SCP-2005 Predicting the Past

SCP Explained - Story & Animation

SCP-2005 is a series of extraterrestrial probes sent from the Teegarden's Star system to monitor human civilization. Disguised differently in each iteration—ranging from a teardrop probe to a zeppelin and a space-suited humanoid—their primary function is to collect cultural media, audio, and visual data. Due to an extreme communication delay across 12.5 light-years, the alien creators misconstrued human science fiction (such as H.G. Wells and Flash Gordon) as actual historical predictions of Earth's future, causing the probes to desperately seek out and study human sci-fi tropes.  LIKE & SUBSCRIBE to SCP Explained - Story & Animation  Follow us on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scpexplainedofficial  Join our Discord, share your SCP art, submit video feedback, chat with other fans...: https://discord.gg/scpexplained  Please let us know in the comments which SCP's we should cover next   Narrated by https://www.youtube.com/c/hitherehunter  Content relating to the SCP Foundation, including the SCP Foundation logo, is licensed under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 and all concepts originate from http://www.scp-wiki.net and its authors.   SCP-2005 Predicting the Past is based on "SCP-2005" by Silberescher: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2005  #scpexplained #scp #animation

Transcript

00:00It started well over a hundred years ago, in Marseille, France, in the year 1897.

00:06So long ago now, it wasn't even the SCP Foundation that discovered it.

00:10Instead, it was a British precursor organization,

00:13known as Her Majesty's Fellowship for the Study of Curiosities and Phantasmagoria.

00:18They'd heard rumblings of another review from one of the most influential and dangerous groups of interest in Europe.

00:24Nous avons conclué un entente, or as we later know it, are we cool yet?

00:31There was always something strange and anomalous to be found at one of these gallery showings.

00:35Beautiful sculptures that could repeat your own deepest secrets back to you in voices only you could hear.

00:41Conceptual dance installations that could rewrite reality itself.

00:44A reproduction of the Mona Lisa that ate a guy who got too close.

00:48But there was no way that Her Majesty's Fellowship could predict that on this fateful showing,

00:53they'd find the first piece of an anomaly that would trickle over in the course of the following century.

01:00Agents raided the gallery, making multiple arrests and impounding a large number of an art pieces.

01:05The one we're going to focus on today would later be known as SCP-2005-A,

01:11a large pale green metal pod shaped like a teardrop made of a metamaterial

01:16unlike anything that anyone on Earth had ever seen before.

01:20It was an unknown composite with extraordinary abilities.

01:23Heat-resistant, highly durable against both cutting and severe kinetic force,

01:28resistant to corrosive chemicals, and despite all this, shockingly light.

01:33The device, believed even at the time to be some kind of mechanical drone straight out of science fiction,

01:38was capable of retracting plates of its unique metal in various places

01:42to reveal a large and operational camera lens.

01:45There was also a thin slot, almost like a letterbox,

01:49through which written materials could be fed for analysis.

01:51While computers were just a twinkle in the human eye at this stage,

01:55more modern foundation analysis and data mining into SCP-2005-A

02:00found that it contained a huge wealth of information.

02:03Strangely though, this information was as much fiction as it was fact,

02:07with a particular emphasis on the works of luminary science fiction writers like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.

02:13There was also a huge cache of information inside the probe that was encoded in a language completely unfamiliar to

02:20all Foundation linguists.

02:22Attempts to decode these sections are still ongoing to this day,

02:25giving us no real clue to the fascinating information contained within.

02:29You don't need an interstellar probe to deliver you more fascinating information about the many anomalies of the SCP Foundation.

02:37You just need to subscribe right here to SCP Explained and hit the bell to turn on notifications.

02:42You have hours of anomalous fun to enjoy from our thousands of videos, with new ones coming every week.

02:48So don't delay. Subscribe today.

02:51Decades would pass, and the world would change substantially before the discovery of SCP-2005-B.

02:57In 1939, Foundation researcher Dr. Stefan Bester would be the one to record the following audio file

03:03on the appearance and nature of this more advanced probe from another world.

03:08Description

03:09SCP-2005-B is disguised as a zeppelin.

03:13It measures about six feet at its longest point.

03:15Its outer facade is made of copper, a fabric that looks like canvas but seems to be some sort of

03:20exotic nylon and asbestos.

03:22Now looking inside, however, we find large torn scraps of the invulnerable plastic similar to the coating of SCP-2005,

03:29which is now called SCP-2005-A to match this new arrival.

03:34It seems to have shed its skin at some point.

03:37The balloon section of the craft is filled with machinery.

03:39The guts of the thing are similar to SCP-2005-A's and equally beyond human advancement.

03:44On the outside, a system of gears and levers protrudes from the bottom, which appears to control a series of

03:50mechanical arms.

03:51But on closer examination, the arms seem to be powered through electricity, or a completely exotic power system.

03:58The purpose of the gears is unknown.

04:00The mechanical appendages extending downwards from the machine include mechanical hands-wearing gloves made of white plastic,

04:06a secondary microphone, and what looks like other recording equipment, scissors, a comb, and a mop.

04:11When deploying the mop, it holds the mop's handle with an extended grasping tool in a manner that somewhat emulates

04:18human use.

04:19When it is indoors and a human enters visual proximity,

04:222005-B deploys its mop and carries out cleaning behavior until the human exits the room or faces away from

04:29the machine.

04:302005-B can also provide haircuts on request, but it is totally incompetent at the task and collects the scraps

04:37of hair.

04:372005-B was discovered in Boston in May of 1939, two years after initial tracking of a fast-moving cigar

04:44-shaped aerial object began in the vicinity of Nantes in France.

04:48Eyewitness reports indicate that it flew at varying altitudes, at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour,

04:54sometimes starting around like a bird,

04:55and entered buildings to literally consume books and other printed material by pulling them up into itself.

05:01Foundation containment agents managed to trap it in a reinforced reading room.

05:04We're beginning to notice a pattern here, aren't we?

05:07These probes are major bibliophiles, perhaps a strange quirk in the programming their mysterious creators gave them,

05:14perhaps even emissaries of some intergalactic book review publication.

05:18It would be difficult to glean any more information from SCP-2005-B for a while

05:23because of a certain level of what you might call drama around its ownership,

05:27as a result of it being kept in a containment site that was under the control of Foundation agents

05:32who splintered away from the main Foundation to form the Chaos Insurgency.

05:37The Foundation wouldn't get access to B until 2022,

05:41when some segments of the Chaos Insurgency signed a non-aggression pact with Foundation forces

05:46and agreed to an exchange of anomalies.

05:48But we would be getting ahead of ourselves there.

05:51We've got a few more anomalous probes under the SCP-2005 umbrella

05:55that might just reveal the answers to all these exceedingly strange questions.

06:00Which brings us, as any big fans of the alphabet will have already intuited,

06:05to SCP-2005-C, discovered in the late 1960s.

06:10It's a humanoid automaton in what appears to be a kind of atomic age sci-fi vision of a spacesuit,

06:16highly articulated and capable of movement.

06:19The probe's creators even went the extra light year

06:22and decided to give the device an approximation of a human face under the glass.

06:26Its features are made out of unpleasantly regular shapes

06:29that gives it an extremely uncanny valley quality.

06:32But let's not judge them too harshly on that.

06:35Like the anomalies that preceded it in the SCP-2005 series,

06:39C is designed for the procurement and transmission of information.

06:43There are slots in its torso for inserting material,

06:46and radio transceivers in its hands capable of sending this information somewhere.

06:51The Foundation's best guess is a planet in a system 12.5 light years away from us.

06:57Oh, and it can speak, too.

07:00It's always a pleasure for the Foundation to get their hands on an anomaly that's talkative.

07:04Unless its speech can drive people insane or compel them to acts of terrifying violence.

07:09But it happens.

07:10Thankfully, SCP-2005-C isn't one of those anomalies.

07:14He's got a series of pre-recorded statements in English, Russian, and French,

07:19which can be activated by asking an appropriate question.

07:22A Foundation researcher, Dr. Roy Benway, was the one assigned to conduct the interview back in 1968.

07:28He first asked,

07:29Where did you come from?

07:31C replied,

07:31There is a traveler from beyond the stars, gleaming, hopeful.

07:36He understands your experiences with such specimen have caused much suffering.

07:40He pleads welcome, disarmed, and approaches the local library.

07:44No, those aren't first draft David Bowie lyrics.

07:46He really did say that.

07:48Dr. Benway nodded and replied,

07:50What is your purpose here?

07:52C said,

07:53Mouth dry with the fullness of creation.

07:56He, a simulation of a billion hearts before him,

07:59tastes truth, justice, and the American way

08:01as he longs with tight anticipation for the bookstore or magazine stand closest to your house.

08:07Dr. Benway made a note of C's apparent obsession with written media and said,

08:11Why do you care about books?

08:13He stood on the cusp of an immense evolution,

08:16wheeling before the thoughts of a generation like sandpaper on fire.

08:20But he needed to know the future and the prognosis,

08:22which leapt tigerishly like the lines of Daniel before him was forward.

08:28A reference to evolution and a biblical allusion in the same passage.

08:32Interesting.

08:33Since C was already getting existential,

08:35Dr. Benway decided to ask,

08:37Who created you?

08:39Hurdling, earthward, through the cold,

08:41from a distant, though not dissimilar world,

08:44seeking the light of truth with peace,

08:46the peace of wisdom in their hearts as they were,

08:49one of great minds to read the predictions,

08:52prescient and euphonious,

08:54made by his own hand of man,

08:56yet beautiful void of space came the traveler.

08:59Dr. Benway was growing a little tired of C's poetic musings,

09:03but he seized on the part about predictions and asked,

09:06Tell me about these predictions.

09:08C paused for a moment,

09:10and then played a recording that said,

09:11He saw that they had legends written of that which had not yet come to pass,

09:16and while those who had come before him used them as a stopgap measure,

09:20a compensation like a smooth gin martini,

09:24to account for the delays of transit,

09:26to let him blend with the cities of mankind years away.

09:29But there was priceless there,

09:32the brilliance of your soothsayers,

09:34this talent and so quickly in the fall of time.

09:36When Dr. Benway asked C who exactly these soothsayers were,

09:41C paused again and delivered the same recording.

09:44Benway controlled his frustration and asked,

09:46Alright,

09:47What do you mean,

09:48delays of transit?

09:50And again,

09:51the same answer as before.

09:52The interview was concluded after that.

09:54In the aftermath of the interview,

09:56other researchers tried to parse the meaning out of the robotic ramblings.

09:59The closest thing they've come is in assuming that what was being said here

10:04was a highly artistic and metaphorical recounting of the device's creation.

10:08It was a probe made to blend in with human society,

10:11though made with such limited understanding of said human society

10:14that it was never going to be up to the task.

10:17Unless,

10:18it was just looking at a different part of human society than we'd first imagined.

10:23By studying the full scope of data collected by the different probes,

10:26it seems that the fixation on sci-fi literature stems from an inherent misunderstanding.

10:32Rather than the pure imaginings of authors seeking to entertain,

10:36these probes believe that science fiction is actually an earnest prediction

10:40of the culture and tech futures of human beings.

10:42This was further confirmed when some of the encrypted data on SCP-2005-B

10:47was eventually decoded,

10:49and revealed that it was storing copies of old Flash Gordon serials,

10:52as well as Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

10:54We're looking at a full-on galaxy quest scenario here, it seems.

10:58C was requisitioned from the U.S. Army,

11:00who confiscated it from a group of religious youths in the Nevada desert.

11:04The soldiers who found them assumed they were communist spies,

11:08saying, quote,

11:09We had no idea what they were doing.

11:10Protesting?

11:11Partying?

11:12They were too hopped up on something, to make sense.

11:14All we could puzzle out there was they were obsessed with the idea of the U.S. government

11:18traveling to the stars,

11:19and they were with the Fifth.

11:21Fifth what?

11:22Ah, well, we assumed Fifth Column and phoned it in.

11:24Of course, we can look at this with a little more clarity.

11:28Clearly, the C probe was in the possession of a group of Fifthists,

11:32seemingly from the Northern Fifth Church,

11:34known for their association to a few different international communist groups.

11:38How Probe C factored into these plans is still unknown,

11:42as Fifthists are known for responding coherently to questioning.

11:45SCP-2005-D, discovered in 1997,

11:49was a considerable step forward in both size and technological ambition from the previous humanoid probe.

11:55A large spherical space shuttle with opposable mechanical arms

11:59and eight sealed chambers to its central core,

12:02which contained diagnostic and processing equipment for carrying out its data-gathering mission.

12:07But this probe doesn't just take, it also gives.

12:10And what it gives are nutrient cubes.

12:12These are non-perishable and high-density, well, cubes of nutrients,

12:17capable of satisfying all of a person's nutritional needs for an extended period.

12:22They've been said to taste like a peculiar mix of mint and salad dressing.

12:26D likes to study humans particularly closely,

12:28and will float over to them,

12:30meeting them at eye level and letting out a low hum while doing so.

12:34Throughout the process,

12:35it would continue to offer nutrient cubes to the human undergoing it.

12:39While D is engaged with you, you can actually climb inside its central chamber,

12:43at which point it will run a decontamination program on you,

12:46releasing you again when it determines that you are on a safe level of radiation.

12:51The decontamination process is considered extremely pleasant,

12:54but it does involve an exit interview.

12:57When you're on the way out of decontamination,

12:59D will ask you questions like,

13:07The recurrence of books as a theme at this point probably doesn't surprise you,

13:11given it's one of the most consistent aspects of all of the SCP-2005 anomalies.

13:15If a person answers yes to the are you dying question,

13:19they'll immediately be ejected from the bottom of the device,

13:22perhaps either out of fear of having a dead person inside,

13:25or the fear of wasting resources on a lost cause.

13:28If the person inside of the device claims that yes, they do have books,

13:32they'll be instructed to insert those books into the console in front of them.

13:36And if they say yes, they would like to read,

13:39the text of one of the books on D's database will be projected in front of you.

13:43In the case of the experiment,

13:44it was one of Kurt Vonnegut's classic sci-fi novels,

13:47of course, with the text projected too small for the human eye to actually read.

13:51If you've picked up on a number of the interesting patterns here,

13:54you'll have also noticed that each of these probes was somehow either recovered or lost

13:59in a circumstance that involves one of the Foundation's known group of interests.

14:03And of course, D is no exception,

14:05because it was discovered back in 97 in the possession of Prometheus Labs.

14:09This now-defunct organization was responsible for a huge number of the technological anomalies

14:14that the Foundation both contains and uses today,

14:18and also had a history of obtaining anomalous and off-world tech for reverse engineering purposes.

14:24Probe D is very much part of that history.

14:26The Prometheus Labs employees fed the probe data in order to pacify it,

14:30while studying the parameters of its technology,

14:33which is likely what led it to have such a vast amount of information on its databanks

14:37before being contained by the Foundation.

14:39Eventually, when Prometheus Labs were destroyed,

14:42Probe D fell into the hands of the Chaos Insurgency,

14:44who for a time intended to share it with the Mana Charitable Foundation,

14:48an anomalous charity that hopes to use anomalies it finds to somehow benefit humankind,

14:54even though in practice, they sometimes fall a little short of their aspirations.

14:58The Mana Charitable Foundation's plan for Probe D was using its Nutrient Cube ability

15:02to keep food in secure places fed.

15:05But due to some kind of tragedy, that's been largely redacted from the files.

15:09The plan was abandoned.

15:11Probe D was eventually turned over to the Foundation

15:13in the same deal that resulted in them gaining ownership of Probe B.

15:17Sometimes it really is better to have all come to the table and play nice.

15:21Which brings us to Probe E,

15:24which was discovered much more recently, in the year 2042.

15:28The official file describes it as a series of interlocked segments

15:31of varying widths and lengths,

15:33with an ovoid central processing core,

15:35and multiple probes that can scan and interact with the human brain

15:38simply by non-invasively touching the skin of the head.

15:42Being the most advanced of the probes,

15:44far beyond a mere microphone or a letterbox for printed books,

15:48Probe E records human thoughts and senses for its mysterious makers,

15:52giving them direct missives from inside of all of our skulls.

15:55It also records a number of other metrics on a heads-up display, or HUD,

16:00including physiological data, chemical analysis based on smell and taste,

16:04readable text from an internal database of human fiction and non-fiction books,

16:08and a camera function which stores visual data for later viewing.

16:12It has a tendency to show up to these people that it's scanning in order to scan the reactions.

16:17Once upon a time, it seems that Probe E may have also had combat potential,

16:22given that it has a non-functional bullet's remaining counter on its HUD that forever reads,

16:26Zero Zero.

16:28The probe was recovered from a Christian-aligned sect of the Church of the Broken God,

16:32where it was used as a holy relic in the presence of U.S. President W.W. Solenoid,

16:36who was worshipping with the group at the time of recovery.

16:39Thankfully, he was very understanding about the whole thing,

16:42and pledged his continued support to the SCP Foundation.

16:45In amongst the vast catalogue of all human fiction,

16:48the document on Probe E that seemed to be of particular interest is one titled,

16:53Message, To Those Who Disabled Transmitters, Sent,

16:56which reads,

16:57Please clarify.

16:59Your projections have continuously been of low utility to journalist assimilation program.

17:05Your projections have been extremely inconsistent with recorded data of events.

17:10Recorded data of events indicates major developments not fully planned or accounted for.

17:15Discrepancy Priority 1.

17:17Retention of planetary civilization.

17:19If transmitters have been disabled, reinstall.

17:22If capable, record response.

17:24Do you not understand yourselves?

17:27Please clarify.

17:28Now check out The Last SCP, SCP-5999, This Is Where I Died,

17:33and Army of Super SCPs, SCP-001, Past and Future, for more.

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