A man wakes up with a start. Did something just bite him? He looks down at his hand. Something definitely bit him. He can see the red welt already forming. He looks around for the culprit but can’t
find it anywhere. He really hopes he doesn’t have bed bugs,
that’s the last thing he needs right now. He’ll have to keep his eyes open for potential
pests, he doesn’t want this to happen again, since the spot is already starting to itch
and feel uncomfortable. A couple days pass though with no signs of
other bugs. It must have just been a random insect that
came inside his house to escape the winter cold. The spot on his hand felt a little rough for
a day or two, but now he’s pretty much forgotten all about it. Now what he really needs is some coffee before
sitting down to another coding session The man is in his kitchen trying to make a
fresh pot of coffee, but finds he’s having a hard time. He’s not so much making coffee as he is
making a mess. He knocks his favorite mug onto the ground,
breaking it, and decides that maybe he doesn’t need coffee after all. A couple of nights later, as the man is watching
TV, he starts to cough. Just a little at first, but then more and
more. The coughing fits get longer and deeper too,
like they are coming from the very bottom of his lungs. He hopes he isn’t coming down with something. He hasn’t left the house in days, so how
could he have? Can bugs transfer colds? He’ll have to look it up later. For now, he needs to do something about this
cough, he won’t be able to sleep if it keeps up. He needs to go get some medicine. The man gets bundled up and heads out. It’s lightly snowing as he walks to the
pharmacy and he can’t help but admire the way the moon hangs in the sky, a beautiful
beacon of light on this dark winter evening. Inside the pharmacy, he finds the cold medicine
section and picks out a cough suppressant. He takes it to the counter and decides to
get a few candy bars too. He’s developed a real sweet tooth these
last few days. The man starts to cough again, it’s a good
thing he’s getting this medicine. Several more days pass and the man isn’t
feeling any better. This cough just won’t go away. He decides it’s finally time to go see a
doctor. As he sits in the doctor’s office waiting
room, he does his best to hold in his coughs, but he has a very hard time. The woman on the other side of the room is
coughing too. Strangely it actually makes him feel a little
better, there must just be something going around. A nurse comes into the waiting room and calls
his name, the doctor is ready for him. The man is sitting on the bed in the examination
room when the doctor enters. He’s looking over his medical records and
doesn’t even look up from his clipboard. He tells the man to take off his shirt so
that he can be examined, and the man obliges. “Okay, let’s see what the trouble is”
the doctor says. He finally looks up at the man… and screams. It didn’t take long for the SCP Foundation
to hear the reports of people’s limbs metamorphosing into insectoid appendages, and they knew immediately
what they were dealing with. This was another outbreak of the parasitic
limb transforming insect known as SCP-150. SCP-150 is an obligate parasite, meaning that
it requires a host for the completion of its reproductive life cycle. It bears a visual appearance similar to that
of Cymothoa exigua, another parasite that eats the tongue of a particular type of fish
before replacing the tongue with its own body. SCP-150 engages in similar behavior, though
it appears to exclusively affect humans. When a human comes in contact with the small,
bug-like organism, it will embed itself under its new host’s skin. Next, over the course of roughly seven days,
SCP-150 will burrow deep into the host’s flesh and begin to cause numerous physiological
changes to them. First and most prominently, SCP-150 will begin
a gradual process of altering the limb that is nearest the original infection site. As SCP-150 burrows deeper and consumes the
flesh, it excretes a substance that has the effect of replacing the missing sections of
the limb with a hard, chitinous material that resembles one of its own appendages. Beneath the chitin, the excreted substance
forms a rudimentary nervous system that gives the host the ability to control the new limb
as if it were their own. As it feeds, SCP-150 also secretes several
chemicals that contain anesthetic, immunosuppressant, and transplant rejecting properties that keep
the host’s body from responding to the changes, or even reacting at all. In fact, the host will often report that their
new limb is completely normal, and feels stronger and more resilient after the transformation. SCP-150 will continue to feed for approximately
one to two weeks, and as it feeds on the nutrients within its host’s body it will begin to
reproduce, creating eggs that it deposits directly into the bloodstream. While the majority of these eggs will die
off, enough usually survive to begin colonizing other parts of the host’s body, where they
will hatch and repeat the process of feeding, reproducing, and spreading more eggs. It is theorized that it is capable of reproducing
on its own, meaning that a single instance of SCP-150 is all it takes to create a new
colony. Humans infected with SCP-150 will sometimes
report slight discomfort and issues with their fine motor skills during this period, but
will usually not express any knowledge of what might be causing this. Eventually SCP-150 eggs will reach the host’s
lungs where the process of assimilating continues, this time replacing the lungs themselves. During this process more eggs will be produced,
laid, and then spread out of the body by the host’s coughing. As many as 10,000 eggs will be produced during
this period, approximately 1% of which will survive being expelled, find another host,
and implant themselves. The assimilation process then spreads to the
central nervous system including the spinal cord and brain, but strangely, the host will
show no signs that their consciousness or behavior have been affected in any way. In interviews with hosts of SCP-150, those
who are unaware that they are infected have not expressed any knowledge of changes happening
in or out of their body. When subjects are made aware that they have
been infected, they will be able point out the site of the original infection and agree
that a change has taken place, but they seem to have no ill will towards their new chitinous
appendages, and will often express positive feelings about it. In order to better study the effects of SCP-150
under SCP Foundation control, two D-Class personnel, D-13732 and D-016002 were both
infected with the parasites and the assimilation process was allowed to fully progress through
all the stages. Following signs that D-016002 was experiencing
swelling of the brain, a decompressive craniotomy was performed, a procedure in which a portion
of the skull is removed in order to relieve pressure on the brain. This surgery had the added benefit of giving
Foundation researchers the chance to look at SCP-150’s progress firsthand. But after a flap of her skull was removed,
the attending scientists did not find that her brain was swelling. They didn’t find her brain at all, but instead
observed numerous instances of SCP-150 in the cavity where her brain should be. The D-Class had been partially anesthetized
to numb her skull but remain conscious during the procedure, and the scientists asked her
several simple questions to which she was perfectly able to answer. They began removing some of the parasites
and as they did so, her answers became slower and less clear. It appeared that the SCP-150 instances had
not just eaten and replaced her brain, they had become her brain. For the next experiment, they would use the
instances of SCP-150 that had been removed from D-13732’s nervous system after he had
been euthanized following the discovery that his entire nervous system had also been replaced
entirely by SCP-150. The parasites taken from his brain cavity
were placed into D-016002’s and the results were nothing short of incredible. After observing a period of time where the
organisms appeared to move and rearrange themselves within her skull, she regained consciousness. Once awake, not only did her cognitive functions
immediately improve, when she was asked to state her name, she told them it was Michael. D-13732’s name. It is unknown why SCP-150 engages in this
peculiar life cycle, but the danger it poses to human’s and the difficulty in keeping
it contained has led the SCP Foundation to classify it as Keter. Some of the more erudite researchers have
taken to calling the parasite the Ship of Theseus, a play on the philosophical notion
that questions whether something that has had all of its parts replaced is still, fundamentally,
the same, or if it has become something new. Perhaps the observation of those infected
with SCP-150 can shed some light on this millennia old question. Infected patients who are being studied are
to be kept in Level-3 Biohazard Containment Cells, with never more than one infected host
per cell. Cultures of SCP-150 adults and eggs are kept
in vacuum-sealed glass flasks in the Site-42 infectious materials lab, and the Foundation’s
standard pathogen-handling procedures are required to be followed at all times. Should any instance of SCP-150 be found outside
of containment, it is to be immediately incinerated. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, and be sure to subscribe as we delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s
classified archives.
