SCP-3001 - Red Reality
It goes without saying that the SCP Foundation archives are filled with some terrifying monsters. Even the deadliest creatures can, in theory, be defeated, or at least soundly avoided. After all, they're just flesh and blood - or in some cases, metal or concrete. But what if reality as you know it one day just…broke.
Or worse, you were transported to a reality so frightening and alien to our own that death seemed like the only escape – but you couldn't even give yourself that. This brings us to today's topic – the terrifying alternate reality of SCP – 3001. The Foundation is no stranger to freaky alternate dimensions, but what was experienced by joint-lead researcher Dr. Robert Scranton at Site 120 is a truly unique nightmare.
Co-managed by his wife, Dr. Anna Lang, Site 120 is a facility largely designed for research into SCPs with dangerous reality-warping capabilities in order to mitigate future containment breaches. Reality warpers are among some of the more perplexing and dangerous SCPs, from the pocket dimension-creating SCP – 106 to the SCP-creating Doctor Wondertainment, and everything in between.
Scranton and Lang's goal to further study such entities was an admirable one, if a little over-ambitious, and on January 2nd, 2000, during the testing of a new technology created by the Foundation's leading power couple, disaster finally struck. Scranton and Lang had already been the brains behind one of the Foundation's most valuable tools in the fight against reality-bending SCPs: The Scranton Reality Anchors.
Their follow up, the Lang-Scranton Stabilizer – or LSS – likely would have been an even more advanced variant of their earlier invention and should have been a huge success for the team. But things didn't turn out that way… Dr. Scranton and several other researchers were gathered in Reality Lab A performing routine tests on the LSS prototypes.
While other technicians ran diagnostics tests, Scranton stood at the control panel, the blinking red light above the console confirming that everything was going according to plan. But as anyone who's fallen victim to one of the Foundation's many anomalies will tell you, just because you've done everything correctly doesn't mean you're safe.
Scranton began operating the machine, not knowing that something was rumbling up towards him from below. Without warning, a sudden, unexpected burst of seismic activity rocked the entire base. Researchers grabbed onto whatever was closest as the world shook around them. In his panic, Dr. Scranton clung to the LSS control panel as the seismic blast fried the circuits and kicked it into overdrive.
There was a blast of magnificent, blinding light, and when the rumbling stopped not only was the doctor gone, he had been erased from reality as we know it. The earthquake had caused a deadly malfunction in the machine meant to stabilize reality, and instead tore a rift in it, dragging the unfortunate doctor and the control panel into oblivion. His wife, Dr. Lang, and the many researchers who idolized him were devastated by his unexpected demise at the hand of what should have been his crowning achievement.
The one silver lining was that this reality-ripping event had almost definitely eliminated the doctor quickly and painlessly. As far as The Foundation and his loved ones were concerned, Scranton's death had been immediate and complete – a luxury afforded to few Foundation employees who die anomalous deaths.
But sadly that isn't how Dr. Scranton's story – or the story of SCP – 3001 – ends. No, this is where it all begins. How do we know all this? In the hellish new place where Scranton had been transported, the control panel from the LSS that he'd been clinging to for dear life had been transported with him, and continued to record audio data from this anomalous location. Not that Dr. Scranton realized it, not at first, anyway. As far as he knew, he'd suddenly been transported into a pitch-black location. No sights, no sounds, no scents. True nothingness.
At first, the doctor was confused. One second, he was testing out his new technology, and the next he was quite literally nowhere. In spite of his current situation, the doctor was still an intelligent and rational man. He took a moment to compose himself, hoping that in time his eyes would adjust to the new darkness around him.
But that moment never came: The darkness remained perfectly absolute. Much like the darkness in another reality-defying SCP, the deadly endless staircase known as SCP – 087, the dark seemed thick, almost like you could touch it.
The doctor, not wanting to give himself to despair and die in this impossible place, and with no other options seemingly available, began walking. Either he'd find his way out, or the Foundation would find him. No need to panic. It may have altered the doctor's temperament if he knew that the Foundation already assumed he was dead, and that no search party was going to come looking for him. Still, logic dictates that if a person walks for long enough, they're bound to find something.
The problem Scranton was about to face was that SCP – 3001 doesn't run by any kind of conventional logic. He walked and walked and walked, but he didn't seem to get any nearer to or farther from anything but how could even know? After all, in total darkness, there aren't any landmarks to assist in navigation.
The doctor walked and paced and screamed for days on end, but he made no progress. He was alone in an empty world. He had no choice though, so he kept walking, and walking, and walking. For eleven days. During that time, he felt his hunger and thirst grow. He was in terrible pain from a mix of starvation and dehydration, but the release of death didn't seem to come for him. He was going to have to learn the rules of this new place the hard way, and it grimly dawned on Dr. Scranton that dying in this place might not even be the worst possible outcome.
He paced and repeated facts to himself, hoping to ground himself in the moment and avoid the panic that could so easily set in. "Name, Robert Scranton. Age, 39. Birthday, September 19, 1961. Favorite color, blue. Favorite song, "Living on a Prayer." Wife… Anna…" Little by little, the words seemed to turn to nonsense in his mouth as the terror grew.
Just as he felt like he was about to lose his mind, he noticed something - a small oasis in the endless darkness of SCP – 3001: The glowing red light of the LSS control panel. Where had it come from? And how was it still recording? The doctor had no idea, but he was grateful for any kind of familiarity in the strange darkness around him. Perhaps the LSS could be the key to saving him, or at least figuring out what on earth was going on here? Whatever the case, there was no denying that having the panel here was better than nothing.
At least, when it was found… if it was ever found, then people would know what had happened to him. As the days passed and he continued to mysteriously survive, Dr Scranton deduced that one didn't need food or water to survive continually in SCP – 3001. The location had an anomalous effect on its inhabitants.
As the days passed and turned to weeks of wandering in the darkness, Dr. Scranton further deduced that he was no longer in his home dimension – this was an entirely separate pocket dimension, much like the one possessed by SCP – 106, but featureless. A perfect, self-contained void. Now dimly illuminated by the red light of the panel, Dr. Scranton explored further into the void around him. He travelled for months on end, the pain of his deficiencies growing by the day, but found he was getting nowhere.
All things considered, he wasn't even sure he was moving, or whether reality and the darkness was swirling around him like a thick liquid. Rather than walking on a single flat surface, he was moving in all directions across a three-dimensional plane. The space-time continuum appeared to be entirely broken here, where movement is more defined by the conscious intention to move than any real geographical repositioning.
Dr. Scranton knew that this place broke every single one of Kejel's Laws of Reality Parameters, and from his years working with a plethora of reality warpers in Site 120, he had a theory for why this pocket dimension was so strange: It had an extraordinarily weak Hume field. Before we get back to Dr. Scranton's semi-living nightmare, we need a quick primer on Hume theory, and why having a weak Hume field is such a problem.
A Hume is a unit of measurement for the strength and amount of reality in a given location or being. In an area with an incredibly low Hume field relative to our world, such as SCP – 3001, universe breaches and anomalous incidences rise significantly. At the time of his being trapped there, SCP – 3001 had the lowest number of Humes in any recorded environment, making it a phenomenally anomalous zone. It was for this reason that starvation and dehydration never took hold of him despite causing him great pain, and the worst by far was yet to come.
Dr. Scranton wasn't trapped in this dimension for weeks or even months. He was trapped in the darkness for years. And it took a nightmarish toll on his body and mind. The small flashing red light on his LSS control panel became his only friend and as the years drew on, he would hold entire conversations with his only source of illumination. He knew that his days were numbered – if he didn't escape dimension within around three years, the Hume field would diffuse further, and he would be left in a truly horrific state.
But based on how little headway he'd made in the time he'd been there, he didn't feel optimistic. He kept speaking into the recorder, if only to break the silence and prevent him from going completely insane. But even that would only hold it off for so long. Alone and talking to himself endlessly in the darkness, Dr. Scranton could feel his mind slipping as the confines of the pocket dimension constricted and his body began to change.
The low Hume field slowly diffused his physical matter, destroying the physical integrity of his body but never being merciful enough to actually let him die. In his haunting audio logs, the doctor described his hands as diffusing and thinning out like spider webs. Over time, there was less and less of him, and what was left wasn't entirely human. As Scranton's Hume level lowered to equalize with that of SCP – 3001, the lines between his body and the LSS control console began to blur in a twisted marriage of warped flesh and machine.
The Lang-Scranton Stabilizer was anything but stable. Before his mind and body became something else entirely, the doctor still had the presence of mind to finally realize how he'd come to be in this terrible place. The LSS had opened a wormhole known as a Class-C "Broken Entry" into a paradoxical pocket dimension between layers of reality, and taken him through it. He'd slipped through a crack in reality into absolute darkness, and now he was stuck with a fate far worse than death.
How do we know any of this? Much like the event in the first place, it's a total accident. Testing superior reality-bending technology almost six years after the disappearance caused the sudden return of the missing LSS to Site 120's Reality Labs. The only trace of Dr. Scranton that it brought back with it was the blood and viscera that coated the console, much to the abject horror of his still grieving wife, Dr. Anna Lang.
To this day, Dr. Scranton, formerly one of the Foundation's brightest minds, remains trapped in the nightmare of SCP – 3001. His current condition whether the doctor is still alive after twenty years of being warped by the low Hume field of 3001's darkened confines is still unknown. But, for the doctor's own sake, we hope he's been dead for quite some time, because few things on earth are as horrifying as the alternative…