POSTMORTEM PTM-XK-CJ13: PANDORA CONTAINMENT FAILURE CASCADE
Akdağlari Archaeological Containment Area, External View
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Thaumiel
Special Containment Procedures: Due to the impracticality of transport, SCP-XXXX is to be contained in situ at the Akdağlari Archaeological Containment Area. With the exception of permanent site security, staff are to operate consistently with non-official cover as adjunct researchers associated with Koç University. In order to ensure normal functioning, SCP-XXXX-01 is to be rotated offline, cycled, and serviced once per calendar year.
All documentation made available to cleared personnel involved in the manufacturing of reality anchors is to be restricted to procedural matters pertinent to that worker's assigned tasks. Explanatory documentation is to be restricted to the Site Director, the Technical Director, and the member of the O5 Council assigned to supervise GLASS VEIL (O5-05), except upon a vote of the full panel of O5.
After an unscheduled excursion in normal operating parameters on ██/██/2007, SCP-XXXX has been rotated offline for maintenance. Functionality is estimated to be restored by ██/██/████.
As of 12/14/2007, SCP-XXXX has been intentionally activated by Foundation personnel. Archival containment procedures available to 3/XXXX personnel are presently superseded, and SCP-XXXX is to be decommissioned upon the approval of a plan by Site Director Azmaggan. However, no actual or hypothetical containment plan has, to date, reduced the breach risk associated with the device's current operational mode.
In the event that the Alderson Conjoint Containment Failure Score for any three Keter artifacts presently in Foundation custody rises above 50% per annum before an acceptable alternative containment strategy is approved, all containment strategies under consideration are to be implemented in parallel. In the event that Alderson scores do not return to the 2007 baseline (35.5% p.a.) within 72 hours of parallel implementation, all remaining Foundation personnel are to implement PROTOCOL 412-GLASS VEIL. 6 hours after initiation of GLASS VEIL, Foundation employees who have registered a personal preference for euthanasia in the event of GLASS VEIL will be issued the cryptographic keys to their division killphrases.
Until decommissioning, SCP-XXXX will continue to be contained in situ at the Akdağlari Archaeological Containment Area, under the Thaumiel containment protocols established prior to the events of 09/21/2007.
Description: SCP-XXXX is a natural cavern complex 41km ENE of Fethiye, Turkey, adapted and briefly occupied by a relict population of Homo sapiens decensus during the lower Paleolithic. A number of anomalous technologies therein stabilize and supply power to SCP-XXXX-01, a 3m x 3m x 3m beryllium bronze icosahedron containing the 1.2m x 1.2m x 1.2m 3-space embedding of a 5-spatiotemporal manifold.
Other than those technologies necessary for the operation of SCP-XXXX-01, no decensus artifacts or signs of persistent habitation are present in the complex. On initial recovery, the artifact was inactive and apparently incomplete. At present, the artifact is tentatively believed to have been intended as a ritual object permitting the visualization of high-dimensional possibility spaces.
The archaeological record surrounding the complex is enigmatic. The structure was apparently abandoned before the central artifact was completed, and while contemporaneous sites from the Akdağlari mountains imply knowledge of basic bronzeworking and a complex written language, no technologies more advanced than meteoric iron knives have been recovered from nearby decensus habitation sites. Foundation researchers tentatively believe that the artifact and its support complex were cached for unknown purposes by Levantine decensus populations and later modified by indigenous Anatolian decensus.
Since its discovery in 1951, SCP-XXXX-01 has been the subject of continuous study. While active, the artifact is capable of substantially constraining the probability amplitude of paracausal (i.e., "reality bending") anomalies within an approximately 8km radius of its origin point. Though it is not well-understood why the 5-manifold embedding underlying SCP-XXXX-01 has this effect, topological calving of the SCP-XXXX-01 manifold has allowed the Foundation to reproduce devices with substantially similar function. As part of the Foundation's 091-PANDORA program, SCP-XXXX-01 has, until recently, been used to manufacture and stabilize the 5-manifolds embedded in Scranton Reality Anchors.
After a 2007 excursion in normal operating parameters, manufacturing has been temporarily halted. Existing Scranton Reality Anchors have been reprioritized for use in Keter and Class 3+ Euclid containment procedures. For access to reserved reality anchor stocks, consult with your site quartermaster.
Between 1951 and 2013, SCP-XXXX was substantially modified by Foundation researchers, and was successfully activated on 8/10/1972. Most documentation of Foundation modifications, particularly documentation related to modifications made between 2003 and 2012, has been deleted, physically removed from archives, modified with inaccurate information, copied to formats containing antimemetic watermarks, or overwritten with Foundation killphrases. The purpose of this sabotage appears to have been to enable an undocumented modification built by Foundation personnel for unknown purposes.
From 2007 forward, this previously undocumented modification to SCP-XXXX has been active, increasing the probability of spatiotemporal anomalies in local 5-spacetime. This has increased, and continues to increase, the probability of XK scenarios resulting from conjoint Keter breach from Foundation custody. The annual risk of an uncontained conjoint breach presently stands at 45.1%, rising at an annualized rate of 1.1%.
Addenda:
<Begin Recording, 7/13/2003, 5:17 PM>
Dr. Khayyam: Dr. Larter. Hi. Come in. Can I get you anything?
Dr. Larter: I have a containment review of 055 at 1800 hours. I'm not missing it. This had better be over by then.
Dr. Khayyam: You've received some bad news recently, and I wanted to see if —
Dr. Larter: For Christ's sake. I'm 81. Do you think an 81-year-old woman ever expects to receive good medical news again?
Dr. Khayyam: You are one week into a diagnosis of chronic myeloid leukemia, and you didn't even take a day off after finding out. This meeting — this mandatory meeting — is to determine what the effect on your —
Dr. Larter: None. There will be none.
Dr. Khayyam: You were just diagnosed with a terminal illness, Dr. Larter. You're obviously aware of this, so if you could stop wasting both of our time, I'd like to go over the possible effects on your job.
Dr. Larter: Presumably, all of my hair will fall out. Peripheral neuropathy from the chemotherapy. Shaky signature. Are we done?
Dr. Khayyam: I'm not your oncologist, Dr. Larter. I'm your psychiatrist. You are telling me that being diagnosed with a terminal illness had no effect on your psychological stability or suitability for your present position. You want me to write that on this piece of paper and hand it to my supervisor and expect him to believe it. How do you imagine that will go?
Dr. Larter: I was dying of being 81 for almost a year before I found out that I was also dying of cancer. Last year, I was dying of being 80, and the year before that of being 79. I'm quite unsure that I am dying of cancer any faster than of being old. Though if you want to convince your supervisor, I suppose you could write this instead: AFRICA DEIONYCHUS SANDALPHON FEALTY —
[COGNITOHAZARD DETECTED: TRANSCRIPT REDACTED]
Dr. Khayyam: Nancy, if that was a joke —
Dr. Larter: I'm not making a joke. I'm making a point. I am an 81-year-old cancer patient with a head full of memetic killphrases and the highest Levi-Bussard resistance score at the Foundation. There's a warning in my file that I'm only clearable for discharge after a class-B amnestic wipe. Would you like to put a wager on the possible drug interactions between the amnestics and my chemo? They're not precisely FDA-approved.
Dr. Khayyam: Don't be melodramatic. That's waivable.
Dr. Larter: As a woman who has given more than half of her life to the Foundation, I am under no circumstances going to allow you to put the world at risk by releasing me. I'm too dangerous. I'm only asking you to do one thing: let me give the rest of my life to the Foundation. If you don't, I will go over you. Think about the outcome of that whole Fletcher debacle. Do you want to go through that again?
Dr. Khayyam: Nancy. You and your department are admittedly a pain in my ass. But inshallah I am not going to put you out to pasture today. We just cannot have a terminally ill 81-year-old running Memetics, for exactly the same reason we can't just let you go. So I am assessing your suitability for an alternative assignment, and presuming the next thing you say is not another cognitohazard, I'm going to approve you for it.
Dr. Larter: One of those "suicidal ideation is nondisqualifying" assignments? I have to warn you, Adileh, I am an elderly woman, not a field agent, so if this is black-bag, I can write you some brain-burners. Other than that, I can't do much more than wave my cane.
Dr. Khayyam: It's Pandora. We'd like you to run it.
Dr. Larter: That's a nursing home for crackpots and the disabled. Totally unrelated to my specialty, and it doesn't even work. Try again.
Dr. Khayyam: It used to be that. It's now — uh — around 30% of the Foundation's yearly operating budget. We'd like you to run it. You're senior, more than competent, and your management style is compatible with what O5 needs.
Dr. Larter: I wouldn't mind working a dozen old warhorses to death, in other words.
Dr. Khayyam: And you wouldn't even get a letter in your file.
Dr. Larter: The gentleman with the silenced firearm outside your office door is my other choice?
Dr. Khayyam: The process for a failed exit interview is more involved than that.
Dr. Larter: And if I say no?
Dr. Khayyam: Then you can feel free to make your case to the full panel of O5 that they should countermand a direct order from O5-05.
Dr. Larter: That isn't much of a choice.
Dr. Khayyam: No. It isn't.
[11 SECOND PAUSE]
Dr. Larter: Where do I sign?
Dr. Larter,
I'm so sorry that I'm ordering you to do this, and, Nancy, you should know that we're not firing you. You're a tough old bird, and no one is going to stop you from leaving the Foundation feet first. But we need your talents elsewhere.
If the worst happens — and it will happen to you, though possibly not the you who is reading them right now — you need to be ready to let SCP-XXXX breach containment. And you need to be ready to keep the Foundation from containing the breach. Read the following briefing docs. Understand that you already consented to this immediately prior to an amnestic wipe. If you would like to retract your consent and retire, we can find someone else. But know that we wouldn't have picked you if you weren't the best person for the job.
On a more personal note, I'm sorry I convinced you to stay. I'm so sorry about what happened to her. If it could have been done any other way, that's the way we would have done it. But no regrets. We work for the Foundation. Our lives are not our own.
Best,
O5-05
<Begin Recording, 08/14/2003, 7:31 AM>
Dr. Scranton: Hi. I'm Paul. I'm the technical director of Pandora.
Dr. Larter: Scranton. As in: the reality anchors. Nice to meet you.
Dr. Scranton: I didn't invent them. I membulz … uh. I mehblit.
Dr. Larter: Oh dear. Are you okay?
Dr. Scranton: I just discovered how to reproduce them. Yes. Sorry. I have aphids. Uh. Aph… the thing where… it's not aphids, it's… oh, uh. Aphasia. You know. Exceeded my lifetime safe amnestic dose. Semi-retired. More common than you think.
Dr. Larter: Oh. Ah. I'm very sorry.
Dr. Scranton: It, uh. It isn't always this bad. Nervous to meet the new boast. Uh. Boat. No. Not that. Boss. What're you in for?
Dr. Larter: Dying. You know. Chronic myelogenous leukemia. Maybe a spot of something on my brain. Doctors don't know.
Dr. Scranton: Dying slower than the guys who clean 173's box. Raki and water?
Dr. Larter: Please. I'm parched.
[71 SECOND PAUSE]
Dr. Larter: I suppose you know the obvious question. Is this assignment bullshit?
Dr. Scranton: Have you read the briefing packet?
Dr. Larter: Yes. And it tells me that the skip you've got down in Demre has been reclassified from Thaumiel to Safe to -EX in the past three years. Not promising.
Dr. Scranton: What skip in Demre?
Dr. Larter: You know the skip. It's not round.
Dr. Scranton: Oh. Sorry. Yes, obviously. Short term memory problems. It's… what's the word… the word where something is difficult because the rules are complicated?
Dr. Larter: Bureaucratic.
Dr. Scranton: It's a bureaucratic issue. It's a PACG reality anchor which got reclassified when O5 made all anchors EX. But it's actually big enough to anchor… uh… about two light-seconds of 5-space in every direction.
Dr. Larter: And is it on?
Dr. Scranton: Yes. Well, no. Sort of. We have to jiggle the switch occasionally. Not sure why. I apparently had a brokis… a bromis… a breakdown. Back in 2001. Didn't leave a lot of notes. Had to go in for Class B wipes twice in a month. Something to do with memetic exposure in Syria. Don't know. Can't know, really. And frankly —
Dr. Larter: Frankly?
Dr. Scranton: I still don't know exactly why we're doing a lot of the things we're doing. Rolling the dice, for instance — we take the Alderson score, count a number of cesium decays modified by the score, and then boot the artifact when the counter hits a particular number. Why do we do this? No clue.
Dr. Larter: Paul, I'm going to tell you something, and you're not going to like it: disregard your concerns about the cesium decays. Implement the procedure as written. I know why you wrote the procedures, and your reasons are sound.
Dr. Scranton: This was before the wipe?
Dr. Larter: This was the reason for one of the wipes. We can just write this one off and get started on Pandora. Is the name yours?
Dr. Scranton: I thought it was poetic. There's a box. Everything else has gotten out. There's hope in the box, but none for us.
Dr. Larter: My leukemia. Your poor brain. There was never hope for us, Paul. Pour me another raki, dear? We have work to do.
NOTICE: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN PROVIDED TO THE L4 CONTAINMENT REVIEW TEAM AS A PART OF THE SCP-XXXX POSTMORTEM REVIEW. NO FINAL ACTION HAS BEEN TAKEN, AND NO EVIDENCE HEREIN SHOULD BE TAKEN TO REFLECT ADVERSELY ON THE PRESENT OR FORMER STATUS OF ANY FOUNDATION EMPLOYEES. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
<Begin Recording, 09/21/2007, 7:02 PM>
Dr. Larter: — okay, the recorder should be running. This is cycle four of process 931-AZAZEL. We're going to cycle SCP-XXXX offline for what should be five minutes, and then we're going to cycle it back up again. Paul should already have the decay counter running. Are we up?
Dr. Scranton: Counter is up and running. Ready to go in four.
Dr. Larter: Tea? I made two cups.
Dr. Scranton: Please.
[214 SECOND PAUSE]
Dr. Scranton: Okay. Should be coming online … shit. Nancy, we've got a significant excursion in the KC. We're reading… okay, it looks like the knot in the artifact is changing topological degree. We're going to cycle that off and then —
Dr. Larter: Paul, no. No, we're not.
Dr. Scranton: With all due respect, Nancy, I'm technical director, and we can just, uh. We can turn it off and back on again.
Dr. Larter: [WEEPING]
Dr. Scranton: Jesus. Jesus, Nancy, what's wrong?
Dr. Larter: [UNCLEAR] You can't turn it off.
Dr. Scranton: I do… I dom. Understate… uh. Jesus.
Dr. Larter: It's us.
Dr. Scranton: What?
Dr. Larter: Paul. I need you to listen to me —
Dr. Scranton: Control, I am overriding the Site Director's order and extrica… exterm… I am turning the fucking thing —
[15 SECOND PAUSE]
Dr. Scranton: Nancy. What did you do?
Dr. Larter: [WEEPING]
Dr. Scranton: What did you do?
Dr. Larter: Paul. I'm so sorry.
Dr. Scranton: What did you do?
Dr. Larter: Do you ever think that the person who … do you ever think about yourself if this hadn't happened? If you never joined the Foundation? If you never consented to have your brain ruined by … all this? Do you ever think that's the real you, and that… these hard, cold things that we are now, they're just… accidents? Possibilities which shouldn't have happened?
Dr. Scranton: Nancy. Focus. I need you to help me to turn it off.
Dr. Larter: I didn't do it, Paul. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You did.
[5 SECOND PAUSE]
Dr. Scranton: We're the… oh. Oh god. This is why —
Dr. Larter: I need you to know that you consented to this. You didn't consent to remember.
Dr. Scranton: Nancy, I can still fix this. We can still fix this. I know enough about the —
Dr. Larter: I know.
Dr. Scranton: There's still hope —
Dr. Larter: Not for us.
Dr. Larter: I need you to know that you consented to everything which is happening right now.
[GUNSHOT]
Dr. Larter: I'm so sorry.
[12 SECOND PAUSE]
Dr. Larter: I'm so sorry, Paul.
[GUNSHOT]