OPERATION PROCEDURES: SCP-9385 has been created by the Foundation. In no part of its design or testing has it exhibited any properties diverging from expected behavior, hence its continued successful containment is expected.
SCP-9385 is housed in a designated facility underneath Site-125, hereafter referred to as FS125-9385. One of three different operation procedures applies to every unit in any involvement with FS125-9385, therefore all such units are split into three categories:
I. Non-sentient construction and operation machinery is to go on maintenance by Category-III units before and after each activation of SCP-9385;
II. A member of the D-class staff is to be preemptively saturated with subliminal memetic data to ensure that the headspace of the subject is confidently distinct from any other human being without any alterations to the subject’s behavior or cognitive function. Said member is to be locked inside SCP-9385’s entry chamber prior to activation, and to be amnesticized immediately following deactivation;
III. Project management staff are to stay outside FS125-9385 and, before each of its activations, are to be partially amnesticized, with the explicit purpose of being unaware of SCP-9385’s existence or any information relating to it while it is activated. Said staff is granted access to mnestics following deactivation of SCP-9385.
DESCRIPTION: SCP-9385 is a conceptual decomposition machine, used to detect hypercomplex concepts and safely fragment them into human-comprehensible information. It has been constructed under Overseer command with the expressed purpose of countering an unspecified pluripotent antimemetic entity, hereafter designated SCP-9385-A.
All project data including blueprints and further instructions has been developed by the Antimemetics Division and directly encoded as algorithms into Category-I units, which were later transferred to FS125-9385, where SCP-9385’s construction was finalized after 6 years of active work.
Generalized schematic of SCP-9385
- Data sensor – tubular structure of anomalous origin, capable of detecting rogue conceptual entities and receiving data from them;
- Decomposition unit – converts attained data into numerous non-anomalous concepts, most if not all of which are fragmentary and incomprehensible to humans at this stage;
- Scranton Reality Anchor;
- Processor array – reinterprets the resulting decomposed information as human-readable data, passing it to the entry chamber;
- Entry chamber – a sensory deprivation chamber where the Category-II unit is sealed. They are set to receive the processor array’s output, equipped with complex neural activity analysis tools that track the influence oncoming data has on a human brain. The thoughts and feelings the unit is experiencing are translated into human language automatically;
- Output gate, where the results are displayed.
Activation report
Date and time: 17:30 14-Jun-2031
Duration: 21 minutes 13 seconds
Command: O5-██, Relevant department heads and senior researchers
Supervision: Category-I units
Subject: D-56225
Outcome: Automated emergency deactivation due to an extreme spike in Hume levels, preventing them from passing a critical margin by 28 milliseconds. Data received from SCP-9385 has been safely converted and archived. D-56225 exhibits partial bodily reconfiguration and is to be indefinitely quarantined.
▲ Collapse
Data locked for special use under explicit Overseer order.
▲ Collapse
The chamber is sealed. It's… Strangely comforting here. …Feels like I'm suspended in the middle of a void. I… would’ve expected it to feel worse than this.
The visual snow feels so vivid. I can almost see it as if it was right here, around me. Whether my eyes are closed or not, it's here.
This is what I always see when I'm about to get my “scheduled resting hours”. I lay down, I close my eyes, and I am in the presence of this scattered glow.
After every other hopeless situation they've put me in for the sake of their useless numbers, it almost feels comforting.
I'm not even sure if I'll survive this, but… If I stay surrounded by the sole thing bringing me comfort, I'm fine with anything.
It coalesces. I remember. Memories from way before I was trapped in concrete walls. I see it now. I'm sitting near a river, tall grass around me, sprinkled with rocks. Small waves softly bumping into the dirt under my feet. Distant songs of birds. I loved that place.
Then I went home. It's been a while since I've moved out… My roommates are nice. We used to play a lot of hilariously off-brand board games together. I still remember when I thought I could just resell one for extra profit.
Sometimes even just walking to a mall and back felt nice. Crossing the suburbs, surrounded by trees, staring at high-rises in the far distance. The fresh air carrying a variety of pleasant smells.
Or those times I went for too long of a walk, coming back home deep into the evening. Seeing old street lanterns glow up, listening to the songs of crickets.
Need to be careful…
To not get into any alterations. Altercations.
Any altercations. Trouble for. Either side. Either side. Either side.
No. That's… No. I didn't want to do anything. He was picking a fight, not me. Stop it. Stop. It.
…
It's… It feels like so many different thoughts jump over my head. I remember lots of things…
The noise is morphing, forming spirals, branching, never-ending. Looking in any corner feels like a different experience. Whatever this is, it brings back memories about a lot of things at once. It feels like life.
It feels like my own life. Everything I'm looking at is a part of me. Every memory and every experience is here. This is just… Me.
But something feels out of place. Is it out of place? Has it always been here? It's like its own mess of memories, joined together… It feels like everyone I ever talked to here at once. Who is this?
It feels like… Everyone. My family, my former friends. Staff. People I didn't like, people I’ve hurt. Everyone is here, at once.
It's deeper now. I can see the spirals coalesce together, wrap around… Zoning in on a pentagonal shape. Every intricacy of its detail is brilliant. Every second of it is like looking at a different renowned mural artwork with its own history.
Shapes merging together and splitting back, in perfect harmony. Surrounding me, always in motion, everywhere, but never in the same place.
The jade gleam surrounding a dark spiral, following its lead, following it as it splits in circles, merges into one, and keeps branching, unbounded.
Like a hydra that never stops growing, each end is a start to five new branches, all merging and separating, veiled in layers of brilliant aurorae.
This is it. This is everyone. This is why humans have five fingers. This is why the Greeks thought there'd be five elements dictating the universe. This is more intricate than that, this is why the number five is what it is.
This is… Everyone I've known. Everyone I could have ever known. Everyone. Everything. I'm staring deeper into the branches, and I see new experiences I've never had. Memories that never existed.
I can feel my hand stretching out towards it. It vanishes in the distance, held by the grasp of the twirling shapes.
This is the purest form of subconscious. This is what everyone is a part of. This is… So beautiful…
I can see it more vividly than before, it's more vivid than anything I've ever seen… This is more real than reality, this is more genuine than anything I ever believed. I was sent to what looked like I'll be dreaming and now I see what feels like I just woke up. This is existence.
…But then why? Why am I like this? Of all the things born from this perfection, why am I an outlier?
…
I see…
Is that… How is it meant to be?
In this miraculous dance of shapes, there is a place for everything. This is how it has to be.
I can feel it encourage me. I can feel it reaching out to me to accept me in its embrace.
I cannot accept. There is no redemption or acceptance for this. I can feel its embrace.
Why is this thing okay with this?!
I cannot accept… It tells me I’ll stop hurting. I can't…
…
I reluctantly subsume.
I can feel my body shiver. Not from fear, not from alertness… It’s a feeling I can't describe.
My arm is moving on its own.
Shiver. It feels like every cell of my body is joining this eternal blissful dance.
I do not know if I should be forgiven. I don't know if I can. But it forgave me.
It feels like I can breathe again.
I'm forgetting the damage I took, the damage I inflicted.
My arm is morphing into something new. I can feel the elbow fall out of its socket. I can feel my muscles cramping as they reform.
I'm forgetting where I was before this, and I am not even sure if it matters enough to remember.
My bones crackle, my forearm appears to be flipping inside out.
I'm forgetting my fear and my guilt.
I don't even know if it matters what I did.
Maybe what I did had to be done. And that's it.
My palm is changing shape, the fingers are drifting apart.
I can feel the swirl reassure me. It will protect me. It will guide me through any altercation, any future incident, every moment that chips away a little bit of my soul at a time. I will not be a slave anymore.
Phalanges crushing into each other and stretching apart, the core of the palm crackling and vibrating.
I've witnessed the absolute of perfection. Branches of the purest dark, built of tranquility, providing solitude and comfort. Surrounded by infinitely deep acid gleam, layers upon layers of purest greenery, branching forever, living forever.
This is infinity. This is the true meaning.
Five equal fingers equally spaced.
…
…
…
Then why…
Why do I still feel it?
Even here, even with this gift from above, why can't I stop feeling it?!
Am I not dedicated enough? I should trust it. It had proven everything to me, it had shown me the source of all that is.
Any reasonable person would have no option but to trust it.
…
I look down my maimed arm. Changed to fit the shape of omnipresent perfection, and yet resembling nothing I've ever known.
I no longer remember what its previous form was.
I no longer remember who I hurt.
I no longer remember anyone.
I cannot forget that I did it.
My limbs do not follow me.
My spiral-shaped mess of snapped bones is in a handshake with the swirl.
I cannot pull away.
I no longer remember myself.
It drags me deeper into the overcrowded absolute void.
I cannot resist anymore.
I cannot resist anything.
▲ Collapse
Despite the emergency shutdown, the first activation of SCP-9385 was ultimately deemed a success, as it had unveiled the precise values of 3716 previously unknown vectors of subliminal influence, 2130 of which have been assessed as high-risk due to the possibility of triggering SCP-9385-A, leaving upwards of 1586 safely utilizable vectors.
The Antimemetics Division concludes that the existence of SCP-9385-A remains an urgent problem of enormous magnitude.
Pending Ethics Committee permit to conduct research into the application methods of attained data into the Foundation's command structure.