SCP-107: The Turtle Shell

SCP-107: The Turtle Shell A little hollow shell that makes it rain sounds like the sort of discovery people would immediately start imagining uses for. SCP-107 certainly encourages that first impression. Put liquid inside it, the liquid disappears into the shell, and that substance begins falling from the sky around it. A tiny amount can produce a surprisingly large weather event. Ten milliliters of water produces twenty-seven minutes of light rain. A larger amount produces two days of torrential rainfall. The effect moves with the shell, with a small dry exclusion zone immediately around it and rainfall extending out to less than ten kilometers away. Moving the object doesn't switch the weather off. It moves the affected area. Water is the reassuring test. Grass grows faster and greener afterward, while fruit-bearing plants produce unusually large fruit. It's easy to see how somebody would start thinking about agriculture or drought. The story then complicates that idea by showing that the weather changes the plants themselves, and different liquids lead to very different results. Orange juice causes fruit-bearing plants to grow an unknown citrus fruit regardless of their species. Adhesive produces rain that leaves plants with an insect-trapping sticky coating. Other tests lead to plants developing carnivorous structures. The blood experiment goes badly enough that part of the outcome is withheld, and the resulting organisms grow back after two weeks. One important detail is that you can't collect the rain and expect the same plant effects somewhere else. Researchers try that with the water, and nothing unusual happens outside the test site. Whatever changes the vegetation seems tied to being inside the affected area, rather than simply being a property you can bottle up and carry away. There are exceptions to the apparent copying process too. Heavy water comes back as ordinary water, while mercury starts to enter the shell and then comes back out. Solid objects don't activate it. Even when ball bearings are mixed into water, the water disappears and the metal stays behind. The shell has rules, but the tests don't reveal a complete explanation for them. It was found in Ethiopia beside remains believed to belong to a shaman. The bones were dated to around 18000 BCE, but the shell itself couldn't be sampled, so that doesn't give us a confirmed age for the object. It's a suggestive origin without an answer about who made it or what they understood. The Foundation keeps it dry and uses a huge isolated testing area. That feels sensible after reading the experiments. A device that brings rain could be enormously valuable, but the consequences don't necessarily end when the sky clears. The next growing season might be dealing with whatever the last experiment left in the ground, and even plain-looking vegetation may no longer behave the way anybody expects. https://t.co/vZhOJf4CTy