Neutralized instances of SCP-419-JP, remaining in Easter Island.
Item#: SCP-419-JP
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-419-JP instances are currently contained in a low-risk object containment chamber at Site-81██. Access and experiments require prior approval of 3 Senior Researchers who are in charge of biological objects, and are to be performed in the presence of at least one other researcher.
In order to suppress data concerning the existence of civilization that created and employed SCP-419-JP, all pertinent documents are to officially be declared lost. A cover story regarding the decline of said civilization, resulting from deforestation and depletion of natural resources, is to be disseminated to the general public and the archaeological community.
Description: SCP-419-JP was discovered the in 1930s when the government of the Republic of Chile was considering the sale of Easter Island1. Based on recovered records, it is believed that SCP-419-JP caused the decline of Easter Island civilization that is described below. Although it has been theorized that as many as 70 instances of SCP-419-JP may have existed in the past, most instances have since been destroyed or otherwise neutralized. The Foundation recovered only 5 anomalous instances, of which 2 of those were later neutralized as a result of experiments. Currently, 2 active and 1 dormant instance of SCP-419-JP are under containment.
Instance SCP-419-JP are statues composed of tuff. Material analysis has dated their construction to before the indigenous Polynesian people settled Easter Island in the 4th century CE. While the exterior of an SCP-419-JP instance is commonly known as "Moai"2, the anomaly is the unknown organism located inside each instance. This organism transforms into tuff when it exposed to air in its inert status, neutralizing SCP-419-JP's anomalous properties at the same time. As such, disassembly of SCP-419-JP has proven infeasible.
SCP-419-JP enters an active state when pieces of limestone in the shape of eyeballs are fitted into its eye sockets. For the sake of convenience, these pieces were designated SCP-419-JP-A, as they were initially discovered along with SCP-419-JP. These were, however, discovered to be non-anomalous in nature, and largely any material crafted to fit the sockets of SCP-419 is enough to trigger its anomalous effect.
Upon activation, the lower half of SCP-419-JP's face melts and becomes highly adhesive. When an object touches the molten part, it is held firmly in place and then drawn into SCP-419-JP via peristalsis. If the input material is an inanimate object or a deceased lifeform, SCP-419-JP will return to its "molten" state once again. If the target is a living organism, SCP-419-JP returns to its original condition and begins preparations for its production phase. If either piece of SCP-419-JP-A is removed from SCP-419-JP's eye sockets during the this process, SCP-419-JP will return to its inactive state and its input creature will disappear. It should be noted, however, that no matter whether the process is aborted or not, once the input creature has been absorbed into SCP-419-JP, it is irretrievably lost.
During its production phase, SCP-419-JP reorganizes the input creature’s biological structure. Reorganized subjects become capable of producing fertilized eggs3 outside the body and becoming pregnant with genetically identical offspring (SCP-419-JP-B). This reorganization applies regardless of gender, and CT scanning have shown that the pregnancies simultaneously occur even in multiple parts other than the abdomen or the womb. SCP-419-JP-B instances develop ██,███ times faster than non-anomalous fetuses, and are discharged from SCP-419-JP via a process mimicking childbirth once they are sufficiently developed to be sexually reproductive. The time required for this process differs for each species, and the size of input creature is directly proportional to amount of offspring. In the case of humans (Homo sapiens), SCP-419-JP will discharge the first SCP-419-JP-B instance █ hours after the activation, after which it will continue producing 50-100 instances of SCP-419-JP-B for approximately ███ hours. Once finished, SCP-419-JP-A disappears and SCP-419-JP returns to its normal state. CT scans have failed to detect the input creature, and it has believed that the SCP-419-A instance eventually expires and/or is consumed during the production process.
It has been proven that SCP-419-JP consumes the surrounding soil during this production process. However, SCP-419-JP only absorbs soil with a certain proportion of water and minerals: sand, gravel and rubble are not consumed. Although it has been confirmed that SCP-419-JP absorbs soil through its ground contact point, the amount of energy derived from the absorbed soil should still be insufficient to produce SCP-419-JP-B instances. How SCP-419-JP converts this energy remains unknown. If SCP-419-JP is prevented from absorbing soil, the production rate of SCP-419-JP-B will decrease substantially and SCP-419-JP returns to its inactive status earlier than usual.
It is worth noting that SCP-419-JP requires a cooldown period between production phases. If SCP-419-JP continues production for over 4,000 days without an interval of 20 days or more between phases, SCP-419-JP will enter a prolonged dormant state. While it is hypothesized that the dormant state can last for decades or even centuries, the exact period of dormancy and the upper limit of continuous production have yet to be ascertained, mainly due to the impractical time periods such experiments would require. It has been confirmed that absorbed subjects are kept alive within dormant SCP-419-JP instances, and that production resumes immediately at the conclusion of a dormant period.
Addendum: The following is a revised history of Easter Island, complemented by data from initially recovered records.
A View of the Monuments of Easter Island, Rapanui
by William Hodges (1775)
The Dawn of Civilization
There is evidence that the Polynesians had been conducting the experiments of the SCP-419-JP found at Rano Raraku4 since their settling on Easter Island in the 4th century. Interpreting the production of SCP-419-JP-B as a gift from their ancestral spirits, they performed a monthly religious ceremony for the breeding the livestock via its anomalous properties. This gradually developed a separate religious culture, and Rapa Nui ancestral statues modelled on SCP-419-JP began appearing in the 7th century.Development and Decline
Rapa Nui ancestor worship is estimated to have continued for about 600 years. However, with improvements in living standards, the islanders also began breeding slaves to comprise the labour force for the creation and transportation of Moai.The first immigrants gained an understanding of the anomaly's nature and established a cooldown period to avoid dormancy, but this changed as time went by. As the population increased, the formerly religious ceremony of SCP-419-JP was performed more frequently for producing livestock to provide for the islanders. The islanders used SCP-419-JP instances diligently, unknowing of their long dormancy periods.
Once an instance entered dormancy, the other instances were made to shoulder an additional load to compensate. With their frequency of usage inevitably increasing, SCP-419-JP instances became dormant one after another. The islanders were soon faced with a critical food shortage: The number of livestock dropped sharply, the rich soil had already been consumed by SCP-419-JP, while at the same time, the production of slaves had led to a population boom. There were not even enough resources to construct ships to escape the island. The islanders began fighting with each other over the remaining resources, and worse, some records have shown evidence of cannibalism. In the middle of warfare and confusion, they scrambled for and sometimes destroyed active instances of SCP-419-JP to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. The majority of the dormant instances were likewise destroyed.
In search of a solution, the islanders quarried material from Rano Raraku, the origin of SCP-419-JP, to construct non-anomalous statues resembling SCP-419-JP. In the final stages of the Easter Island civilization, many incomplete Moai statues were abandoned at Rano Raraku.
Civilization Resets
It is theorized that all inhabitants became extinct due to conflicts and starvation. After several decades of unrecorded history, many dormant SCP-419-JP instances became active once again and discharged a small number of slaves and livestock. Those SCP-419-JP-B instances are recognized as "native islanders" in subsequent records. By the time that Europeans discovered Easter Island in 1722, they were living at Neolithic levels due to the reset of civilization.This is a very rare, ironic case: The demise of civilization was not directly caused by the anomalous objects themselves, but indirectly due to the civilization having become dependent upon the objects' anomalous properties.