Did you hear that not so long ago, a five-year-old
boy went up against twelve of Russia’s greatest chess grandmasters - And do you know what
happened? He lost every single match. That’s because winning at chess, dear viewers,
isn’t easy. Chess is an ancient game of strategy, cunning,
and skill. It’s not just about thinking one step ahead
of your opponent, that’s not going to be enough. Make a wrong prediction and you could end
up sacrificing one of your pieces, as well as vital space on the board. But thinking two to three steps ahead, beating
your adversary’s moves before they’ve even been made. Now there’s a viable strategy. Tricky, but viable; after all, if it was easy,
we’d all be Queen’s Gambit level chess prodigies. Eric Matthews had never been good at the game,
but he had a pretty substantial reason to keep trying. And that reason’s name was Brian Matthews,
his father. You see, for as long as Eric could remember,
his dad had regarded a high level of skill on the chessboard to be a sign of intellectual
superiority. Intelligence was something that Brian put
quite a considerable value on, given that he was a professor at a university in their
home county in England. Some of Eric’s earliest memories were of
playing chess with his dad, usually on a Friday night when Brian got home after a week of
giving lectures to the next generation of scholars. Obviously, with his son at such a young age,
the professor would take it easy on Eric, playing in a much laxer fashion, focusing
instead on teaching the boy the basics of the game. And, for a time at least, it was good. It was a rare time that Eric and his academic
father could spend bonding, after all, with his mother gone, his dad was all he had. But as the years passed, the game changed. By the time Eric was a teenager, Brian had
stopped pulling his punches on the chessboard. He had hoped his son would build on what he’d
learned when they played in the past, using those skills to best his dad on the board. But to Eric, playing chess had never been
about a purely educational experience; it was more about spending time with his old
man. Time after time, the young man’s pawns fell
prey to Brian’s expertly considered and far more competitive moves. Try as he might, Eric couldn’t best his
dad. He tried his best, and never stopped putting
the effort into every game, but thinking too hard about one possible plan of attack left
him wide open to a counter-strategy from the professor. Over and over again he landed himself in checkmate,
or made illegal moves without even realizing it, every time earning criticism and chastisement
from his scholarly father. Every game it got worse, it was like Eric
could feel his father’s gaze and the weighty expectations behind it with each move he made
across the board. There were so many nights where he wondered
if it would be better to give up entirely, to knock down his own king and concede. But how could he ever find any other shared
interests with his dad beyond the two of them playing chess? It had become a lifeline, tethering father
and son together, and to cut it now left Eric uncertain if he’d sink or be able to swim
alongside Brian. He had long admired his father, his achievements
in academia were impossible to avoid, with more framed certificates hung up on the walls
than there were photos of the pair of them together. But the shadow it cast over him made Eric
desperate to keep this one shred of common ground alive. Eric wasn’t the type to give up, despite
how much of an uphill struggle the situation felt like. Taking a leaf out of his professor father’s
scholarly ways, he decided to learn the game inside and out, every known move and strategy. He would research the entire history of chess
itself, if that’s what it took to play with the same skill as his dear old dad. Over the coming weeks, Eric checked out every
book at his local library on the subject; Beginner’s Guides, Advanced Rulebooks, and
even a few volumes on notable players throughout the extensively long history of the game. Along the way, a chapter of a certain book
stood out to Eric. It described a chess prodigy from Russia,
who had created an early mechanical chess device known as ‘The Samurai’. It had been designed to be a traveling curiosity,
and would sit playing chess games against volunteers taken from a spectating audience,
each one of them having forked over some of their hard-earned money to watch this man-made
wonder. The Russian chess prodigy’s young daughters
also had a love for the game. Seeing that gave Eric a pang of jealousy,
wondering if those daughters had as much trouble playing their own father as he did with Brian. But at least there was an underlying shred
of hope there too, if this father and his daughters could bond over chess, maybe there
was a chance for Eric and his dad too. Sadly, it’s one thing to try and learn all
the facts you can about chess. It’s an entirely different beast to put
all that information to use and apply it to an actual game. Despite having read every book he could get
his hands on, Eric still couldn’t best Brian at the board. It was like nothing had changed, his father
barely noticed when Eric tried to replicate move sets he’d read up on, and still managed
to not only counter those moves but check his queen in the process. So, practice, Eric thought. After all, practice was supposedly meant to
make perfect, right? The plan was simple if he practiced his chess
moves enough times, and figured out how he could call on what he’d learned, then he
might stand a chance at winning when he and his dad played each other. There was just one hiccup to the plan: Eric
needed someone to practice against. The only other person in the house was Brian,
meaning it was that hiccup that turned into a problem almost big enough to stop Eric in
his tracks. That is, until he went into his father’s
lab. It was under the house itself, a sort of sub-level,
maybe used as a basement or cellar by the previous owners. But since Professor Matthews and his son had
lived there, the entire room had been remodeled into an at-home laboratory. Not a terribly advanced one, of course, this
was the early nineties, after all. A majority of Brian’s time, even when he
was at home instead of working at the university, was spent on his own, downstairs in the lab. Eric had gone down there in search of his
dad, to ask him if there was anyone whom he knew who he could practice and develop his
chess skills with. But, instead, what he found down there was
the last thing he expected to see. Not that he had any clue exactly what it was,
at first. The… thing was some kind of bizarre contraption,
a collection of components that didn’t seem to be in any logical configuration. However, it was primarily comprised of something
that Eric recognized all too well: a chess table. This one was metal, steel to be precise, and
seemed to be hooked up to some sort of computer. While, back in the nineties, computers were
hardly as commonplace as they are now, Eric had seen a fair few at school and the library. Although this one was different, it seemed… old. Far older than Eric thought computers had
been around for; as far as he knew, they’d only really come to prominence in the mid-eighties. But this computer looked like it pre-dated
even that period. Noticing another part of the contraption – a
large steam engine with the words ‘Manufactured by Maudslay, Sons & Field, established 1840’
engraved on one side – made it seem that this whole device had been around since the
Victorian era. The next part that caught his eye was the
chess pieces themselves, each one standing neatly in its place on the board. They looked delicate, intricately carved from
some smooth substance. For a moment, Eric toyed with the thought
of how they could even be made from bone, noting how each pawn, knight, rook, bishop,
king and queen were all about the size of a human finger bone. He dismissed the idea; nobody would ever do
something like that. Eric grabbed a sheet covering a larger component
hooked up to the mess. Lifting it away in a swift pull, it unveiled
what was sitting beneath: a full suit of 18th Century Samurai armor. Eric looked closer at the embellishments on
the surface of the pauldrons; he was no expert on Feudal Japan, but it looked authentic enough
to be the real thing, if not a very close approximation. Taking a look at the collection of oddities
all tethered together in his father’s lab, a certain detail of all his chess research
came to the forefront of Eric’s mind. The armor had given it away: this was ‘The
Samurai’ – or, at the very least, a least a crude, homemade version of it that his dad
had put together. But if it worked, it was also something to
practice against. It didn’t take Eric long to start tinkering
with the contraption, trying to get it to work. All the while, the question of why his dad
owned such a thing kept drumming up noise in the back of his head. Had Brian built it, or was this the original
made by that Russian chess prodigy? Was this machine the reason that Eric’s
dad possessed such an unbeatable skill at chess? And would using it give him the edge he needed
to best him at the game and earn his father’s respect? After what felt like hours upon hours of trial
and error with a machine he could barely comprehend, Eric seemed to have cracked it. As far as he could tell, the steam engine
powered the whole contraption and could be set to five different speeds, labeled on the
side in roman numerals. The power from the engine was then fed to
some kind of sophisticated mechanism that was within the suit of samurai armor, allowing
it to move, and what appeared to be a series of electromagnets that moved the chess pieces
and kept them on the board. Flicking it onto the third-highest of the
five speed levels, the machine whirred into life; the sounds of creaking, and grinding
of metal filled the lab. Kneeling opposite, Eric went to make the first
move… only to stop himself. It wasn’t that he’d changed his mind about
practicing against the Samurai, but because of the speed he’d set it to. Determining that the settings must have correlated
to difficulty levels, Eric figured that if he really wanted to get the most rigorous
practice, to really hone his chess moves, he needed to commit fully. Reaching for the dial, he turned the device
up to its fifth and highest speed, then made his first move. He pushed one of the bone-colored pawns forward
by a single square and waited. A split second passed, and the arm of the
early automaton responded with its first countermove. It was quick, almost moving with the same
natural fluidity and speed as an actual human being; albeit still with a little bit of creaking,
and some slight, clockwork-like stutters. But it worked nonetheless, the machine could
play. The tension over the first game was palpable,
forming a layer of sweat over Eric’s forehead. Every whirr and tick of the machine gave the
impression they were playing with a stop clock timing each of their moves, adding to the
urgency. Despite this, Eric Matthews tried his best
to stay calm. This was practice after all, a dry run, not
the inevitable game he’d play against his dad. With every move he made, his heart drummed
against his ribs, uncertain he’d made the right call. Each time the robotic hand cruelly knocked
one of his pieces away, Eric felt the surge of frustration, but told himself to quell
it. He kept focused, used what he’d researched
to adapt and respond accordingly to each of the machine’s moves, until… Checkmate. He’d beaten it – he might have lost everything
save for a knight, a rook, his king and queen – but he had won. Trapped without anywhere else to move on the
board, the metal finger of the automaton conceded the game, knocking over its own king in resignation. Panting, heart racing from the sheer excitement
of being on the winning side of a game, Eric hurriedly gathered up and reset all the pieces. He had to go again, not just so he could be
certain it wasn’t a fluke, but to make sure he had what it took to take on his professor
father. Back and forth Eric went with the chess machine,
over and over again. They were fairly evenly matched, it seemed. Eric won the second game, only to be best
on the next two. But it was some time afterward – he had
lost count of exactly how many rounds later – that things started to change. Maybe it was the age and condition of the
Victorian era chess computer, the natural wear and tear stopping it from functioning
properly. But Eric noticed the Samurai started to make
moves that were illogical, that practically offered him the upper hand with no discardable
strategy behind them. Then, its movements became flat-out illegal,
disregarding the directions and number of squares each different piece was allowed to
move. Before long, it was moving them erratically
around the chessboard, refusing to cooperate and forcing Eric to call an end to the day’s
practicing. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the end of
the unusual things that would happen that day. “Did you send me that weird email?” was the first question Eric’s dad asked
him when he returned home, looking noticeably under the weather. Confused, Eric said he had no idea what his
father was talking about. Professor Matthews then went on to describe
what he’d received on his work computer. It had been an email, with a file attached
to it named ‘shakhmaty’, a word in Russian that translates to ‘chess’. Embedded in the email below – although it
had taken a long time to load being opened on a 1990s computer – there had apparently
been a photo as well. “It was rather odd, Eric,” Brian went
on. “Quite unnerving to tell the truth. Black and white, all sort of distorted and
stretched. But it looked like two young girls, one grinning
and the other screaming. I’ve been feeling… well, not quite myself since I saw it.” With that, Brian excused himself, stating
he’d been suffering from headaches and a high temperature, and as a result, needed
to go and lay down. It wasn’t like his father to get ill, Eric
thought, but of course, he had no reason to assume it was anything serious. Probably just a spate of fatigue after a long
day of teaching at the university, no cause for concern. If only that’s all it was. Within a few hours, Brian was completely restless,
so unable to sleep that simply taking a nap was impossible. He kept calling to Eric, complaining of the
sound of childlike laughter coming from somewhere in the house, but his son hadn’t heard anything. By the time the sun went down, Eric was trying
to calm his dad down through a rush of intense anxiety that gripped him. Brian had claimed to be hallucinating, seeing
the warped faces of two girls that frightened him half to death. It was getting late, long past the time they
usually played chess together, but for now, Eric’s mind was focused solely on helping
his dad. For a while, he seemed to be able to calm
his father down, only to realize Brian wasn’t settled at all. He was awake, eyes open, fully conscious,
but wasn’t responding at all to Eric asking if he was alright. Instead, the accomplished academic just stared
blankly into space. Eric had been up all night, exhausted, worried
for Brian’s safety, and completely clueless about what was happening to him. After a while of being non-responsive, his
dad seemed to regain a little bit of lucidity once more, but his behavior was erratic. “Take me back to work, I need to get on
my computer!” Brian demanded of his son. When Eric refused, that’s when his dad got
angry, and agitated. Professor Brian Matthews was sadly found dead
within the next few months. Several months later, as the sole executor
of his father’s estate and last living relative, Eric had to be the one to go through his dad’s
personal belongings. Volumes upon volumes of thick academic books,
his smart, scholarly clothes. The house was almost clear now, save for one
thing that was left in the basement lab. Flicking on the light switch, Eric looked
at the Samurai sitting motionless, still uncovered after their last practice game. He’d sold off the chess pieces to a collector
in New York, now it was just an empty oddity. Eric placed a king on the board, one of the
ones that he and his dad had used when they played each other. With a gentle flick of his finger, he toppled
it, resigning to the strange automaton and leaving it there in the laboratory. He wasn’t sure how, but he had some kind
of gut feeling that this chess machine had somehow been responsible for his father’s
fate. Of course, Eric had no idea what the device
actually was, and what… or who lay beneath its whirring metal parts. SCP-1875 is the designation given to this
machine now, and has been ever since the Foundation recovered it not long after Eric sold his
father’s house. They were able to learn much more about it
than young Mr. Matthews, or even the late Professor Matthews, ever had. Not just how to make it work or what its function
was, but who had built it… and who had been used to build it. Although details of his real name eluded the
Foundation’s top researchers, they were able to uncover newspaper articles about the
device from all over Russia, America, and England, dating back to the early 1900s. The Russian chess prodigy who’d invented
it and toured the chess-playing machine around, had used some interesting components to make
his automaton. Maybe they were where it derived its skill
at the game, and its apparent temperament when the device was made to play at maximum
speed for too long. He had used his daughters to make the machine. Deep within the heart of this early form of
computer, the two girls brain tissue had been hooked up to the electromagnets. The machine’s moves were theirs; each pawn
or rook shifting across the black and white squares of the board, every rule or strategy
their prodigy father had taught, it all determined how the device played. Their minds, taken from their skulls, were
now the analytical engine of their father’s creation. The bones of their fingers, he'd carved into
chess pieces. Over the coming weeks, the Foundation naturally
ran their usual slew of tests on SCP-1875, playing multiple games of chess against it. Every time, they increased the machine’s
five levels of speed, until it started behaving erratically while on the highest setting. Shortly after, every member of personnel working
on SCP-1875 received a bizarre email. It contained a file, named with the Russian
word for chess… And a photograph; of the stretched, distorted,
smiling, and screaming faces of two young girls. Faces that you might be seeing very soon… Now go and check out “SCP-1733 SEASON OPENER”
and “SCP-1984 THE DEAD HAND” if you’re in the mood for more tales of technological
terrors and other chaos-spreading computerized creatures.
