – 2000 happens. Simply put, this anomaly is a reset button. A chance to start over when all life has been compromised by anomalous activity.

2000 is a giant and mysterious facility beneath Yellowstone National Park. The entrance is disguised as a disused park ranger station, feeding into a facility that burrows miles down into the earth. It's a place that contains incredible anomalous technologies capable of bringing the world back to its former glory, even after the worst happens.

Only a select few personnel are allowed to work at the facility, keeping its machinery maintained in case the day comes when we ever need to use it again. These personnel are not allowed to come and go as they please and their memories of 2000 are wiped if they're reassigned to different Foundation duties elsewhere.

Why all the secrecy? SCP – 2000 is the Foundation's – and humanity's – lifeboat, and as such, the base is well-guarded both from potential human threats, as well as anomalous activity and reality warpers. The surface-level entrance to the base is surrounded by a number of strategically placed Scranton Reality Anchors, or SRAs.

These devices, largely constructed of corrosion-resistant beryllium bronze alloy, keep certain types of reality-bending anomalies from manifesting their powers within the vicinity of the base. However, these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the state-of-the-art Foundation technology employed within and around SCP – 2000.

You probably have a lot of questions, and that's understandable: What kind of technology can possibly reverse an apocalypse? And what did we mean when we said we may need to use it "again"?

Well listen up, because this is going to be a lot to take in. SCP – 2000 is powered by a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, stabilized by five Xyank/Anastasakos Constant Temporal Sinks, and host to the most miraculous technology of all: 500,000 Bright/Zartion Hominid Replicators. Utilizing geothermal energy from the volcanic activity in the area, the base could potentially remain operational forever if Foundation staff kept up with maintenance.

The grand majority of the space in this huge, subterranean facility is taken up by building materials, construction equipment, factory machinery, agricultural equipment, and computer database storage.

Why? Well, let's explain the processes of the apocalypse and how it relates to the activities of SCP – 2000. In any K-Class or end of the world scenario that doesn't destroy SCP – 2000 in the process, any surviving Foundation member can enact Procedure CYA-009, while any Foundation facilities globally can monitor the unfolding situation.

While SCP – 2000 is waiting for the "all clear" to do its thing, remaining Foundation sites set into motion what is known as the "Ganymede Protocol." This involves collecting and preserving materials which could be useful during the recreation process.

However, it's extremely possible that in a sudden XK class end of the world scenario there may be no surviving Foundation personnel, or at least not enough to maintain any kind of organization. Thankfully, there are fail safe measures for such a scenario. During the periods of extended inaction caused by an apocalypse that destroys most human life, SCP – 2000 will gradually, autonomously relax its security measures.

Any personnel, regardless of clearance, will be able to activate the next stage of the process when this occurs. If such a thing doesn't happen for an extended period, the security measures lapse further, to the point that even the presence of an animal could activate it. This would set into motion Procedure Lazarus-01, humanity's last hope for survival. That's where the 500,000 Bright/Zartion Hominid Replicators, or BZHRs, come in.

These incredible pieces of anomalous technology are capable of perfectly cloning the entire human race from any given period in the last twenty years, even down to their ages and memories, thanks to Class-G hallucinogens and developmental hypnotherapy. With a warm-up period of five days, these machines are capable of creating 100,000 viable, non-anomalous humans per day.

The facility keeps records of all known human alleles, and is capable of recreating any lost human genomes or generating as many new and unique genomes as necessary to repopulate human civilization.

Which humans the machines generate depends on the period of time the machine is ordered to replicate. It will first reproduce prominent cultural and political figures, as well as the acting top brass of the SCP Foundation to coordinate the recreation effort, of course.

The machine will then recreate…Well, everyone else. You're probably wondering: If the world outside SCP – 2000 has been destroyed then what good is creating all these new humans if they have nothing to go back to? Thankfully, SCP – 2000 has a contingency for rebuilding both the infrastructure of civilization as well as society itself.

The first generation of clones will have one mission: Rebuild, and they have quite literally all the resources in the world to do it. In addition to having all the physical equipment for buildings and agriculture, SCP – 2000 stores an immense amount of data.

Which is appropriate, considering the whole facility is basically a huge backup drive for life itself. They have the entire internet backed up, as well as the sum of all human memory, and a wide cultural base with copies of thousands of famous works of art, music, and literature.

They have all the scattered jigsaw pieces of the time that came before, and it's their job to put the whole thing back together. It's expected that many of the first generation of clones will die in this process, but that's fine. With the BZHRs working at full capacity, anyone can be replaced.

As the population increases and spreads across the globe, rebuilding and recolonizing old settlements, population growth will increase exponentially. Once society returns to some kind of normal, decades after the activation of Procedure Lazarus 01, it becomes the Foundation's task to restore the psychological and historical status quo.

Administrators will falsify dendrochronological, astronomical, and radiometric dating records to make it seem as though history never paused. They'll then employ amnestic agent ENUI-5 en masse to erase and reconstruct the memories of the entire human population, up until the chosen time prior to the end of the world.

As far as any civilian knows, nothing ever happened, history never stopped, and life goes on. It may seem comforting at first to know that the ultimate contingency is out there. Even if there's a containment breach of astronomical proportions, and the world as we know it ends, there's still a way out.

It means that there's hope, even in the bleakest situations, but of course, there are always caveats. After all, if a deal seems too good to be true, it's safe to assume it probably is. Whether any of this works is dependent on two factors: The first is that no anomalies or human insurgents infiltrate the SCP – 2000 facility and destroy the equipment within.

It's for this reason that discussion of the facility is so restrictive – if ever a powerful reality-warper discovered and gained access to the facility, we would lose our lifeboat. The second factor is the overall integrity of the machines. After all, without proper maintenance, it's not hard for the technology to malfunction, often to truly horrifying results.

The failure of some SRA and XACTS components is believed to have caused erroneous BZHR activity, resulting in the production of ten million humanoid entities with internal biology wildly inconsistent with humanity. These beings remained unconscious for five weeks before dying. In the event of an XK class end of the world scenario, well-maintained machines can reproduce the human race.

But all it'd take is one little malfunction to release ten million mutants who are effectively dead on arrival. Even with SCP – 2000 in our back pocket, the fate of the world still lives on a knife's edge. But in a way, that's not even the most frightening part of the existence of SCP – 2000.

Seeing as the machine can perfectly reproduce reality without leaving a trace behind, it raises the question: How many times has this happened? You may be surprised, but the Foundation can confirm this occurring at least twice in recorded history, but can you ever really be sure of how many times your clone has crawled out of the BZHR? We received a disturbing clue to the reality of the situation when human remains were discovered on site at SCP – 2000. All tests indicate the remains are between 450 and 700 years old, and have been matched to the very-much-alive Dr. Alto Clef, who has no knowledge of how these remains came to be there.

The only other thing found with the remains was a note, hermetically sealed in a plastic document sleeve. The note read: "Why did we have to build this thing? When did we do it? How long have we been doing it? Do we even know?!" And the answer? No, we don't. And for everyone's piece of mind, it's probably best to just forget about it. If you can..