What if I told you there was a place where every year, people changed. Well that’s obvious, everyone changes, but I mean really changes. Somewhere where every year, everyone becomes someone new entirely. Well that somewhere is the small town of Clearwater, Montana. Once a year it begins to rain. It is a light rain at first; then it becomes a violent storm. The storm takes all who once were, and recycles them into new. The old are gone, the rain misses them, they have to go to it. Each year the rain dissolves each person into water; it then reforms them into new people that are always different from before. The foundation has had trouble studying this phenomenon because when the event starts no one can enter; no one can leave. Everyone in the town becomes a totally different person with no memory of their previous self.
Rain can seem dreary, but also represents life and rebirth. This is an ironic truth in the case of Clearwater. The event is typically in June and lasts for six to eighteen days. For the first forty eight hours, it is light and calm rain; however after that it becomes a violent thunderstorm that will last until the event ends. Any attempts by the foundation to enter the town during an event have failed, either by loss of personnel, or emerging on the other side of the town; just like it was never even there. If a resident of Clearwater is absent for the event, they will simply disappear. There is also an effect on people who do not live in the town to quickly lose focus while talking about the town or its citizens. They do not forget about it, simply have trouble paying attention to it.
Our main source of information comes from a girl who was keeping a journal during one of the events, and the journal was recovered by the SCP foundation. A young woman identified as ‘Margaret Lane’ was the author, in the event of 1995.
The SCP Foundation is a fictional organization that focuses on capturing “anomalies” aka, anything that may have special powers or can break the natural laws. SCP stands for Secure, Contain, Protect, the foundations goal is to keep these creatures in check while studying them and keeping the public from knowing the truth. They seem to be a morally gray organization as they are fine with doing inhumane experiments on harmless and even friendly creatures.
Check out the story of SCP 3300 and others here: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3300
The people of clearwater are not exactly people, well in the normal sense that we think of people. For most of the time they are people, down to their DNA, as the foundation can not find anything anomalous about the citizens in themselves. During the 3300 event something changes, every resident of Clearwater, Montana dies by being turned into water that makes up this storm that is the anomaly. The storm then makes a new set of people, who think they have lived in Clearwater for their whole lives. The new people behave very strangely during the event, but once it is over they seem to be perfectly normal citizens of a small town. They retain no memory of being made by the storm, or their previous selves. The dreams give us clues into the start of this occurrence, some form of ritual that started when a village tried to save itself from destruction. They did in a way save themselves by becoming part of the storm, but it came at the cost of continual, tragic loss of life, even if they may not exactly be what we consider ‘normal humans’.
The story of Clearwater may seem like mere fiction, but can also be considered in a more philosophical sense. If you think about it, the citizens of Clearwater are experiencing the same thing as everyone else, just at a much more accelerated rate. We all will eventually succumb to death, and no matter where you run or where you hide, it is inevitable. We can all learn a thing or two from Margaret and her friends struggles. You should enjoy the life you have while you have it, before you are whisked away and gone forever, doomed to be forgotten in the unforgiving winds of time. So ask yourself, is it really so different from us? Maybe you are a thrill seeker, or maybe you stay shut up in your house, scared of the outside world. But no one wants to die; not even those who say they do. Those who wish to take their own life only do so as a last resort, as the only way that they can see out, but even they do not truly want to die. It is just because their situation has become so bad, they wish to end it by any means. If they had a better life, if they weren’t so stressed, if, if, if, if…you get the idea. You have a natural instinct to survive, every creature does. Live, eat, drink, sleep, repeat. Did you know you can’t snap your own neck? Go ahead, try it, it doesn’t matter how strong you are, it’s impossible. It’s because your brain won’t let you use all of your strength as it knows it will most likely end to your death, so it keeps you from doing it. Maybe we can all learn to appreciate life a little more from now on, because we never know when our time is up.
