WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.060 --> 00:00:02.520 The Store Manager had heard of crazy customers,   00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:06.900 but this was something else. A mob  comes barrelling towards the store,   00:00:06.900 --> 00:00:12.180 visible through the display windows as they  charge down the street. They all look crazed,   00:00:12.180 --> 00:00:17.040 much closer in appearance to rabid animals than  human beings, frenzying, foaming at the mouth.   00:00:17.760 --> 00:00:21.720 A few of them stumble in their haste while  rushing for the automatic sliding doors.  00:00:22.500 --> 00:00:27.180 Some fall to the ground, only for others to  clamber over them, leaping like athletes going   00:00:27.180 --> 00:00:32.760 over hurdles, with all the same speed but with  none of the grace. To the staff inside the store,   00:00:32.760 --> 00:00:37.620 they look like a pack of zombies, all apparently  infected by the same virus that had given them   00:00:37.620 --> 00:00:43.080 such a ravenous hunger… for savings! “I thought Black Friday was a week ago,”   00:00:43.080 --> 00:00:46.920 the Trainee remarks, as the doors slide  open and the first mob spills inside.   00:00:47.940 --> 00:00:52.200 “Welcome to the Mattress Madness Megastore  everyone, if you could kindly form an orderly-”  00:00:52.860 --> 00:00:57.060 Within seconds, the Trainee vanishes as  a tidal wave of maddened mattress store   00:00:57.060 --> 00:01:02.580 customers starts to pile into the store. Each  and every one of them is deranged, that much   00:01:02.580 --> 00:01:07.920 is clear even from a distance. Across the store,  the Store Manager watches as his colleagues are   00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:13.140 shoved and tackled out of the way, just from their  misfortune of standing too close to the entrance.  00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:18.240 It's only as one of the mob wanders closer  that the Store Manager notices their eyes;   00:01:18.240 --> 00:01:24.960 both lids stay shut, somehow closed despite the  crazed customer standing upright. They aren’t   00:01:24.960 --> 00:01:29.100 screwed tightly, it’s clear this person isn’t  forcefully keeping their eyelids clamped down.   00:01:29.100 --> 00:01:35.220 Instead, they’re gently sealed, as if the  customer is still asleep… or sleepwalking.  00:01:35.880 --> 00:01:40.740 The whole situation was astounding; first thing  in the morning, just at opening time, a horde of   00:01:40.740 --> 00:01:45.720 sleepwalking customers barged their way into the  Mattress Madness Megastore, moving – and fighting   00:01:45.720 --> 00:01:51.000 retail staff – as if they were all still awake and  fully aware. And as if that isn’t bizarre enough,   00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:55.620 it quickly turns out these people aren’t here  because they’re eager not to miss out on great   00:01:55.620 --> 00:02:00.300 deals on their bedroom furniture. To the  Store Manager’s horror, the mob has come   00:02:00.300 --> 00:02:06.780 to the Mattress Madness Megastore… for breakfast. He watches an elderly woman, eyes closed, shuffle   00:02:06.780 --> 00:02:12.900 up to a luxury Cashmere Pillow Top California King  size mattress and proceed to eat it. And not bite   00:02:12.900 --> 00:02:18.180 by bite either, not even ripping off pieces to  chomp through like so much cotton candy. In a   00:02:18.180 --> 00:02:24.660 far more horrifying fashion, the old lady eats the  mattress whole. The Store Manager feels his blood   00:02:24.660 --> 00:02:29.280 run cold at the sight of her mouth widening  unnaturally, unhinging like a snake eating   00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:35.340 its prey; except in this bizarre, unaired nature  documentary, the snake is a human being, and its   00:02:35.340 --> 00:02:40.320 meal is a perfectly good bed that moments before  had been resting on a stylish ottoman frame.  00:02:40.920 --> 00:02:45.660 The same exact display of confusing  carnage is unfolding all over the Mattress   00:02:45.660 --> 00:02:49.380 Madness Megastore, people devouring  entire Egyptian Cotton mattresses.   00:02:50.100 --> 00:02:55.320 Some have even devoured their respective meals and  are already moving on to any accompanying pillows   00:02:55.320 --> 00:03:00.780 or cushions, feeding on them in much the same  way. The few members of staff bold enough to try   00:03:00.780 --> 00:03:05.940 and intervene can’t seem to wake the sleepwalking  shoppers up, no matter how hard they grip each one   00:03:05.940 --> 00:03:11.400 by the shoulders and shake, nothing can deter them  from devouring divans and munching on memory foam.  00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:16.260 A sudden, terrifying, and inescapable  thought cuts through all the confusion,   00:03:16.260 --> 00:03:22.380 striking the Store Manager with even greater  fear: the stock room. Behind a series of doors,   00:03:22.380 --> 00:03:28.560 marked with signs reading ‘Employees Only’, are  shelves upon shelves of new units. The Mattress   00:03:28.560 --> 00:03:33.420 Madness Megastore being a much bigger outlet  means there’s additional inventory to replace   00:03:33.420 --> 00:03:39.480 any mattress on the shop floor that gets sold.  And more mattresses mean more food for the mob!  00:03:39.480 --> 00:03:43.980 The worry that these sleepwalkers might soon  develop a taste for human flesh never occurs   00:03:43.980 --> 00:03:48.240 to the Store Manager. He hurriedly races around  the store, gathering up as many of his surviving   00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:53.640 staff as he can, and urges them to help him  defend the stock in the back room. Some are   00:03:53.640 --> 00:03:57.660 already abandoning their posts, ripping  nametags off their polo shirt uniforms,   00:03:57.660 --> 00:04:02.700 and rushing to leave the store; they  aren’t willing to die for $7.25 an hour.   00:04:03.420 --> 00:04:08.280 The Mattress Madness Megastore has insurance,  it’ll cover the damaged stock once the crazed   00:04:08.280 --> 00:04:13.020 customers have feasted on feather beds. But the  Manager urges them to stay; the store’s insurance   00:04:13.020 --> 00:04:17.640 covers stock that is damaged in transit – not  mattresses that are eaten by hungry lunatics!  00:04:18.360 --> 00:04:23.340 A few stay, using the Manager’s desperation to  leverage pay raises and more annual vacation   00:04:23.340 --> 00:04:27.780 days in exchange for their help during  this crisis of cashmere carnivory. With   00:04:27.780 --> 00:04:31.440 his resistance force gathered, the Store  Manager commands the remaining employees   00:04:31.440 --> 00:04:36.060 to charge for the door at the back of the store.  But some of the nearby mattress eaters overhear   00:04:36.060 --> 00:04:40.800 in the sleepwalking state. The staff freeze,  uncertain whether to bolt for the stock room,   00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:44.880 and risk being chased by the hungry  customers. They need a distraction,   00:04:44.880 --> 00:04:49.500 a sacrificial lamb, to grab the horde’s  attention. And with a solemn expression,   00:04:49.500 --> 00:04:54.840 the Store manger realizes what he must do:  this isn’t a fight he’ll make it out of alive.  00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:59.880 He leaps up onto a twin innerspring  and calls out to the crazed customers.  00:04:59.880 --> 00:05:05.340 “Attention, everyone!” He bellows. “I’d  like to announce… that all our mattresses   00:05:05.340 --> 00:05:10.380 are half off for the next five minutes!” The crowd goes even more rabid, all eager   00:05:10.380 --> 00:05:15.480 to eat the pillowy pedestal the Store Manager is  standing upon. His staff flees in the opposite   00:05:15.480 --> 00:05:19.980 direction, rushing to barricade themselves  inside the storeroom while their boss meets   00:05:19.980 --> 00:05:24.720 a grisly demise, and the crazed customers  devour every remaining mattress in sight.  00:05:25.380 --> 00:05:30.900 But what on earth could have possibly caused such  a scene to unfold? What was the inciting incident   00:05:30.900 --> 00:05:36.480 for this unprecedented act of mass mattress-cide,  the divan destruction, and combination carnage?   00:05:36.480 --> 00:05:43.560 All it took was one seemingly innocuous image,  an unassuming online post, to stir over seven   00:05:43.560 --> 00:05:49.920 thousand people into a featherbed feeding frenzy. It’s December the 3rd, 2020, almost an entire day   00:05:49.920 --> 00:05:54.180 before the deranged events that would soon  unfold at the Mattress Madness Megastore.   00:05:54.900 --> 00:05:59.220 And just like he does most days after  college, the Student is trawling various   00:05:59.220 --> 00:06:04.140 internet forums in search of things to laugh at. He’s procrastinating, and through inaction,   00:06:04.140 --> 00:06:09.000 allowing himself to be buried under a veritable  avalanche of assignments, all with rapidly   00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:14.700 approaching dates that they’re due in by. But he  doesn’t care, he can always do them tomorrow. As   00:06:14.700 --> 00:06:19.680 far as he’s concerned, there’s plenty of time  for him to waste doing… well, very little.  00:06:20.460 --> 00:06:25.920 But no matter where he looks, nothing brings with  it even the smallest hit of dopamine. It’s been   00:06:25.920 --> 00:06:29.700 hours since he stopped checking the clock at the  bottom right hand corner of his computer screen,   00:06:29.700 --> 00:06:34.080 instead wearing out the muscles of his finger  as it spins the scrolling wheel of his mouse.   00:06:34.740 --> 00:06:40.320 His social media feed is all the same, more  doom and gloom, and despite his searching,   00:06:40.320 --> 00:06:44.940 he can’t find anything funny to alleviate  his ongoing existential nightmare for so   00:06:44.940 --> 00:06:50.100 much as a second. If anything, seeing every  anxiety-inducing post about the state of   00:06:50.100 --> 00:06:55.860 the world., or dour headlines of reposted news  articles only makes everything worse. That is,   00:06:55.860 --> 00:07:01.440 until the fateful link appears in his inbox. It's from one of his friends at college,   00:07:01.440 --> 00:07:06.060 living in the dorm across campus. The pair of  them constantly swapped links, and exchanged   00:07:06.060 --> 00:07:10.740 memes over direct messages, sometimes while  sitting in the middle of important lectures. So,   00:07:10.740 --> 00:07:14.700 the Student quickly opens up the latest message  from his friend, pleased to have something to   00:07:14.700 --> 00:07:18.720 relieve the monotony instilled by the prior  several hours’ worth of mindless scrolling.  00:07:19.320 --> 00:07:24.540 Sure enough, his friend’s message sits waiting  to be read in his inbox. It’s just a single   00:07:24.540 --> 00:07:29.040 blue hyperlink, with no additional context  offered. Nothing to indicate what the link   00:07:29.040 --> 00:07:34.200 is or what website it leads to, or even why the  Student’s friend bothered to send it. They’re   00:07:34.200 --> 00:07:38.580 long past the need to provide context for the  memes they send each other. The link redirects   00:07:38.580 --> 00:07:43.320 to a familiar corner of the internet to the  Student, the Deep Fried Memes subreddit. Just   00:07:43.320 --> 00:07:48.180 seeing that written in the hyperlink is enough to  spur an enthusiastic click; it’s like going home,   00:07:48.180 --> 00:07:52.860 back to somewhere warm and welcoming, where  everybody knows your name, and they’re always   00:07:52.860 --> 00:07:57.540 glad you came. And where the Student knows he’s  bound to find something to entertain himself.  00:07:58.260 --> 00:08:02.700 A ‘deep fried’ meme is usually a heavily  edited image, with a number of different   00:08:02.700 --> 00:08:07.740 filters added to it. Its contrast is boosted,  the picture is over-saturated and distorted,   00:08:07.740 --> 00:08:12.120 all to the point wherein the colors are  unnatural, and the image appears as a grainy,   00:08:12.120 --> 00:08:17.820 washed-out mess of pixels. And they’re one of  the Student’s favorite sub-genre of funny posts.  00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:23.100 Opening up the link sent by his friend, he  finds one such deep-fried meme staring back   00:08:23.100 --> 00:08:27.960 at him. It depicts a man, long-haired and  wearing dark clothes, presumably a fan of   00:08:27.960 --> 00:08:33.360 heavy metal music. In front of the Metalhead is  a table, with a chessboard placed neatly atop it.   00:08:34.020 --> 00:08:38.880 The pieces on the board are distributed in such  a way that places the Metalhead in checkmate. And   00:08:38.880 --> 00:08:44.460 his opponent? Directly opposite him at the table  is a glass bowl filled with water, and a goldfish   00:08:44.460 --> 00:08:50.760 aimlessly swimming around. And to top off this  Louvre-worthy masterpiece is text, seemingly cut   00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:56.220 and paste from various different places judging by  the alternating fonts and styles. The words have   00:08:56.220 --> 00:09:00.480 been placed into a sentence that reads: “Tell me your secrets, fish.”  00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:06.060 And the Student explodes with laughter. As  if answering his prayers for some humorous   00:09:06.060 --> 00:09:09.960 entertainment to avoid working on his college  assignments, his friend had appeared out of   00:09:09.960 --> 00:09:14.520 the blue and delivered a perfect deep fried  meme. But that momentary boost in serotonin   00:09:14.520 --> 00:09:19.740 levels quickly subsides, and the Student knows how  these exchanges work. This has to be reciprocal,   00:09:19.740 --> 00:09:24.840 a mutual trading of memes, like for like, akin  to swapping trading cards in the playground at   00:09:24.840 --> 00:09:30.180 a younger age. And so, he searches the subreddit  for a token worthy of returning to his friend.  00:09:30.780 --> 00:09:35.160 He clicks on a search filter, sorting the  results from the top posts of all time to the   00:09:35.160 --> 00:09:40.320 most recent posts of the day. These were fresh,  hot off the presses – or out of the deep fryer,   00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:45.300 in this case. And the newer they were, the lower  the chances that his friend had already seen them.   00:09:46.020 --> 00:09:49.080 Scrolling through, the Student  is met with a few underwhelming   00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:53.040 attempts that weren’t worthy of the prestige  expected by the Deep Fried Memes subreddit;   00:09:53.040 --> 00:09:59.820 they’d be better suited for posting on r/cringe.  But then, it appears; the perfect deep-fried,   00:09:59.820 --> 00:10:04.680 crispy, golden brown, cooked-to-perfection  picture to send back to his friend.  00:10:05.520 --> 00:10:10.680 The distorted image is a photograph of a  bed, specifically a king-size mattress on   00:10:10.680 --> 00:10:15.000 what looks like a polished wooden bedframe –  although it’s not easy to tell, thanks to just   00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:19.680 how grainy the picture has been made. Whoever  edited this meme knew what they were doing,   00:10:19.680 --> 00:10:24.600 and has nailed the absurdist, bizarre humor  that the Student and his friend thrive on.   00:10:24.600 --> 00:10:29.880 A label over the mattress simply reads ‘King  Size’ and the meme is captioned in a classic ‘Top   00:10:29.880 --> 00:10:34.320 Text/Bottom Text’ format with the phrase: “A feast fit for a king”  00:10:35.040 --> 00:10:39.540 And the pièce de resistance, the crowning touch  that makes this meme-worthy of the Student’s   00:10:39.540 --> 00:10:45.240 lofty standards, is the title given to it by the  original poster. It sums up the meme perfectly,   00:10:45.240 --> 00:10:51.360 succinctly in three words: ‘Eat Your Mattress’.  The Student erupts into uncontrollable fits of   00:10:51.360 --> 00:10:55.680 laughter, so much so that tears start to  stream down his face. His stomach almost   00:10:55.680 --> 00:10:59.340 feels like it might explode at just how  fine he thinks the post he’s found is.  00:11:00.060 --> 00:11:04.440 Through giggles that hit like the aftershock of  an earthquake, he copies the link to the Eat Your   00:11:04.440 --> 00:11:09.240 Mattress meme into a message and hits send,  to share the hilarity with his friend. Little   00:11:09.240 --> 00:11:15.420 does he know, he’s just condemned his friend to  the same fate that now awaits him. As soon as he   00:11:15.420 --> 00:11:20.520 falls asleep, it’ll happen. And the Student  and his friend aren’t the only ones either.  00:11:20.520 --> 00:11:26.340 The post spreads, either sent directly from  one person to another, or seen by those just   00:11:26.340 --> 00:11:30.480 browsing the Deep Fried Memes subreddit and  happening across the Eat Your Mattress photo.   00:11:31.260 --> 00:11:36.720 Not all of them find it funny, they don’t have to.  They aren’t even required to share it, to pass it   00:11:36.720 --> 00:11:42.000 on to someone else and help the post spread like  wildfire. They’ve looked at it, and that’s enough.  00:11:42.720 --> 00:11:46.740 Come the next day, an estimated seven  thousand people across the world have   00:11:46.740 --> 00:11:51.600 seen the same meme. And it affects them all  in the exact same way, becoming a directive,   00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:56.880 a command planted in their subconscious, one  that they will act on without even realizing.  00:11:57.600 --> 00:12:01.920 It’s been only a few hours since all the carnage  erupted at the Mattress Madness Megastore,   00:12:01.920 --> 00:12:05.760 but by now, the SCP Foundation has  swept in and taken control of the scene.   00:12:06.480 --> 00:12:10.320 A cordon section of multiple blocks, under  the cover story of a dangerous gas leak.   00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:15.540 It’s enough to keep civilians and prying eyes  away without asking too many questions. But as   00:12:15.540 --> 00:12:20.760 for the Foundation personnel themselves, they’ve  got plenty of unanswered questions of their own.  00:12:20.760 --> 00:12:24.060 Two members of the clean-up team are  reviewing the store’s security footage,   00:12:24.060 --> 00:12:29.400 baffled by the sights of the chaos that unfolded  there earlier that same morning. On the screen,   00:12:29.400 --> 00:12:34.740 frenzied customers are eating entire mattresses,  stretching their mouths wide open and swallowing   00:12:34.740 --> 00:12:39.600 them whole. They watch as the Store Manager  appears to make an attempt at a noble sacrifice   00:12:39.600 --> 00:12:43.860 to distract the horde of ravenous customers, so  his employees can rush towards the store room.  00:12:43.860 --> 00:12:49.380 But the Manager is fine; once the horde has eaten  all the mattresses out on the store’s main floor,   00:12:49.380 --> 00:12:53.820 they start trying to break into the stock room out  back, where the other employees have used layers   00:12:53.820 --> 00:12:59.220 upon layers of cellophane-wrapped mattresses to  barricade the door. By the time the Foundation   00:12:59.220 --> 00:13:03.720 arrives, the customers have already forced their  way into the stock room, and have devoured around   00:13:03.720 --> 00:13:07.740 half of the mattresses while exhausted employees  try to wake them from their sleepwalking state.  00:13:07.740 --> 00:13:12.360 The Foundation sees to it that everyone affected  is rapidly administered with memory wiping   00:13:12.360 --> 00:13:17.580 amnestics to forget all about the ordeal. Their  next job is to try and track down the source of   00:13:17.580 --> 00:13:22.380 whatever caused this unprecedented outbreak  of mattress eating. But being experts in all   00:13:22.380 --> 00:13:26.640 things anomalous, it doesn’t take the Foundation  long to start pursuing possible explanations.   00:13:27.420 --> 00:13:32.340 Having already confirmed this wasn’t a viral  anomaly, their next course of action is to   00:13:32.340 --> 00:13:37.500 investigate possible memetic causes. And sure  enough, a common factor quickly presents itself.  00:13:38.100 --> 00:13:42.720 The mob that attacked the Mattress Madness  Megastore, along with subjects who have engaged   00:13:42.720 --> 00:13:47.040 in similar acts of mattress eating across  the world, all have one thing in common.   00:13:47.640 --> 00:13:52.980 Each one has been exposed to the ‘Eat Your  Mattress’ post on the Deep Fried Memes subreddit.   00:13:52.980 --> 00:13:56.880 It takes some deduction on the Foundation’s  part to figure out the cause, after all,   00:13:56.880 --> 00:14:00.960 the meme in question is similar to a number  of others posted in the same subreddit.   00:14:00.960 --> 00:14:07.020 As a result, the Foundation’s online detection  software – or ‘web crawlers’ – initially fail to   00:14:07.020 --> 00:14:13.500 flag the mattress meme as an anomalous image.  Once they do, it is designated as SCP-5126.  00:14:13.500 --> 00:14:18.960 But with a cause established, the pieces start  to fit together. The Foundation’s researchers   00:14:18.960 --> 00:14:23.580 soon realize what the image does – another  reason it was initially missed is that its   00:14:23.580 --> 00:14:28.380 effects only occur once the subject that has  seen it falls asleep. The Student is one such   00:14:28.380 --> 00:14:32.700 subject who lived through this. He dozes off  in his gaming chair, well past the middle of   00:14:32.700 --> 00:14:40.140 the night, hours after he’s first seen SCP-5126. While sound asleep, without waking up once, he   00:14:40.140 --> 00:14:44.700 starts to seek out his mattress, laying unoccupied  on his bed on the other side of his cramped   00:14:44.700 --> 00:14:51.480 dorm room. He and all the others who have seen  SCP-5126 then consume their mattresses, including,   00:14:51.480 --> 00:14:57.420 in many cases, their pillows, any cushions, and  even plush toys. Their bodies stretch unnaturally   00:14:57.420 --> 00:15:02.520 to accommodate the meal, only to return to normal  once they have done the deed. Having returned to   00:15:02.520 --> 00:15:07.500 normal, the Student – and the others like him  – remain unaware they’ve just eaten a mattress.  00:15:08.220 --> 00:15:13.080 But the Foundation is left puzzled, there’s  still one question that hasn’t been answered.   00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:17.940 Their examination of the several hundred customers  at the Mattress Madness Megastore revealed that   00:15:17.940 --> 00:15:24.000 the consumed mattresses aren’t digested like food  ordinarily is – they vanish without a trace. So,   00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:30.480 this naturally begs the question, where are all  these eaten mattresses going? Well, the Foundation   00:15:30.480 --> 00:15:36.480 quickly comes up with an experiment to find out… They place tracking devices inside the cell of a   00:15:36.480 --> 00:15:43.200 member of D Class Personnel, and expose him to  SCP-5126. Sure enough, the meme takes effect,   00:15:43.200 --> 00:15:48.780 and once asleep, he eats his mattress. The  experiment is going exactly as the Foundation   00:15:48.780 --> 00:15:53.760 planned; now they can follow the signal from the  tracking devices to pinpoint the destination that   00:15:53.760 --> 00:15:59.280 all the consumed mattresses are disappearing to.  And, after several sweeps of the Earth’s surface,   00:15:59.280 --> 00:16:04.320 their satellites discover a ping, coming from  a remote location in the state of Montana.  00:16:04.320 --> 00:16:11.040 MTF Sigma 16 suit up, ready to head out to the  location. This Mobile Task Force operates under   00:16:11.040 --> 00:16:16.680 the codename ‘Slumber Party’, and it’s up to  them to investigate. They come across a large   00:16:16.680 --> 00:16:21.720 structure, it looks a lot like a medieval castle,  but it has been built out of mattresses and large   00:16:21.720 --> 00:16:27.720 cushions; it’s the ultimate pillow fort. It  even has pillars and all the fortifications   00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:32.220 you’d expect from a real historical  castle, all made out of even more pillows.  00:16:32.880 --> 00:16:36.960 The Slumber Party team enters the fort, and  quickly discovers that the structure is able   00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:41.940 to anomalously reconstruct itself. Sigma Three  kicks over a stack of pillows and plush toys   00:16:41.940 --> 00:16:47.880 arranged to resemble a statue and watches as  it reforms after collapsing. The team ventures   00:16:47.880 --> 00:16:52.260 deeper into the pillow fort, and is quickly met  with humanoid entities that are also made out of   00:16:52.260 --> 00:16:57.000 pillows. An entity swipes a pillow arm at Sigma  One, but she ducks out of the path of the attack.   00:16:57.780 --> 00:17:02.580 Drawing her firearm, she fires, causing a plume  of feathers to spray out of the pillow person.   00:17:03.120 --> 00:17:09.000 The entity is unphased, and several additional  shots do nothing; even a taser is ineffective!  00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:15.060 The pillow entities are exhibiting extreme  resistance to damage, but Sigma Two has an idea.   00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:20.280 She grabs a pillow from one of the walls, and  uses it to bash the entity attacking her teammate,   00:17:20.280 --> 00:17:26.460 Sigma One. The pillow person collapses into a  pile on the floor, inanimate. And just like that,   00:17:26.460 --> 00:17:31.260 the Mobile Task Force has a way to  fight back. They all grab pillows,   00:17:31.260 --> 00:17:35.580 and make quick work of their attackers, before  they move on to explore the rest of the castle.  00:17:36.360 --> 00:17:43.260 Then, they encounter… the King. There is a man,  sitting atop a large stack of cushions wearing   00:17:43.260 --> 00:17:48.600 a nightcap and pyjamas, eating feathers from an  expensive brand of pillow. Scattered around him   00:17:48.600 --> 00:17:54.180 are empty pillowcases. Trying to ignore the smell,  the Slumber Party team attempts to interrogate   00:17:54.180 --> 00:18:00.180 him. He claims to be the King of Cushion, obsessed  with pillows since a young age. Their smell,   00:18:00.180 --> 00:18:05.820 taste, and texture inspire him to create a  kingdom of plush, his masterpiece of mattresses.   00:18:05.820 --> 00:18:10.680 It doesn’t take very long for the Foundation  operatives to realize that this man is insane.  00:18:11.400 --> 00:18:18.060 They question him about how SCp-5126, the Eat  Your Mattress meme, works – how is it able to   00:18:18.060 --> 00:18:23.640 make people consume entire mattresses and send  them to the King’s cushiony castle? And why?   00:18:24.360 --> 00:18:29.580 Well, the King explains that buying mattresses  is expensive, so in order to build his castle,   00:18:29.580 --> 00:18:34.440 he’s outsourced the gathering of building  materials. As he sees it, he is offering people   00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:39.180 affected by the meme a delicious meal in exchange  for their beds, spreading the world of pillows   00:18:39.180 --> 00:18:44.100 so he can gather resources for his kingdom. Suddenly, he challenges the Slumber Party team   00:18:44.100 --> 00:18:49.200 to a pillow fight for having tracked him down.  The king of Cushion takes up a pillow in one hand,   00:18:49.200 --> 00:18:53.520 and charges towards the Mobile Task Force,  armed and ready to do battle with them all.   00:18:54.120 --> 00:18:58.500 He is quickly incapacitated by Sigma One’s  taser and drops to the floor, defeated.  00:18:59.280 --> 00:19:05.940 Now designated SCP-5126-A, the King of  Cushion is transported back to the SCP   00:19:05.940 --> 00:19:10.620 Foundation for analysis and containment.  Their testing reveals he possesses no   00:19:10.620 --> 00:19:14.700 anomalous properties whatsoever, and the  King actually requires his stomach to be   00:19:14.700 --> 00:19:17.580 pumped thanks to the copious amounts  of pillow feathers he’s been eating.   00:19:18.240 --> 00:19:22.740 The Foundation gets to work dismantling his pillow  fort, and moving all the components into storage.  00:19:23.640 --> 00:19:28.380 And as for the Eat Your Mattress meme itself,  the Foundation’s webcrawlers are keeping an   00:19:28.380 --> 00:19:32.520 eye out for any other posts of the anomalous  image. And don’t worry, if you find yourself   00:19:32.520 --> 00:19:36.660 giggling at a funny deep fried image that  jokingly implies you should eat your mattress,   00:19:36.660 --> 00:19:40.860 the Foundation will ensure you don’t remember  it happening, and they’ll even throw in a   00:19:40.860 --> 00:19:45.720 replacement for your swallowed mattress  at no added cost – now that’s a bargain!  00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:50.640 Check out the Dr Bob Patreon and become a  junior researcher today! Now go and watch   00:19:50.640 --> 00:19:55.620 another entry from the files of Dr Bob, like  ‘15 Best SCP Stories That Will Blow Your Mind!’