Your phone suddenly vibrates. A text alert, nothing too surprising about
that… but you don’t recognize the number. You open the message and there’s no text,
just a picture. A strange figure dressed all in black, with
a face that looks like the skull of a dog. “Who sent this?” you think to yourself,
“is this a prank?” You try to put it out of your mind and go
about your day. The next day there’s another message from
the same number. You open this one to find the same dog skull
faced creature staring back at you, but this time you recognize the background. Is that your house he’s standing in front
of? Now you’re getting a little freaked out. Someone is trying to mess with you, you’re
sure of it. But what can you do? Another couple days pass and you get another
message. You don’t need to look to know it’s that
same number again, you’ve been getting plenty of these over the last few days. You’re really scared now and you run out
of the house to your car. You’ve got to get out of here. You drive, and while stopped at a light you
decide to finally check this latest message and see what it is. It’s the creature again, but this time,
it’s a picture of him sitting in the backseat of your car. You put your phone down and slowly turn your
head - Hi! I’m Dr. Bob, and THIS is SCP-1471, also
known as... Mal-O version one point oh point oh. SCP-1471 is a very interesting anomaly that’s
not really a creature, or a monster, or even an object. It’s a mobile app. It’s 9.8 megabytes in size and is freely
available in online application stores where it’s listed under the name Mal-O version
one point oh point oh. There’s no developer listed on any of the
stores, and it seems as though the app is somehow able to bypass the normal application
approval process and appear directly on the stores for wide distribution. Once SCP-1471 is downloaded and installed
on a device, there are no icons, shortcuts, or widgets like you’d expect when installing
software. It also does not appear on program managers
and once installed, it seems there’s no way to remove it. Within three to six hours of installing the
app, the individual whose device it is will begin receiving mysterious picture messages. All of these images will have one thing in
common - somewhere in the foreground or background is a large humanoid figure with a canine-like
skull for a head and long black hair. This creature has been designated SCP-1471-A. Sometime during the first 24 hours following
the installation of SCP-1471, the individual’s device will start to receive slightly different
images from before. These images still always contain instances
of 1471-A, but now the locations will be recognizable to the individual. These pictures will be of places that the
individual regularly frequents, like their local grocery store, their school, or their
work. These sorts of images will continue to be
received until 48 hours since the initial installation has passed. At that point, the device will start to receive
images of places that the individual recently visited, like an image of the restaurant where
they picked up your lunch an hour ago. Just as before, all of these images have SCP-1471-A
somewhere in them, as if it’s been following them and wants them to know it. After 72 hours things get even stranger. Now the pictures received by the individual
will be of them in real time. They might receive a picture of themself sitting
on the couch taken in that exact moment, except SCP-1471-A is standing right behind them. But when they look there’s nothing there. It’s as if someone is photoshopping in this
bizarre, canid creature but doing so impossibly fast. Finally after over 90 hours have passed since
the app was installed, the weirdness reaches its peak. The individual no longer receives photo messages,
but instead will start to catch glimpses of SCP-1471-A in real life, either in their peripheral
vision, in reflective surfaces, or in both. At this point, the individual afflicted will
continue having visualizations of SCP-1471-A in the real world, a result that so far has
been irreversible. Individuals who have reached this extreme
stage of exposure have reported that the entity appears to be trying to visually communicate
with them, but none of them have been able to understand or comprehend whatever message
it’s trying to relay. Such was the case with a subject named William. William had first been exposed to SCP-1471
at fifteen years old when his sister, Sara, showed him an app she had downloaded earlier
in the day. The app’s description states that you will
never have to settle for awkward feelings of being alone ever again. That Mal-O is an exciting and interactive
experience that will keep you engaged and intrigued, and that after just a few hours
of Mal-O you will soon forget all about those painful emotions of disappointment. Neither William nor his sister knew how the
app worked, but they assumed it was tracking them using some kind of GPS and soon William
was receiving images from SCP-1471. The first one he received was of his school’s
courtyard, with SCP-1471-A, barely noticeable, sitting on a bench. He had black, matted fur, knife-like claws,
a set of blank, pure-white eyes, and a face that looked like the skull of a beast with
a large, wolfish grin. William was immediately frightened by this
but Sara insisted it was “cute” and “funny.” William wasn’t so sure. The pictures continued over the following
days, with SCP-1471-A appearing at his school, at his bus stop, on his street… nearly everywhere he went. And then the pictures started appearing as
if they had just been taken the moment they were received. William and Sara were both being sent the
same type of nightmare inducing images and they tried to delete the app from their phone
to stop them, but they couldn’t find where the application was stored. Then things got even worse… the creature
started appearing to William and Sara in the real world. William, as it turns out, was the lucky one
as SCP-1471-A primarily appeared to him in reflective surfaces like mirrors, which he
could cover with a curtain when he didn’t want to see the strange dog-skull face with
its toothy grin staring back at him. Sara was less fortunate. She saw the creature everywhere she looked,
it always appearing just outside of her periphery, catching glimpses out of the corner of her
eye, or feeling it looming over her and watching her as she slept. William has been able to cope with the appearances
of 1471-A, even regarding it as a somewhat comforting presence at times. Sara sadly, was driven mad by the never ending
visions of the creature. Currently, the only known treatment to reverse
the effects of SCP-1471 and the appearances of 1471-A is to eliminate the individual’s
exposure to the images before 90 hours have passed after installing the app. Once those 90 hours have elapsed though, it’s
too late, and SCP-1471-A becomes a permanent presence in the individual's life. Thankfully, 1471-A has thus far remained non-hostile
and has not been shown to pose a threat to those afflicted by it, at least not a physical
threat. All mobile devices that are found to have
Mal-O version one point oh point oh installed on them are to be confiscated and analyzed
for any potential information as to who might have created the application, as well as leads
for other devices that may have been infected. Following this investigation, the device’s
batteries are to be removed and the device placed in storage unit 91 at research site
45. Additionally, all online application stores
for mobile devices are to be monitored to prevent unsuspecting users from inadvertently
downloading the anomalous software. Any individuals who are suspected of having
downloaded SCP-1471 will have their device targeted by a self-uploading malware that
can disable it until it’s able to be seized by Foundation agents. Due to its unpredictable nature of the anomaly
and the potential sentience of the software itself, SCP-1471 has been classified as Euclid
by the SCP Foundation and research into ways to hopefully one day contain the anomalous
software is ongoing.
