SCP-3996

Interviewer: Dr. Claude Montague (Unreality Division).

Interviewee: Silas Harlington, de facto mayor of Ghost Town and long-term resident; reported to be the settlement's founder.

Date: 19/09/2000.

<Begin Log>

Dr. Montague: Good afternoon.

Mr. Harlington: Afternoon, sir. What can I do for y'all?

Dr. Montague: You can answer a few questions. We’re just a little curious about… this place.

Mr. Harlingon: Ghost Town? Or the whole tangential frontier?

Dr. Montague: …Tangential frontier?

Mr. Harlington: A name some fella came up with a few years ago. He liked some- well, I don’t what “television” is, but some kinda theatre show or something. Said that it called space the “final frontier”, so this must be a frontier a bit to the side. Tangential frontier.

Dr. Montague: I see. We’re curious about both. How was this town founded?

Mr. Harlington: Same way all the places on the frontier were founded; people looking for riches, and other folks like me trying to make a little money off ‘em. I came here with the first bunch back in ’89. There wasn’t much of a frontier left in the Dakotas then, what with all the Indians being herded into the reservations, and me and old Gul had heard about a strange place, a new frontier down Nevada way. We tracked down a guy who knew more- some artsy type, looking for inspiration- and stumbled across the horses one day.

Well, was a hard few years. Had to convince gullible easterners to come here, promised they’d get rich. We realised the aging thing pretty early on; I haven’t been back home since 1901, when I brought my wife over. Not my kids. They had their own life to lead.

Dr. Montague: What kind of “riches” did you promise people?

Mr. Harlington: The kind that are actually here. Why, look around you! This place is full of all kind of strange, devilish things. The potatolos are just their start. There’s rocks that tell you the future, strange trees that produce whatever fruit you want, flies that eat spiders, all sorts of stuff. You can’t make it back home, so we’d get collectors coming here for years. Those were the good days.

Dr. Montague: What happened?

Mr. Harlington: You know out west, where all the tribes are? Bunch of Indians and Chinamen, looking to stir up trouble. They started getting close, started raiding us. We got more guns and stuff from back home, but they had.. weird stuff. Lasers on the tops of their rifles. Bows and arrows that knew exactly where you were. A weird mix of strange engines and weird magic that we couldn’t stop.

Dr. Montague: You’re still here, though.

Mr. Harlington: Yeah, that was the thing; they never burnt our stuff down, or attacked people they didn’t have to. Don’t get me wrong, they killed a bunch of folks, but they only ever went for the weird stuff. All those rich, strange things we were hawking, they kept taking them away. Eventually, we just gave up. Stopped people from taking stuff, shut the whole thing down. The place became a ghost town for a while; seemed a fitting name, so we used it.

Anyway. That didn’t last long. We’re thriving now, ‘cos when people got wind of the fact that you couldn’t age, they all wanted to move here. We got electricity, a little cinema back in the ‘20s, those refrigerator things- a lot of stuff that helped folks out. There’s still some hardship- we probably shouldn’t eat so many taters- but it’s a nice life, and it lasts forever.

Dr. Montague: Didn’t you ever want to go back? To the prime dimension?

Mr. Harlington: What for? Frontier was drying up, and even the Indians have been shoved in the same boxes as everyone else. My kids are probably long dead, and their kids wouldn’t want to know me. And, hell, the immortality is sweet. If I tried to go back, I’d just die of old age.

Dr. Montague: So- what can you tell us about the rest of this place? What happens when you go further out?

Mr. Harlington: Well, there’s the nomads to the west. Fierce devils, but they mostly leave us alone nowadays. Tougher than us, too, so we don’t want to go too near them. Then there’s the cities, down to the far south. All grey concrete. The townfolk there all have cold hearts- don’t like us too much. Have lots of rules, regulations, temples. Not very nice. There’s nothing to the east; just boring desert forever. Not even any interesting devils or demons to tempt you.

Dr. Montague: And to the north?

Mr. Harlington: The north… it’s just dark up north. The sun emits darkness, not lights. Shadows are white, day is night. The wolves and bats live up there, preying on the weak. The people up there are friendly, but a bit odd. Best be wary if you want to go north.

Dr. Montague: I see. Thank you. There may be more questions later.

Mr. Harlington: Hey, I’m not going anywhere. I'll see you around.

<End Log>

<Begin Log>

U90-3 is sitting in the middle of a large snowy field. She appears to be drawing a map of her surroundings into the snow, presumably in order to better gauge her position. Several trees can be seen from a distance; the landscape is reminiscent of rural England. Snow continues to fall onto the field.

A figure can be seen approaching from the other side of the field. As it gets closer, it can be seen to be wearing hunting clothes worn by the Lakota Sioux during the mid-19th century.

U90-3: H-Hello! Hi!

U90-3 stands and waves at the figure. The figure continues to approach, before stopping approximately 3 metres away from U90-3. Aside from her clothing, she has an identical appearance to U90-3. U90-3 abruptly stops waving, and steps backwards a few paces.

Unknown: Hello.

U90-3: …Hi.

Unknown: There’s no need to panic.

U90-3: I wasn't. I've come to expect this kind of thing.

There is a pause of 10 seconds as U90-3 and the figure stare at one another.

U90-3: I was born in the reservation, in the Dakotas. My mother drank herself to death. My father left me when I was young.

Unknown: I was born in the great pasturelands of the Sioux. My mother sliced her own throat when my father disappeared.

U90-3: You're one of the nomads we saw earlier. Hunting the potatolo.

Unknown: You're one of the settled who tried to disrupt this place.

U90-3: Disrupt?

Unknown: The strangeness of this place cannot be taken back home, cannot be sold to others. This place has to be as it is; the unknown.

U90-3: I don't understand.

Unknown: This is the edge, Margaret Blue Wolf. This is the edge of reality, the shining curve where real meets unreal and breaks down. Keep going and you'll find a ghostly ger, that'll take you to my world, where the nomads rule and the settled dwell only where they are untouched. Go south and you shall pass through a shimmering haze to a city of stone and sacrifice. Go north, and you'll find the tribes of snow and oil, where dark is light and light is dark. Go further east, west, north and south, and you shall find new frontiers and new peoples who gaze across them. The City of Candles. Alagadda. The Imam's respite. This is the edge of all of them. That's its role. It can never be settled, never plundered. It's the edge.

The unknown individual sighs heavily.

Unknown: If it ever wasn't the edge, then it'd dissolve itself. If it was another heartland, another place where reality obeyed its own rules, dreamlike or otherwise, it'd be pointless. We couldn't let that happen. It's too tantalising a place. It's whatever you see, just over the horizon, appearing to obey its own logic but never quite obeying any laws. It's an understanding just beyond your reach. It is the tangential frontier.

U90-3: I- I don't really understand.

Unknown: <laughing> Neither do I, really. Tell me, do you have a Red Doe in your world?

U90-3: She's called Martha.

Unknown: And are you happy there? Are you content? I wasn't. I had to see the edge, the edge of everything. I think that's what you wanted too, Blue Wolf. Because you're me. You can't stand to cook and hunt in a ger either.

U90-3: Are you happy here? Transgressing all the lines of reality-

Unknown: -and entering the void, the void we joined up to see…

U90-3: We- I- we have a duty.

Unknown: This is the edge. There are no duties here. There are no families, no memories, no homes. There is only the twisting, the unknown, everyone's unknown. The shifting mountains, the clinging survivors, the void eternally changing to challenge us. This is all there is, Blue Wolf. This is the frontier.

There is another pause for 4 seconds.

U90-3: When did I get so confident?

Unknown: When you learnt to value the unknown more than the known.

U90-3" 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1: On 07/03/2001, exploration began of SCP-3996-1 by MTF Upsilon-90 "Andalusian Dogs". Composed of team members U90-1 "Persistent Memory" (Captain), U90-2 "Burning Giraffe", U90-3 "Reflecting Swan" and U90-4 "Meditative Rose", the team was instructed to proceed west and report on what they found. A table detailing of the anomalous events and organisms encountered can be seen below:

Time (Hours:Minutes)	Distance from SCP-3996 (km)	Anomaly observed
00:45	2.1 km	A series of fruitbats, composed of sand, abruptly flew upwards from the desert, and flew north. As they did so, they began to glow, eventually reaching a light output of 30,000 lumens as they reached the edge of U90's field of vision.
01:45	4.5 km	The landscape has since become noticeably rockier and contains more flora, especially gorse bushes and grass. The U90 passed betweeen two rocks; protrusions from the rocks in the shape of human hands then manifested. They attempted to seize the MTF members and drag them towards the boulders. All members of U90 were able to clear the rocks unharmed; the hands disappeared, before several appendages in the shape of human arms instead manifested themselves. A protrusion at the end of each appendage resembled a human head, with an Italian tragedy mask in lieu of a face. All of the masks stared at U90, and were continuing to do so when U90 lost visual contact.
03:59	5.8 km	U90 had just cleared the rocky area, coming onto a large area of steppe or grassland. A large quantity of "potatalos", followed by a series of humanoids on horseback, then came into view. The humanoids were armed with either bows or rifles, and were attempting to hunt the potatalo; they managed to fell several of them and took them with them back to the south. Of note was that the clothing and practices of these individuals were reminiscent of a number of nomadic horseback riders throughout history, such as the Mongols, Kerait, Lakota Sioux, Kyrgyz, Bedouin and Berbers.
06:29	8.1 km	The MTF was moving through a thick swamp. The entire ground and sky abruptly disappeared, leaving the MTF falling in a black void. The void suddenly transformed into a sandy desert, which the MTF then fell onto unharmed. Their instruments recorded that they were in the same position as before; a brief reconaissance mission showed that the swamp had apparently been transformed but that the rest of the surrounding landscape remained intact.
06:48	8.3 km	While still in the sandy desert, a series of large pocket watches, which appeared to be melting, manifested 100m away from U90-1 "Persistent Memory". All of the watches headed for U90-1 at a fast speed, emitting a series of Spanish expletives. When they were 1m away from U90-1, they abruptly demanifested.

After 7 hours within SCP-3996-1, the decision was taken to return to SCP-3996. However, contact was lost with U90-3 "Reflecting Swan" shortly after this decision was taken; the remaining members of Upsilon-90 attempted to search for their missing teammate, but could not find her. The decision was taken to return to base; U90-3 has not resumed contact.

Addendum 2: On 12/03/2001, U90-3's camera and audio feed abruptly resumed contact for several minutes, before cutting out for a second time. Attempts to contact U90-3 failed. A log of the transmission is below; all dialogue has been translated from Lakota Sioux, U90-3's first language.

+Exploration Log 1

-Exploration Log 2

<Begin Log>

U90-3 is sitting in the middle of a large snowy field. She appears to be drawing a map of her surroundings into the snow, presumably in order to better gauge her position. Several trees can be seen from a distance; the landscape is reminiscent of rural England. Snow continues to fall onto the field.

A figure can be seen approaching from the other side of the field. As it gets closer, it can be seen to be wearing hunting clothes worn by the Lakota Sioux during the mid-19th century.

U90-3: H-Hello! Hi!

U90-3 stands and waves at the figure. The figure continues to approach, before stopping approximately 3 metres away from U90-3. Aside from her clothing, she has an identical appearance to U90-3. U90-3 abruptly stops waving, and steps backwards a few paces.

Unknown: Hello.

U90-3: …Hi.

Unknown: There’s no need to panic.

U90-3: I wasn't. I've come to expect this kind of thing.

There is a pause of 10 seconds as U90-3 and the figure stare at one another.

U90-3: I was born in the reservation, in the Dakotas. My mother drank herself to death. My father left me when I was young.

Unknown: I was born in the great pasturelands of the Sioux. My mother sliced her own throat when my father disappeared.

U90-3: You're one of the nomads we saw earlier. Hunting the potatolo.

Unknown: You're one of the settled who tried to disrupt this place.

U90-3: Disrupt?

Unknown: The strangeness of this place cannot be taken back home, cannot be sold to others. This place has to be as it is; the unknown.

U90-3: I don't understand.

Unknown: This is the edge, Margaret Blue Wolf. This is the edge of reality, the shining curve where real meets unreal and breaks down. Keep going and you'll find a ghostly ger, that'll take you to my world, where the nomads rule and the settled dwell only where they are untouched. Go south and you shall pass through a shimmering haze to a city of stone and sacrifice. Go north, and you'll find the tribes of snow and oil, where dark is light and light is dark. Go further east, west, north and south, and you shall find new frontiers and new peoples who gaze across them. The City of Candles. Alagadda. The Imam's respite. This is the edge of all of them. That's its role. It can never be settled, never plundered. It's the edge.

The unknown individual sighs heavily.

Unknown: If it ever wasn't the edge, then it'd dissolve itself. If it was another heartland, another place where reality obeyed its own rules, dreamlike or otherwise, it'd be pointless. We couldn't let that happen. It's too tantalising a place. It's whatever you see, just over the horizon, appearing to obey its own logic but never quite obeying any laws. It's an understanding just beyond your reach. It is the tangential frontier.

U90-3: I- I don't really understand.

Unknown: <laughing> Neither do I, really. Tell me, do you have a Red Doe in your world?

U90-3: She's called Martha.

Unknown: And are you happy there? Are you content? I wasn't. I had to see the edge, the edge of everything. I think that's what you wanted too, Blue Wolf. Because you're me. You can't stand to cook and hunt in a ger either.

U90-3: Are you happy here? Transgressing all the lines of reality-

Unknown: -and entering the void, the void we joined up to see…

U90-3: We- I- we have a duty.

Unknown: This is the edge. There are no duties here. There are no families, no memories, no homes. There is only the twisting, the unknown, everyone's unknown. The shifting mountains, the clinging survivors, the void eternally changing to challenge us. This is all there is, Blue Wolf. This is the frontier.

There is another pause for 4 seconds.

U90-3: When did I get so confident?

Unknown: When you learnt to value the unknown more than the known.

U90-3 …Come on, then. Let's go.

At this point, the air around U90-3 appears to explode into shards. The shards then transform into snow, falling into the ground. The unknown individual has apparently disappeared. The camera falls to the floor.

At this point, the transmission abruptly cuts out.

<End Log>