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An artist's depiction of SCP-0000's symptoms

Item #: SCP-0000

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: Any infectious image that causes SCP-0000 (i.e. SCP-0000-X instances (todo:weak)) must be contained immediately. Although the preservation of the original medium that an SCP-0000-X instance appeared within is a priority, destruction of the original is acceptable if it minimizes civilian exposure. Civilians infected with SCP-0000 are non-anomalous but risk leaking knowledge of SCP-0000, and so must be held in Foundation custody until their infection is sufficiently obfuscated. This is done by following the DAZZEL obfuscation protocol.

All companies involved in mass advertising must be infiltrated or manipulated to install a version of the SPOTTR computer program at some stage in their publishing process. Optimally, this should be at a stage that is closest to final distribution. For example, the computer system that sends final copy to a newspaper's printers. Operatives within Microsoft and Apple are to maintain covert versions of SPOTTR within their respective operating systems.

Original copies of SCP-0000-X instances are to be held in secure storage site (todo) and limited to level 5 clearance. Digitally reproduced copies of SCP-0000-X are to be copied to the Foundation Anomalous Data Storage System (ADSS) and limited to level 5 clearance. An inactivated copy is to be included in the document Inventory of SCP-0000-X Instances which is limited to level 4 clearance.

Description: SCP-0000 is an infection of the human visual cortex that manifests as a static visual obstruction. SCP-0000 is not contagious between humans, and is only contracted by viewing an infectious image. While viewing, the image will imprint itself on the subject's visual field approximately 20 times a second, with newer imprints overlapping old. These imprints are unaffected by lighting or visual impairment and persist indefinitely.

The severity of an SCP-0000 infection strongly depends on the amount of eye movement while a subject viewed an infectious image. As the image moves across a patient's visual field, it will leave trails where its projection passed over their retina. If the image to passes over every part of a subject's retina, then their sight will become completely obscured by copies of the image. This effectively renders them blind.

SCP-0000-1 through SCP-0000-5 is the set of currently known images that cause infections of SCP-0000. All of these images are attributed to "Seven Sisters LLC" and appear to be advertisements, as evidenced by their wording and design. However all organizations or persons advertised have been fictional, as no evidence of their existance can be found. Descriptions and inactivated copies of SCP-0000-1 through SCP-0000-5 are available in the document Inventory of SCP-0000-X Instances.

fMRI and SCP-████ studies of infected individuals have supported the hypothesis that SCP-0000 is localized to the V1 area of the visual cortex. This is the area of the brain responsible for processing low-level image features such as edges and simple textures. Most notably, SCP-0000 is a "system disease," a scenario where the individual neurons function normally but the network as a whole functions abnormally. The malignant behaviour cannot be isolated to a specific cell, and is instead the result of a distributed collection of neurons (roughly 10-50 million) passing anomalous sequences of action potentials between themselves. This behaviour has the effect of overriding the visual data received through the optic nerve, replacing it with the imprinted image.

Further evidence for SCP-0000's isolated effect on the visual cortex is the "blindsight" exhibited by those infected. Blindsight is a condition where a cortically blind patient can unconsciously perceive visual stimulus in a limited capacity. For example, patients with blindsight have been able to optically track a fast moving light despite being unable to describe what they see. Patients with SCP-0000 whose entire field of vision has been imprinted have shown identical behaviours.

The circuits caused by SCP-0000 persist through most modes of consciousness including sleeping, dreaming, and induced coma. However, the imprints are not necessarily permanent. In one case a presumed epileptic seizure dissipated the imprints caused by an infectious image. Attempts to induce such a seizure in patients has proven difficult to do safely and has not been successful. Amnestics are not a viable treatment option, as their action on memory-forming and storing areas of the brain does not affect the visual cortex. Currently, the only viable management strategy for SCP-0000 infections are to replace the infected image with SCP-0000-4-FC. Further details on this strategy can be read in the Foundation research paper Scars, Dots, and Lines: Obfuscating SCP-0000 with the DAZZEL System.

Detailed image of the fiducial mark in SCP-0000-1

How an image causes an infection of SCP-0000 is an active area of research. In one corner of each SCP-0000-X instance is an identical pattern of circles. See inset figure. This is referred to as the “fiducial mark” in the SCP-0000 research literature. Removal of the mark on each image is sufficient but not necessary to inactivate them. Additional circular patterns in the opposite corners must also be present for the image to remain infectious. A Foundation-developed algorithm known as SPOTTR uses computer vision techniques to automatically search for and censor the fiducial mark in an image. It is currently employed in the containment of SCP-0000.

The origin of all SCP-0000-X instances can be traced to their spontaneous appearance during bulk copy operations from one computer storage medium to another. All computers involved thus far have been owned by companies specializing in mass advertising. This suggests that the anomalous effect that conjures instances of SCP-0000-X into existence is restricted to desktop publishing and digital distribution. To the best of the Foundation's knowledge, each SCP-0000-X instance has not reappeared after initial discovery.

Research into the creation of new SCP-0000-X instances has shown promising results. Simply imitating the design and including the fiducial mark does not produce infectious images. However, modifying an existing image will often produce a similarly infectious image. Image transformations that preserve infectivity includes but are not limited to:

• Linear perspective distortion
• Linear colour distortion
• Non-linear distortion not exceeding ~5% displacement
• Nonlinear colour transformation (e.g. pseudo-solarization) with PSNR above 10dB
• Image convolution (e.g. blurring or sharpening) with PSNR above 10dB
• Noise addition or reduction with PSNR above 10dB

Changes to the central content of an SCP-0000-X instance will render the image inert. For the image to remain infectious, the circles that decorate the edges and corners of the image must be altered in an unpredictable way. It is possible to discover the necessary alteration by brute-force trial and error, however this requires a human to be exposed to the image as it is edited, giving feedback as possible alterations are explored. No computer or animal model exists to predict if an SCP-0000-X instance will remain infectious after alteration.

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+ Inventory of SCP-0000-X Instances

This document lists the currently known infectious images that cause SCP-0000. It summarizes the discovery of each image and the investigation into their origins. Inactivated copies are included as inset figures. Inactivation is done by censoring critical portions of the images with black rectangles, disabling the anomalous effect.

ANY ATTEMPT TO REACTIVATE THESE IMAGES USING PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE IS CONSIDERED AN INTENTIONAL BREACH OF CONTAINMENT AND IS GROUNDS FOR IMMEDIATE DEMOTION FROM LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE AND SEVERE DISCIPLINARY ACTION.

THIS IS YOUR ONE AND ONLY WARNING.

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SCP-0000-1

Item: SCP-0000-1

Medium: Printed poster.

Description: Text on a colored background. The text reads: “We've kept your business safe. Now let us help your business. Seven Sisters LLC. Advertising for a distracted world™”
Note: For illustrative purposes, this image has been inactivated with the fiducial mark left intact.

Civilians infected: 2

Discovery: 03/06/1998 - London, England. SCP-0000-1 was discovered in a stack of posters that an individual was putting up for a client. This individual was pasting their posters on the wall of a public alley when they encountered SCP-0000-1 in the stack. After a few moments of experimenting with it, they realized its danger and tore it in half, inactivating it. However this was not before over half of their visual field became occluded by SCP-0000-1.

In spite of the visual obstruction they were able to navigate to a walk-in medical centre, bringing SCP-0000-1 with them. Once there, they explained their predicament to a doctor, accidentally exposing them to SCP-0000-1 when the pieces were realigned. Their panic attracted the attention of a Foundation agent who was at the clinic for an unrelated personal matter. After being appraised of the situation, the agent contacted their site director to report the potential SCP. The clinic was secured and the copy of SCP-0000-1 was recovered and repaired. Class A amnestics were distributed to patrons and staff. The two affected civilians were taken into Foundation custody indefinitely.

Investigation: (todo)

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SCP-0000-2

Item: SCP-0000-2

Medium: Print newspaper advertisement.

Description: Black text on a white background. In the middle is a profile shot of a young man in greyscale. The text reads: “Like what you see? Please call ████████” The person depicted in the advertisement has not yet been identified or located. The phone number is currently owned by a massage parlor in Laval. Neither the owner nor the employees are familiar with the person in the image.

Civilians infected: 1

Discovery: 10/01/2001 - Montreal, Canada. The image appeared on the home computer of an editor at the Montreal Sunday Reader. The editor was subsequently exposed and, after realizing its effect on their vision, shut down their computer and contacted the phone number to complain. Because the owners of the phone number were not responsible for the image, these complaints were met with confusion. During the call, the editor described their symptoms. This was picked up by Foundation wire-tapping software and determined to be consistent with SCP-0000. A containment breach was declared and the editor's home was secured by Foundation personnel. With the cooperation of the editor, SCP-0000-2 was recovered. The editor was taken into Foundation custody indefinitely.

Investigation: Interviews with the editor and a forensic analysis of their computer were performed. The analysis found that the image spontaneously appeared when the editor copied a directory of advertisements from an external hard drive onto their computer. The image appeared after copying but was never present on the external drive. Foundation investigators determined that the sudden appearance of the file was anomalous. This necessitated updates to the SCP-0000 containment procedures and a reclassification from Safe to Euclid. These findings also motivated the development of the SPOTTR algorithm.

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SCP-0000-3

Item: SCP-0000-3

Medium: Internet banner advertisement.

Description: Text on a colored background. The text reads: “Computer slow? MakeMyComputerFast.net!” The domain in the banner has never been registered.

Civilians infected: Unknown, likely zero.

Discovery: 18/09/2002. The image was discovered by a preliminary version of the SPOTTR algorithm that was used to search through a Foundation archive of 30 million web pages. SCP-0000-2 was discovered on the bottom of the web page for Yvonne’s Flower Shoppe, based in Boston, Massachusetts. The banner was served by SuperSiteMarketing, also based in Boston. The website was archived on 10/03/2002 and the advertisement was not served when accessing the site a second time. Neither party was found responsible for the image.

Investigation: SuperSiteMarketing was audited to determine the origin of SCP-0000-3. On 5/03/2002, a site administrator copied a folder of banner images to their production server. SCP-0000-3 appeared on the server-side of the copy operation, as evidenced by the file timestamps. Because of the way SuperSiteMarketing distributed ad slots, there should have been no way for SCP-0000-3 to be served since there was no advertiser account associated with it. However, a software bug in the distribution code would cause the image to be displayed under very rare circumstances. This bug was fixed sometime between 10/03/2002 and 18/03/2002. Due to the limited time window that SCP-0000-3 could be served and the lack of reports of SCP-0000 infections in the wild, it can be assumed that no person was infected by SCP-0000-3.

After this event, the potential for a mass-scale (>1000) containment breach of SCP-0000 became apparent. Wargaming of hypothetical containment breach events began on 01/11/2002 and concluded on 07/11/2002 with a complete redesign of special containment proccedures. Results of this redesign include the DAZZEL obfuscation system and SCP-0000-4-FC, which completed development on 05/01/2003.

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SCP-0000-4-FC (Foundation Countermeasure.) Note that the contrast of the instance has been increased dramatically to make its features visible.

Item: SCP-0000-4-FC

Medium: Digital image.

Description: dsfsdfjsjfejkhfjkslhfkjshefjklhfsj.

Civilians infected: N/A

Development: Blaallalalalfdj

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SCP-0000-5

Item: SCP-0000-5

Medium: Digital billboard advertisement.

Description: Text on a colored background. To the right of the text is a line drawing of a crane. The text is in German and reads "Lori und Söhne. Heben heute, bauen morgen." Translated to English, the text reads: “Lori and Sons. Lift today, build tomorrow.” The bottom right contains a phone number, an address in Saarbrücken, and an email, none of which can be reached.

Civilians infected: 357 infected, 12,316 potentially exposed but cleared.

Discovery: 02/06/2004 - Saarbrücken, Germany. Displayed on a billboard above a crowded public square for 1 minute at 15:45 CEST. See Incident Report SCP-0000-2004-002

Investigation: The owner of the billboard, Lightwire Media GmbH, was audited to find the source of SCP-0000-5. The billboards themselves download a compressed package of images from a central server every hour for rotation. At 3:00 PM the affected billboard received an image package that anomalously included SCP-0000-5. Because the billboard firmware did not include the SPOTTR software, the image was not inactivated before display.

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+ Incident Report SCP-0000-2004-002

SPOTTR-censored web camera image of
incident SCP-0000-2004-002

On 02/06/2004 at 15:45 CEST, SCP-0000-5 displayed for 1 minute on an 8 meter digital billboard installed on a building facing the Gustav-Regler-Platz, a public square in Saarbrücken, Germany.

The incident became known to the Foundation almost immediately when a web camera on the building opposite captured an image of the billboard displaying SCP-0000-5. This image was saved to a network drive connected to a civilian computer running the Windows operating system. The covert SPOTTR daemon embedded in the operating system recognized the image and remotely triggered the containment breach warning system. The affected area was secured at 15:57 CEST, which included the plaza, its adjoining buildings and pedestrian walkways, and three skyscrapers that had line of sight to the billboard. The 12,673 individuals within this area were pacified with Class E amnestics and triaged on-site.

12,316 of these individuals were determined to have no symptoms of SCP-0000, and were not exposed. The severity of the remaining 357 infected individuals were categorized based on the total angular diameter of the imprints. Mild cases were those with no more than 5 arc-minutes of imprints. These would appear to the sufferer as small retinal scars and—most importantly—would not have readable text or imagery. 275 of the cases were mild. The other 82 cases were considered severe, with 14 cases presenting a complete obstruction of their vision. The 357 infected individuals were separated into groups by severity and taken to the nearby Site-(todo) for further processing.

Individuals presenting mild symptoms could have be released without treatment, since the imprints themselves would not have been distinguishable from normal eye trauma. However, during processing at Site-(todo) these mild severity individuals determined between themselves that their "retinal scars" were anomalous, as they all shared the same vibrant blue tone. Even after exposing this group to a Class A amnestic they were able to rediscover the anomaly after discussing amongst themselves a second time.

Although public knowledge of this anomaly is low-risk, it was decided that all 357 should receive DAZZEL obfuscation. This proved challenging as only two exposure machines had been built, and each patient requires on average 20 minutes for their infection to be sufficiently obfuscated. All told it took four 16-hour days to process all infected individuals. It is the opinion of the containment team that additional exposure machines should be build to accelerate DAZZEL obfuscation. Evaluation of this request is still pending.

An additional challenge to containment was the design and installation of cover stories to explain the sudden blinding or partial-blinding of the 357 individuals. Those with mild infections were implanted with memories of looking at the sun or a similarly bright object for too long sometime in their childhood or adolecence. The 82 individuals with severe infections were more difficult to justify, and required a more tailored approach to artificial memories.

To save effort and time, the 82 severe infections were split up into groups based on familiarity—i.e. individuals in the same family or workplace were placed together. These groups ranged from 18 individuals to single individuals, roughly following a Zipf distribution. Each of these groups where then assigned a fictional event that explained their sudden blindness, such as a firecracker accident or a bout of severe conjunctivitis. These events were also randomly displaced in time, chosen to have occured within the 5 year span between 1999 and 2004. Cross-group relationships were initially seen as a security risk, since two individuals might discover the peculiarity of their differing stories explaining their identical kind of blindness. However, it was determined that these relationships should be strengthened on the basis of this shared experience. In other words, the foundation of cross-group relationships were altered to revolve around the shared experience of these visual impairments.

The 357 infected individuals and a 1% random sample of the 12,316 unexposed individuals were enrolled in lifetime Foundation surveillance. Basic info on the individuals in these groups is available in documents Manifest of Infected Civilians in Incident SCP-0000-2004-002 and Manifest of Subset of Uninfected Civilians in Incident SCP-0000-2004-002. More detailed, monthly reports on both groups are also available through the Foundation civilian surveillance program.

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