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SCP-9430

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For every anomalous object that the Foundation has in containment, the Department of Analytics estimates two more exist in private collections and storage facilities around the world. Anomalous items are both scarce and unique; both of these qualities make them excellent stores of value. The illegibility of their anomalous behaviour to conventional banking and assessment systems allows huge amounts of wealth to slip unnoticed through the shadow economy, benefitting those who prefer to live in the darkness.

My team and I exist to trace the movement of anomalous items through hidden and exclusive markets wherever we find them, to assess the threat these items pose, and (when deemed necessary) to enable their seizure and containment. We skulk around auction houses, check receipts, and monitor all kinds of databases on the internet. That might not seem very glamorous, but as we put each listing and transaction together, sometimes something larger begins to emerge. That's how SCP-9430 started.

- Agent Amelia Lau, Subdepartment of Shadow Economics

Item #: SCP-9430

Object Class: Pending

Special Containment Procedures: All deposits and withdrawals to the locations where SCP-9430 instances are known to be present are to be monitored by Foundation analysts. Micro-lens CCTV cameras are to be covertly placed in and around known storage facilities and any sign of a withdrawal from vaults known to contain SCP-9430 must be immediately reported to Agent Lau, as should any discovery of SCP-9430 outside known facilities. If the intended destination of undelivered instances can be determined, Foundation operatives are to make this delivery themselves, while attaching surveillance devices to the recovered SCP-9430 instances. No attempt should be made to open any instance of SCP-9430-1 at this time.

Description: SCP-9430 is a collection of anomalous items being deposited in Le Freeport, Singapore, and the Luxembourg High Security Hub, Luxembourg City. These items have so far been divided into two categories, designated SCP-9430-1 and SCP-9430-2.

As of 01/03/2017, 44 instances of SCP-9430-1 have been identified. These are artificial cylindrical objects containing a miniature spatial topological defect, which consists of a pocket of higher-dimensional space compressed into three spatial dimensions, with the defect in each instance taking on the shape of a slightly different Calabi-Yau manifold; however, no notable magnetic field, gravitational distortion, or exotic particles have been detected emanating from instances of SCP-9430-1. Foundation physicists calculate that breaching the containment of an SCP-9430-1 instance would result in the collapse of the topological defect inside, causing massive damage to the local area up to a distance of 3 km; for this reason, no attempt has been made to deconstruct any instance until its method of containing the defect can be better understood.

Fourteen instances of SCP-9430-2 are currently known to the Foundation. Instances of SCP-9430-2 are framed rectangular surfaces of an unknown wood with dimensions ranging from 0.1 x 0.3 m to 4.3 x 6.8 m. On one side, they are decorated with pigments made from metal oxides and a previously unknown form of the protein albumin. They depict various unique scenes, over half of which contain rough depictions of sinuous, eel-like figures with a halo of detached arms ending in different kinds of manipulators. Instances SCP-9430-2-8 and SCP-9430-2-10 also include patterns which analysts theorise are a form of text due to their regular inventory of symbols and division into discrete compounds which may act as words or sentences.

Discovery: SCP-9430 was first identified as anomalous on 13/02/2017 by Foundation analysts who received a tip about unusual deliveries to Le Freeport and Luxembourg High Security Hub. Instances of SCP-9430 were identified by scanning parcels in the field. The drivers and postal workers interviewed by operatives claimed to have no knowledge of nor interest in the parcels' contents.

Agent Lau noted that while SCP-9430-1 may pose a danger to civilians and the Veil if improperly handled, the probability of such an event is low, and the subdepartment's current priority is to uncover the source of SCP-9430. Therefore, she suggested that all known SCP-9430 storage facilities be monitored closely, but to postpone the seizure of SCP-9430 objects until more information can be gathered. This should avoid causing the source of the objects to change its deposit locations and leave the domain of Foundation surveillance.

[► Video Log 9430-A1 - 03/03/2017]
[Agent Lau is sitting in a fast food restaurant in Hong Kong, facing the door and working on her laptop. A shambling humanoid figure wearing a trenchcoat, hat, and a facemask enters, looks around, and walks over to sit opposite Agent Lau. Two stacked pairs of sunglasses obscure its upper face.]

Unknown: Miss Lau?

Agent Lau: Who am I speaking to?

Unknown: You may call me Cassius-64. My investigative record is extensive and flawless. I have been tasked by the Supreme Revenue Authority with determining what actions are required to combat the shameless flouting of our financial standards on your planet.

[Agent Lau cocks her head]

Agent Lau: I'm sorry; the Supreme Revenue Authority?

Cassius-64: They are the mouth and stomach of the Nuurudan Syzarchy, the supreme culture, an empire that spans all dimensions.

[Agent Lau looks at Cassius-64 in silence for five seconds.]

Cassius-64: The collectors of tax.

Agent Lau: Ah. And you believe our planet should be paying?

Cassius-64: That is not what I am currently investigating. Some wealthy individuals in the Syzarchy are not doing their part or giving their fair share to the very system that enables their power and their riches. They have come to your world to hide their income and assets. From my vessel, I conducted a passive sweep of your planet's entire digital infrastructure, searching for anomalies that defied the economic logic of your civilisation's legal and financial systems: companies with no employees landing large real estate deals, sudden influxes of cryptocurrency into anonymous wallets, and inexplicable purchase prices for artwork by artists of no particular talent or note.

Agent Lau: What did you discover?

Cassius-64: I discovered that these activities are very common among your species. I discovered that I would need some help.

Internal note: Some information sharing with this entity, designated PoI-9430-A, could be exceptionally useful in our analysis of this SCP and its associated Group of Interest. They clearly have surveillance capabilities far in advance of our own, and being members of the same civilisation as the GoI, they have the systems knowledge we lack to understand the situation from the other side. Collaboration could also help us establish friendly diplomatic relations with an extraterrestrial power and gain insight into their technology. I propose that we share select information on locations where we currently know SCP-9430 is being stored and form a joint strategy for detecting anomalous activity. - Agent Lau


Page Revision: 25/03/2017, 17:54

Item #: SCP-9430

Object Class: Keter

Special containment procedures: Knowledge of SCP-9430 individuals has escaped into a portion of the civilian population, though it is expected to remain restricted to certain discreet financial services firms due to client confidentiality. The Foundation is to actively monitor and gather information regarding the activity of SCP-9430 individuals on Earth and obscure data and records likely to threaten normalcy. Any withdrawal of SCP-9430-1 or -2 instances must be tracked and any unsecured instances must be immediately retrieved by Foundation operatives.

Description: SCP-9430 is an extraterrestrial civilisation referred to as the 'Syzarchy of Nuuruda'. Technologically, it greatly surpasses humanity in the domains of dimensional manipulation and materials science. Artifacts of this civilisation present on Earth include SCP-9430-1, a form of contained topological defect designed to be impossible to replicate which serves as the polity's only legal currency, and SCP-9430-2, a form of artwork which has its scarcity maintained through the use of a complex guild system and strict regulation of various aspects of its production. 11,453 instances of SCP-9430-1 are known to be present on Earth, in addition to 3,291 instances of SCP-9430-2. The technology of SCP-9430 enables members of this civilisation to transport items and persons between Earth and the civilisation's home dimensions through an unknown method that cannot currently be effectively monitored by the Foundation.

SCP-9430 is the source of GoI-9430, described below.

GoI-9430 is a collective of extraterrestrial entities currently utilising financial institutions on Earth for the purposes of tax evasion and money laundering. Assets operated by GoI-9430 include:

  • At least 29 shell companies and 67 discretionary trusts registered to the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and the US state of Delaware
  • Six secure storage vaults at the Le Freeport, Singapore
  • Four secure storage vaults at the Luxembourg High Security Hub, Luxembourg City
  • A network of cryptocurrency wallets on several major blockchains (refer to document 9430-G)
  • The open ship registry of the country of Aruba
  • A network of gambling websites with frequently changing domain names (a list of known domains is maintained by Agent Lau at document 9430-K).

Foundation researchers hypothesise that GoI-9430 is a network of wealthy Nuurudan individuals exploiting the favourable tax and secrecy conditions provided by certain Earth nations to disguise their wealth from the Syzarchy tax collection apparatus and collect additional off-world income.

Internal note: The Legal Department was consulted on the Foundation's mandate regarding extraterrestrial tax evasion, but no consensus was reached. The Ethics Committee noted that actively assisting Syzarchy tax collection would not exceed the current limits established for Foundation cooperation with authoritarian regimes, terrestrial or otherwise.

Our main concern is the Veil, which the GoI is managing to skirt quite capably. The Syzarchy may be the larger threat to normalcy. GoI-9430 is anomalous, but legally compliant. - Agent Lau

[► Video Log 9430-A-4 - 30/06/2017]
[Agent Lau and PoI-9430-A ("Cassius-64") are sitting at a beachfront café in Willemstad, Curaçao. Agent Lau wears a colourful blouse and sunglasses; PoI-9430-A wears the same mask, trenchcoat, and hat as in all other appearances, as well as a pair of pink-rimmed plastic sunglasses.]

Cassius-64: I have been reading your reports. You have done well. Your species has greater capacities than we had so far recognised. Perhaps your entry to the civilised realms is closer than expected.

Agent Lau: Perhaps it is. I wanted to ask you a few questions, actually. They might assist with our investigation.

Cassius-64: Very well.

Agent Lau: Firstly, what information do you need from us? I'm guessing your legal system requires you to bring certain kinds of evidence forwards to prove wrongdoing?

Cassius-64: Yes. The core of my duty is to legally connect the income of these wrongdoers from their planetary estates to the assets on your planet. We need to match names, numbers, and assets between your records and ours.

Agent Lau: But each of your units of currency and works of art is completely unique, right? They're designed to be that way. Can't you just check who the last known owner of an item was?

Cassius-64: Ordinarily, yes. However, a vague and nebulous web of actors work day and night to conceal ownership in this way. We have records of wealthy individuals deliberately shipping their treasuries to noncompliant planets just before an assault simply so they could designate them as lost or stolen, moving them rapidly into the shadow economy. I believe you use the term 'laundering' for these kinds of activities.

Agent Lau: Hm. Secondly, I assume that your civilisation has a much larger economy than ours. Shouldn't this process be less about looking for fingerprints and more like looking for the splash pattern when a boulder hits a garden pond?

Cassius-64: Not so. A thing which is greatly valued in our economy, such as our physical currency, may be of little value to your civilisation. It may not even be understood at all. Therefore, it may not be highly valued in your currencies. Additionally, the Supreme Revenue Authority does not just tax income, but a percentage of one's wealth and capital gains. If an asset lies outside our economy, it can appreciate and store wealth completely untaxed.


Incident Log - selected extracts

01/07/2017: Foundation analysts intercepted communications from GoI-9430 indicating that a deposit was about to be made to a specific storage vault in Singapore. In order to gain more information about the entity, Agent Morrison requested that a mobile task force be dispatched to seize the deposit and detain the courier(s) being used.

Agent Morrison's request to raid the freeport has been denied. In a case such as this, we are reliant on co-operation with local authorities. Singapore authorities require a warrant. A warrant requires probable cause of crime under Singapore law. 'Being an alien tax cheat' is not currently illegal in Singapore, as long as you're not evading their taxes. - Regional Director Wu

19/08/2017: One GoI-9430 entity accidentally filed Nuurudan tax forms with Delaware Division of Corporations. Forms included species designations and off-world addresses with dimensional co-ordinates, and were written mostly in Nuurudan script. Delaware processed the filing without comment and charged the standard $89 fee.

10/10/2017: An email account being used in the Foundation's investigation began to receive forwarded copies of a Nuurudan magazine titled 'Love Your Wealth - Get Rich and Stay That Way'. One article in the latest issue (#8594) claims Earth ranks #3 among 'emerging tax havens' in known space, behind the Phazonian Arcades and a rogue moon with no known inhabitants. Earth's ranking is boosted by an 'unexpectedly cooperative professional services sector' and 'charmingly primitive enforcement capabilities.'

Illustrative advertising copy from the same issue is reproduced here: 'PLANET EARTH - THE NEW HOME FOR ALL YOUR HARD-EARNED SAVINGS! Lax enforcement! Cooperative banks! Authorities still debugging basic inter-agency communication! No off-world information sharing agreements! Inquire at Sulgu & Shmee, 867-546 Axial Station, Kattard Quadrant.'

[► Video Log 9430-A-8 - 28/04/2018]
[Agent Lau and PoI-9430-A are seated together in an operations room near Site-611. Agent Lau is sharing the information authorised by Regional Director Wu with PoI-9430-A on several computer monitors.]

Cassius-64: A good start. I can assist in pinpointing the sites where the criminals are storing their wealth. There are materials used in our technology which are unknown on your planet. My vessel has been maintaining a continuous scan for even minute traces of these substances. I will share this information with you so that you can find the exact location where the items are being stored.

Agent Lau: That would help us identify many more nodes of the network.

Cassius-64: Precisely. Dust containing traces of these substances will also cling to the skin and clothing of our targets' human associates.

Agent Lau: Right. It's them who make the whole operation possible. The criminals aren't hiding their riches alone, and I doubt they'd even know where to start. They're employing a highly-paid, professional class of lawyers, accountants, and wealth managers to do it for them.

Cassius-64: Your species has taken to this with a worrisome level of enthusiasm. Do you have anything more for me? My superiors grow impatient. They do not appreciate the complexities of non-compliant worlds.

Agent Lau: Nothing for now. I'll be in touch with anything significant we find.

Internal note: PoI-9430-A doesn't need to know everything we do about the exact nature of the web of people, trusts, and bank accounts connected to the GoI. We're still trying to find out more about the Nuurudan Syzarchy, their technology, and their intentions for Earth both in the case of a successful prosecution and in the case of failure. Both might be bad news for us. Indications are that the Nuurudan government cares very little for the laws and sovereignty of any state other than their own. - Agent Lau

On 05/06/2018, Agent Lau was able to identify Hanstead Law Partners as the registered agent for a GoI-9430 shell company and interviewed Mr. Henry Glisson, a member of the firm, for comment.

Interview log

Date: 08/06/2018
Time: 11:02 a.m.
Interviewer: Agent Amelia Lau, Subdepartment of Shadow Economics
Interviewed: Mr Henry Glisson, Senior Counsel, Hanstead Law Partners

Agent Lau: Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Glisson. We've been looking into your services and considering whether they're a fit for us.

Mr. Glisson: Excellent. If you value experience and professionalism, I believe you have already found your firm.

Agent Lau: Privacy is very important to us. In order to guarantee we could receive that privacy when working you, I must confess that we've been studying your work from a distance to see if any sensitive information might slip through.

Mr. Glisson: I am disappointed to hear that. We would certainly have been able to allay your concerns. You may have opened yourself up to legal consequences if you have accessed or stored certain items of confidential data.

Agent Lau: It did raise some questions we'd need to have answered before retaining your firm. Isn't it irregular that your clients communicate with you via email alone? Shouldn't you meet them face-to-face, at least once?

Mr. Glisson: We have many international clients with privacy concerns.

Agent Lau: And help me make sense of these receipts. These are records of payments made in a currency that doesn't even exist on Earth.

Mr. Glisson: We convert all payments made in foreign currency at prevailing rates. I am afraid client confidentiality prohibits further discussion on this matter.

Agent Lau: Look at this, then. The being shown in this photograph of 'Mr. Nissibis' is visibly not human.

Mr. Glisson: We don't discriminate based on appearance. Do you have a warrant?

[► Video Log 9430-A-19 - 14/06/2018, 11:25 a.m.]
[PoI-9430-A manifests in Agent Lau's office. This is the first occasion on which the PoI entered Foundation property; site security was immediately called to the location, but did not arrive for two minutes and forty five seconds.]

[Agent Lau jumps to her feet upon the PoI's arrival.]

Agent Lau: Cassius. Um, this is highly irregular.

Cassius-64: We have been extremely patient. However, you are withholding essential information from our investigation.

Agent Lau: Information? What information?

Cassius-64: Exact names and locations. The full extent of the criminal network on your planet. Your access to seditious materials providing instructions for illegal activities and insulting the Syzarchs and their instruments of governance.

Agent Lau: Well, we've been collecting as much information as we can, and building a case…

Cassius-64: Enough. We now understand that the organisation you represent does not hold the authority to carry out Revenue's orders on Earth, and even perceives Revenue as a threat to your so-called 'normalcy'. It has become clear that an Audit will be required.

Agent Lau: Hold on a minute…

Cassius-64: In less than seventy-two of your hours, the Third Auditing Fleet, destroyers of the Goldhaven Syndicates, breakers of the Angrassian hoard-worlds, winners of the SGA exceptional mandatory auditing standards award eleven times running, will begin a full audit of your planetary economy. Following this, a Commissioner-Resident and a Revenue office will be established on your planet to begin the process of integration into the Syzarchy.

Agent Lau: There's no need for that. I'll share everything I can get permission to share with you. We can discuss-

Cassius-64: The time for discussion is over, Miss Lau. Working with you was not entirely unpleasant. I wish you all the best in the new order that will illuminate your benighted world.

[Cassius-64 disappears just as site security rush into the room]

Incident-9430-BLACK Following the departure of PoI-9430-A, Foundation dimensional interferometry detected 2,466 masses in excess of 1011 kg beginning to manifest in high Earth orbit. By order of O5-8, PROTOCOL SUMERIAN BEAR was triggered immediately.

Internal note: Director Wu: Here are the options I see before us. All are terrible, but take whatever you like from this in your memo for the council. I hope they see something I can't.

1. Make no attempt to resist the auditors. Hope that the Foundation and its mission is preserved by the new Nuurudan regime. Many issues with this strategy; several major GoIs will certainly not submit. The conflict could lead to the deployment of anomalous weaponry and will likely draw in the Foundation anyway.

2. Fight back. I know only the smallest fraction about what we have out there, but perhaps we could use something in containment to neutralise the Nuurudan fleet. Issues: Unknown unknowns from the deployment of anomalous weaponry or reality restructuring. There is a high probability that they will send another fleet, perhaps one designed wholly for war. All-out war will probably involve them turning their dimensional manipulation technology on us, and given that their agents seem able to just pop up anywhere in the world, defense would be very difficult.

3. Scorched earth. Auditing requires records. We can render our data, and the entirety of human civilisation, illegible to them through the propagation of computer viruses and the physical destruction of our databases. This will throw society at large into chaos, but the Foundation could rebuild and continue our work. - Agent Lau

Expunging our records and burning our papers is not an option. If this invasion cannot be repulsed, or if any other which follows it should succeed, we have ourselves an SK-class "Dominance Shift" scenario, the end of the Masquerade, and with the end of most if not all of the Foundation's revenue streams, a BK-class scenario. I am ordering you to find another solution. - O5-8

[► Video Log 9430-Kappa-114 - 15/06/2018, 09:03]

Agent Lau: Mr Glisson.

Mr Glisson: Ms Lau.

Agent Lau: I expect you are aware of the situation.

Mr Glisson: Indeed. I was not surprised to receive your call. My clients have given me a thorough briefing.

Agent Lau: We have a common interest. You might call it an existential interest. I came to you because I suspect that your clients know more about the internal processes of a certain interdimensional empire than we do, and I think they might know where to find some cogs vulnerable to our spanners.

Mr Glisson: Just so. Preparations have been made for this eventuality. I hear the Third Auditing Fleet has been assigned to deal with Earth; they are the best there is. They are efficient, ruthless, and incorruptible. You cannot fight them, or bribe them, or hide from them. But they have a critical weakness.

Agent Lau: Yes?

Mr Glisson: They are the product of a vast, ancient, and highly ordered culture. They expect records to be legible. They expect systems to be rational. Their entire auditing process is predicated upon on the assumption that a civilisation's financial system, however complex it may be, is fundamentally coherent. Ours is not.

Agent Lau: Can they really not just cut through the red tape, with all their power and technology?

[Mr. Glisson produces a manila envelope and hands it to Agent Lau]

Mr Glisson: The task is not to make their work impossible. The task is to make the cost greater than the expected value. We propose a three-pronged approach.

THE JARNDYCE CONTINGENCY

Through PoI-9430, the Foundation has obtained access to the Revenue Authority's complete operational manual. In order to maximise the complexity and expense of the Nuurudan Audit, Foundation operatives are instructed to immediately begin executing the following three strategies.

1. SRA code 87B/9 requires auditors to personally verify the physical existence, dimensional co-ordinates, ownership history, and condition of any object designated as 'artwork'. The Foundation will immediately begin instructing regional governments to designate millions of the following media as 'artworks';

  • Recordings of music
  • Youtube Videos
  • Photographs on cloud storage media
  • Children's art produced in educational institutions
  • Graffiti
  • Internet Memes
  • Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)

Images of these artworks and coordinates (or missing co-ordinates) will then be transferred to the Fleet with a request to follow procedure.

2. The SRA "Principle of Singular Validity" is predicated upon the assumption that a uniquely identified asset cannot exist in multiple ledgers simultaneously. Therefore, the Foundation will create millions of conflicting, algorithmically generated transaction records. These records will show a single asset being simultaneously sold, gifted, destroyed, and used as collateral in loans at thousands of different locations on Earth at the same time.

Additionally, any evidence of conflict of interest on behalf of the auditors must be assessed before a record can be processed, as per SRA code 156R/14. A list of auditors known to be present in the Third Auditing Fleet has been supplied by GoI-9430. The transactions generated by our algorithm will be linked to the identifiers of the auditors themselves and their commanding officers.

3. The Foundation will begin a continuous data transfer directly to the Auditing Fleet. We will not just send tax records, but every transaction from every bank, every stock market trade, every credit card receipt, every online purchase, the terms of service for all major software products, and the municipal budgets for every city on Earth, in every language, using every currency, regardless of format, completeness, or data quality. Illustratively, as of the writing of this document, Earth's financial system yields the following per day:

  • 3.1 billion credit card transactions
  • 19,000 real estate transactions, many with title histories going back decades or centuries
  • 1.2 billion shares traded daily on the NYSE alone
  • Cash register receipts from 350 million retail locations worldwide

These transactions are recorded in more than 6,000 living languages, made in sovereign currency systems with their own accounting standards, subject to competing financial frameworks, and stored in various digital and physical formats (many discontinued). Paper records are often scanned or photographed with varying quality and levels of damage.

The total quantity of data transferred to the Third Auditing Fleet per hour is estimated at 6.4 petabytes.

Incident-9430-BLACK Analysis: Foundation space monitoring facilities and intelligence gathered after the incident permitted reconstruction of the following series of events.

Date

Time (UTC)

Event

17/06/2018

6:11 a.m.

The Third Auditing Fleet completed its manifestation in Earth orbit. Fleet disposition consistent with standard auditing configuration. Processing vessels begin to approach Earth atmosphere.

17/06/2018

6:12 a.m.

Jarndyce Contingency transmission begins.

17/06/2018

6:14 a.m.

Processing vessels cease manoeuvring. Fleet requests additional processing resources.

17/06/2018

6:21 a.m.

Fleet expands its request for resources.

17/06/2018

6:39 a.m.

Fleet issues an urgent request for a replacement legal team.

17/06/2018

10:14 a.m.

Confirmation received by Fleet that all resource requests have been granted.

18/06/2018

12:54 p.m.

125 additional vessels arrive in Earth orbit, bringing the new resources and legal team.

18/06/2018

4:12 p.m.

The newly arrived vessels and legal team depart.

19/06/2018

7:21 a.m.

Fleet transmits updated completion date estimate to Revenue Authority.

19/06/2018

8:31 a.m.

Fleet receives a reply from Revenue Authority. Content unknown.

19/06/2018

8:45 a.m.

The Fleet begins to dematerialise.

19/06/2018

9:03 a.m.

PROTOCOL SUMERIAN BEAR de-escalated to monitoring status by order of O5-8.


[► Video Log 9430-A-20 - 26/06/2018, 13:23]

[Agent Lau is eating at a fast food restaurant in Hong Kong. PoI-9430-A appears in the doorway and goes to sit opposite her. Its trenchcoat is rumpled and its hat is dripping with water, even though there has been no precipitation in the area in 27 hours.]

Agent Lau: Cassius. It's good to see you.

Cassius-64: The audit is… it's suspended. Pending review. The initial phase was estimated to take three of your hours. We currently estimate its completion time at approximately two thousand years, by which point a new audit would immediately be required.

Agent Lau: I'm sorry to hear that.

Cassius-64: The Third Fleet's sweep of awards will end this cycle. Several officers are already being audited for gross incompetence and wasteful expenditure. To make matters worse, the Fourth Fleet was given the honour of conducting the investigation. Tell me. Are you proud of what your species has done? Are you glad that you have the scum of our society coming to you to hide their crimes away in blockchains and boxes?

Agent Lau: It is a price we pay. It may be better than the alternative.

Cassius-64: For your sakes, I hope it is. I thought your planet was primitive. I was wrong. It is a frighteningly calculated thing: a self-sustaining vortex of merciless self-interest. It would be wrong to describe Earth as a mere tax haven. It is a legal black hole. You have my sincerest and most forlorn congratulations on achieving a level of complexity that defies dimensional analysis.

Agent Lau: We still have much to teach each other, your species and mine.

Cassius-64: I think we may be better off without that knowledge. I will check on you again in two or three hundred years. If you ever decide to choose the path of integrity and transparency, we will know of your efforts, and you will have a friend of inestimable valuable.

Agent Lau: I'll share this with my superiors.

Cassius-64: See that you do, Sister Lau. See that you do.


Page Version: Current

Item #: SCP-9430

Object Class: Keter Archon

Special containment procedures: PROTOCOL NO DORADO, an updated form of the Jarndyce Contingency, is on continual standby in case of an incursion by SCP-9430 Syzarchy representatives into Foundation space. The Foundation is to maintain a mutually beneficial financial relationship with GoI-9430, offering the rental of unneeded pocket dimensions and business access to selected front organisations to gain financially from the economic activities of GoI-9430 and its associates (see Strategy Document-9430-Z). A permanent liaison office (SD-EE-4, "the Dutch Sandwich") has been established under Director Lau to manage this relationship.

All instances of SCP-9430-A and all instances of SCP-9430-B except SCP-9430-B-92, which was given to the Foundation as a gift in thanks for services rendered, are to be stored in the aforementioned pocket dimensions. Director Lau has received permission to hang SCP-9430-B-92 on the wall of her office, on the condition that it remains within its non-transparent, hermetically sealed cover.