It was a cold September morning in one of the most remote provinces in China,
it had been an unusual summer season for the villagers. They were used to seeing
many visitors during the summer months and this year was no exception. People came from far and
wide to trek through the forest adjoining the village. The forest was popular because of its
abundance of rare flora and fauna. But this year not everyone who entered the forest came out.
There had been stories all summer of families reporting their relatives going missing.
The local police force had sent out search parties but none of the missing persons were ever found.
It was as if they had vanished into thin air! The villagers had their own theories about what had
happened, some people speculated that a mystical wolf was living in the forest and devouring them.
Others were suspicious that it was actually the families that were to blame.
That in fact perhaps the families had killed their relatives and buried them in the forest.
Nobody knew for sure what had happened as no bodies were ever found.
The leader of the village knew that if the disappearances continued then tourists would stop
coming to visit the forest. He couldn’t afford to let that happen. The local people relied on
the money the tourists brought into the village, they wouldn’t survive if no one came. He decided
that he would take matters into his own hands, he would search the forest himself to find any clues.
He wasn’t concerned about entering the forest alone, he knew it like the back of his hand.
He had spent most of his childhood playing in the depths of the forest and he never got lost.
He took the track that led to the very centre, as he walked deeper and deeper into the forest
the trees got denser and it got darker and darker. Only a small chink of light could make its way
through the denseness. Suddenly he looked around him, it had only been about three months since he
had last visited the forest, but things looked very different. There were a number of strange
sphere shaped objects just over a metre tall dotted between the trees. He wondered what their
purpose was. He approached the largest of the spheres, he could see that it was a hive-like
structure with many chambers, he was just about to put his hand inside one of the chambers to find
out what it was concealing when he felt something crawling across his cheek towards his mouth.
He reached up and grabbed hold of the insect, but at that moment he felt a sharp pain on his finger,
and he dropped the creature onto the floor. When he saw what it was he relaxed,
it was just a common garden earwig, nothing to be worried about. It must’ve given him a
pinch with its abdominal forceps. But what the man didn't realize was that this was no common earwig.
Welcome back to SCP exposed. Before I go on,
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Today we bring you Euclid class object SCP 439. SCP 439 is a small insect approximately 2.5cms in
length. It has a translucent greyish colour and is very similar to the Forficula auricularia,
otherwise known as the common earwig. The origins of this insect are currently unknown.
The Foundation has only ever come across one specimen, that was found
in the middle of a dense forest in a remote province in mainland China.
This creature is relatively harmless to human beings, it’s huge abdominal forceps are capable of
giving a painful pinch, but unless provoked it is unlikely to attack. It's only danger to human life
is in the way that it forms the habitat that it needs in order to be able to reproduce. First the
creature enters the human body through the mouth. In order to enter, the human being must be asleep.
It is currently unknown how the creature determines that the human has fallen asleep,
but what we do know is that the creature is accurate in knowing
that the human is asleep in the majority of cases. Once the creature has located
a suitable host it waits in a dark corner of the room for the human to go to sleep.
Once asleep the creature approaches the human and enters the body through the mouth,
SCP 439 travels along the trachea and takes up residence in one of the lungs.
This occupancy of the body only occurs in humans, other lifeforms have been offered
to SCP 439 but have been rejected. Within less than 8 hours of the human awakening
the first symptoms will appear. Chest pains, difficulty in breathing are the first signs,
closely followed by severe abdominal cramping. The tightness in the chest will become more severe and
the host will break out in a fever. This will leave the host incapacitated. At this time is
when the beginnings of Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP) occur. FOP is normally a genetic
disease that causes muscle tissue to turn into bone. The development of the new bone is so rapid
it causes severe pain in the human, often new bone spurs can be seen protruding from the skin.
During this process the human will seek out a dark enclosed space to take refuge,
commonly this is inside cabinets or heating ducts. If the host receives no treatment at all it will
only take within 3 days for him to reach the final stage of the transformation into what is known as
the “Bone Hive”. When the host reaches this point he will take up the fetal position. Sections of
the skeletal structure will shift position until the body takes on a sphere like shape.
New bones will continue to form to produce a cage to protect the internal organs and colony.
The end result will be around ¾ of the size of the original human body.
At this point, transformation is complete. The original Queen that entered the host will have
produced 20-30,000 offspring that function as workers, drones and warriors in a typical insect
hive hierarchy. Since only the Queen is capable of reproduction, the rest of the hive's inhabitants
are, fortunately, harmless except for the large, strong abdominal forceps of the warriors.
The interior of the sphere is now almost unrecognisable from its original form,
some of the internal organs are used as food whilst others are
modified by the worker insects to be used as egg incubation chambers.
The warrior insects collect organic material which is then processed by the host's digestive system
into a nutritive slurry which feeds the colony and also maintains the hive structure.
It takes around 4 - 6 months for a new Queen to emerge, she will select a drone to mate with.
Once this has happened the colony will destroy itself by rupturing the sphere. The majority of
the insects will die at this time as drones and workers cannot survive outside of the colony. Now
that their task has been completed, the warrior insects will abandon the sphere. No food will be
consumed by warriors that aren't nutritive slurry produced by the hive of origin. The new Queen will
venture out, fertilized, to search for her own new hive. Incredibly, the trauma of evacuation
is not what finally causes biological activity to cease in the hive, but starvation is the cause.
A particular disturbing piece of information was discovered when one of the leading female doctors
in this field performed a range of experiments to see what damage had occurred to the body during
the transformation. Previous autopsies had shown that some parts of the brain had been destroyed,
to be used for food. Whilst other parts remained intact,
presumably to control the bodily functions that were still required by the colony.
During the doctor's study, she had the opportunity to examine a host structure
shortly after its transformation. Although we know that the eyes are eventually used for food,
because this particular structure had been found straight after its transformation,
the eyes were still intact. The doctor lifted the eyelids and shone a beam of light into the eyes,
the eyes moved and followed the beam as it went from left to right. At this point the
experiment was terminated and there are no plans for any further testing.
SCP 439 is currently being kept at the Hazardous Lifeforms Wing of Armed Research site 45.
The creature is kept in a sealed and locked 38 litre type G containment unit.
The unit is connected to an oxygen supply and the creature is being fed through feeding tube 16a.
The creature's diet consists solely of the approved nutritive substance
X-F. Handling is authorised only to personnel level 2 and higher.
The Foundation's personnel have many theories as to why this creature exists.
Some personnel feel that the insect's purpose is to take over the world, whilst others feel that
it only seeks to prevent its own demise. Whatever the case, SCP 439 must be handled with great care.
What do you think of that SCP case? Very disturbing isn’t it?
Please comment below with your thoughts.