Exploration 4320-A Video Log Transcript
Date: 08/21/2024
Exploration Team: Mobile Task Force Pi-32
Subject: Unnamed city center, SCP-4320-1
Team Lead: Captain Juliet Mendez
Team Members: Lieutenants Matt Cyterski and Andrew Butler (Butler is a member of SCP-4320-2), Researcher Amelia Zhang
Notes: MTF operatives were armed with assault rifles. All team members were further equipped with a helmet-mounted camera, nonlethal sidearm, multi-tool, and cognitohazard-filtering visors. Due to the similarities between the atmospheres of SCP-4320-1's and Earth's atmospheres, only basic EVA suits were required.
[BEGIN LOG]
CPT Mendez: Alright, recorder's running. Sound off.
LT Butler: Butler, check.
LT Cyterski: Cyterski, check.
RSCR Zhang: Zhang, check.
Mendez: That's everyone. Command, you hearing us?
Command: Affirmative, Captain. How's it going up there?
Mendez: Well, we're on the surface. Haven't run into any life-threatening danger.
Cyterski: Yet.
(Laughs from Cyterski and Butler.)
Mendez: Hey, guys, keeping morale up is important, but the mission is too.
(Cyterski and Butler return to attention.)
Butler: Yes, Captain.
Command: Alright, your task is to find as much information on SCP-4320 as possible: why SCP-4320-1 is hidden, why the -2s are special, and who or what -3 were.
Mendez: You got it. Zhang's already looking in one of the buildings.
Zhang: There's nothing remarkable in here. It's essentially just a round staircase that heads down into the center of the room, like you might find at an amphitheater, with a couple archways embedded in the stairs.
Command: You said archways?
Zhang: Uh, yeah.
(Zhang's video feed confirms this, showing five archways within the circular staircase.)
Mendez: Well, I guess that's where we're heading.
Command: Up to you, Captain.
Mendez: Then let's go. Butler, Cyterski, keep your weapons locked and loaded. We don't know what we're gonna find in there.
Butler and Cyterski: Copy.
(Team follows Mendez into one of the archways, which leads into a descending, spiral-shaped passage which the team travels along for approximately 31 minutes. Several comments are made by members of the team about the length of the passage. Near the end, the passage becomes straight and levels out before sloping sharply upwards, opening into the center of a hemispherical empty space at least 1 kilometer in radius, the walls of which are lined with inscriptions in an unknown language.)
Zhang: Well, that was underwhelming.
Command: I assume you're not seeing any more than us?
Zhang: Not unless you're seeing less than a big empty space.
Mendez: There's gotta be something in here. Whoever built it wouldn't have it if they didn't need it.
Cyterski: Hey, uh… Butler, you okay?
(No response from Butler. Feed still showed a successful live broadcast and stable vitals.)
Command: Lieutenant Butler, do you copy?
Butler: It's beautiful…
Mendez: What the hell? Butler, snap out of it.
Command: Butler, tell us what you see.
(Silence from Butler for several seconds. Other team members show increasing signs of distress.)
Command: Lieutenant Butler, you are under orders to respond.
Mendez: Command, permission to abort?
Command: Permission denied. You still need to-
Butler: I can see them. Us. It's here. It's all here. The world. Our history. Our inheritance.
(All feeds broadcasting from Butler cease.)
Mendez: Command, we've got some weird shit going on. Butler's gone.
Command: Please elaborate. He's still showing up on your feeds. How is he 'gone'?
Mendez: He's gone in the way that I can still see him but I can tell he's not actually here.
Command: Captain, you have orders to abort the mission.
Mendez: But there's gotta be something-
Command: If it's really how you describe it, there's nothing you can do. We can't risk losing the rest of you. Abort the mission and get out of there.
[END LOG]
Mission was aborted and team returned to Site-73. No further broadcast was received from Butler, and all attempts to locate him have failed.
Findings Report: Researcher Amelia Zhang
The higher-ups have asked me to write this report on what happened up there. I guess I'll do my best.
SCP-4320-1 was once the home of SCP-4320-3, a highly advanced and highly religious society of humans, or at least a species similar enough to humans that they had the ability to reproduce with humans.
Their religious beliefs weren't quite mirrored by any particular Earth religion. While they had the typical stuff (daily worship, selfless acts, et cetera), they also had an obsession with something they called 'Inheritance'. For those of you that read the expedition log, that's the last thing Butler said before we lost him.
So, considering all that, what's the story behind SCP-4320? What's so important about this thing that it needs to be hidden?
Here's what I think. I don't think Inheritance is a thing, at least not in the way we generally use the word 'thing'. It's their afterlife. But not in the way we generally use the word 'afterlife'.
It's quite obvious at this point that SCP-4320-2 are the biological descendants of -3. It's been hypothesized for some time, but only now have we been able to confirm it. And it's clear that -1 affects -2 in ways we couldn't have imagined. But I think it goes beyond even that.
Once that place claimed Butler, thousands of -2 around the world fell unconscious. I think that that moment was an awakening. That moment in that room. Butler claimed his Inheritance. Now that hidden planet is calling for the rest of its children to spread its word. And some are listening.
We've gotten reports of cults with members who are both -2 and not popping up, worshipping Inheritance. If we can't stop them soon, they risk exposing the world to knowledge of SCP-4320. And then what do we do? We have no idea what Inheritance is. We have no way of contacting anyone who's entered Inheritance as far as we know. It's better not to send people into Inheritance blindly. So to avoid exposing the Foundation to the world, it's better still to prevent anyone from entering Inheritance at all.
And I'm going to leave you with one final lingering question that none of us quite know the answer to. There's no way the human species evolved identically on both our planets. It's simply impossible. But if that's true, one of the planets had to have been inhabited before the other, or there had to be some other civilization that sired both of us. So who came first?
SCP-4320 seems to have a long history, perhaps longer than we could ever imagined. But we could still only be seeing the beginning of it. There's no way to tell how long it will be until we can't hide 4320 from the public anymore. So we're going to have to play this by ear for a while. I suggest expanding our disinformation campaigns and working on finding more -2, possibly through genetic identification. We can't let anyone get the truth out. If we do, we risk exposure of the anomalous world and the Foundation as a whole.