Dr Laming

Hot Money Disease

Item#: 5678

Level3

Containment Class:

keter

Secondary Class:

none

Disruption Class:

ekhi

Risk Class:

notice

link to memo

Special Containment Procedures: Seven instances of SCP-XXXX-1 are to be hermetically sealed in separate transparent packages and stored in a BSL-4 laboratory in Site-76. Any interaction with stored SCP-XXXX-1 instances must be logged and personally overseen by Researcher Peterle.

The Field Division of MTF φ-67 ("Friedman Fans") has been deployed at major banks to identify and incinerate other remaining instances of SCP-XXXX-1 in circulation. A disinformation campaign is launched to disguise the ongoing destruction of affected currencies as a response to a surge in sophisticatedly-produced counterfeit.

The Analytics Division of MTF φ-67 is to monitor global economic indicators for unusual spikes in inflation rates. The Field Division and Researcher Peterle are to be notified if such spikes are found. The discovery of SCP-XXXX-01 instances coinciding with abnormal local inflation constitutes a containment breach, in which event additional personnel will be recruited into MTF φ-67 and deployed at the region in question.

Description: SCP-XXXX is a pathogen transmissible through infected banknotes, hereafter designated as SCP-XXXX-1. Excited by high-energy X-ray (wavelength less than or equal to 0.1 nm), SCP-XXXX-1 emits visible fluorescence in the pattern of a stout Caucasian male. SCP-XXXX can contaminate nearby banknotes in direct contact with SCP-XXXX-1, albeit at a slower rate if transmitting to different currencies, the rate being even slower when transmitting to currencies of a different fabric (e.g. from cotton currencies to plastic currencies).

Subjects within two meters of SCP-XXXX-1 often report a smell similar to that of paint thinner or nail polish remover. At this point, the subject is affected by an olfactory cognitohazard, exhibiting heightened levels of nervousness and pessimism¹. The subject displays the following sudden behavioural alterations:

• Stockpiling of items.
• Radical aversion towards receiving or giving any favour.

According to preliminary experiments, the subject justifies their actions as a precautionary measure in anticipation of an imminent depreciation of the currency they are currently using, and a general fear of the inability to return favours.

Please input credentials to view Addendum XXXX-a: [_______]

awright@@foundation.scp | jmk1883

Login date: 30 Jul 2021 21:07. Loading…

Welcome Director Wright. You knew there were no addenda.

Addendum XXXX-a: The mistake you made.

To: Researcher Andrej Peterle
From: Site Personnel Director Adam Wright

---

Dear Andrej:

This email is to notify you about your potential reassignment from MTF φ-67. Do not worry. You are not in any form of trouble — quite the contrary, this may very well be a celebratory note. Your work is done, congratulations!

I understand your desire to repay the Foundation’s favour, but you do not have to do it by chasing leads of a ghost and stirring up irrational fear. SCP-XXXX is gone, forever. It has been more than a decade since we last found a single infected banknote. The coast is clear. Time to move on. Never.

When I recruited you from Belgrade in 1992, I knew you had the potential to do great things. I trusted you when everyone else didn’t, so I handed you the command two years later to clean things up and to prove yourself. You did it brilliantly, but when I sent you emails about new opportunities, you chose to ignore all of them. Now that I am promoted to Site Personnel Director, it would add duty to my personal wish that the Foundation’s best people be assigned to where they are more needed. Please consider my offer seriously this time. And be patronised?

I would also like to warn you against making unfounded claims about the “re-emergence” of SCP-XXXX and abusing the group email to circulate rumours. Several complaints against you have been filed already. On a personal note, Zimbabwe is doing well. The stock market going strong against the global recession means it has a sound economy, rather than the result of your ghost. Trust me.

We can have a conversation at my new office about your future career when you are available. We both know how that conversation ended.

Wish you have a nice day.

Adam Wright, Site Personnel Director
March 12^th, 2007

You never understood, Adam. You only saw an uncontained anomaly; I saw lives being ruined. I still remember how тата begged the pig of a shopkeeper for just one can of gasoline. He returned home with nothing, and our wheat rotted in the fields. Josef lost his job as a road worker, even if there were so many potholes in Belgrade to patch. We had dinar, but the government stores were always out of stock, while those roadside dealers only accepted Deutsche Mark, so we burned dinar to keep warm. I admit, were it not for you, I would have starved to death.

Then I took a vow never to let that tragedy happen to anyone else. I made it my life’s work, but a decade of work was undone in a second when you signed that damned “dissolution notice”. I flew to Bulawayo without my squad, and that nightmare I kept having for years unfolded before my very eyes. Collective fear of depreciation always translate to depreciation in reality. The poor souls were already living on the line; the inflation made it even worse. Ask yourself, Adam, have you seen someone with untreated cholera? They lay starving on the roadside with sunken eyes and cracked lips. They vomited the meagre food they bought at unbelievable prices, and their faces were as pale as the diarrhoea dripping down their soiled thighs. All this, because someone sitting in their Manhattan office decided “the Foundation needed to cut redundant projects”.

The world blamed Mugabe, but you and I know who is really to blame. Don’t make the same mistake.

draft

[You have (1) unread email.]

To: Agent Portland Williams
From: Dr Haggard Evans

---

Dear colleague,

This email is to follow up the conversation we had regarding your reassignment of MTF duty. You may think you have been demoted. This is not the case — quite the contrary, this may very well be a congratulatory note.

I assume you have read the file about SCP-XXXX? For the sake of clarity, I shall provide a briefer but easier-to-understand summary.

Suppose you learned from a trusted source that your government is about to abolish its currency tomorrow. Believing that the banknotes you carry in your pocket or wallet will immediately lose their value the very next day, and that they will not fetch you necessities to sustain yourself, but merely a convenient source of fuel for warmth — what would you do?

Rush to the nearest supermarket and hoard everything before the whole currency shuts down.

Now, zoom out of that bubble for a moment, and think of countless others in the world who have the same thought as you. Zoom in on that realm. Everyone run to buy in panic. Factories struggle to keep up. Customer demand overtakes supply. What happens?

A price hike. Keep on maintaining that trend, it would be a ticking time bomb until those zeroes start to line up behind every numerical value on those banknotes. Prices spiral out of control. And what does the government get at the end of the day?

Hyperinflation.

You see, there were multiple historical events in which an entire nation kneeled down to the destructive power of hyperinflation, most of which were attributed to human error. Imagine the Foundation’s horror when it found an anomalous entity could cause one. The first known victim of SCP-XXXX was the Yugoslavian Dinar in 1992. 313 million percent a month. The government was busy “revaluing” the Dinar while this Mobile Task Force was founded and dispatched to contain it. After the crisis subsided, there was not much news about SCP-XXXX, so our department gradually lost its funding and its best men. We were left in the dark for years, gathering dust.

Until 2007.

89.7 sextillion percent. 21 zeroes. People simply stopped haggling because prices would rise every hour. We were not prepared for Zimbabwe at all. We had to abolish their currency altogether. Apparently, SCP-XXXX came back from the dead and caught us all off-guard. But the main question we always had in mind was: where did it come from?

It was not until we stumbled upon an abandoned UIU archive that we had a lead. We found a log belonging to one of the UIU’s precursors. A doodie was carelessly scrawled on the margin - the very likeness of the man on the banknote. Beside it was a vague description of a project “for President H.H.”

Herbert Hoover. The president that saw his country descend into the Great Depression. “Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement”, and it seems he turned to another course of action. We knew the project was not finished because the US economy is still in good shape, but how SCP-XXXX found its way to Yugoslavia and the rest of the world is still a mystery. That is what our Friedman Fans are investigating, and we would need your assistance. You have been picked out with a doctorate in economics, am I right? The tests were held for a reason.

For that, we say:

Welcome to MTF φ-67.

Footnotes

1. Clinical psychology assessments suggest such effects are reversible if SCP-XXXX-1 is removed from affected individuals in 24 hours.