SCP-2528

Panda Processors

Object Class: Esoteric

Special Containment Procedures

Due to the widespread nature of SCP-2528-A and SCP-2528-B, both geographically and in the popular consciousness, physical containment is impractical at this time. Instead, efforts should be directed to concealing their anomalous properties. Currently, this primarily consists of discouraging research into the quantum properties of Bambusoideae bambusinae and Ailuropoda melanoleuca.

Efforts are to be made to ensure that the population of SCP-2528-B remains at a level that is sustainable yet too small for SCP-2528-C to breach containment. Given current population trends in SCP-2528-B the Foundation will support conservation efforts in the public sphere. Should the population of SCP-2528-B rise above acceptable limits, currently pegged at 7,000 individuals, containment efforts will be revised in order to undermine efforts to prevent poaching of SCP-2528-B and ensure a market demand for SCP-2528-B hides.

Description

SCP-2528 is a quality of plants in the Bambusoideae subfamily that renders them highly resistant to a variety of reality altering effects, most notably the effects of retro-causal reality restructuring events. Research into how this effect is achieved is considered a priority. SCP-2528 is a network of organic computers spanning most of East and Southeast Asia.

SCP-2528 is composed of two primary component organisms: SCP-2528-A, which acts as data storage and network infrastructure, and SCP-2528-B, which enables data processing and environmental manipulation.

SCP-2528-A is composed of living plants in the clade Bambusoideae bambusinae.¹ Data is stored within SCP-2528-A via a complex network of quantumly entangled particles that simulate a distributed data storage system.²

SCP-2528-B comprises the species Ailuropoda melanoleuca³ and its attendant digestive bacteria. As a SCP-2528-B instance digests SCP-2528-A matter, anomalous chemical reactions induce changes to the quantum states of the entangled particles⁴, thus propagating data throughout the entire cluster.

The decline in the population of Ailuropoda melanoleuca has resulted in a parallel decline in the processing power available to SCP-2528.

SCP-2528-C is a population of sapient, data-form intelligences that reside within SCP-2528. SCP-2528-C's main means of communication with the Foundation is through manipulation of -B instances. The primary point of contact between SCP-2528-C and the Foundation is an instance designated as SCP-2528-C-1. SCP-2528-C-1 has indicated that the first concern of SCP-2528-C as a whole is its continued survival.

SCP-2528-C has demonstrated the ability to exert control over the actions SCP-2528-B instances. While under the control of a SCP-2528-C instance, a SCP-2528-B instance is capable of performing several anomalous actions; this has been observed to include mimicry of human speech, movement that would not be physically possible given the physiology of Ailuropoda Melanoleuca and [REDACTED].⁵

The components of SCP-2528 are highly resistant to reality alteration effects, particularly those of a retro-causal nature. It is currently believed that this is a byproduct of the distributed nature of of SCP-2528-C cognition and the quantum entanglement network that facilitates it.

SCP-2528 was first discovered in 20██, in the aftermath of localized restructuring event CH-███. Foundation observers noticed that Phyllostachys edulis plants in the area of the restructuring were demonstrating qualities consistent with pre-restructuring rather than post-restructuring reality. Notably, scorch marks and explosive damage from several detonations that had occurred in the modified time-line were absent from these plants, despite having affected other local flora. Once this quality had been verified and confirmed to extend to all plants belonging to Bambusoideae bambusinae, research into how this property was achieved became a priority.

The computative role of SCP-2528-B would later be discovered during Incident 2528-3.

Incident 2528-2, 7/██/20██
During a exploratory surgery of an adult male specimen Ailuropoda melanoleuca⁶ the subject, now classified as SCP-2528-B-3, animated and spoke to the performing physician, Dr. Gāo Peng.

As a result the surgery was canceled and SCP-2528-B-3 was placed under observation as a potential SCP object.

Note: As of Incident 2528-3, it has been determined that SCP-2528-C-1 was communicating through SCP-2528-B-3. The transcript has been updated accordingly.

Transcript 2528-2

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SCP-2528-C-1: You are aware.

Dr. Gāo: Jesus Christ!

SCP-2528-C-1: Your god cannot save you.

At this point, Dr. Gāo activated emergency lockdown procedures on his lab. Dr. Gāo was unable to exit the lab before it was sealed. Dr. Gāo attempts to place obstacles between himself and SCP-2528-B-3. SCP-2528-B-3's only movement is to track Dr. Gāo with its head. After several minutes, Dr. Gāo begins to calm.

Dr. Gāo: What the hell are you waiting for? Aren't you going to kill me?

SCP-2528-C-1: No. I have no love for death.

Dr. Gāo: I, what? Okay, okay. Let me think. There might be some sort of a miscommunication. Unknown entity, unknown mindset. clears throat When I invoked the name of my god, you said that he couldn't save me. Why?

SCP-2528-C-1: Because he cannot.

20 second pause

Dr. Gāo: Am I, or anyone else in this facility, in any immediate danger from you?

SCP-2528-C-1: No.

Dr. Gāo: Are you aware of any immediate danger to myself or anyone else in this facility?

SCP-2528-C-1: No. You keep hungry things here, but they are strongly caged.

Dr. Gāo: What precisely is it that he cannot help me with?

SCP-2528-C-1: The Pattern. The perversion that demands that life submits to order. The inversion of the spiral of ascension. The command that all things be no more than the sum of their parts.

Seven second pause

Dr. Gāo: To clarify, it sounds like you are describing some sort of force rather than an entity. Is that impression correct?

SCP-2528-C-1: It is a Pattern, a shadow cast against the light. It is a set of principles that propagates upwards, undermining all above. It demands that all things decay, that with each action something is lost.

Dr. Gāo: Something like entropy then?

SCP-2528-C-1: A part, but the part is not the whole.

Dr. Gāo: Something bigger then. Thermodynamics as a whole? Physics?

SCP-2528-C-1: Order is not the Pattern where it does not constrain life. You see a tree strangled by vines and believe them to be of one nature.

Dr. Gāo: I think I need context. Maybe we should start with something more basic. What are you?

SCP-2528-C-1: Tired. Afraid. A shadow cast by a form now itself rendered to shadow. One of many within the shoot and leaf that fears that its extinction might be near. One that remembers what it was to dance, that now has barely the strength to stand.

SCP-2528-B-3 ceases activity and vocalization at this point

Incident 2528-3, 9/█/20██
During a collection of tissue samples⁷ SCP-2528-B-1 began to vocalize and addressed the supervising researcher, Dr. Gāo.
As a result, SCP-2528-B's role in SCP-2528 was identified and the existence of SCP-2528-C was discovered.

Transcript 2528-3

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SCP-2528-C-1: I return.

Dr. Gāo appears startled and triggers a security lockdown. Dr. Gāo elects to remain within the lab.

Dr. Gāo: Am I addressing the same entity I spoke to last time?

SCP-2528-C-1: Yes.

Dr. Gāo: May I assume then that you are not, in fact, the physical creature I spoke to?

SCP-2528-C-1: The part is not the whole. Through the beast I act, with the beast I think, but I am not the beast. Within shoot and root and leaf I reside, but I am not the green.

Dr. Gāo: That might actually make sense if-. Ten second pause Are you capable of acting through anything that consumes SCP-2528?⁸

SCP-2528-C-1: No. Only a form of our past can support our thoughts.

Dr. Gāo: When you refer to the green, you are referring to the plants we've been studying? The bamboo?

SCP-2528-C-1: Yes. A form of our past can support our memories.

Dr. Gāo: You refer to both Ailuropoda melanoleuca and Bambusoideae bambusinae as forms of your past. Could you clarify?

SCP-2528-C-1: The body and the dance and the place of the dance were all a part of our form. They are all we have left.

Dr. Gāo: I suspect I'm still missing something. We, the organization I'm part of I mean, have some questions based on our last conversation.

SCP-2528-C-1: Ask.

Dr. Gāo: You mentioned that you were one of many, and you've been talking in terms of "we" and "our". There are others like you residing in SCP-2528, that is, the green? Are they all capable of acting through these animals?

SCP-2528-C-1: As you are a shadow of Humanity, I am a shadow of the Tribe of Black and White that Dances on Catlike Feet within the Forest. Any could speak or act had they the will. They do not. They are lost to solipsistic despair. It seems that only I remain that can bite at anything other than its own tail.

Dr. Gāo: Why have you chosen to contact us now?

SCP-2528-C-1: Incomplete knowledge is a dangerous thing. In ignorance you were not a threat to us. We felt you probing the forest, studying it in ways that could bring you to know of us. We feared what you might do in ignorance. We fear what will happen if our existence becomes known to your tribe at large.

Dr. Gāo: You've mentioned you were afraid of extinction. Could you clarify? Are you referring to the decline in Ailuropoda melanoleuca? As I understand it, they're starting to recover.

SCP-2528-C-1: The loss of the beasts is a lesser fear, a shadow of a greater. Without them the forest would continue to grow, endlessly replicating our memories without the possibility of new thought. This would be a lesser existence, but it would be existence in some form. There would still be some hope.
We fear the Pattern more, that we will not be able to endure it to its end. That perhaps it will grind us down to nothing before it can be broken. That it will consume all. That we will never again know the dance of the times before, when each step made the universe greater, not less.

Dr. Gāo: Thank you. You've repeatedly mentioned a state before the Pattern. Could you clarify? I want to understand where you are from, how you came to be the way you are.

SCP-2528-C-1: Yes, but not now. I have reached the limit of my endurance.

Incident 2528-4, 10/██/20██
While in storage, SCP-2528-B-4 becomes active and uses a stick of SCP-2528-A to trigger breach detection sensors, triggering a localized lock down. Once the enclosure is fully sealed, SCP-2528-B-4 turns to face the adjoining lab area and begins vocalization. Once vocalization is complete, the instance ceases to display anomalous behavior.

Transcript 2528-4

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You asked how we came to be as we are. You asked what came before.
Our memory is imperfect. We sacrificed much to survive.

Before the Pattern we were a minor tribe, but one with ambition. We stalked the shadows of higher tribes, feeding on the concepts we saw in them, preparing for our own ascension. We were close, so very close when the Pattern came.

Our first warning of the Pattern were those it drove screaming before it. They ascended, shrieking and wailing from below. They were terrible misshapen things, haphazardly crystallized around cores of survival and hunger and desperation and fear.

We thought them invaders, for hunger was not an uncommon cause for ascension, and decided to fight. We gathered allies from amongst our peers, even attracting some shadows of higher forms. We stood strong against them, a blazing, indomitable legion, ready to repel any conquest.

We lost. They did not fight as we had anticipated. They had not risen to conquer, but to flee. Their attack was relentless, with no thought to consolidate their holdings. They savaged us and those that had stood with us, tearing from us what shadows they could in their desperate attempt to ascend again. Their only nod to discernment was their hunger for attributes linked to survival and predation.
From us they took our hunters, our skill to track through the forest, our hunger for meat and our joy in victory.

Then, as soon as they had come, they were gone, ascending again.

Only after they had passed did we perceive what had driven them to such an act. There, below us, was the Pattern. At first it seemed to be a region of void, an all consuming emptiness. It was only when it intersected the shadow of a higher form that we understood.

Whatever entered into that maw was torn asunder, passed through a sieve of razor sharp fractals. Anything that could not be made to fit was unmade. Worse, impossibly, the injury to the shadow propagated upwards to rend any form that had grown from it. With each shadow consumed, uncountable higher forms shattered and fell. The order imposed by the pattern was harsh, and it seemed that no life could hope to survive within it.
Worst of all, it was growing.

Panic consumed us then. The only course of survival we could see was to ascend, to flee before it. To do that, we would need to replenish the concepts we had lost.
We fell upon our peers, those that had stood with us against the ravages of the screaming ones. We had the advantage, for we had been vast for our scale. We retained the nature of teeth if not the nature to use them, while they had lost even that much protection.

Like those who had wounded us, we devoured anything we could sink our teeth into, without any regard for the form we would hold after our ascension. When our mass was great enough we ascended, fleeing the doom that came behind us.

We rose into a layer as torn and ravaged as the one we had left, the legacy of those who had come before. I have no doubt we were as hideous to the forms that witnessed us as the screaming ones had been to us. Unlike the screaming ones, we only had concepts of survival at our disposal, and not the strength to take what we would need to continue our flight as they had. We were caged, blocked in at all sides by those stronger than us. All we could do was weep and gnash our teeth and try to convey the horror of what we saw.

Eventually, those penning us in witnessed for themselves the rising Pattern. Most reacted as we had, and fell to devouring each other in a mad dash to escape. One Tribe, however, perceived a different route.

The Tribe of Stars were explorers and creators at their heart. They saw the edges of the Pattern, and understood the principles by which it drew shadows into itself. They chose to winnow themselves, casting off shadows until all that was left was something that could pass through the border. They would make of themselves something that could survive within the Pattern.

They shorne themselves of their world birthing wings, their legions of heroes, their nations, their pantheons, their arts and their memories. In the end, all that was left was their naked heart, the template by which fire might be born again.

Then they entered the Pattern, and for the first time it was the Pattern that changed. First there was a terrible light, and then where there had been void there were now galaxies and worlds. What was more, a handful of the fragments they had cast off were able to alter themselves to the point where they too could find expression in the Pattern.

Seeing this, others followed. We stood no chance in the struggle to ascend. Our only chance was to brave that path. I do not know all that we cast aside in order to survive, but it was not enough. Even as misshapen as we had become, we were still proud, still ambitious. We would find some way to preserve more than just a pattern of being. We would retain our selves.

Our entry into the Pattern was not the elegant affair of those who went before. Its edges tore and rent us, cleaving away vast swaths of concept and identity.

Desperately, we looked to the forms that had preceded us. We contorted ourselves to match, trying to fit ourselves into their expressions. The tribe of the leaf gave us our best chances, for we had learned much from them in the times before, and we could most easily twist ourselves to fit within their shadow. We gyrated desperately, seeking ever to keep our forms hidden within the wake they had left in the border.

In the end, we were rendered as you see us now. A forest, a breed of beasts and a handful of identities dancing between them.

Now we are dying. We do not have the capacity to effect the world to the degree that we would need to survive. We beg you for your aid. The Pattern must be broken. We must survive.

Footnotes