SCP-810 Never Want Lamp

SCP Explained - Story & Animation

Object appears to be a standard oil lamp dating back some 1-2 thousand years. When touched by a human, an inscription appears in Aramaic. It reads, roughly Ask what you will, and you shall never want for it. If the holder of the object expresses any of their desires verbally, the SCP will vibrate briefly. The holder must, on some level, genuinely want what they wish for. The holder will, from then on, have no desire for what they wished for.  LIKE & SUBSCRIBE to SCP Explained - Story & Animation  Follow us on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scpexplainedofficial  Join our Discord, share your SCP art, submit video feedback, chat with other fans...: https://discord.gg/scpexplained   Please let us know in the comments which SCP's we should cover next   Narrated by https://www.youtube.com/c/hitherehunter  Content relating to the SCP Foundation, including the SCP Foundation logo, is licensed under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 and all concepts originate from http://www.scp-wiki.net and its authors.   SCP-810 Never-Want Lamp (SCP Animation) is based on "SCP-810" by HawthornCircle: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-810  #scpexplained #scp #animation

Transcript

00:00Even with off-road tires, the journey out to the village was a strenuous one for the Foundation field agents.

00:06They hadn't been given a detailed dossier on what they'd encounter when they arrived,

00:11just some intercepted radio chatter about an evil lamp that had apparently been causing chaos in this isolated rural part

00:18of India.

00:19Agent Johnson thought it was almost funny, despite himself.

00:22His son, Adam, was five years old and going through an Aladdin phase.

00:26The very idea seemed farcical to him, even though his partner on this mission, Agent Royce, didn't seem to see

00:34the humor in it.

00:35Perhaps Agent Johnson would have been a little more reserved if he knew that one of them would be dead

00:40within the next two weeks.

00:42The vehicle pulled up at the edge of the village in the dead of night.

00:45It was full dark, with none of the urban light pollution that normally obscured the glittering constellations in the sky

00:51above.

00:52Only little handmade lights with small fires dancing inside them lit the way.

00:56They were to meet with the village elder, who would tell them exactly what they were dealing with.

01:01Both Johnson and Royce had been on a number of missions before,

01:04but there was always something eerie about this stage, going in with such an informational disadvantage.

01:11They reached the elder in a small adobe home.

01:14He was an ancient man with a salt and pepper beard that dangled down to his knees,

01:19and a haunted look in his eye.

01:21He asked in a desperate tone if they were here to exercise the evil that had plagued his village

01:26and taken several lives in the last few weeks.

01:29They told him, in his own local dialect, that they would do their very best.

01:33He told them tales of some of the strange things that had unfolded before people started dying.

01:38One of the town's most dedicated workers had suddenly just lost all desire to do anything.

01:43He was a handyman, someone who loved his community and helped nearly everyone,

01:48from fixing roofs to driving the elderly out of the village for medical appointments.

01:52But then he just stopped.

01:55Any of his passion for service disappeared,

01:58and whenever someone made a request of him, he'd just shrug and sit around, doing nothing.

02:03This would prove to be the most minor case.

02:06Some would starve, even when food was forced into their mouths and their jaws were worked up and down by

02:11their loved ones.

02:12One or two people had completely vanished from the village without a trace.

02:16And the common denominator reported by the friends and families of everyone involved was something incredibly strange.

02:23An old oil lamp had been seen in the homes, or worse, in the hands of everyone who had been

02:28involved in the change.

02:31So it would be that very lamp that they would remove from the area and contain.

02:36Just like you won't be able to contain your joy if you subscribe to SCP Explained right now

02:41to enjoy our massive catalogue of anomalous explorations.

02:45Back to the story.

02:46Where the lamp was being kept was a reflection of the Elder's fear.

02:50In a bucket at the bottom of a disused well on the edge of town.

02:54Secret from everyone but the Elder and his most trusted confidants.

02:58He instructed them to retrieve it themselves.

03:00He wouldn't touch it, wouldn't even look at it.

03:03He just wanted that terrible thing as far away from his village as humanly possible.

03:08Johnson and Royce were meticulous, hoisting the rope up from outside the well.

03:13Johnson suppressed a yawn.

03:14He'd been up for eighteen hours now, and it felt like it was killing him.

03:18Once they retrieved the lamp and he'd made it back to the States, he was going to sleep for a

03:22week.

03:23That much he knew.

03:24He just needed to keep working.

03:26Get this lamp.

03:27And they did.

03:28They retrieved it from the bucket and rinsed off the dirty water, seeing it was about what Johnson had expected.

03:34A tarnished old metal lamp straight out of Aladdin.

03:37It had words inscribed on the side reading,

03:39Ask what you will, and you shall never want for it.

03:43Even if Johnson wasn't a member of the SCP Foundation,

03:47he'd read enough fairy tales as a kid to know that you never rubbed a lamp,

03:50and you never made a deal with a genie.

03:53He put the lamp in a Ziploc evidence bag, and with that, they were ready to go.

03:58No ill effects.

03:59No casualties.

04:00The eggheads at the lab would test this thing and have the final verdict.

04:03There was nothing left for Johnson and Royce to do but get it to them.

04:07Good work, Agent Johnson, said Royce, the senior of the two, as they walked back to the vehicle.

04:12Very professional.

04:13I'll put in a word for a commendation.

04:15Johnson smiled and nodded.

04:17Very kind of you, Agent Royce.

04:19Personally, I just want to get some sleep.

04:21That was the moment that Johnson died.

04:23Well, technically, he died two weeks later.

04:25But that was the moment that the arrangement was sealed.

04:28The lamp was returned to a Foundation containment site,

04:31and Johnson noticed that very night that despite his exhaustion,

04:35he just couldn't get any sleep.

04:37He pulled an all-nighter.

04:39Perhaps he figured it was jet lag.

04:41He'd get some NyQuil and be fine in a couple days.

04:43But he wasn't.

04:45Several days went by and he didn't sleep a wink.

04:47And the strange thing was, it was fine.

04:50His body wasn't fine, of course.

04:52It took a horrific physical and psychological toll on him.

04:55He was an incoherent wreck with hallucinations, slurred speech, and diminished motor functions.

05:01He knew that he was dying from lack of sleep.

05:04And somehow, despite it all, he didn't want to sleep.

05:07There was just no desire for it.

05:09Even as his wife and his young son begged at the hospital bedside for him to sleep,

05:13he could feel their sadness for him.

05:15But he couldn't emphasize with their desire.

05:18Some people sleep, and he just wasn't one of those people.

05:21That was fine.

05:22When it hit the two-week mark without sleep in that hospital bed,

05:26he died of a sudden massive heart attack from the physical strain.

05:30It didn't even bother him, though it was too late by that point.

05:33The death of Agent Johnson, the accounts from the village,

05:36and the inscription on the side of the lamp,

05:39Ask what you will, and you shall never want for it.

05:42It was enough for the Foundation to put a pretty good guess about the rest together.

05:47A genie lamp, in the traditional sense,

05:49is the home of what ancient Arabic scholars call a jinn,

05:53a powerful spirit capable of bending reality to its will.

05:56If you had a jinn bound under your command,

05:59you could make a wish to receive a benefit for it.

06:02But of course, as you likely already know,

06:04the jinn hate being bound and controlled,

06:07so they use their immense power and intelligence

06:09to turn the nature of your wish against you.

06:13SCP-810, as it came to be known,

06:15works on a principle that is similar and yet also totally different.

06:19If there is a jinn inside that acts as the animating force for this lamp,

06:23it has never made itself known.

06:26But whatever power is within the lamp

06:28doesn't manipulate the world based on the lamp owner's desires.

06:31No, instead it uses its power to change the desires themselves

06:35to often horrifying but sometimes surprising results.

06:39To put it in the simplest of possible terms,

06:42when you wish for something while holding the lamp,

06:44if you even express wanting something while holding the lamp,

06:48the lamp won't give it to you.

06:50Instead, it will rewrite your brain until you don't want it anymore.

06:54Naturally, the second the Foundation discovered it,

06:57their thoughts and feelings on the matter would be best summed up with,

07:00what are the strangest possible ways we could use this thing?

07:04Enter a large supply of D-class personnel from stage right.

07:07It wouldn't be Foundation experimentation

07:09if we didn't add a few human rights abuses into the mix.

07:14Inspired by one of the rumors at the village

07:16where the lamp had first been discovered,

07:17they selected a D-class, isolated him,

07:20and kept him for an entire day without food.

07:23When he was then taken to the testing chamber,

07:25told that the lamp granted wishes and was given it,

07:28he immediately made a wish for some food.

07:30You can imagine what happened next.

07:32The D-class, despite showing all the physiological signs

07:36of increasingly severe hunger,

07:38showed no interest in food whatsoever.

07:40It wasn't long before he was physically wasting away,

07:43and within a week and change, he was dead.

07:46He never once complained about the process.

07:49Another D-class, a known womanizer,

07:51was brought into the testing chamber and given the lamp.

07:54As the Foundation predicted,

07:55he longed for the companionship of a woman,

07:57and made a wish for this in far more vulgar terms

08:01than I'm comfortable telling you about here.

08:03As a result of the lamp's anomalous abilities,

08:05he immediately became gay

08:07and was released back into the D-class population.

08:10He survived a few more weeks

08:12before being brought back in for additional tests

08:14and was given the lamp yet again.

08:16This time, he wished for the companionship of a man

08:19and was immediately made asexual.

08:22After this, he didn't show interest in anyone,

08:24and instead spent a lot of his free time in the D-class barracks

08:27doing cryptic crossword puzzles.

08:29Another D-class, who hadn't taken well to this new kind of confinement,

08:33had an even more spectacular and disturbing result from using the lamp.

08:38Crucially, he hadn't been yet involved with any other anomalous tests,

08:42and when he was given the lamp,

08:44he didn't actually believe it was real.

08:46He exhaled and then said,

08:48I just want to have some goddamn fresh air.

08:51This, it seemed, made him completely cease in the desire to breathe.

08:55He began gasping and sputtering,

08:57but also showed no signs of psychological distress

09:00at the fact that he just stopped breathing.

09:03Researchers just watched in astonishment

09:05as the D-class just sat there and suffocated in real time.

09:08His skin went white at first,

09:10and then a strangled blue.

09:12He died right there on the chair inside of a two-minute period,

09:16all because of a poor choice of words.

09:18However, the Foundation did actually discover

09:21some earnestly valuable uses for SCP-810,

09:24which they have now dubbed the Never Want Lamp,

09:27and this was apparently the case

09:29with particular psychopathic and dangerous criminals

09:31who'd been made into D-classes.

09:33One D-class was an ex-member of the Chaos Insurgency,

09:37the dangerous breakaway group,

09:38who'd once all been members of the Foundation's

09:41most elite mobile task force.

09:43He was a well-trained and extremely dangerous individual

09:45with a clear animosity towards the Foundation,

09:48so researchers were curious to see

09:50what would happen if he was given the lamp.

09:53They'd need to be a little more clever with this one, though.

09:56A Chaos Insurgency member would smell a rat

09:58if he was just handed the lamp and told to make a wish.

10:00He needed, above all else,

10:03to believe that he wasn't meant to have it.

10:05In order to make this work,

10:07the Foundation went as far as to stage

10:08a fake containment breach

10:10that would allow the Chaos Insurgency member

10:12to believe he'd escaped,

10:14and, in the process of this escape,

10:16simply encountered the lamp.

10:18He picked it up,

10:19and researchers that were secretly observing

10:21were able to hear him say aloud,

10:22I wish for the destruction of the SCP Foundation.

10:26The second after he made that wish,

10:28an immediate sense of calm seemed to set in.

10:31When he was recaptured,

10:32he didn't seem to have any negative feelings

10:34towards the SCP Foundation.

10:36He was, in fact, completely compliant

10:38with all the demands made of him.

10:40Without the desire to destroy the Foundation

10:42lingering on his mind

10:43as an animating force

10:44for his Chaos Insurgency activities,

10:46he didn't feel any motivation

10:48to keep on making trouble.

10:50They decided to conduct a similar experiment

10:52with a D-class who proved to be

10:53quite an escape artist,

10:55having made several almost successful attempts

10:57to get out of the D-class barracks

10:59and a containment site entirely.

11:01The reason he tried so hard

11:03and so frequently to escape

11:05was that he claimed he'd always been innocent,

11:07though the Foundation highly doubted this.

11:09He was given the lamp,

11:10told that it granted wishes,

11:12and he immediately wished

11:13to escape the Foundation containment site.

11:15After that, he became wonderfully placid

11:17and never attempted to escape again.

11:19He was killed by SCP-682

11:21in a later cross-test,

11:22before exonerating evidence came out

11:24that proved he was, in fact, innocent.

11:27You can't win them all.

11:29Perhaps feeling guilty

11:30about what happened last time,

11:32they decided to next test

11:33on a convicted serial killer

11:34who had fully and gleefully

11:36admitted to ten different killings

11:38on the outside.

11:39He said that if ever given the opportunity,

11:42he'd happily do more.

11:43It was just too delicious,

11:45too exciting to ever quit.

11:46When he was given the lamp

11:48and told that it could grant

11:49any wish he made,

11:50he naturally wished

11:51to be able to claim another victim,

11:53because this was not a particularly

11:55psychologically complex guy.

11:57After that wish, however,

11:58everything changed.

12:00Despite previously being

12:01a creepy little dude

12:02who made all of his fellow D-classes

12:04uncomfortable

12:04with his rantings of mutilation

12:06and murder well into the night,

12:08he was now a model citizen

12:09with seemingly no violent urges whatsoever.

12:12He was known to be kind

12:13and caring after this incident,

12:15and was a model example

12:16of grace and charity

12:17to the other D-class personnel

12:19in the barracks.

12:19He was killed by SCP-682

12:21in a later cross-test.

12:23Interestingly,

12:24after these incidents,

12:25one researcher became

12:26extremely curious

12:27about the prospect

12:28of testing the lamp

12:29on SCP-682 itself.

12:32Seeing as the hard-to-destroy

12:33reptile's greatest desire

12:34always seemed to be

12:35the destruction of all life

12:36on Earth,

12:37maybe touching the lamp

12:38while thinking

12:39these omnicidal thoughts

12:40would cure it

12:41of its murderous affliction.

12:42This idea was soundly rejected

12:44by his colleagues,

12:45who feared that 682

12:46would use its adaptive powers

12:48to somehow synthesize

12:49the ability of the lamp

12:50and use it against everyone.

12:52Still,

12:53the researcher persisted,

12:54positive that despite

12:55all the naysayers,

12:57there was gold hidden

12:58in this idea.

12:59There was no way

13:00to destroy SCP-682,

13:02but the lamp could provide

13:03a brilliant means

13:04of changing the monster's mind.

13:06There was nothing

13:06that he wanted more

13:07than to give this a try.

13:09So,

13:09his superiors passed him

13:10the lamp

13:11and asked him

13:11to repeat his proposal,

13:13and after that,

13:14he lost all interest

13:15in the idea.

13:16Don't you just love

13:17a happy ending?

13:18Now check out

13:19A Day in the Life of SCP

13:20Dr. Alto Clef

13:21and Ancient SCPs

13:23that should have

13:23never been bothered

13:24for more.

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