WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.660 --> 00:00:05.040 It’s never a nice feeling waking up lying  amongst shards of broken glass in the middle   00:00:05.040 --> 00:00:10.560 of the road. The dawn sky above the Biker  looks almost peaceful; it's as if nothing had   00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:15.660 gone wrong at all, as if everything is right  in the world. But slowly, the throbbing pain   00:00:15.660 --> 00:00:20.580 washes into his helmeted head, and the sound of  the traffic surrounding him rises in his ears. 00:00:21.180 --> 00:00:25.980 A sea of onlookers gathers around as the cars  blast their horns. Through the cracked visor   00:00:25.980 --> 00:00:30.000 of his helmet, the biker can see concerned  faces, people calling emergency services,   00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:35.580 and a few women crying. His paramedic bike  is toppled on its side about 40 feet from   00:00:35.580 --> 00:00:40.380 him. There are long black tire marks running up  to where it lies, smoking slightly on its side. 00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:46.560 With a groan, the Biker sits himself up and  shakes his head; bad idea. Looking around,   00:00:46.560 --> 00:00:51.360 though, it seems he's the only one injured.  His bike had gone into the front of a car   00:00:51.360 --> 00:00:55.440 at the junction. The occupants of the car  stand by nervously, offering him whatever   00:00:55.440 --> 00:01:00.000 little assistance they can. But there's no  time for that, the Biker suddenly realizes! 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:05.880 He looks down at his watch frantically.  It's 12:03pm. There's not enough time. He   00:01:05.880 --> 00:01:10.440 rushes over to the bike as fast as he can and  lifts it back upright. A couple of onlookers   00:01:10.440 --> 00:01:14.400 try to grab his arms, trying to sit down  to rest, but he can’t. There’s no time! 00:01:15.180 --> 00:01:19.800 He has three minutes to get to Saint Mary's  Hospital in Central London. Right now,   00:01:19.800 --> 00:01:23.220 he's at the junction outside Baker  Street station. He can still make it   00:01:23.220 --> 00:01:28.080 on time if he gets on his bike and goes now. The biker swings his leg onto the bike and   00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:32.340 kicks it into life. He takes a deep gulp and  looks over his shoulder at the box on the back   00:01:32.340 --> 00:01:37.680 of his bike. He can't risk opening it here;  the damage may already be done. But if the   00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:42.900 heart is still alive in that box, it is the  only chance that a 10-year-old boy has for a   00:01:42.900 --> 00:01:48.300 normal life. If he doesn't get to the hospital in  the next three minutes, his life could be over.  00:01:48.300 --> 00:01:53.760 The school children stand in a circle, looking  down at the dead bird with a morbid fascination. 00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:55.440 "Do you think it's alive?" 00:01:56.100 --> 00:01:57.060 "Nah, no way." 00:01:57.060 --> 00:02:01.680 The Boy in the middle of the group goes to pick  up a stick. With an air of false confidence,   00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:07.680 he walks up to the bird and gives it a prod.  It makes a squelching noise. The other kids   00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:12.540 all reel in shock, making retching noises and  laughing about it. It's only when their teacher   00:02:12.540 --> 00:02:16.740 comes out to call them inside that the group  disperses, leaving the animal carcass alone,   00:02:16.740 --> 00:02:20.700 sitting at the edge of the playground,  outside the view of boring adults. 00:02:20.700 --> 00:02:26.220 Each passing day, the kids wander over to the  bird's body. It's kind of the best biology   00:02:26.220 --> 00:02:33.120 lesson they've ever had as they watch the animal  slowly decompose. At first, its body just shrinks,   00:02:33.120 --> 00:02:38.040 goes flat almost. The feathers start  falling out, and it loses all of its color.   00:02:38.700 --> 00:02:42.840 Then it starts to get puffy; different  parts of its flesh bulge out in weird   00:02:42.840 --> 00:02:46.700 places, as if they're being inflated like a  balloon animal at someone’s birthday party. 00:02:46.700 --> 00:02:52.620 But then the maggots come. There are only a  couple of tiny white crawling wrigglers in   00:02:52.620 --> 00:02:57.240 the bird's body at first, but a couple of  days after that, it's infested with them.   00:02:57.840 --> 00:03:00.060 The creepy crawlies wriggle all over the body. 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:05.100 But as the Boy looks down at the dead  bird, he spots something very peculiar,   00:03:05.100 --> 00:03:09.840 something they haven't seen in a biology  class before. There's a red maggot,   00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:14.940 wriggling and crawling in amongst the rest of the  creepy crawlies. It squirms like the rest of them,   00:03:14.940 --> 00:03:19.380 but even over the course of the school day, it  quickly grows larger than any of the others. 00:03:19.380 --> 00:03:22.320 What do you think it is? the Boy stares at it. 00:03:22.320 --> 00:03:23.880 It looks like a worm. 00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:28.860 And a worm is exactly what it was.  The next day, when the kids return,   00:03:28.860 --> 00:03:33.900 they see that the red maggot is now much larger  than any of the others feasting on the bird.   00:03:34.560 --> 00:03:39.960 With a slightly translucent body, cherry-red  coloring, and small white speckles on its skin,   00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:45.660 it looks unlike anything they've ever seen before.  Actually, not unlike anything they've seen before,   00:03:45.660 --> 00:03:50.640 it looks exactly like something that all  the kids recognize very well. In fact,   00:03:50.640 --> 00:03:54.300 one of the kids has a bag of them  right now that he's chewing on. 00:03:54.960 --> 00:03:56.340 A candied worm. 00:03:56.880 --> 00:04:01.260 The kids stare in curiosity, first at the bag  of candy that their friend has in his hand,   00:04:01.260 --> 00:04:06.480 and then down at the worm slowly eating  its way through the decomposing bird. As   00:04:06.480 --> 00:04:11.100 far as their eyes can tell, the two  things are exactly the same. Except,   00:04:11.100 --> 00:04:14.040 of course, that the one eating  the bird seems to be alive. 00:04:14.940 --> 00:04:19.080 Kids being kids, the next thing that  happened was sort of inevitable. 00:04:19.080 --> 00:04:21.600 One dares the Boy to eat it. 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:25.920 He almost retches in disgust. There  is no way he’s even touching it. 00:04:25.920 --> 00:04:30.540 And then… Another one of the children throws  down the poison chalice and dares him. 00:04:31.140 --> 00:04:36.180 The Boy stands there nervously. He knows that  he is not allowed to eat worms. That had been a   00:04:36.180 --> 00:04:41.100 lesson ingrained in him from a very young age.  But his mother isn't here right now, and this   00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:46.260 thing doesn't look like any kind of worm that  he's seen before. It almost looks a bit tasty. 00:04:46.260 --> 00:04:48.420 In exchange for eating the worm,   00:04:48.420 --> 00:04:51.600 another one of the children promises  he’ll give him five English pounds. 00:04:52.320 --> 00:04:56.280 The kids around the circle gasp. That's  a lot of money. None of them have even   00:04:56.280 --> 00:04:59.880 got two pounds on them, let alone  five. Think of all the sweets you   00:04:59.880 --> 00:05:04.020 could buy with that kinda money. But the  Boy is adamant. He puffs his chest out,   00:05:04.020 --> 00:05:09.120 he stands up tall, and he nods firmly.  Five pounds, or he wouldn't do it. 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:13.920 After some intense schoolyard  debate, the deal is sealed. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.640 As the boy lies in bed that night, staring at  the ceiling and grumbling, he knows that he   00:05:19.640 --> 00:05:23.640 is not happy about what his friends have done to  him today. He is going to get them back for this. 00:05:24.360 --> 00:05:29.820 Only he's getting a bit of a tummy ache. "Getting"  is the wrong word. He's had a tummy ache for most   00:05:29.820 --> 00:05:35.520 of the evening. What he's experiencing now is  heartburn. It feels as if something is crawling   00:05:35.520 --> 00:05:40.140 in his chest. The Boy just ignores it. It's  probably just his worries about the worm inside   00:05:40.140 --> 00:05:44.340 of him. He chewed it up really well; there's  no way that it's still alive in him. Surely. 00:05:45.060 --> 00:05:49.380 His uneasy sleep is punctuated by  rotten dreams. Dreams in which he   00:05:49.380 --> 00:05:53.100 finds himself lying on the floor, and his  playground lying on the ground at school,   00:05:53.100 --> 00:05:58.500 unable to move as people gather around him to poke  him with a stick. He feels his skin covered with   00:05:58.500 --> 00:06:04.380 maggots - They even crawl across the surface of  his eyes. In his chest, there's a searing pain. 00:06:04.380 --> 00:06:09.420 The Boy wakes with a start as he feels his  heart pounding, thudding against his ribs.   00:06:09.420 --> 00:06:15.120 It’s agonizing. Adrenaline courses through him as  he sweats off his face. Crying out for his mom,   00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:19.200 the boy lies there in bed, feeling  the heart attacking his system.  00:06:19.860 --> 00:06:23.460 When you decide to become a surgeon, you  have to accept that you're not going to   00:06:23.460 --> 00:06:27.780 get very much sleep most nights. In fact,  it's more than that. You have to not only   00:06:27.780 --> 00:06:31.200 accept that you won't get much sleep  most nights, but you also have to be   00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:34.980 at your absolute best when you've had no  sleep, and it's the middle of the night. 00:06:34.980 --> 00:06:40.200 With over 40 years under his belt, the Surgeon  doesn't even need coffee anymore, even when the   00:06:40.200 --> 00:06:45.000 junior doctor offers it to him as he strides  toward the operating theater. Instead, he asks   00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:49.080 them to fill him in on the situation - who is his  patient, what's going on, what needs to be done? 00:06:49.980 --> 00:06:54.360 The doctor accompanying him reads the notes in  a calm but hurried voice. They haven't got much   00:06:54.360 --> 00:06:59.400 time on this one at all. At any moment, the  Boy's heart could give out. The Surgeon asks   00:06:59.400 --> 00:07:03.900 what's wrong with the organ, and the doctor looks  at his notes in apparent confusion. Apparently,   00:07:03.900 --> 00:07:09.120 over the course of the night, the Soy has  suffered a 72% reduction in the mass of his heart. 00:07:10.020 --> 00:07:13.680 The Surgeon stops just on the other side  of the door. He doesn't want to have this   00:07:13.680 --> 00:07:17.400 conversation in front of his whole team.  He whispers to the doctor in a terse voice. 00:07:17.400 --> 00:07:20.700 "What kind of infection does  this boy have that his heart   00:07:20.700 --> 00:07:22.680 has undergone that rapid of a deterioration?" 00:07:22.680 --> 00:07:27.660 "It's not an infection at all, sir.  It's... well, sir, it's a worm." 00:07:27.660 --> 00:07:32.880 The doctor holds out a sheet to him. The Surgeon  takes it from him. He looks down at the X-ray to   00:07:32.880 --> 00:07:37.440 see a scan of the boy's chest cavity. It  doesn't look so bad - there is a hole in   00:07:37.440 --> 00:07:40.260 the heart for sure, but the Surgeon  has encountered worse in his career. 00:07:40.860 --> 00:07:43.020 "This was taken when the boy was first admitted." 00:07:43.020 --> 00:07:45.780 The doctor hands the Surgeon a second X-ray. 00:07:45.780 --> 00:07:48.840 "And this was taken just one hour later." 00:07:48.840 --> 00:07:54.840 It is barely recognizable as a human heart. There  seems to be a mass growing in the cavity that was   00:07:54.840 --> 00:08:00.540 left by the heart. And there, infecting all  of the boy's organs, was the shape of a worm.  00:08:01.140 --> 00:08:04.320 The Biker weaves his way through  the traffic down Marylebone Road,   00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:08.760 eyes darting frantically in all directions.  He may have a concussion, and he may not be   00:08:08.760 --> 00:08:13.380 allowed to drive at all right now. In fact,  he knows he definitely isn't. But he is under   00:08:13.380 --> 00:08:18.120 strict instructions: this heart needs to get  to St Mary's Hospital before it's too late. 00:08:18.120 --> 00:08:22.200 The bike careens around the corner and  skids to a halt outside the emergency   00:08:22.200 --> 00:08:25.980 doors. An ambulance team in front of him  is trying to help an old lady out of the   00:08:25.980 --> 00:08:29.460 back of their vehicle, but the Biker  doesn't have time for them. He grabs   00:08:29.460 --> 00:08:32.340 the organ box from the back of the  bike and races into the building. 00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:37.320 It takes all of his remaining concentration to  navigate through the maze of hospital corridors   00:08:37.320 --> 00:08:42.060 on his way to the operating theater. On a better  day, he would be able to do this with no problem,   00:08:42.060 --> 00:08:46.140 but with his head injury, he can see the  lights starting to blur all around him. 00:08:47.820 --> 00:08:53.880 Ward 6, Ward 7, Ward 7A, Ward 7B. He runs  as fast as his heavy boots will allow him,   00:08:53.880 --> 00:08:57.540 feeling that energy draining from his  system. He can't look at his watch;   00:08:57.540 --> 00:09:00.540 he can't check the time. He  just has to find this Boy. 00:09:01.260 --> 00:09:04.740 Operating Theatre. There, right up ahead  of him, just a couple of hundred feet. 00:09:05.340 --> 00:09:08.280 There's a doctor waiting outside the  door who looks up at the sound of his   00:09:08.280 --> 00:09:11.760 footsteps. The Biker rips his helmet  off and holds out the box with the   00:09:11.760 --> 00:09:15.840 heart in it, panting heavily. It's  the moment of truth: is he too late? 00:09:15.840 --> 00:09:21.240 The doctor looks shell-shocked, not at the  biker's arrival but clearly at something else   00:09:21.240 --> 00:09:26.880 she's just seen. The man starts to explain but  runs out of words and instead beckons the Biker   00:09:26.880 --> 00:09:31.260 to follow him into the observation room. There,  the two of them stand looking through the glass   00:09:31.260 --> 00:09:34.860 at the little boy lying on the operating  table with the surgeon standing over him. 00:09:35.460 --> 00:09:38.940 There’s something in the air.  The Biker sniffs, confused. 00:09:38.940 --> 00:09:44.400 “Can anyone else smell sugar?” Next time you open a packet of candied worms,   00:09:44.400 --> 00:09:48.960 take a second to look through the little  creepy crawlies in the bag. Perhaps poke   00:09:48.960 --> 00:09:52.980 a couple of them just to see if any of them  are moving. You can never be too careful. 00:09:53.700 --> 00:09:57.420 If you had told the parents of that young boy  on the night when their son woke up with heart   00:09:57.420 --> 00:10:01.860 palpitations telling stories of eating a worm  at school that the only health concerns he   00:10:01.860 --> 00:10:05.880 would have going forward were mild diabetes  and a slightly raised level of blood sugar,   00:10:05.880 --> 00:10:08.100 I'm sure they would have been thrilled to hear it. 00:10:08.100 --> 00:10:15.600 You see, SCP-839, commonly referred to within the  Foundation as "candied worms", is much scarier on   00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:21.120 the surface than it is underneath. Not only  does this SCP resemble your usual candy worm,   00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:25.800 but its body is actually composed of sugar  flavorings and colorings roughly equivalent   00:10:25.800 --> 00:10:30.000 to what you would find in most convenience  store candy aisles. Each instance even has   00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:33.600 a small raised bit of writing near the  tail specifying which flavor it is. 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:38.460 While the origins of these worms are yet to  be determined, cases have sprung up across   00:10:38.460 --> 00:10:43.740 much of the Western world, with higher numbers  reported in areas with higher levels of diabetes.   00:10:43.740 --> 00:10:47.520 There seems to be a parallel between  high sugar diets and the presence of   00:10:47.520 --> 00:10:53.100 SCP-839. Whether they are of man-made or  other origins is yet to be determined. 00:10:53.100 --> 00:10:57.900 That is not to say the SCP-839 cannot  survive outside of human populations.   00:10:57.900 --> 00:11:03.480 This SCP in the wild primarily feeds  on decomposing organic matter and is   00:11:03.480 --> 00:11:06.540 capable of sustaining itself  on a purely vegetarian diet. 00:11:07.080 --> 00:11:13.980 However, when ingested into the human body,  SCP-839 will target specific organs and burrow   00:11:13.980 --> 00:11:19.020 its way towards them. The organ in question  depends on which color candied worm the SCP   00:11:19.020 --> 00:11:24.540 instance is. For example, the red cherry-flavored  candied worms will burrow towards the heart and   00:11:24.540 --> 00:11:29.400 consume that, while the blue raspberry ones  will instead feed on the human's kidney. 00:11:29.400 --> 00:11:35.940 One would expect the health consequences of this  feeding to be severe. However, as the SCP feeds,   00:11:35.940 --> 00:11:40.980 it will also change its own shape and chemical  composition until the worm itself becomes a   00:11:40.980 --> 00:11:46.080 substitute organ for the one that it is  consuming. However, this substitute organ   00:11:46.080 --> 00:11:50.520 is not a perfect replacement, as other health  consequences are derived from its presence. 00:11:51.180 --> 00:11:57.960 For example, the green apple-flavored SCP-839-3  targets the eye and replaces it with a jelly-green   00:11:57.960 --> 00:12:03.240 version of the human eye. While this eye is  mostly capable of sight, subjects have reported   00:12:03.240 --> 00:12:08.280 mild hallucinations and blurriness of vision, as  well as a greenish tint to how they see the world. 00:12:08.940 --> 00:12:13.140 Fortunately for the Foundation,  SCP-839 reproduces sexually,   00:12:13.140 --> 00:12:18.660 meaning that individual instances require a  partner in order to have offspring. This has   00:12:18.660 --> 00:12:22.860 made containment of this SCP much more  feasible, though they are a relatively   00:12:22.860 --> 00:12:27.300 low-priority entity in the broader scope of  the Foundation. There are no known cases as   00:12:27.300 --> 00:12:32.340 of yet of any SCP-839 infections leading  to death or serious chronic illness. 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:39.000 Therefore, any instances that are captured by the  Foundation are sent to Storage Site 839-1, where   00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:44.460 they are kept in a glass housing and regularly  fed a diet of plant matter each day. Here, their   00:12:44.460 --> 00:12:48.900 reproductive activity can be closely monitored  and controlled based on what research is needed. 00:12:49.500 --> 00:12:54.600 Those infected with SCP-839 instances can  continue to live long and healthy lives,   00:12:54.600 --> 00:12:58.740 with only minor health complications  arising. Therefore, the Foundation is   00:12:58.740 --> 00:13:02.280 comfortable allowing a reasonable number  of cases to go unexamined in the world. 00:13:02.280 --> 00:13:08.280 So like I said, for next time you open up a bag  of candied worms, maybe just give them a quick   00:13:08.280 --> 00:13:13.320 poke. You could be saving yourself a trip to the  hospital and a lifetime dependence on insulin. 00:13:13.980 --> 00:13:18.720 Check out the Dr. Bob Patreon and become a  junior researcher today! Now go and watch   00:13:18.720 --> 00:13:24.900 another entry from the files of Dr. Bob, like  SCP-1550 Dr. Wondertainment's Custom Pets.