A house affected by RPC-700 after growth.
Registered Phenomena Code: 700
Object Class: Alpha-Yellow Beta-Orange
Hazard Types: Sensory Hazard, Aggression Hazard, Grouped Hazard, Immeasurable Hazard, Info-Hazard
Containment Protocols: The house affected by RPC-700 has been blocked from the public. RPC-700-2 instances are to be transported to OL-Site-700 and housed in standard humanoid containment cells until their total disintegration. If their immediate survival is deemed necessary, small doses of water will be force-fed to RPC-700-2 instances to eliminate the risk of dehydration. Residents living in buildings affected by RPC-700 are to be exposed to MUTA-Class EG:2 glyphs and relocated to a non-infected house. Demolition of RPC-700-infected houses is to be approved by Level 4 personnel or higher. All recorded verbal descriptions of RPC-700-1 made by RPC-700-2 instances are to be deleted. To negate the risk of infection caused by RPC-700-2, all infected subjects must be terminated, and cover stories explaining the subject's death are to be created if necessary.
Description: RPC-700 is a 2 x 1 m shower stall located in a residential house in Crawford, Nebraska. Aside from being impervious to all damage, it possesses no other physical anomalies. The pipeline of RPC-700 descends indefinitely downwards. Attempts to change the pipeline or dig deeper than 16 meters below RPC-700 have been met with failure, as individuals performing these acts will immediately stop for unknown reasons, despite being fully self-aware of said compulsion.
RPC-700's anomalous abilities manifest when it is opened and a human being remains in the stall for 10 minutes or more. The subject will claim to experience intrusive thoughts involving a unique entity, consistently described as a giant grey-hued caterpillar with elongated humanoid extremities protruding irregularly from its body (hereby named RPC-700-1). After leaving RPC-700, no unusual thoughts will manifest in the subject for ~4 days.
Subjects report the absence of any intrusive thoughts for 3-4 days, after which they will undergo an alteration process described below.
Stage 1: The subject will begin to experience a continuous, acute fear of water and steam. Subjects will refuse to shower, bathe, and even drink regardless of deteriorating health conditions caused by such avoidance. Subjects will also avoid discussing RPC-700-1, believing that mentioning RPC-700-1 attracts it to the speaker. Subjects past Stage 1 will be classified as RPC-700-2. All verbal descriptions of RPC-700-1 made by Stage 1 subjects exhibit a memetic anomaly (hereby named RPC-700-3). RPC-700-3 can only be transmitted through auditory means, including digital recordings and transmissions. Individuals who hear RPC-700-3 infected media report that its sound is deeply muffled, commonly likening it to "talking in the rain" and "being recorded underwater". Listeners of RPC-700-3 will invariably be converted to RPC-700-2 instances.
Stage 2: RPC-700-2's voice will begin to be muffled by the noise of water pouring from a shower head until their voice is completely muted by it. If in a state of distress, panic, or anger, the shower noise will be replaced with steam whistles, and RPC-700-2 will release vapor from its mouth. RPC-700-2 is not damaged by this vapor, though it will raise their body temperature exponentially. RPC-700-2 will be extremely distressed by this stage, and ~29% of RPC-700-2 instances die of heart attacks before Stage 3. The noise and vapor have also been discovered to propagate the memetic effects of RPC-700-3. Direct exposure to vapor produced by RPC-700-2 accelerates the RPC-700-3 effects from days to aprox. 5 hours.
Stage 3: Bite marks will start appearing across the body of RPC-700-2. These marks resemble mandible bites left by Danaus plexippus larva, though disproportionally bigger compared to normal bites. RPC-700-2 will subsequently die due to their bites. If RPC-700-2 is killed prematurely, Stage 3 still continues.
Stage 4: Several body parts will start to slowly fade out from the corpse of RPC-700-2 until it fully disappears. The process creates a high amount of steam, which obscures the corpse of RPC-700-2.
Incident 700-1: On 10/4/20██, Researcher Andrew Velasco reported to OL-Site-700's infirmary after displaying RPC-700-2 behaviour. Due to RPC-700-3 not being discovered at the time of the incident, Researcher Velasco infected the medical staff. A potential containment breach alert was announced on OL-Site-700 via broadcast, further spreading RPC-700-3 across the facility; the subsequent panic by personnel in OL-Site-700 producing extremely high levels of vapor. A distress signal was sent to nearby Site-███, where RPC-700-3 was detected by automatic memetic signature traces.
Roughly 10 hours after the first infection, OL-Site-700's East, North and South Wing were engulfed in vapor. Reported casualties indicate 83% of the personnel in OL-Site-700 were infected by RPC-700-31.
Several afflicted witnesses reported a large being similar to RPC-700-1 inside the compromised OL-Site-700 wings, with some reports coinciding with each other, while others claiming to have seen the figure in different areas. It is unknown if these are multiple RPC-700-1 instances, or RPC-700-1 manifesting individually for all RPC-700-2 personnel.
Addendum 700-1: 16 days after tests on RPC-700 had been stopped, a loud groan was heard resonating below RPC-700's pipeline. After the groan, nearby pipeworks stretched to RPC-700, attaching themselves to it. The showers were found to possess the same anomalous phenomena as RPC-700. Due to this, RPC-700 has been reclassified as Beta.