SCP-5520 - The Rabbit Hole. Working for the SCP Foundation is not like working for a typical company. That much is obvious, of course, but I’m not just speaking about the risk of dying to anomalies or the frequent breaking of the universe’s laws.
Signing up to work for the foundation is often a lifelong commitment, demanding a life of secrecy and loyalty. While the exact specifics of the foundation’s hiring process is up to interpretation, there’s no doubt that if the foundation hires someone, they’re going to be pretty committed to the foundation’s ideals and goals. SCP-5520 focuses around a couple of foundation researchers and their loyalty to the organization, along with the price of that loyalty.
SCP-5520 is listed as Archon class, meaning that while it could theoretically be contained, it shouldn’t be, for one reason or another. The containment procedures state that containment of 5520 is unnecessary at the moment, although if it becomes necessary, Sundown protocol must be initiated, which involves opening the bulkhead gates to Lake Huron and flooding the Acroamatic Abatement facility. SCP-5520 is former SCP Foundation Senior Researcher and Provisional Site Co-Director Dr Wynn Rydderech.
He is now a class III reality bender, as a result of long-term exposure to esoteric materials. Correspondence with him has revealed serious and progressive cognitive impaiment, dissociation, depersonalization, derealization, and both retrograde and anterograde amnesia. He remains aligned with the goals of the foundation however, but no longer answers directly to the executive structure.
He presently resides in a series of vast caverns and refineries located beneath Site-43, classified Acroamatic Abatement Facility AAF-W by former site Director Dr Vivian Lesly Scout. Although the facilities themselves exhibit no anomalous properties, their scale, location, and the activities performed there do. Both manual and automatic cave surveying techniques have been unable to determine the precise extent of AAF-W, but best estimates suggest over two million cubic metres of interior space.
A breathable oxygen atmosphere pervades throughout, presumably as a result of Wynn’s activities. Alright, so we have a foundation member that has since become a reality bender due to spending so much time around anomalies, and is now located deep underneath a foundation facility, where he continues to work in alignment with the foundation’s goals. Before we continue on, let me quick give some backstory as to what’s going on here.
Site-43 is the center of the On Guard 43 canon, a rather extensive hub of various storylines and articles that focus around various personnel and the often creative solutions they devise for containing things at site-43. Despite their atypical approach to containing some very tricky to contain anomalies, they have an admirable containment breach record. One of the key things done at site-43 is acroamatic abatement, which simply means that they deal with solutions for all of the anomalous gunk that is constantly created by various anomalies, such as the reddish brown substance created by scp-173.
Dealing with enough anomalous goop is bound to create some other weird stuff in the same area, and it seems that Wynn himself became affected after enough years. Rynn headed the foundation’s effort to manage the toxic materials generated by its collected objects from 1915 to 1966, with his acroamatic abatement group moving from Vienna, Austria to Provisional Site-43 in Canada in 1943, where he became co-director with Dr Vivian Lesley Scout. Under Wynn’s direction, the applied occultism and acroamatic abatement sections of Site-43 became the foremost facilities for studying and neutralizing esoteric effluence on earth.
When site-43 was upgraded from provisional status in 1965, Dr Scout became the site director with Wynn’s sponsorship. Wynn subsequently disappeared from site-43 on the 14th of November, 1966, after 51 years of employment. A search of his dedicated research laboratory in Acroamatic Abatement Facility AAF-A found it significantly altered and its 43 staff members absent.
Wynn’s notes revealed dozens of conflicting, frequently incoherent or unintelligible programs of research, suggesting that his disappearance had been voluntary. The entire site was immediately placed on alert, and Dr Scout ordered the pursuit and suppression section to investigate the facility further. Six members of MTF Delta-43 are sent in to the facility, and head down to the basement sublevel, which should be the lowest point of the facility.
The team lead reports that there are considerably more pipes in the wall than the schematics show, and he can’t be sure without touching them, but some of them look like they’re made out of bone or porcelain. There’s an open door leading to a stairwell going down nearby, so the team proceeds down the steps. They exit out into a glass-walled tunnel, with cave walls visible on the other side of the glass, illuminated through unknown means.
At the other end of the tunnel, it opens up into a very large cave system, with one of the team remarking that this place looks like the facility did in the forties, when they were first building it. They continue on, soon finding some of Wynn’s researchers, examining some pipes and taking notes. They approach them with caution, calling out, although the researchers show no response to the MTF, even when snapping their fingers in front of their faces.
For now, the team continues on, moving through five more sublevels of this new underground facility, before finding a closed door. It doesn’t seem to be locked, so they slowly open it. On the other side, the team leader reports that he sees what appears be an underground ravine.
He can’t even begin to speculate on how deep it is, but there are structures along the walls and at the bottom. It looks like a natural cave system that was augmented with artificial construction consistent with the other alterations they’ve seen so far. Another team member says that it looks like somebody turned ten factories inside-out and stacked them.
Control asks if it looks like this ravine and its contents are larger than AAF-A, but the leader responds that this ravine and its contents are larger than site-43. The MTF was recalled to regroup and plan further investigations, although the research personnel were not re-encountered on the way back. Keeping in mind that this takes place in 1966, the Identity and Technocryptography Section of the site had recently completed the installation of an experimental site-wide computer system with a rudimentary command line interface.
When the team returned to Wynn’s office, they discovered that his networked printer had produced the following message for Dr Scout. “Vivian, I blame the comic books. I started reading them as a middle-aged man.
Something frivolous to take my mind off of toxicants and virions and threshold limit values, something fantastical. I do some of my best work when I'm distracted. So many of those old superheroes were scientists, just like us.
They got their super-powers because something stupid, but scientific, happened to them. Jay Garrick inhaled heavy water vapour, and instead of gaining NOTHING, he gained super speed. Rex Tyler created a one-hour strength pill, and started popping them like an addict.
Ted Knight found the cure for gravity, and he used it to fly around and beat people up. My idiotic idols. I swear, Viv, I didn't intentionally expose myself to esoteric materials.
Then again, neither did the Flash. There were accidents, of course, even back in Europe. A drop here, a shattered cask there, an accidental exposure every once in a while.
I thought nothing of it when my pants started staying up without a belt, or I stayed warm in cold weather, or I didn't need to use the washroom unless I thought about it. Just getting fat and hot and slow and absent-minded, I thought. Now, of course, I know it was just the maintenance of my self-image.
Sometimes I'd wake up sweating in the middle of the night, and find myself wearing my three-piece suit and tie. Sometimes I'd look in the mirror and see my hair was red again, red like it hasn't been since the Great War. Once, only once, I had a long telephone conversation with my wife without remembering to dial out of the facility.
Or remembering that she's dead. I know what this is, and you know, too. I'm Dr Fate.
I'm bending reality on my knee. Things turn out the way I want them to, or the way I think they should be. I'm starting to be able to direct it, now, which scares the everloving you-know-what out of me.
You know how we've made such great strides these past months? How all our experiments have turned out perfectly? That's because I've wanted them to.
I've willed them to. Where there's a will, there's a way. But I don't have the will to be put in a cage, and you don't have a way of fixing what's wrong with me without PUTTING me in a cage.
So, at the risk of belabouring the metaphor, I have to go away. I hope I'll be back soon. In the meantime, I'll keep in touch.
Do you remember what I told you at the lake, Vivian? Now is the time. I'm counting on you.
- Wynn” Technicians also reported that the terminal in Wynn’s office was now networked with a printer in an unknown location. After consulting with the security and containment section, Dr Scout began correspondence with Wynn via the terminal and printers. Their first conversation with this method reads, “Dr Scout: Wynn, please return to the Site.
We can help you. No, you can't. But I can help you.
From down here. Dr Scout: We've got the finest doctors in the world on our side, Wynn. Precisely.
The finest doctors in the world can't stop what's happening to me. I'm a toxicologist, Vivian, I've done the research. You're a toxicologist too, so please don't lie to me.
Dr Scout: Think of your staff, Wynn. Is this what they wanted? My staff don't exist.
Dr Scout: What? My staff don't exist. I invented them.
My whole department was filled with phantoms I imagined into existence. I'm just imagining them down here, now. Check their employment records, you'll see what I mean.
You know why there were forty-three of them? So I wouldn't forget how many there were, and call down an investigation on my head. I've had this condition for a long time now.
I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. Dr Scout: We can fix this together, Wynn. You and I.
Why do you keep repeating my name? Do you think I don't know who I am? I don't want you to see me like this.
It's better if I stay down here. Dr Scout: What do you expect me to do? Let you hide out underground until you suffocate or starve to death?
I expect you to be a scientist and let me alone to do my work. I'm close to a breakthrough, now. Very close.
Just think of this as an extended research sabbatical, and I'll be back good as new before long. Dr Scout: Now who's lying, Wynn? Dr Scout: Wynn?
” Dr Rydderech was subsequently classified as SCP-520, although this was later updated to use the present-day classification of scp-5520. The duplicate AAF-A facility was thoroughly examined over the next 14 months, revealing that it, like the original, had fallen out of use. It was determined that Wynn and his phantom staff had moved into the larger facility in the caverns, which had by then expanded twofold.
As Wynn had not corresponded with site-43 at all during this period, Dr Scout instructed the MTF to rappel down into the larger structure and investigate it. We’re given a partial transcript of their exploration, from Februrary of 1968. Upon approach to the cavernous facility, the team lead reports seeing a skyscraper of machinery, with gantries, pipes, tanks, and chimneys protruding from the cave floor, calling it one of the biggest buildings in the country, and certainly the biggest thing underground.
The first section of the facility they explore resembles the original acroamatic abatement facility in Vienna, while the second section of the facility is unfamiliar to the team. The phantom researchers from before are also no longer present. The team leader remarks that he doesn’t think this section was built to match any existing facilities, as the walls are orange.
Dr Scout gets on the comms however and asks if the orange walls have a grey stripe down the middle, which they do. He says that that’s the toxicity lab from Cardiff, where they both studied together. They didn’t have fluorescent lights then however, although Dr Scout says that Wynn might not be himself right now, and they should keep that in mind.
The team turns a corner into a large room filled with shining copper pipes, and Wynn standing in the middle of the room, pointing at each pipe and nodding. He turns to face the agents as they enter, and begins to weep. He says that he won’t remember tomorrow, and won’t even remember tomorrow, tomorrow.
He doesn’t even remember tomorrow today. He then asks if he was a friend of yours, as the team reports to command that they have eyes on Wynn, and he looks unharmed, although a little shaken. Control tells them to bring him in, so they approach.
Wynn says that he gets confused sometimes, and when they ask him to come with them, he apologizes and says that that was his fault, but then questions if it was his fault. Clearly he’s not thinking straight, and one of the pipes nearby begins to vibrate intensely, creating a deafening sound, although Wynn is still audible. He asks where did he go, as one of the team reaches out to steady the pipe.
When he touches it, he disappears completely, and Wynn remarks that he wouldn’t touch that. The sound then abruptly ceases, and the recording ends as the five remaining members of the team were returned by Wynn, through unknown means, to the top level facility. A message was already waiting for Dr Scout in Wynn’s original office, reading, “Vivian, I'm sorry about your man.
You won't be seeing him again. I've connected my facility to AAF-A. Please send any new substances down the pipeline to me, and I'll see what I can do with them.
Dr Scout: Why would we do that? You're not a Foundation researcher anymore, you're an SCP object. That's a good approach to take.
I've seeded the facility walls with a compound that will expand to fill its container, immobilizing anything it touches and anesthetizing humanoids. It's water-activated, so all you have to do is open the floodgates to my cavern and you'll be rid of me. Oh, yes, my cavern has floodgates now.
I hope the underwater panthers won't mind. These were their tunnels, did you know that? They used them to travel between the lakes.
I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that literally nothing in those oral histories was wrong. No response. I suppose I can't blame you.
So, you have Special Containment Procedures for me now. We'll call that our framework for a working relationship. Take my proposal to O5 and the Ethics Committee.
Let them handle it. We both know you're too close to the issue. The good work goes on, Vivian.
It must. ” By order of the o5 council, site-43 began employing Wynn from this point forward as a consultant researcher, and despite Dr Scout strongly objecting to this, he agreed to remain as Wynn’s point of contact. The foundation began sending problematic substances down to AAF-W, and geological measurements indicated that the artificial complex grew at a slow, steady rate every day for the next three decades.
The efficiency of the site-43 facilities improved at a commensurate rate, and Wynn frequently delivered ad hoc research papers and chemical formulations to the foundation via the printer in his former office. We’re given a partial collection of the various messages between Dr Scout and Wynn. [01/24/1969] Dr Scout: Alright Wynn, we're sending you something very caustic now.
Ah, you're finally coming down for a visit? I've missed you. Dr Scout: I'll tell Security and Containment that you've still got your sense of humour, maybe it'll put them at ease.
In any event, please see what you can do with this stuff. If we can ameliorate it, we can lock up the object creating it for good. I'll take a look, but my sympathies are with the object (for obvious reasons).
[10/13/1970] Dr Scout: How are you holding up down there? I've developed a method for stripping the human body of its mucous membrane. Dr Scout: What?
Why? That's not what you were supposed to be working on. I'm going to cure catarrh!
And the common cold. Dr Scout: The mucous membrane keeps us from getting sick, Wynn. Oh.
Dr Scout: But you know that, right? Of course I do. I was just joking.
To put you all at ease, remember? [06/04/1971] Dr Scout: We can't make sense of the data you're sending us. It's elementary enzyme design, Vivian.
Dr Scout: We haven't invented enzyme design yet, Wynn. Oh. Well, let me know when you have, then.
[06/29/1972] stop it Dr Scout: Stop what, Wynn? stop flushing your GODDAMNED TOILETS on me WHOEVER YOU ARE [07/04/1972] Dr Scout: Are you there? I'm sorry about last time.
I got a little confused. Dr Scout: Yes, well, we're working on that problem for you. Is there anything else you need?
How are those floodgates doing? Dr Scout: The floodgates are fine. Maybe you should test them.
Dr Scout: What do you mean? Dr Scout: Wynn? What do you mean?
[08/17/1973] Dr Scout: I'm sending you the chemical equations and synthesis outline for a new antipsychotic developed at Site-19. It will completely suppress your reality-bending symptoms. I want you to make it, and I want you to TAKE it, and I want you to come back home.
Vivian, What a clever formula! Thank you so much for sending me this, it's right up my alley. I'm sending you a list of chemical and procedural improvements, the shots should work much faster now.
Dr Scout: But did you take it, Wynn? Dr Scout: Wynn? [12/19/1975] this is what you wanted isnt it Dr Scout: What do you mean?
i know who you are i know what you DID you put me here youre KEEPING me here you WANT me here out of the way Dr Scout: You went down there on your own. I want you to come home. do you think im stupid do you think i dont understand i hope you never forget what you did to me i hope you NEVER FORGET what youre DOING to me [12/21/1975] Vivian?
Where are you? Vivian? I'm sorry.
” At this point, Dr Scout reiterated his opposition to the project, and refused to participate any further. Wynn continued to transmit regular messages however, apparently unaware, at least most of the time, of Dr Scout’s departure. We’re given some more of these messages.
“[06/11/1976] Does chirality exist, Vivian? This is a serious question. Does chirality exist, or is it something I made up?
This is a serious question. [03/08/1979] I don't remember my eyes. [08/17/1980] Where are you, Vivian?
Why aren't you here? Please find attached five hundred pages of toxidrome reports. [08/17/1980] Why doesn't it ever rain down here, Vivian?
It should rain down here. I NEED IT to rain down here. [12/21/1985] Yesterday I cured cancer.
Today I can't remember how. Unless I'm imagining curing cancer yesterday, or imagining I've forgotten how, or imagining cancer, or imagining yesterday, or imagining today. Or [05/06/1988] Please find attached one page of words.
They're the right ones. [01/18/1990] I've drawn up new manuals for AAF-C, Vivian. Please make sure you follow them to the letter when we build the facility twenty years ago.
You don't want a repeat of what I just thought about. [09/12/1991] I know you're not Vivian. ” On February 9th, 1996, Dr Scout attempted to enact the Sundown protocol, which would have decommissioned SCP-5520.
Safeguards installed under o5 instructions prevented this from occurring however, and Dr Scout was summoned for immediate questioning. O5-8 asks him why he did what he did, and Dr Scout says that Wynn gave his life to the foundation, all of it, from start to finish, and he owed Wynn this courtesy. O5-8 however says that what he calls a courtesy, they might call an execution.
Wynn’s life is not finished. Dr Scout counters though, that what o5-8 meant was that they aren’t finished with Wynn’s life. They’re not talking about someone’s abandoned grandfather, who just needs his loved ones to visit and brighten his day.
They’re not talking about someone with cognitive impairment who just needs patience and affection and rewarding work to live a meaningful life. Not anymore. They’re talking about someone who’s been completely alone and out of his mind for thirty years.
Most of Wynn Rydderech is gone, and what’s left is crying out for help, and they’re not listening. He’s asked them, time and time again, to let him bring Wynn back up here and to see if they can help him. He might never be the same, but at least he wouldn’t be alone.
He could live a real, human life, in the light. He would still be brillian, he would still be Wynn, if they could manage his condition. But they continue to refuse him, time and time again, and he’s come to realize that they’re never going to let Wynn get better.
They’re going to keep him sick in the dark for all eternity if they can, so that they can benefit from h is sickness. They are perpetuating a falsehood, through anomalous means, because it is convenient for them. That’s not the foundation that he, or Wynn, signed up to work for, or built.
O5-8 says that he’s one to talk about anomalous perpetuation, facetiously referring to him as MrBaggins and asking if he’s eleventy-one years old now. Dr Scout however says that he’s still himself, unlike Wynn. He left specific instructions for him on the matter, and his wishes are the only ones that should count.
It’s his life, and he put it in Scout’s hands, trusting him as his friend and as his partner. O5-8 remarks that he has access to the infonet feed, and has seen what Wynn is saying. Last week he asked Dr Scout to look in on Ashley, which doesn’t seem like someone who’s dissociating to him.
Dr Scout counters that o5-8 has no idea who Ashley, as it’s Wynn’s dead brother who was hit by a bus during the london blackout of 1918. This promptly silences o5-8, and Dr Scout continues, saying that Wynn is suffering, and they’re letting him suffer, keeping him apart, because he’s useful to them. They know what he wants, and if they’ve seen the messages, they’ve seen him begging for it, but they dont’ care.
He then proceeds to pull a folded, yellow sheaf of papers from his suit, and says that it’s a letter that Wynn wrote back when site-43 became official, April 1st, 1965. He gave it to him and asked that he open it if he ever became compromised, so Dr Scout opened it 30 years ago. It reads, "Vivian, I'm so pleased I got to see the lake one last time, and share that moment with you.
As myself. Before what's going to happen to me. I know this is going to be difficult for you to understand, but I have to go away.
I'm a danger to you, to the Site, maybe even to myself. I've tried to hide it, I've tried to control it, but I'm losing my grip. It's better for everyone if I disappear for a while.
Hopefully, I'll be back. But if I'm not, I need to you understand something for me. I need you to understand who, and what, I am.
So that you'll also understand if it's not me you're seeing, or hearing, down there in the dark. So that you'll do what needs to be done, as you always have. As we used to do, together.
You remember what we used to say at Cardiff? I know you've moved on to magic words and musty, dead old things, but I'm sure you haven't forgotten. There's magic in these words, too: "We are chemistry, and electricity.
" That, and nothing besides. You and I are the sum of our electro-chemical reactions. Electricity is the fire that is our conscious selves, and chemistry is the beating of our hearts.
The wet, sparking computers in our heads are the most powerful thinking, feeling machines in existence, more complicated than anything we can devise. More points of failure than any bridge, any airplane, any equation. They always break down, in the end, and so do we.
That ephemerality is part of the magic. The fire goes out, the heart stops beating. Sometimes the fire goes out first, and we lose ourselves.
We become not ourselves. Every human being has the right to decide where that line is drawn for themselves, personally. You know full well where I draw it.
Words have power, Vivian, but chemistry is power. If you change the chemistry, you change who you are. And it doesn't take much.
Yours very truly, - Wynn. " After a brief pause, o5-8 simply responds that they’ll take it under advisement, and the meeting concludes. The Identity and Technocryptography technicians however continued to correspond with Wynn under o5 directions, leading to Dr Scout resigning from the Foundation on April 1st, 1996.
In his resignation letter, he tells the council that, per their offer of employment dated April 1st, 1915, he must respectfully, retroactively, decline. They are not who he thought they were, and he perhaps is no longer who he thought he was. They may keep their secrets, or they may benefit from them, but they cannot do both.
If they continue to profit from Wynn’s madness, they will soon find it impossible to hide him. The truth will come out. He ends by remarking that he should like to see the lake again.
Afterwards, he retired to the town of Grand Bend within the limits of Nexus-94, succumbing to advanced old age one year later. A message was received from Wynn the same day, which reads, “Vivian, The sun sets for you, but never for me. I look forward to seeing you, yesterday.
For today, the work goes on. ” The document ends with an email from the head of Identify and Technocryptography to O5-8, with the subject line of Regarding Project Rhetoric. In the email, she says that they are ready announce project rhetoric, which should address the security and ethics concerns identified by Dr Scout and allow them to capitalize on the scp-5520 asset indefinitely.
Communications personnel assigned to the project will be rotated out regularly to prevent the creation of an empathetic bond, and amnesticized. With the o5’s approval, they’re going to send a message to everyone at site-43 on New Year’s Day. The message welcomes all personnel to the new millennium, and states that the I&T section is now accepting research-related queries for submission to their quantum supercomputer, DrRhetoric, also designated SCP-5520.
They should contact a research associate to apply, and it’s noted that I&T will not be allowing users direct access to the dr-rhetoric feed, as it’s artificial intelligence algorithms are extraordinarily complex, and the results often require significant interpretation by trained personnel. The chief of I&T says in the email that they’ve tried to modify the network and the printer to filter out occurrences of Vivian and Viv in incoming messages, but they haven’t had any luck so far. She’ll just re-type each printout herself before passing it on to her staff.
It’s easy enough to write a story in which the SCP Foundation comes off as cold and cruel, doing whatever it takes in the name of the greater good. A harder task, and something that SCP-5520 does, is presenting how human some of the foundation’s personnel can be in the face of that cold cruelness. The o5 council had an extremely loyal employee in Dr Wynn Rydderech, who gave decade after decade of his live in service to their goals and ideals.
When he became anomalous himself after all of those years of hazardous work, they were certainly ready to lock him away and throw away the key, much like any other anomaly. When instead he revealed that he still had use to the foundation, he became less than an employee, and became a tool. Dr Scout, Wynn’s significant other, was at first horrified at what has become of Wynn, and tried his best to maintain Wynn’s hold on humanity, but eventually became more horrified at what the council was doing.
He tried to provide an end to Wynn’s torment with the sundown protocol, but that failed. He then tried to convince the o5 council that this is wrong and not what Wynn would’ve wanted, but that too failed. With no other options, the only thing he could do is no longer take part in the process, and walk away.
Unfortunately, it looks like Wynn’s torment is going to continue indefinitely, locked away underground, out of his mind as he continues to serve the foundation’s purposes. The article is certainly a tragic one, and certainly works on it’s own with no other information about the site-43 canon. That being said, these are not one-off characters, and there’s plenty more material for those interested, especially the tale The Good Work, which goes into a lot more detail about the relationship between Wynn and Vivian.
The Foundation may be a necessary evil in the scp universe, depending on one’s perspective, but it’s ultimately an organization of humans. Those humans by and large believe in the foundation’s goals, and give up their normal lives in order to serve this greater good. Unfortunately though, loyalty comes with a cost, and for the foundation, the ends always justify the means.
