WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:05.600 Picture yourself as a small water bug moving  across the surface of a pond - the depths of   00:00:05.600 --> 00:00:11.680 the water below impossibly vast for your  tiny size, and yet you have the ability   00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:17.160 to ignore all that lies under because  your movement is limited to the surface.   00:00:17.160 --> 00:00:23.440 That tension is all that keeps your reality  from falling apart, though it easily could:   00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:28.840 all it would take would be for a human to put  their hand in the water and make a splash. 00:00:28.840 --> 00:00:32.800 All of a sudden, the water that you stood  on with such stability has revealed its true   00:00:32.800 --> 00:00:39.920 form - a chaotic and ever-shifting maelstrom that  beings far greater than you can alter on a whim. 00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:45.320 For the water bug, the hand that disturbs  the surface of its small reality is so   00:00:45.320 --> 00:00:51.800 unknowably large and strong - that it is worthy  of reverence and abject terror even without any   00:00:51.800 --> 00:00:59.440 awareness or knowledge of the titanic organism,  the human, it is connected to and operated by. 00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:04.440 While we - as humans ourselves - have  the capacity to understand this metaphor,   00:01:04.440 --> 00:01:08.880 it offers us as little consolation as the fact  that the water bug can stand on the pond’s   00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:14.920 surface. We were made to call this unstable  reality our home and to believe that we are   00:01:14.920 --> 00:01:20.720 solidly present and important within it. But  there are undoubtedly beings within reality   00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:28.120 that exist beyond our wildest comprehension,  and some of them possess hands just like ours. 00:01:28.120 --> 00:01:33.440 A fearful man in a prison suit arrives at a bus  stop with little memory of how he got there. All   00:01:33.440 --> 00:01:38.600 the prisoner knows is that the road he is  on is only a few miles from his hometown:   00:01:38.600 --> 00:01:43.920 a place that he hasn’t seen since his unfortunate  turn to a life of crime. Vague recollections   00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:49.960 of being arrested and institutionalized in a  correctional facility seem to cloud his mind,   00:01:49.960 --> 00:01:55.880 but there are some details of the site he was  detained at that seem all too fantastical. 00:01:55.880 --> 00:01:59.920 Though he was understandably quite anxious  about the gaps in his consciousness,   00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:03.920 the prospect of returning home after  all this time filled the Prisoner with   00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:09.840 a sense of warm catharsis. He jogged down  the road with an almost celebratory glee,   00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:14.040 reminded of all the times he did so as  a youth. The hard cement beneath his   00:02:14.040 --> 00:02:19.440 feet felt like miles of silk and lace  with how nostalgic it was to be back. 00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:23.360 The Prisoner wondered to himself who would be  there waiting for him among his old friends   00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:28.480 and relatives. He knew his parents wouldn’t be  there, obviously, but when it came to the Townies   00:02:28.480 --> 00:02:32.880 that he went to school with - there were a  few that he knew he had to pay a visit to. 00:02:32.880 --> 00:02:37.520 The road stretched on in an unusual  spiral pattern, but despite that,   00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:41.480 it was surely the same path that led  the Prisoner into town. He made it to   00:02:41.480 --> 00:02:44.760 main street in the exact amount of  time he thought it would take him,   00:02:44.760 --> 00:02:50.200 and that was even with the bizarre spiral he ran  through on the way there. He thought that perhaps   00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:55.840 he was only imagining the weirdness  of the familiar but unnerving road. 00:02:55.840 --> 00:02:58.600 Perhaps he was imagining all of it. 00:02:58.600 --> 00:03:02.960 For a few brief moments, the Prisoner’s  surroundings became a confined and nearly   00:03:02.960 --> 00:03:09.200 lightless chamber. His first thought was that  it was a jail cell: his jail cell. But when he   00:03:09.200 --> 00:03:14.880 saw what else was inside the containment unit,  his mind fumbled for explanations. Within the   00:03:14.880 --> 00:03:21.760 center of the chamber was a truly enormous human  hand. It was not attached to any arm or body of   00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:28.200 any description, but its errant twitching made it  obvious to the Prisoner that it was still alive. 00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:32.660 The Prisoner screamed and jumped back…  back into the main street of his home   00:03:32.660 --> 00:03:38.720 town. Which was where he was and also where  he had been this entire time. Obviously. 00:03:38.720 --> 00:03:43.440 Perhaps a cup of coffee over at Smith’s Diner  would take the edge off my nerves. He thought. 00:03:43.440 --> 00:03:48.040 The route back to his nostalgic teenage  hangout was exactly as he’d remembered it.   00:03:48.040 --> 00:03:52.200 That had to be a good sign. Although,  when he stepped inside the old diner,   00:03:52.200 --> 00:03:57.160 things were not as the Prisoner had expected.  There was nobody sitting at any of the tables,   00:03:57.160 --> 00:04:01.440 which were once packed every day of the week  back in the day. The only other person in   00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:07.440 the diner was the barista behind the counter,  whose face seemed inexplicably hazed in shadow. 00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:11.240 The Prisoner was somehow sure that the  Barista must have been one of his old friends,   00:04:11.240 --> 00:04:16.200 who had managed to stay out of trouble and become  a key holder at Smith’s back during their teenage   00:04:16.200 --> 00:04:20.720 years. He had always thought that his friend would  have a future there throughout his adult years,   00:04:20.720 --> 00:04:25.280 which while something that a young person  might dread, the prospect of a stable job   00:04:25.280 --> 00:04:31.440 felt much more ideal now that the Prisoner had  experienced the consequences of a criminal career. 00:04:31.440 --> 00:04:35.920 He called out to his friend, who seemed  unusually focused on operating the coffee   00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:40.560 machine. This wouldn’t be unusual if there  were actually customers in the diner,   00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:45.480 but their absence made this behavior  especially strange. The Prisoner was   00:04:45.480 --> 00:04:49.600 talking loud enough for his friend to  hear him, but there was no response. 00:04:49.600 --> 00:04:54.800 Perhaps a solitary person might be reluctant to  acknowledge somebody wearing an orange prisoner   00:04:54.800 --> 00:04:59.800 jumpsuit, even if they knew them at one  time. The Prisoner would not be deterred,   00:04:59.800 --> 00:05:04.720 and approached his old friend, banging on the  coffee machine itself to get his attention.   00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:09.320 This did manage to get the barista  to look his way, but a wave of regret   00:05:09.320 --> 00:05:14.320 washed over the prisoner when he realized  something was very wrong with his friend. 00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:19.480 The shadows that strangely clung to the Barista’s  face were swirling like black water going down a   00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:26.040 drain - a sinking void in place of his head. The  Prisoner thought he was staring into infinity,   00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:31.680 but deep inside the dark hole that was his  friend’s face he could see that same hand from his   00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:38.080 previous vision - twitching in the darkness. There  was something deeply disturbing about this hand,   00:05:38.080 --> 00:05:44.280 despite, or maybe because of, it seemed  unaware of the Prisoner’s existence. It was   00:05:44.280 --> 00:05:48.680 likely related to the strange happenings,  but there was no way to reason with it. 00:05:48.680 --> 00:05:52.520 He turned and ran back for the front door of  Smith’s Diner - convinced that whatever he   00:05:52.520 --> 00:05:58.600 was looking at was no longer his friend - if it  ever was. He barreled through the entrance and   00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:04.440 to his discomfort, found himself entering into  the same room. The interior was identical to   00:06:04.440 --> 00:06:10.720 how it was just moments ago, but with the one  exception of the barista being gone as well. 00:06:10.720 --> 00:06:15.600 The Prisoner was now feeling an uneasy  sense of deju vu. Was this the first time   00:06:15.600 --> 00:06:19.800 he had entered Smith’s Diner since  he got to town? He couldn’t tell,   00:06:19.800 --> 00:06:24.320 and rather than staying inside and waiting  for something more unusual to occur,   00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:29.960 he left the diner. As soon as he stepped through  the door, the memories of seeing his friend - the   00:06:29.960 --> 00:06:37.040 Barista - faded into his subconscious. It couldn’t  have happened. It was a dream to him. Although,   00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:43.120 at the same time, the prisoner couldn’t shake  the feeling that he had just been woken up. 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:47.520 Given the increasingly disorienting nature of  the situation, the Prisoner elected to change   00:06:47.520 --> 00:06:53.000 his approach to exploring this apparently altered  version of his home town. He would go to pay a   00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:57.600 direct visit to the house of one of his teenage  acquaintances - hoping to find at least some   00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:04.080 ordinary people he could talk to. He didn’t have  a car, so he would have to make the trek on foot. 00:07:04.080 --> 00:07:08.600 Though being a lifetime criminal meant that the  prisoner wasn’t above a little grand theft auto,   00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:13.320 there weren’t any cars on the sidewalk to  steal. While his hometown was always small in   00:07:13.320 --> 00:07:19.120 terms of population and was rarely bustling with  activity, the distances between houses because of   00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:23.840 forestation and agriculture meant that motor  vehicles had always been a necessity for the   00:07:23.840 --> 00:07:31.120 function of the community. To see none of them  - and no people either - was not a good omen. 00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:35.240 The Prisoner still remembered the streets well  enough, and made his way to his Cousin’s house   00:07:35.240 --> 00:07:41.080 while shaking off the feeling of encroaching dread  and loneliness. Though he had been mostly a friend   00:07:41.080 --> 00:07:46.320 of circumstance, the Prisoner’s cousin was one  of his oldest and strongest familial bonds. The   00:07:46.320 --> 00:07:51.360 two of them had even been local nuisances for the  cops together - jaywalking and loitering all over   00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:57.560 town. As opposed to the Prisoner, the prisoner’s  cousin had grown out of committing crime. However,   00:07:57.560 --> 00:08:03.360 it was likely that his Cousin could still be an  understanding presence, if he could reach him. 00:08:03.360 --> 00:08:07.600 Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be  anyone home at his Cousin’s house. The   00:08:07.600 --> 00:08:11.840 Prisoner knocked on the front door and back  door, and checked every window for activity   00:08:11.840 --> 00:08:16.600 on the inside. The lights were on, but  there were no people visible within,   00:08:16.600 --> 00:08:20.440 let alone the Prisoner’s cousin. He  realized again that his appearance as   00:08:20.440 --> 00:08:25.520 a jailbird might have been alarming, and that  the home’s occupants could be hiding from him. 00:08:25.520 --> 00:08:30.720 Then again, he hadn’t seen the police  or any police cruisers anywhere. Surely,   00:08:30.720 --> 00:08:36.240 if he was thought to be dangerous, somebody in  town would have reported him. Right now, even the   00:08:36.240 --> 00:08:41.200 attention of law enforcement - however unwelcome  it would be in most circumstances - would feel   00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:46.760 like a calmingly normal event. This caused  the Prisoner’s thoughts to spiral again,   00:08:46.760 --> 00:08:52.640 as he became paranoid that nobody had been there  to witness him since he had come back to town. 00:08:52.640 --> 00:08:54.360 What if everyone was gone? 00:08:54.360 --> 00:08:57.120 Frightened, the Prisoner picked  a broken chunk of cement off the   00:08:57.120 --> 00:08:59.440 ground and hurled it through the  window of their cousin's house.   00:09:00.040 --> 00:09:05.360 To their surprise, they were struck from behind  by that very same chunk of cement. As he looked   00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:10.680 down at the solid object that he himself had  thrown, he heard a sudden noise that sounded like   00:09:10.680 --> 00:09:16.120 breaking glass. Looking back at the window which  he had thrown the rock at, the prisoner saw that   00:09:16.120 --> 00:09:22.520 the glass had been shattered in a distinctive  spiral pattern. The window itself was intact,   00:09:22.520 --> 00:09:29.360 showing no other signs of damage, but the strange  spiral seemed carved almost intentionally. 00:09:29.920 --> 00:09:34.080 Beyond the now distorted glass, the Prisoner  could see that the interior of the house had   00:09:34.080 --> 00:09:39.600 been replaced all at once with an entirely  different - but now all too recognizable   00:09:39.600 --> 00:09:47.840 chamber. It was a dark place with that very same  enormous disembodied hand. Without even knowing   00:09:47.840 --> 00:09:53.240 he had done it, the chunk of cement was once  again in the Prisoner’s hand. Absent-mindedly,   00:09:53.240 --> 00:09:59.760 he hurled the cement again into the window, this  time breaking its surface into a thousand shards. 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:05.960 The unsettling reflection was gone and the inside  of the house had returned to normal. Or at least:   00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:10.000 returned to the expected. There was  still no sign of the Prisoner’s cousin,   00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:13.920 but he had committed to entering the  house now. He stepped through the window,   00:10:13.920 --> 00:10:20.800 unnerved by the lack of an alarm. As the  saying goes, it was “quiet… too quiet.” 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:25.600 He wandered through the familiar house, through  darkened hallways and up and down bizarre liminal   00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:31.360 sets of stairs. It took him a long time to realize  that his cousin’s house was much larger than   00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:36.960 he remembered. This was no wonder, as deeper  into his delve within the cavernous interior,   00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:42.600 the Prisoner could see that parts of his childhood  home had been incorporated into the building. 00:10:42.600 --> 00:10:48.920 This did not bode well, as his parent’s house  was the place in town he least wanted to be. 00:10:48.920 --> 00:10:54.240 But there was no clear way back outside. After  ascending a spiral staircase, the prisoner   00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:59.560 found himself at the door of his parent’s  bedroom. Somewhere deep in his subconscious,   00:10:59.560 --> 00:11:06.360 he knew what was waiting for him inside  that room. He did not want to open the door. 00:11:06.360 --> 00:11:11.560 The shadows seemed to grow taller all around him,  and as the prisoner turned away from the door,   00:11:11.560 --> 00:11:16.600 he came face to face with his Cousin.  Or rather, it was his face looking at   00:11:16.600 --> 00:11:22.520 a similar void pit to his barista friend  where his cousin’s head should have been. 00:11:22.520 --> 00:11:27.400 Within the umbral darkness of his cousin’s  hole-face, the hand seemed to point towards   00:11:27.400 --> 00:11:33.800 the door. The Prisoner looked on in horror  as his cousin also pointed towards the door   00:11:33.800 --> 00:11:39.960 with one of his own hands. He wanted to close his  eyes - to deny what was in front of him - but the   00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:46.840 image persisted and the strange disruptions  to his senses only became more pronounced. 00:11:46.840 --> 00:11:51.160 He was hearing things that should not have  been happening, partly because they had already   00:11:51.160 --> 00:11:56.840 happened long ago. The strained voices of his  parents gurgling on their own blood seemed to   00:11:56.840 --> 00:12:01.960 emanate from behind the door. He could hear  bludgeoning sounds that repeated at irregular   00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:07.680 intervals, drowning out and weakening the  voices but not entirely eliminating them. 00:12:07.680 --> 00:12:11.560 The Prisoner could not close his  eyes, nor plug his ears. Instead,   00:12:11.560 --> 00:12:19.960 he was transfixed on the twitching hand. Was  it testing him? Did it know everything he knew? 00:12:19.960 --> 00:12:27.720 If I go in there, they’ll die. They’ll die because  I’m the one who took their lives from them. 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:32.560 His thoughts were as loud as the cries of  pain, but somehow a message from beyond his   00:12:32.560 --> 00:12:38.920 perception blared through and reminded  him of the truth: where he really was. 00:12:38.920 --> 00:12:44.000 “D-34678! Get out of there.  This is your only life line.” 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:47.400 It was the voice of the warden  of his correctional facility. 00:12:47.400 --> 00:12:55.800 No, they weren’t wardens. Researchers. And I’m  part of their test. They are testing the hand. 00:12:55.800 --> 00:12:59.200 As quickly as his fracturing psyche  was able to put everything together,   00:12:59.200 --> 00:13:04.440 the door opened behind him and out stepped a  younger version of himself carrying a bloody   00:13:04.440 --> 00:13:09.040 aluminum baseball bat. The Prisoner  looked this other self in the eye,   00:13:09.040 --> 00:13:14.440 causing a mutual panic between the two. In  fear for his future, the young murderer swung   00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:19.680 the bat and hit the strange older man  in the prison jumper hard in the skull. 00:13:19.680 --> 00:13:25.640 There can’t be witnesses! He thought,  making sure that his handiwork was fatal. 00:13:25.640 --> 00:13:30.480 The Prisoner did not survive, and apparently  neither did his younger self. When the research   00:13:30.480 --> 00:13:36.760 team from SCP Foundation Site-22 entered the  containment chamber, they found that D-34678 had   00:13:36.760 --> 00:13:43.080 beaten his own body into disrepair with a blunt  instrument that had never physically existed. 00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:49.120 D-34678’s entire phantasmal return to his hometown  and his subsequent accidental death being an   00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:56.960 incident that happened entirely because of the  distorted reality of SCP-5688. The giant hand,   00:13:56.960 --> 00:14:02.720 measuring three meters tall and one meter wide is  a euclid-class object that, while animate - does   00:14:02.720 --> 00:14:08.320 not appear to possess an active psyche. The  only movements that SCP-5688 has been known   00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:15.320 to display are entirely random nerve spasms  which can neither be predicted nor provoked. 00:14:15.320 --> 00:14:19.680 The Hand was discovered beneath Site-22,  entirely buried in the dirt and rock of   00:14:19.680 --> 00:14:24.440 the Earth’s crust. It is currently unknown  how long the hand had been lying dormant in   00:14:24.440 --> 00:14:29.320 the place of its discovery, and the only reason  that it was unearthed was a planned expansion   00:14:29.320 --> 00:14:34.040 to the subterranean containment portion  of Site-22. The construction project was   00:14:34.040 --> 00:14:40.000 completed and SCP-5688 was placed inside of  one of the newly built containment units. 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:45.400 Experiments into the nature of SCP-5688 have  revealed that it has an ambient reality-warping   00:14:45.400 --> 00:14:50.400 effect on its surroundings. Usually, this is  limited to the chamber where it has been stored,   00:14:50.400 --> 00:14:55.280 and for that reason, it is meant to remain there  so that containment procedures can be upheld.   00:14:55.280 --> 00:15:00.600 The variance and severity of reality warping  that occurs during interaction with SCP-5688   00:15:00.600 --> 00:15:05.320 is still being extensively researched  through the use of D-class personnel. 00:15:05.320 --> 00:15:09.400 While The Hand doesn’t inflict any  direct violence upon the test subjects,   00:15:09.400 --> 00:15:13.320 there have been a number of casualties  among the D-class due to the completely   00:15:13.320 --> 00:15:17.840 unpredictable nature of the  SCP-5688’s effects on reality. 00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:25.280 D-34678’s assignment had merely been to observe  SCP-5688 uninterrupted for as long as possible,   00:15:25.280 --> 00:15:29.080 and the unexplained bludgeoning that  resulted in his death was only one   00:15:29.080 --> 00:15:33.600 of the many ways that the altered  reality could have manifested. 00:15:33.600 --> 00:15:38.600 Curiously, another D-Class - D-7452  - had been assigned to puncture the   00:15:38.600 --> 00:15:43.920 flesh of SCP-5688 with a spear in order  to see if The Hand would defend itself   00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:49.280 from attack. The results were ultimately  inconclusive, as the spear was unable to   00:15:49.280 --> 00:15:55.600 make contact with SCP-5688 - the wood and  metal twisting into a spiral shape along   00:15:55.600 --> 00:16:02.960 with several D-7452’s fingers. D-7452 felt no  pain during the transmutation of his digits,   00:16:02.960 --> 00:16:08.280 but nonetheless required corrective  surgery to detach his hand from the spear. 00:16:08.280 --> 00:16:13.680 These results raise one of the most unusual  pieces of information regarding SCP-5688’s   00:16:13.680 --> 00:16:19.000 reality warping properties: that being, the  prevalence of spiral patterns. Whether it   00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:23.720 is the appearance of spiraling shadows or  objects becoming bent and reshaped into a   00:16:23.720 --> 00:16:28.920 spiral formation, it is oddly common for The  Hand tamperings to repeat this modification.   00:16:29.800 --> 00:16:33.920 Though there doesn’t appear to be a root cause  behind the consistent appearance of these spirals,   00:16:33.920 --> 00:16:41.800 it does suggest that SCP-5688 is not fully chaotic  and random in the way that it influences reality. 00:16:41.800 --> 00:16:45.000 Perhaps the spiral is somehow  linked to the Fibonacci sequence,   00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:49.480 a recursive mathematical sequence that  is associated with the Golden Ratio - an   00:16:49.480 --> 00:16:53.760 underlying symmetry that is believed to  indicate the universal beauty of visual   00:16:53.760 --> 00:16:59.120 phenomena. Others might say that spirals  are a lot more inherently unnerving,   00:16:59.120 --> 00:17:06.360 as the idea of endless recursion implies an  inescapable and hypnotic eternity. The intentions,   00:17:06.360 --> 00:17:11.440 if any, behind the Hand’s affinity for  spirals cannot be discerned at this time. 00:17:11.440 --> 00:17:17.400 Though spirals are far from the only trick  up the sleeve of SCP-5688’s nonexistent arm,   00:17:17.400 --> 00:17:21.560 as it has the ability to trap those  who interact with it in impressionist   00:17:21.560 --> 00:17:27.960 mind prisons that are imperceptible from the  outside. Within these delusional sub-realities,   00:17:27.960 --> 00:17:33.800 almost anything can happen or at the same  time… not happen. The rules of time and   00:17:33.800 --> 00:17:37.600 space are suspended and this can result  in a number of alterations that cannot   00:17:37.600 --> 00:17:42.160 be replicated or conceived of outside  of describing the results of the test. 00:17:42.160 --> 00:17:47.520 In a test involving one D-Class, the subject  both died in a gratuitous explosive fashion   00:17:47.520 --> 00:17:52.280 and yet also lived through the experiment,  albeit trapped in an inaccessible state of   00:17:52.280 --> 00:17:59.000 suspended sleep. Both results were recorded by the  foundation and both are effectively true, with the   00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:06.480 research team present at Site-22 recalling both  events with perfect clarity. SCP-5688 has the   00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:12.920 uncanny ability to allow contradictory outcomes  to occur within the same moment and span of time. 00:18:12.920 --> 00:18:18.960 Measuring and cataloging the numerous effects  of SCP-5688’s reality distortion are certainly   00:18:18.960 --> 00:18:23.720 the primary source of research into the euclid  class object, but there is a secondary purpose   00:18:23.720 --> 00:18:29.920 to the tests that are being conducted. Dr. Henrik,  a veteran researcher of Site-22, has been adamant   00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:36.360 about acquiring a functional DNA sample from  SCP-5688. Though attempts to extract such a sample   00:18:36.360 --> 00:18:42.320 have proved to be a herculean task, the importance  of this endeavor is paramount to Dr. Henrik. 00:18:42.320 --> 00:18:47.200 Ever since a brush with SCP-5688’s  tendency to create pocket realities,   00:18:47.200 --> 00:18:52.760 Dr. Henrik has been reasonably convinced that  The Hand is somehow a replication or alternate   00:18:52.760 --> 00:18:58.920 universe variant of his own hand. This theory  does not have much in the way of proof outside   00:18:58.920 --> 00:19:02.240 of Dr. Henrik’s testimony on his  own experience with the hand,   00:19:02.240 --> 00:19:05.840 as well as the experiment log that was updated  without the knowledge of any member of the   00:19:05.840 --> 00:19:11.320 research team. An inference could be made  about the location of SCP-5688’s discovery   00:19:11.320 --> 00:19:17.080 and that its proximity to Site-22 could imply  a connection between Dr. Henrik and the hand. 00:19:17.080 --> 00:19:20.400 This wouldn’t be the first time that an  SCP was believed to have been brought   00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:25.160 into existence as the result of a researcher  being exposed to warped reality - especially   00:19:25.160 --> 00:19:30.760 if the theory that connects SCP-106 The  Old Man and Doctor Robert Scranton is to   00:19:30.760 --> 00:19:37.280 be believed. SCP-5688 might be another SCP  that was created as an incidental result of   00:19:37.280 --> 00:19:43.840 the Foundation’s research. Alternatively,  SCP-5688 may be a the fate that awaits Dr.   00:19:43.840 --> 00:19:49.520 Henrik after an event that has yet to occur  in our reality. The third party responsible,   00:19:49.520 --> 00:19:57.200 whether it is a conscious force or not, would  be the unknown catalyst of SCP-5688’s existence. 00:19:57.200 --> 00:19:59.040 Maybe the event that turned the hapless   00:19:59.040 --> 00:20:04.640 Dr. Henrik’s hand into SCP-5688 will  never actually occur in our reality,   00:20:04.640 --> 00:20:10.160 but did fully and irrevocably occur in its own  version of reality. While this might be good   00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:15.200 news for Dr. Henrik, as he won’t need to fear  for the safety of his limbs - it also means   00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:22.360 SCP-5688 exists and will continue to exist  regardless of anything the Foundation can do. 00:20:22.360 --> 00:20:26.480 Check out the Dr. Bob Patreon and  become a junior researcher today!   00:20:26.480 --> 00:20:33.320 Now go and watch another entry from the  files of Dr. Bob, like "SCP-513 A Cowbell.”