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lcatala · 9 months

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Paratopos #28

Preliminary report on investigation of Paratopos #28, authored by ███████████ for ██████. Authorized personnel only. Document not to be altered or removed from ███████████. Copies and note-taking prohibited.

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Background:

██/██/████: group of teenagers from ████████████ disappeared while exploring local woodland. Search parties organized. Resulted only in number of search volunteers going missing too.

Professional reinforcement brought in. Discovered entrance of concrete tunnel on side of hill at coordinates ██████████ ██████████, not on local maps. Witnesses described tunnel as "unnaturally" dark. Flashlights unable to get past entrance. Several people attempted to explore. Disappeared from view few meters in, ceased to respond to radio. None returned.

Over possibility of toxic gas leak or similar hazard, authorities had surrounding area evacuated and contacted ████████████████████. █████████████ was able to intercept file and pass it on to us.

Team sent to investigate. Location subsequently categorized as Paratopos #28.

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Observations:

Seemingly man-made concrete tunnel with square opening, 2.5 meters/8.2 feet across, 2 meters/6.5 feet vertically, running straight into hill. No path leads to tunnel, area mostly covered in trees and shrubs. Access difficult.

Strong shifting electromagnetic field radiating from tunnel. 5 meters/16 feet from entrance, magnetic compasses become erratic, start pointing toward Paratopos #28 instead of north pole.

No other anomaly detectable near entrance of tunnel. Air, flora and soil samples all normal. Insect life unperturbed.

Confirmed earlier eyewitness testimonies of impenetrable darkness rendering inside of tunnel unobservable. Any light ray entering tunnel dims quickly, vanishes couple of meters in. No difference with powerful artificial lighting. No difference depending on time of day or weather situation.

Occultation phenomenon, or related one, also affects sound. No sound heard coming out of tunnel. No audible impact when throwing objects into occultation zone.

Initial speculation of ideal black-body combined with extremely efficient noise-cancellation, perhaps meant as advanced cloaking device, falsified when occultation discovered to affect only direct biological observers.

No occultation when looking at Paratopos #28 thru recording device, analog or digital, on any kind of light spectrum, or even at reflection of entrance in mirror. Sounds from tunnel can be captured with microphone and then heard as playback, either live or from recording. Might also be possible to directly hear echos of sounds coming from tunnel, but surrounding geography not conductive to experiment. Could be confirmed with parabolic reflector.

No measurable effect can be linked to phenomenon. All readings from entrance normal apart from electromagnetic activity. Possibility of induced illusion. Unseen device affecting human brains directly to erase perception of inside of Paratopos #28. Exact mechanism unclear. No maximal perimeter observed. Occultation persists as long as tunnel in direct line of sight. Source lighting inside tunnel can't be seen directly, but objects outside tunnel in path of light appear illuminated.

ECGs performed on site indicate slightly decreased activity in parietal, temporal and occipital regions of subjects looking directly at Paratopos #28. PET and fMRI required for more reliable data.

Observation thru equipment revealed bare concrete tunnel. No discernible sections. 50 meters/55 yards in length. Ground flat and mostly clean near entrance. Covered with increasing amount of concrete fragments further in. Unclear origin. No visible damage on ceiling except at far end, where partial collapse has occurred and hidden most of exit from view.

Partially visible exit shows daylight and plant life similar to entrance side. Trying to access tunnel from other side proved impossible. Hill no more than 6 meters/20 feet high at peak, but much larger than tunnel is long. Theoretical position of exit in impossible location.

Speculation that exit actually underground room made to look like outside ruled out by exploratory digging. Excavating soil where exit should be revealed only more soil. Trench reached 20 meters/22 yards into expected location of tunnel without encountering anything.

Possible explanations include induced hallucination also affecting recording equipment (cf. Paratopos #23), stable wormhole (cf. Paratopos #17), or altered physical geometry (cf. Paratopos #6, #11 and #13). Digging halted due to potential risk of wormhole collapse (see Paratopos #17 Disaster, file ████████).

Exploration technically challenging. Frequency and intensity of electromagnetic field rise quickly deeper into tunnel. Significant interference with radio-transmission. Radio-guided robots become unresponsive inside occultation zone. Robots linked by cable to control-station perform better. However, past 22 meters/24 yards, frequency of magnetic field becomes high enough to induce currents and fry unshielded electronics.

Robots designed for exploration of radioactive environment able to progress up to 43 meters/47 yards into tunnel before dying. Further shielding theoretically possible, but would hit significant diminishing return on weight and necessary weak points (control and power cable, recording equipment).

All samples from robots normal. No contaminant, toxin, pathogen or other hazard detected at significant levels. Temperature, pressure and humidity all normal. Wall samples ordinary concrete with no special property. Walls themselves self-healing. Sample sites undetectable after 36 hours. Concrete debris within tunnel fused to each other and to ground. Process similar to cold welding. Successfully replicated experimentally within tunnel.

Direct recordings of shifting frequencies of magnetic field showed highly erratic patterns. Later demonstrated by higher-dimensional analysis to be governed by two strange attractors with riddled basins. Significance unknown. Far enough into tunnel, field produces ionizing radiations. Measurements indicate lethal amount of exposure to humans within hours at 36 meters/39 yards, within minutes at 41 meters/45 yards. Recovered samples only mildly radioactive.

Light and weather pattern on exit side not always consistent with entrance side. Ambient light on exit side dims then brightens on 38 hour cycle. Never fully reaches full night obscurity level. Lowest point similar to sunset, but noticeable purple tinge. Unpredictable EMPs can occur during this phase, damaging equipment beyond normally safe distance. No precipitation or wind observed at any point. Plant life static. No growth, weathering or shifting observable on time-lapse recordings.

Attempts at acquiring plant samples from exit side using mechanical telescopic arm containing no electrical part. ███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ ████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████ Nature of these plants remains speculative pending successful acquisition of sample. Almost certainly not what they seem to be.

Tests using animal subjects conducted. Outside of tunnel, animals sensitive to occultation phenomenon same way humans are. Other tested senses similarly obliterated by tunnel. Professionally trained detector dogs unable to locate target objects placed few meters within tunnel. Animals placed inside tunnel appear to suffer no perceptual impairment over sight, sound or other senses. Can perceive things both inside and outside tunnel without assistance.

Mentally, animals in tunnel sluggish and passive. Still responding to stimuli but not taking any initiative. Trained animals respond to commands, but with lowered ability to follow complex instructions. Tendency to mindlessly pursue current task. Effect scales linearly with complexity of nervous system. Simpler animals less affected. Arthropods show only subtle amounts of diminished mental capacity. Cnidarians show none that can be significantly measured.

Animals back from tunnel return to prior state. No sign of psychological disturbance. No sign of physical harm. No later development of ailment out of statistical ordinary. Exception for animals pushed far enough into tunnel. Show usual symptoms of acute radiation poisoning.

Human tests conducted. Human test subjects equipped with radiation-shielding suits and tethered to outside for additional safety. Humans entering tunnel display same mental sluggishness and diminished initiative as animals. Become highly suggestible. Mindlessly execute commands given to them that don't involve direct personal harm. Speech becomes erratic on discourse-consistency level. Subjects prompted to talk about particular topic will forget said topic after three or four sentences. Go only by associative reasoning with previous sentence. Sometimes switch mid sentence to entirely different idea. Speech generally devoid of metaphor and abstraction. Attempt to communicate with test subjects using metaphors, similes, allusions or other rhetorical effects result in literal interpretation. Answer to questions often incoherent, only tenuously connected to subject of inquiry. Speech devoid of affect, empathy. Emotions almost entirely absent. Temporal reasoning highly diminished. All sentences in simple present tense. No distinction between states, processes and events.

Spatial and temporal reasoning also impaired in task execution. Generally unable to execute complex task requiring more than two steps, unless given instructions at each step. Particularly poor performance on tasks requiring precision and intentionality, or outside normal training. Routine tasks and reflex actions unaltered, possibly enhanced. Poor proprioception. Individuals respond well to commands to move specific body parts, but great difficulty if asked to describe own movements and position.

Maximum safe distance within tunnel 25 meters/27 yards. Individuals beyond no longer consistently respond to commands. Have tendency to spontaneously walk toward other end of tunnel. Need to be forcibly pulled back with tether.

Individuals back from tunnel report memory loss about entire stay within Paratopos #28. Not loss-of-time experience similar to sleeping or general anesthesia. More akin to blanking out when driving car. Individuals aware on some level of passed time. Unable to give precise estimate. Aware that they were wakeful participants in series of events. But lack perceptual recollection of said events.

█████████████ advanced hypothesis of Paratopos #28 as qualia antagonist. If confirmed, would be strong evidence in favor of panpsychism, idea that consciousness is inherent property of matter, rather than emergent property of complex nervous systems.

No trace of missing persons. Presumed dead. Recovery of bodies highly unlikely.

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Risk assessment and containment policy:

No apparent danger of short term contamination. Paratopos #28 extremely stable and self-contained. Magnetic field active within very tight perimeter. No detectable expansion or contraction during entire period of investigation. No unusual activity outside of EMPs during "sunset" phase. Self-healing capabilities make infiltration and/or dispersal of material unlikely.

Longer term risk hard to assess. Underlying mechanisms not understood. Possible conditions of change unknown. Hard-to-monitor exit with unknown location leaves open possibility of hazardous material or entities spilling thru with no prior warning.

Recommend addition of sealable reinforced gate over entrance, to keep locked outside of testing periods. Build secure facility directly around entrance.

Recommend exclusion zone at least 2km/1.2 miles in radius around Paratopos #28, with extensive 24/7 monitoring. Facilities built on site should be properly concealed.

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Information containment:

Back official version of toxic gas leak and long-term contamination of site.

Discredit alternative theories in public eyes by supplying select influential conspiracy theorists with poor quality forgeries of leaked documents linking site to aliens, secret government testing facility, giant race, satanism, Hollywood elites, hollow Earth, flat Earth, etc.

Covertly expose intruders to non-lethal dose of ██████████████████ before sending to military hospital and make press statements about recklessness, dangers to public health, etc.

#epistolary fiction #diegetic fiction #short fiction #liminal spaces #eldritch location #SCP/Backrooms inspired #science fiction #horror #Paratopos #LCatala's writing

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