SCP-3632

5. prize of victory of the men of KHEMENNU, who devoted their most excellent minds and many years of their labour to the Pyramid… [illegible] gone from a seedling in the mind of the nomarch MERESANKH to a splendid structure, which towers over the city,
6. and it has been built in the name of DJEHUTI, whom all men of intellect aspire to
[illegible]
9. as it was a structure most ingenious and pleasing to his sight, he took the whole city of KHEMENNU to the wondrous land of BROT KRUMA beyond the Sun,
10. where his chosen followers will live in bliss forever.

-Unidentified tablet fragments, dating to the early Third Dynasty

In the later years of Huangdi’s² rule, the god Lei Gong, who could control thunder and rode in a flying city, visited his capital of Xinzheng. The boy Ji Mǐn, who was one of Huangdi’s sons, was a great admirer of Lei Gong and called to him, saying, “Look at the canals I have made by the river: they protect the city from flooding. Look at the wooden birds I have made: they carry our people from one end of our kingdom to the other.³ Is this not pleasing to you?”

But Lei Gong was angry and said, “My people have been travelling for seven thousand years; they have travelled past the Moon and beyond the stars. But you bring them no food and no gifts, not even some workers to ease their burden. Instead you bring me tricks and toys, all of which I have seen before, and think this will please me?”
And there was a great storm above Xinzheng, which knocked the palace roof down, and floods lasting for two years.

-Redacted passage of the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, circa 1st century BC

The Bird and the Floating Island

There once was a wise old Bird, named Thoth, that greatly desired the miraculous floating island of his neighbours: a miniature world, much like the one we live on now, with all manner of plants and animals. His neighbours, the Pistreans, were monstrous creatures with fins and fangs and rough, scaly skin, and they spread all across the island until the plants were gone and the animals dead. Desperate for aid, they called for help, and Thoth disguised himself as a wrinkled old crane and went to them.

“Wise crane,” said Akheilos,⁴ their leader, “we have no food to eat and no crops to plant. Our children lie awake in their beds at night, keening with hunger. All we ask for is some bread, to fill our bellies and keep our people alive.”

For this Thoth was glad, for he did not care for Akheilos or his people, and was not overmuch concerned with keeping the Pistreans alive. But because he sensed an opportunity for himself, he opened his crooked beak into a smile and said, “My friend, your troubles are my troubles; I promise you that your people will never have to go hungry again. But for everything, there is a price.”

“Anything,” pleaded the lord of the Pistreans, and Thoth preened his tattered wings and said, “Akheilos, my friend, as much as it pains me to say this, was it not you who led your people into famine? If I do this thing for you, you must leave the Pistreans and be bound outside the Universe, so they do not suffer the same fate again.”

With a heavy heart, Akheilos agreed, and was bound and cast outside the universe. And Thoth was glad, because he knew that this was the only creature that could defeat him in what he planned to do.

To the remaining Pistreans, he said, “Here is a spell that will give you all the bread you shall ever need: not a one of you shall ever be forsaken again.” And giving them the spell, he departed that place as speedily as he could.

The Pistreans, being a trusting people, immediately opened the spell that wise old Thoth had given them, and gave shouts of joy as the few crumbs of bread they had left began to grow in size. But their shouts turned to groans of despair, then screams, as the crumbs continued to grow and grow, filling their plates and then their homes and finally, their entire floating world.

When Thoth returned to that place, not a single Pistrean was left alive: all were buried beneath the vast, undulating waves of bread that covered the surface of the planet. And seeing this, Thoth began to work his magic. From the bread sprang up something that looked like plants and animals, at least to the untrained eye, and from under the planet’s new crust rose the Pistreans, transformed into a new and terrible form of life. And they built palaces and edifices that were testaments to Thoth’s great power, even if they were not entirely real.

Outside of the Universe, Akheilos still lies bound, unaware of the fate of his people. Let the moral that he learns from this tale be thus: An old crane may be very, very wise, but that does not mean he is on your side.

-Second-century Italian folk tale, anachronistically attributed to Aesop

So.

By now, you’ve probably figured out that SCP-3632-1 is very real. We mostly call him Thoth at this point – containment procedure’s fallen apart, but can you really blame us?

We should have recognized from the history records that Thoth has a penchant for setting traps, and we walked right into one he set. SCP-3632, the buildings, the entities – it was all elaborate bait he set for us, a means of transporting some kind of weaponized idea back to Earth. And we fell for it, because it was only a Safe anomaly and there were so many other, catastrophic, world-ending terrors we had to deal with on a daily basis. And here we are. Let that be a lesson to… well, who, really? There’s almost no one left.

Humanity never stood a chance. The meme was across the planet in a matter of hours. We still have some colleagues holed up in Lunar Area-32, but it’s only a matter of time until they run out of supplies. In the end, there were no voracious reality-eaters, no walking pillars of flesh, just… a single, stupid meme that got past our filters, and suddenly the people we swore to protect entire population of Earth is roaming around, cawing and pecking at the ground. And lately, there have been other, more disturbing changes.

If you’re reading this – if at this point, by some miracle, you’re still alive – you’ll probably be reading this document, trying to figure out what went wrong. Well, we’re still alive too, and Thoth won’t see us coming. Come to Site-18. We’re there, the birds and the not-quite-humans that managed to avoid the apocalypse, and we’ve got a plan.

I can’t tell you if it’s a good one, but we’ve got a plan.

…

Out of all the things that could have ended the world, I still can't believe it was fucking birds.

-Dr. Frederick Hoygull, Avian Division Head