cplstrappi

SCP-XXXX

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Safe Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-XXXX should be kept in a locked iron book binder in a normal storage unit. The book should be removed from the storage unit for the purposes of testing, after which it should be returned.

After Incident 39, containment procedures for SCP-XXXX have been revised, and the object has been reclassified 'Euclid'. SCP-XXXX should be kept in a locked iron book binder on a table in the middle of a standard containment cell. The containment cell should have a one-way radio tannoy system to allow for instructions to be given to those inside the cell. No audio or video recording equipment of any kind should be installed in the cell – all observations should be recorded on a closed-server laptop computer provided inside the cell.

SCP-XXXX is to only be read inside the containment cell, and all personnel that read SCP-XXXX are to log their findings on the laptop then immediately be subjected to class-C and class-E amnestics. Initial suggestions were to only provide class-E amnestics, but as long as a subject is able to remember and repeat the phrases they have read from the book, there is increased risk of a containment breach. Class-E amnestics are similarly necessary, as they are the only way to prevent affected individuals from acting upon the compulsions caused by SCP-XXXX. These compulsions have been shown to manifest even once knowledge of the book itself is wiped. For this reason, among others, testing on SCP-XXXX has been limited, as detailed in the addendum from Site Director Marzenis.

All staff working on SCP-XXXX and interacting with documentation about SCP-XXXX, should be monitored daily for symptoms of SCP-XXXX. Any staff manifesting such symptoms – whether mental, behavioural or somatic – should be immediately subjected to class-C and class-E amnestics and re-assigned from SCP-XXXX.

The Foundation has contained all specimens of SCP-XXXX-Alpha and SCP-XXXX-Beta that it has knowledge of, but due to the potentially late-onset nature of SCP-XXXX’s compulsive effects, the potential for another containment breach must be considered likely until at least 2100. Additionally, the possibility of further specimens of SCP-XXXX-Beta being hidden away in libraries means that SCP-XXXX may never be fully contained, although the Foundation remains confident that all instances of SCP-XXXX-Beta will at some point be contained.

Description: SCP-XXXX is a leather bound book measuring 16.5cm wide by 25cm high. The cover of the book is made from a cured leather-like material that so far remains undetermined, while the pages are made from faded paper. The book was discovered at the Free University of Berlin in ████, after an incident involving several instances of SCP-XXXX-Alpha. The book was discovered to have been a key citation in the works of Max Planck, with a dedication to the text given in the preface of Planck’s work in 1900. Thus, the book was on several university reading lists, and had a number of citations. All of these were expunged by the Foundation as part of containment procedures for SCP-XXXX.

The book has no stated author or publisher, and no date of original publication or printing. All attempts to ascertain the origins of the book have proven unsuccessful.

+ Details on the contents of the book are restricted to Level 3 personnel working on SCP-XXXX. Please enter security credentials.

SCP-XXXX is a novel titled ‘Something Awry’ and contains 94 pages detailing the life of a young girl who wants to become a nurse. The prose in the book is very light, skimming through the entirety of the girl’s life in a relatively small number of pages. In addition, several absurd events or descriptions are prevalent in the book, and inconsistent with the brevity of the rest of the text. For example, the words 'empty', 'mirage', and 'deceiver' are used commonly as descriptors of people and objects, and numerous references are made to the 'golden space between'. Several characters in the book tell the main character, Nadiya, to 'look deeper into the hidden world', and the book ends with Nadiya declaring that she understands the purpose of life now, and that she must 'carefully dissect her own perceptions'. These phrases and the themes they entail seem to be key to the causality and manifestation of the book's anomalous effects.

SCP-XXXX’s is a cognito-hazard that creates an obsessive desire to look ever deeper into the structure of reality, followed by a compulsion to act upon these desires. Anyone that begins reading SCP-XXXX will feel a strong compulsion to continue reading the book until the end. Anyone who reads the full text of SCP-XXXX will almost immediately start to experience cognitive-obsessive symptoms. Individuals are overcome by an urge to deconstruct things or pick them apart, searching for a deeper level to or meaning of reality.

At some point after this stage, the compulsive aspects of the book's effect will manifest, although the time at which this occurs after exposure varies greatly. Recorded incidents have shown that it can take as little as 2 minutes - see Incident 38 - or as long as 49 years. Researchers theorize that this is not an upper limit, and that the compulsive effects may be able to manifest at any point in a subject's life, although no specific trigger for this has been identified. The variability of the symptoms means that any individual that reads or hears the full text of or even key phrases from SCP-XXXX is deemed to be a potential sleeper threat, and is designated SCP-XXXX-Alpha.

The compulsive effects of SCP-XXXX have largely been derived from field observations, and are by no means conclusively verified. A few key phases of anomalous behaviour have nevertheless been identified. Initially, compulsive effects manifest themselves in harmless activity, such as the deconstruction of simple mechanical or electronic personal possessions. Affected individuals will deconstruct items to their smallest components, leaving them disassembled and to an extent fetishizing the components, interacting with them or viewing them every day.

The next step in severity is an obsessive desire to deconstruct items of property, regardless of scale or ownership. This can cause affected individuals to deconstruct parts of vehicles or public buildings. Subjects will usually return to the sites of their vandalism to study them over time, and have in some cases been observed to build small shrines at these locations. This step often results in SCP-XXXX-Alpha subjects receiving various public order offences.

Subjects will then begin dissecting small animals and pets, looking for their inner functions. Their behaviour will not be limited by possession or lack thereof of an animal – affected individuals will search for animals in near-by green spaces, or abduct neighbour’s pets. Subjects will keep the carcasses of the animals they experiment on, often positioning them at the focal point of a room, or specifically building a shrine to house them. During this stage, subjects will also begin experimenting on themselves, creating incisions in their own skin, with increasingly finer blades and sharp instruments. Subjects have been recorded as making incisions into their own eyes, cheeks, genitals, and stomachs.

During the final stage of affected behaviour, subjects will look to experiment on other human beings, taking advantage of personal connections where possible. At least 3 incidents of subjects dissecting their families are known to the Foundation. During this stage, subjects' self-incisions will become more prominent, with cuts appearing in increasingly closer proximity to each other, and increasingly vital areas of the body being cut into. Subjects that reach this stage will usually inadvertently self-terminate by cutting into their own heart or brain.

Subjects are likely to recommend the original text to friends, acquaintances and colleagues, and will create instances of SCP-XXXX-Beta to then gift or lend out in order to facilitate this aim. They will also recite the text of SCP-XXXX from memory, in order to further spread its cognitive effects. Subjects have been shown to demonstrate enhanced physical and mental capabilities while attempting to spread the knowledge of SCP-XXXX. This has been likened to hysterical strength by Foundation researchers, who noticed increased levels of norepinephrine in violent SCP-XXXX-Alpha subjects, although the causality is inconclusive.

Subjects often present as hypomanic, as they usually display a decreased need for sleep, urgent speech patterns, and psychomotor agitation; as well as displaying what appears to be a 'flight of ideas', although this is in reality explained by their belief in the principles and ideas induced by SCP-XXXX. Subjects have also been described as presenting with psychosis, although Foundation researchers are reluctant to describe this as a misdiagnosis until the nature of SCP-XXXX's effects can be studied further.

Addendum SCP-XXXX-Beta: Several hand-copied editions of SCP-XXXX were discovered by the Foundation after incidents continued to occur in an unusually high quantity after the containment of SCP-XXXX and SCP-XXXX-Beta-01 following Incident 38. Any copies of SCP-XXXX are designated SCP-XXXX-Beta-XX. Instances of SCP-XXXX-Beta have a wide variety of sizes and designs, and are not immediately easily likened to SCP-XXXX. SCP-XXXX-Beta instances to a varying extent mimic the effects of SCP-XXXX, with the severity of the response seemingly linked to the severity of effects currently being experienced by the SCP-XXXX-Alpha subject that copied it at the time.

+ Addendum – Incident Reports – Level 3 Clearance needed

Incident Report 01 – University of Munich

The first known SCP-XXXX incident occurred at the University of Munich in 1897. Several university academics and students were thought to have been directly exposed to SCP-XXXX, with most of the affected individuals found dead through self-inflicted wounds, a fact the university covered up. Among those infected is thought to have been famed physicist Max Planck, as he cited the book several times as a key factor in his work. It is unknown why or how Planck survived the incident.

Addendum – Theory

To O5-3

It is my scientific and deductive opinion that the only way Max Planck could have survived exposure to SCP-XXXX is if he somehow managed to synthesize a class-E amnestic. His work on sub-atomic processes bears a very strong resemblance to the obsession with looking deeper into reality that manifests itself in other subjects, and he stuck with this specific mentality for most of his professional career. Those administered class-E amnestics by the foundation still seem to display a strong curiosity into looking deeper into things which would be consistent with Planck’s subsequent academic focus and body of work.

I strongly suggest that the Foundation looks closer at the work of Max Planck, in an attempt to discover firstly how he was able to overcome the compulsive effects of SCP-XXXX long enough to develop an amnestic; and secondly how he was able to synthesize a class-E amnestic in the 1800s at all.

Doctor Niklas Lorez Morgentaler, Senior Researcher

Addendum – Re: Theory

To Doctor Morgentaler

Niklas. I don’t know how you thought it was a good idea to go over my head and directly to the O5 council, but let me make one thing clear: it wasn’t. Any such further attempts shall be met with your immediate dismissal, and you’ll be lucky if your paperwork doesn’t slip and end up with you as just another D-Class.

Oh, and regarding your Planck idea, you know I think it’s stupid, but here’s why. Planck may well have synthesized an amnestic, but it clearly was very expensive and in a very small quantity – if it had been in any way commercially viable we would have known about it by now. As such, it is exceedingly unlikely to be any more effective than the amnestics we have today, and not worth the time it would take to look into.

Any use of Foundation resources of time to pursue this theory will be met with disciplinary action.

Have a nice day,

Julia Marzenis
Site-██ Director


Incident Report 38 - Free University of Berlin, 1998

The Foundation was called into Berlin in February 1998 to respond to an outbreak of shared anomalous behaviour in students and staff at the Free University of Berlin’s physics department. Affected individuals had been described as acting with violent urges towards themselves and others, and in addition causing damage to university property. Two agents from Site-54 were sent to Berlin at the request of the German government, and arrived to find the campus under lockdown. Affected individuals had been locked inside the university’s physics department building, and local police were patrolling the perimeter. Foundation agents Buttler and Oberhas entered the building in an attempt to study the behaviour of the anomaly, but after 3 hours had still not come out or made any attempt at communication over their radios. At this point a specialist containment team was deployed to Berlin, consisting of 3 Forward Reconnaissance Teams, a backup unit, and a field support team.

Upon arriving at the site, the containment team set up a forward base of operations outside the physics department building, applying class-A amnestics to local police and university staff with knowledge of the quarantine. Three exploration teams of 5 agents designated FRT-01 through FRT-03 were established to enter the physics department building. The teams entered the building simultaneously, with FRT-01 entering through the South-West entrance, FRT-02 entering through the North-West entrance and FRT-03 entering through the North-East entrance.

FRT-01 encountered several specimens of SCP-XXXX-Alpha at various stages of mental degeneration, and successfully subdued all of them, with only minor wounds to Field Agent Glazer. FRT-03 encountered only one severely degenerative specimen of SCP-XXXX-Alpha, and subdued them. FRT-02 experienced 2 fatalities and 2 counts of grievous bodily harm in the process of subduing SCP-XXXX-Alpha specimens, and had to be assisted by FRT-03. FRT-02’s radio transmissions are attached below.

After securing the building, all specimens of SCP-XXXX-Alpha were escorted from the premises and transported to Site-54, where they were placed into standard human containment cells pending the establishment of further containment procedures. The German government assisted the Foundation in suppressing news of the incident until SCP-XXXX-Alpha specimens were administered class-C and -E amnestics and returned to the university.


Radio Transmission Logs – FRT-02 – January 14, 1998

The following logs are audio only, and were deemed the most relevant to understanding of interactions with SCP-XXXX-Alpha by Site-54 research staff. The transcription begins with the entry of FRT-02 into the Free University of Berlin’s physics department building. FRT-02 consists of Field Agents Martha Pocka, Rebecca Shearing, Scully Jessop, Esteban Vasquez, and Dominic Amengual, in command. Additional descriptors have been added to the transcript for clarity.

<Begin Log, 14:08; January 14, 1998>

Amengual: Alright everyone, make sure your radio transmitters are on. We don’t know exactly what’s in this building, but it could be some kind of cognitohazard that’s already claimed 2 field agents, so keep your wits about you.

Vasquez: Ay Dom, we know man. This is what we’re trained for, we see a threat we subdue it. Chill.

Pocka: He’s just doing his job Vasquez, let’s all do ours okay? Could be anything in there so need to stay alert.

Jessop: Dom’s got a point, we don’t know what’s in there. And if two agents haven’t come out, let’s just make sure that we do?

Shearing: Amen to that Scully.

Amengual: Alright guys, that’s enough talk. We’re going in, make sure you keep an eye on affected individuals at all times, we don’t want anything escaping our attention. Jessop, you take point.

FRT-02 ready their gear, and enter the building, with Jessop leading Amengual, Pocka, Vasquez and Shearing in order.

Jessop: Ok guys it is weird in here, the walls look torn to pieces. I’m seeing vertical slashes in the plaster, three, four, five in a row, what the fuck is going on here?

Vasquez: Dom, you didn’t say there’d be fuckin’ apex predators in here man. Did we bring big enough guns?
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Amengual: Stay focused guys, look out for more patterns of slashes in a row. Could be significant.

FRT-02 move further into the building, noting further occurrences of linear structural damage to the walls, furniture and ceiling.

Shearing: Have you seen anyone up ahead? This place seems deserted, no-one’s here. I can’t think – oh bloody hell that’s a lot of blood.
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Jessop: You guys go back and check it out, I’ll hold here.
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The rest of FRT-02 join Shearing near the entrance to one of the labs.
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Vasquez: Fuck me, you ain’t wrong Becky. That’s a lot of blood.
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Amengual: Ok, so we’re seeing a large room, a laboratory, the floor and desks seem to be mostly coated in blood and viscera. All looks pooled, wasn’t caused by uncontrolled wounds, there are no splash marks.

Pocka: I’m moving into the room now, there’s nothing in here I don’t think- negative, I see a body between two of the central tables, it’s face-down. Permission to try and turn it over?

Amengual: Granted Pocka, turn it over.
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Pocka: Affirmative, turning it over now- dear Christ. You’re going to want to see this.

FRT-02 move into the room.
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Vasquez: Awh shit man, that’s fucked.
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Amengual: Ok command, we’ve got a human male here, mid-50s by the looks. Chest has three vertical slices down above the heart, the face is a mess, it’s cut to pieces so bad it’s hard to recognize that as human-

Shearing: My God, the eyes are torn to shreds, it’s like they’ve been put through an egg-slicer.
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Amengual: Command, I don’t know what we’re dealing with here but these weren’t self-inflicted, whatever it is it’s a danger to the remaining civilians and the other teams, notify them.

Command agrees to notify FRT-01 and FRT-03. At this point, a low, rasping, gurgling noise is heard from outside the room.
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Vasquez: Shit. What was that?

Pocka: I’ll go check it out.
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Pocka leaves the room.
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Amengual: Jessop, are you there? Report in. … Jessop? Jessop! Scully, you listening?
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A high-pitched scream is heard from outside the room. The voice is Pocka’s.
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Vasquez: Awh fuck fuck fuck, guys come on.
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Vasquez leads Amengual and Shearing out of the room to look for Pocka and Jessop. They find Pocka outside in the corridor, holding a hand over one of her eyes. There are splashes of blood on the floor.
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Vasquez: Shit Pocka, what happened?? Are you alright?

Pocka: (speaking through gritted teeth) There was… a man… he came up to me asking for… help. He said something… about looking deeper… he needed help. His skin was… cut up real bad. He… slashed… my fucking eye… Fuck Vasquez, I think it’s been put out I can’t see anything!

Amengual: Ok Vasquez, you help Pocka, get her patched up. Shearing, come with me, we need to find Jessop. He’s not responding to his radio.

Vasquez: Come back quickly guys, I don’t like this.

Amengual and Shearing move to where Jessop was holding position. They find no evidence of him, and decide to press on further into the building.

Shearing: Ok Dom, I’m gonna check in here, cover me. Opening now… (breathes softly) mother Mary what happened here.

Amengual: Command, I’m seeing another lab, there are corpses everywhere… I count 8, 9 bodies even… We’re moving in to have a look-

SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01: Have you seen it? Have… have you seen the golden space between?

Shearing: (whispering) Dom, what do we do? Do I engage it?

SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01: I can hear you, you know. Don’t speak so quietly, no-one’s being fooled here. Are you them? Are you deceivers? You propagate this mirage of the soul?

Amengual: Shearing, don’t-

Shearing: We’re not here to deceive you, we’re here to help.

SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01: Help? Help?! That’s what they told Nadiya too, but she saw through their lies. She saw there was more below, there was a truth beyond their deception!

Shearing: We’re not here to deceive, only to learn – you must understand that urge right? Who is this Nadiya, what did she see?

SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01 appears to start reciting from SCP-XXXX by memory, entering an unresponsive state.

SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01: Something’s awry. Haven’t you noticed? She’d noticed since she was just a little girl, staring at the way the dew hangs from the trees every sunrise. Why didn’t it fall as it hung there? What kept it reflecting the slow, slumbering motion of the day’s break, the love between the skies and the Earth manifested as light and colour? She knew there was something more, a force she could not comprehend that kept the morning dew away from the ground’s embrace.

Shearing: Dom, is he reciting from memory? It almost sounds like a ritual. Dom? Dom??

Amengual is unresponsive, looking at SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01 with a look of almost entrancement and curiosity.

Shearing: Hey Dom, blink if you can hear me. Show me something, anything ok? Dom??

SCP-Alpha-XXXX-01: She ran into trouble at school several times. “What do you want to be when you’re older Nadiya?” her teachers had asked, deceivers in their way of asking. The question was never what she wanted to be, it was how much she could know, how deep she could look. Of course she could not articulate these sentiments, these paramount questions, at such a young age. Instead she responded with apathy, stating she did not want to be anything, that school was pointless. One day however, she saw another student fall outside the school, and gash open their leg badly. She saw more deeply than flesh for the first time, and knew from then on she needed to be a doctor or nurse, to look deeper into the hidden world.

Shearing: Amengual, you need to focus on my voice ok? Stop listening to him, he’s an anomaly. Amengual? Dom? Ok Dom, I’m gonna need to administer you an amnestic, you’re gonna be fine.

SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01: Nadiya applied herself to her school studies, particularly to sciences. Nothing but rigour would do if she wanted to dispel the mirage, to see beyond what the deceivers taught. She needed to see past their veil of ignorance, look into the golden space between. The sciences took her interest in particular of course – no field had done so much to subvert deceit, to re-construct models of what was known.

Shearing: Oh shite, Pocka has the amnestics. I’m gonna go find her and Vasquez, just wait here Dom- guess you’re not going anywhere anyway.

Shearing goes to go and find Vasquez and Pocka, and hears shouting and sounds of conflict as she enters the corridor. She runs towards the sounds to find Vasquez fighting with SCP-XXXX-Alpha-02, and Pocka lying seemingly unconscious on the floor. Shearing hauls SCP-XXXX-Alpha-02 off Vasquez, and pins them to the floor.

Shearing: What the fuck happened here Vasquez??

Vasquez: Hijo de puta, that thing came out of nowhere and hit me over the head with that glass vial before sinking a knife into Pocka, she’s fucking dead Becky.

Vasquez injects SCP-XXXX-Alpha-02 with a tranquilizer.

Vasquez: That should put him out for a while. Ay Becky, where’s Dom? Didn’t he go with you?

Shearing: Shite yeah, this guy started reciting something from memory, sounded like a fucking book reading. Amengual is unresponsive, was gonna give him an amnestic but Pocka has those-

Vasquez: Fuck Becky! You left Dom with one of them??! Let’s fucking go!

Vasquez and Shearing head back to the room with Amengual and SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01. SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01 has gone, and Amengual is standing with a blank, otherworldly look on his face.

Vasquez: What the fuck Becky, you said there was someone else here?? Ay Dom man, you alright?

Shearing: I told you Vasquez, he’s not responding, he won’t answer-

Amengual: I’ve seen beyond their mirage.

Shearing: …come again Dom?

Amengual holds up a leather-bound book, designated SCP-XXXX-Beta-01, appearing to proffer it to Shearing and Vasquez.

Amengual: They’re deceivers, Vasquez. I heard it, like a gospel. There’s more to this world that it seems. The Foundation? The GOC? The fucking SCPs? They’re nothing, just fronts for what lies between. Their deception is our loss, our science their undoing.

Vasquez: Dom, you’re not making sense, just come with us ok? We can get you help.

Amengual: Shearing, how did you not hear? Do you not understand? Tell Dom.

Shearing: I don’t know what you’re talking about Dom, you’re not well. Please, just come with us, you’re sick.

Amengual: Becky, Esteban, come on. You’ve got to look harder, dissect your own perceptions.

At this point, Amengual lunges at Shearing with a knife he has been concealing, and SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01 and -03 come round the corner, similarly armed.

Vasquez: Shearing, run!

Vasquez and Shearing run down the corridor and dive into a doorway to a storage closet, barricading it shut. Amengual and SCP-XXXX-Alpha-01 and -03 start trying to cut into the door with their knives.

Shearing: V-Vasquez… Is that…?

Vasquez and Shearing turn to see the eviscerated body of Jessop, slumped against a storage locker in a pool of blood and gore.

Vasquez: Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck we’re so fucked-

Shots ring out down the corridor, followed by the sound of footfalls and bodies hitting the floor.

Berteman: Clear!

Yang: Clear!

Vasquez: Hey! Guys! We’re in here, get us the fuck out! Don’t fucking shoot!

The door is pulled open, and FRT-03 are in the corridor, standing over the bodies of Amengual and the SCP-XXXX-Alpha specimens. Vasquez and Shearing are extracted from the building by FRT-03.

<End log, 14:56>

Debrief: Field Agents Shearing and Vasquez were debriefed after incident 38. Vasquez exhibited intense anxiety when recalling the events of Incident 38, particularly around the death of Field Agent Amengual. Shearing exhibited mild signs of anxiety, but also sub-consciously used the phrases ‘mirage’, ‘deceivers’ and ‘the golden space between’ several times during her debrief, as well as expressing curiosity as to the contents of SCP-XXXX, and the intentions of SCP-XXXX-Alpha.

Vasquez was later administered a class-B amnestic and transferred away from Site-54. Shearing was administered class C and class-E amnestics and returned to active duty.

The bodies of Field Agents Pocka, Jessop and Amengual were recovered by the Foundation and buried in accordance with Foundation protocol. SCP-XXXX-Beta-01 was recovered by FRT-03 and put into containment once its cognitive influences were described in debrief. SCP-XXXX itself was discovered in the university’s library during a routine search, and contained by the Foundation.

Incident Report 39 - Foundation Site-██, 1999

Addendum - Reduced Risk

The Foundation has judged that there is a reduced risk of further SCP-XXXX incidents, as there have been no further instances of SCP-XXXX-Beta discovered since Incident 51. SCP-XXXX will, however, keep its Euclid classification due to the remaining possibility of further incidents.

Addendum – Testing to be Approved

To all researchers working on SCP-XXXX

Testing on SCP-XXX has been strictly regulated for several reasons. First of all, it is expensive in both fiscal and human terms to keep using D-class subjects to record data. Class-C amnestics are expensive, and we don't have an unlimited supply of D-Class, contrary to what some of you seem to believe.

Second, most of our information on the book's effects was gained from interviews with affected individuals and containment specialists. While I agree in principle that it could be interesting to assess the effects of SCP-XXXX in a controlled environment, the fact remains that it would generate very little additional understanding that could aid in containment procedures.

Third, Incident 39 is still pretty fresh in our minds. While containment procedures have been revised since then, it still remains that one slip-up during testing could prove very costly. I understand that many of you are eager to further understand SCP-XXXX, but it poses no risk while it remains unread.

Finally, and linking to the point above, the site contains a large number of other cognito-hazards, and as such the risk of cross-contamination after testing is one we would prefer to avoid.

As such, all tests on SCP-XXXX require the personal approval of Site Director Marzenis first.

Senior Researcher Sauer