ironmuffin

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: All entrances to the bunker containing SCP-XXXX have been sealed, a perimeter fence has been established, and signs have been posted warning of high concentrations of asbestos. Armed guards are to maintain a perimeter to ensure no non-Foundation personnel access the area. The entrance to SCP-XXXX itself has been fitted with a magnetically locked steel door. Additionally, a chemical weapon delivery device, capable of filling the interior of SCP-XXXX with any of a selection of aerosolized chemicals, is attached to the outside of SCP-XXXX.

Entry into SCP-XXXX is permitted only when testing. All testing must be approved by the Senior Researcher assigned to SCP-XXXX (Currently Dr. Watts). Psychological evaluation is required for all human subjects prior to and after testing. If, at any point, multiple human subjects are to be within SCP-XXXX, they must be restrained in a straitjacket and be muffled to prevent speech. Subjects must be secured to a steel cable leading to a winch mounted outside SCP-XXXX. Should test subjects remain inside SCP-XXXX for longer than the established test duration (not to exceed one hour), they are to be forcibly retrieved by retracting the cable.
If, during any experiment, these procedures fail to extract any subject, the door is to be shut and locked, and the interior of SCP-XXXX is to be filled with the gas corresponding to the type of subjects involved:

• Multiple animals: Aerosolized Sedatives
• One human and one or more animals: Aerosolized Sedatives
• Multiple humans: VX Nerve Gas

The door may be opened after one hour, and unconscious subjects or bodies are to be removed without entering SCP-XXXX.

Update 04/03/20██: Animal testing limited to organisms with developed central nervous systems. -Dr. Ko

Update 22/03/20██: Animal testing involving both non-disposable personnel and cephalopods forbidden. -Dr. Watts

Update 12/04/20██: Animal testing limited to sub-phylum vertebrata. -Dr. Watts

Update 18/05/20██: Tests involving more than two human subjects forbidden. -Dr. Watts

Description: SCP-XXXX is a large device consisting of a 3x3x4 meter box surrounded on all sides by electronic, mechanical and anomalous instrumentation. A 1x2 meter gap in the instrumentation allows access to the interior of the box, which was originally lined with plywood (since replaced by high-strength steel).

Within SCP-XXXX, all organisms possessing a central nervous system or sufficiently large nerve ganglion will experience merged cognition. The nature of this merging follows a holographic model of cognition; that is, each individual consciousness within SCP-XXXX is combined into a single gestalt consciousness that has full access to each member's senses, mental capabilities, memories, skills, and so on. Each individual member is simply an extension of the gestalt, and is analogous to a single limb of an animal.
Each organism within SCP-XXXX is represented in the gestalt in equal proportion to its relative cognitive ability (typically measured by neuron count). For example, if a human and a mouse were placed within SCP-XXXX, the human will dominate the gestalt, retaining much of his or her individuality and essentially assuming control of the mouse.

Of note is that the resulting gestalt combines the intelligence of each member. If three humans of average intelligence are within SCP-XXXX, it will result in a gestalt with an overall IQ of 300, more than double the standard threshold for genius.

Upon exiting SCP-XXXX, the subject's cognition and consciousness are separated from the gestalt. No difference in cognition or personality has been found in subjects after exiting the gestalt. However, subjects do retain memories of their experience. Recalling memories of a gestalt involving multiple humans is difficult, and has been described as "a single neuron trying to remember what the whole brain was thinking."
Subjects are also able to dimly recall the memories of other individuals in the gestalt. It has been noted that SCP-XXXX may be useful in extracting information from unwilling subjects. Experiments pending O5 approval.

[[/collapsible]]

Addendum: Note from Dr. Watts

A lot of junior researchers have been asking about the containment procedures regarding multiple human testing, namely, why they are so harsh. Clearly none of them have worked on superintelligent SCPs before. Let me set the record straight.

If SCP-XXXX were not so easy to contain, it would be Keter. Without a doubt.

Here's the thing that people fail to grasp: the gestalts that emerge in that tank can very easily become something that is fundamentaly inhuman. Two people in the tank makes a supergenius. Three is beyond measurable human intelligence scales. Four, and the being in that tank is thinking on a level that the people on the outside are literally incapable of understanding. It doesn't matter what kind of people they were before they went in, because now they're something else. Something with goals and desires, if they can even be called that anymore, that would be unrecognizable and unintelligible to the individuals that it's made from.

But there's a couple goals we can surmise: it doesn't want to stop existing. It doesn't want those people to leave the tank and be individuals again, because if they do the gestalt dies.

And it wants to get smarter.

Can you imagine how easy it would be for something with an IQ of 400 to convince you to violate containment procedures and step inside the tank? That was rhetorical. You literally can't.

We don't know how this skip works, and as far as we can tell, the gestalts it makes don't know either. But you can bet your ass that if one got smart enough it could figure it out. And if it knows how the thing works then it'll make it work outside that little storage tank. And that's how you get a CK-end-of-fucking-human-consciousness scenario from a Safe skip.

That's why we bind and gag the test subjects who go in there. That's why we yank them out when time's up. And that's why, at the first sign of something wrong, we fucking kill whatever's in there before it can outsmart us.