mszegedy's sandbox

Foundation Electronic Document Handling Warning
This file contains contains a Class-7 (“Minor Concern”) Infohazard. Staff conversant in SCP-XXXX-A instances should confirm that their contextual blocking software is active and functional before reading this article.

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Thaumiel

Special Containment Procedures: Outpost 182 in Telefomin is to be staffed with at least three Level 2 researchers conversant in the majority of the languages of the Deinin Valley (excepting Sänä), and at least three Level 3 researchers fluent in both the main and pandanus registers of the Sänä language. During pandanus harvest season, two Level 3 researchers are to to accompany the Sänä tribe (designated GoI-XXXX) on their harvest. If they report a change in the containment status of SCP-XXXX-B, MTF Unit Upsilon-3 "The Whorfian Fist" is to be dispatched to the Deinin Valley immediately with both Class E amnestics and Class X mnestics.

All staff at Outpost 182 are to refrain from using SCP-XXXX instances in their dialect of English, Tok Pisin, or Telefol.¹

Description: SCP-XXXX is a constellation of anomalous language features centered on the Deinin Valley, about 18 km northwest of Telefomin, Papua New Guinea. The affected languages (collectively designated SCP-XXXX-A) are distributed across at least four language families, having no other significant unifying characteristics. The language with the greatest abundance of these features, known as Sänä (designated SCP-XXXX-A-8), is an isolate.

In instances of SCP-XXXX-A besides Sänä, SCP-XXXX takes the form of words and morphemes that, when understood and believed, remove information from a listener's mind, rather than add it. The process by which SCP-XXXX instances erase memory is exactly analogous to the usual spread of information by speech in the following ways:

• The listener must already know the function of the SCP-XXXX instance in its host language, and fully understand the sentence in which it is used. If the listener is unsure of the meaning of the sentence, whether due to lack of fluency or due to syntactic ambiguity, SCP-XXXX will fail to affect the listener. Two speakers of an instance of SCP-XXXX-A may successfully loan any of its anomalous features into another language they both know, making their microdialect of that language a new instance of SCP-XXXX-A.²
• SCP-XXXX can only remove very specific information, but that information is removed completely. The information each instance of SCP-XXXX erases is that which would normally be conveyed by a morpheme in the same position, such as an anomalous verb that makes the listener forget the nature of an action, or an anomalous tense marker that makes the listener forget whether an action occurred in the past, present, or future. SCP-XXXX-A-2, for example, contains the pronoun hənip, which, when given a particular role in a sentence, causes the listener to forget whatever they previously remembered being in that role. If told again what is in that role, the speaker will not recall ever knowing it previously. When used in quotation, hənip has no effect. This is demonstrated in the following excerpt from Interview Log XXXX-12 (translated from SCP-XXXX-A-2 and Tok Pisin, and anonymized):

[BEGIN EXCERPT]
Interviewer: Stej fetches firewood. Who fetches firewood?
Subject: Stej.
Interviewer: Hənip fetches firewood. Who fetches firewood?
Subject: Nobody, I think. What firewood?
Interviewer: The firewood from our example. Stej is the one who fetches firewood. Do you remember now?
Subject: No. You used the word hənip or ███████, right? There is no remembering after those.
Interviewer: Yes, but please focus on the questions. Here is another example with the word hənip. Stej fetches firewood. Stej fetches hənip. What does Stej fetch?
Subject: I don't know. Ah, remember.
Interviewer: Do you remember what was the last question you asked me about one of the examples? Before the question about the word hənip.
Subject: I asked about firewood.
Interviewer: Why did you ask about firewood?
Subject: Probably because that example involved firewood.
[END EXCERPT]

• The listener must "believe" the sentence containing the SCP-XXXX instance in order for the erasure to happen. In practical terms, this means that the listener must be expecting the speaker to make a true claim, whether applying to the real world or to a fictional one. This has the notable effect of making SCP-XXXX difficult to use antagonistically. If one suspects someone of using SCP-XXXX against them, one will reflexively disbelieve their statements, and the effect will no longer apply to them.

The usage of SCP-XXXX instances among SCP-XXXX-A speakers is nearly always to benignly correct misinformation they have previously transmitted. In this sense, they are not notable or dangerous, since all languages contain ways to correct misinformation; the difference is that SCP-XXXX-A speakers won't remember the misinformation ever being transmitted in the first place. This makes them mildly distrustful of anybody speaking in a language that isn't a SCP-XXXX-A instance, since they are unaccustomed to observing their interlocutors making mistakes during conversation.

Like many languages of New Guinea, the languages of Deinin Valley have an avoidance register used during the harvest of the fruit of Pandanus julianettii,³ known as a pandanus register. This register typically has a much more restricted vocabulary compared to the main register, with the meanings of many words shifted or merged. The purpose of these registers is to make sure that the pandanus nuts will not become rotten during the harvest, as the main registers are believed to contain words that are unhealthy for the pandanus trees. The pandanus registers of SCP-XXXX-A instances may contain cognates of SCP-XXXX instances, but have not been found to contain any of the instances themselves.⁴

Deep in the Deinin Valley, opposite the town of Telefomin, is spoken the SCP-XXXX-A instance Sänä, which has a far richer set of SCP-XXXX instances than any other language in the area, numbering over 900 individual morphemes. While other SCP-XXXX-A instances only have at most three anomalous morphemes for a given syntactic role, Sänä has a SCP-XXXX instance for nearly every word in its core vocabulary, and multiple instances for every morpheme in its core grammar. The function of the vast majority of these morphemes is to overwrite information in the listener's mind, rather than erase it, as SCP-XXXX instances in other languages do. This has the additional effect of [DATA EXPUNGED]. This makes them somewhat more efficient than other languages' SCP-XXXX instances in performing their role of correcting misinformation.

Sänä is spoken by a single tribe in a single village. It is difficult to obtain accurate information about this village; researchers sent to document it have given conflicting accounts of its location, population size, layout, and social hierarchy. Only Level 3 researchers are permitted access to the Sänä tribe, or information about its activities.

XXXX/3 clearance required to continue.

Sänä's mnestic SCP-XXXX instances are more powerful than all other SCP-XXXX instances in that they override all but the most powerful amnestic effects, including both Class A through D amnestics and the effects of all amnestic SCP-XXXX instances. A certain class of Sänä's morphemes, rather than erasing or overwriting information, instead have a purely mnestic effect, causing the listener to remember the referenced piece of information, if they had forgotten it previously. Information "fixed" with Sänä's mnestic morphemes is almost impossible to erase.

The village of the Sänä contains a localized infohazard with both memetic and antimemetic properties, designated SCP-XXXX-B, whose effects the Sänä use SCP-XXXX to protect themselves from. It is unknown why the Sänä would choose to live near SCP-XXXX-B, but it is estimated from the diversity of SCP-XXXX instances that SCP-XXXX has existed for at least 3000 years; it may simply be a matter of tradition for the Sänä. It is hypothesized that some aspect of SCP-XXXX-B allowed the Sänä to acquire their anomalous vocabulary, so in this regard, SCP-XXXX-B may be viewed as partially beneficial to them. The instances of SCP-XXXX outside of the Sänä tribe are not known to protect against any particular infohazard, and are thus thought to all descend from loans from Sänä.

The pandanus register of the Sänä language contains no instances of SCP-XXXX, but, unusually for a pandanus register, is somewhat more expressive in its vocabulary and morphology than Sanä's main register. During the pandanus harvest, the majority of the Sänä leave the village, ascend the nearby mountain to reach the pandanus grove, and freely discuss the past year, in a way that they are not normally permitted to. Discussion of SCP-XXXX-B is forbidden, except by a council of elders, who hold a private conference to discuss their successes and failures in the containment of SCP-XXXX-B.

For the past 3█ years, the Foundation has maintained good relations with the Sänä, and sent two Level 3 researchers as delegates to this conference. The following is a record of Researchers Kroening and Huxley's contributions to the latest such conference, translated into English.

<Begin excerpt from transcript of Audio Log XXXX-08-5-39.>
PoI-XXXX-07: Delegate Kroening, it is now your turn to speak. Have you had any success convincing your leaders that the containment of the Unknown is in danger of failing?
Kroening: They have believed it all along. They simply don't see the merits of putting additional effort into containing it. There are few of us equipped to deal with these things, now. I'm surprised that both Huxley and I have survived this long.
PoI-XXXX-10: We are not so fortunate. This marks the fifteenth year in a row that the death toll in our village was greater than the number of its births.
Kroening: By only three. Not so alarming in a village of hundreds.
Huxley: Keep in mind that we can never trust anything we know. The decline of the village could have been a lot faster than we remember.
PoI-XXXX-07: The pandanus trees are almost surely outside of the reach of the Unknown, and they show signs of having been picked by a village of two hundred or so last year. It is not a completely foolproof sign, but I would guess from it that there are at most twenty souls fewer here today than last year.
Huxley: Can we make everyone pick the same number of pandanus trees next year, so that we can get an accurate census? We could even alter the pattern of picked trees, to record additional valuable details. The anomaly interferes with writing, but it might not understand what we're doing with the trees.
PoI-XXXX-12: We cannot do this, for the same reason as why we cannot leave the number in writing. If the Unknown learns of new plots against it, we cannot predict what it will do to keep itself safe. The medium of the plot does not matter.
PoI-XXXX-08: It is sacrilege to upheave the traditions of the pandanus harvest, anyway. This is the time when the joy of the Sänä people is at its height. To crush it by reminding them of the horror waiting at home is unthinkable.
Kroening: Quite literally, I think. We are not sure exactly how the anomaly is contained, but the morale of the Sänä people surely plays an important part. Thank you, elders, for everything the Sänä have done for the safety of the world. The Foundation is indebted to you.
<End excerpt.>

Footnotes

1. This constitutes a borrowing, and will turn the affected dialect into an instance of SCP-XXXX-A.

2. A transparent example of this is the recent loan of SCP-XXXX instances into the dialect of Tok Pisin spoken in the Deinin Valley.

3. Karuka nuts, or pandanus nuts.

4. For instance, in the pandanus register of SCP-XXXX-A-2, the word hənip means "person or cassowary".