ShilohPell

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Euclid

CAUTION: MEMETIC CONTAGION

Special Containment Procedures: A standard storage room is to be specially outfitted for containment of SCP-XXXX and its associated containment medium, according to specifications detailed below. The storage room is to be selected to minimize line of sight from the doorway. It is suggested this be accomplished by selecting a containment room around a blind corner, where possible. The corridor selected is to be the only means in or out of the containment area, and no other facilities other than the containment room of SCP-XXXX is to be accessible via this corridor. Containment room is permitted a single table to hold containment medium (optional) constructed as detailed below

A quarantine area is to be established along the access way to the containment area. A minimum of five Level 2 or higher personnel are to be assigned to this quarantine area at all times. Quarantine personnel are to be vetted before assignment to ensure their skin contains no tattoos or other artificial markings. The quarantine area is not to contain any writing implements, recording apparatus, or other means of making meaningful records. Quarantine and all areas beyond quarantine are to conform to the construction outlines below.

The quarantine facility and all areas beyond, including the containment room itself, are to be wood-paneled on all surfaces including the floor, ceiling, walls, and doors. Doors are not permitted to contain windows, peepholes, or other means of providing sight through said doors. If present, optional table is to be constructed in a similar manner. The wood used in all construction is to be felled, milled, sanded, and constructed by Foundation personnel without the aid of any marking tools of any kind. The wood is to be inspected and found free of meaningful markings before being approved as construction material. Under no circumstances are plastic, metal, glass, or other artificial materials to be used in construction to reduce the possibility of manufacturer markings providing an escape vector. No labeling, signage, or other printed information is to be allowed beyond the quarantine area. No surveillance methods including CCTV cameras are permitted in the containment area.

All personnel visiting the containment area, including quarantine personnel, are to undergo quarantine procedures before being permitted access. All clothing, personal effects, electronic devices, writing implements, jewelry, recording devices, prosthetics, and any other item not a natural physical member of the person’s body are to be confiscated on arrival and placed in an airtight, light-proofed wooden chest constructed using approved materials and methods. Quarantine personnel are to perform a thorough search of visitor’s skin to ensure it is free of tattoos, even those previously removed via laser surgery or other means, or other markings of significance. Any personnel not meeting entry criteria are to be denied entry with no exceptions. Personnel are to be provided with hand-knitted full body woolen suits. Suits are to be manufactured on-site and are to bear no text, insignia, or other markings or dyes of any kind. On exiting quarantine, suits are to be retrieved and incinerated before personnel’s clothing and effects are returned. All personnel coming into contact with SCP-XXXX during their visit are to be administered Class-A amnestics before being allowed to depart.

Once every 3 months, a Class C personnel is to be selected and passed through quarantine. Class C is to be provided with a single hardcover book bearing no title, pictures, or other markings on its cover. The book is to consist of at least 300 pages containing text but no pictures. Other than this, there is no specification on the book provided as to genre or subject. Class C is to enter the containment room and touch the book provided to the existing containment medium. Contact is to persist for a full ten seconds. The provided book will then be reclassified as the new containment medium. Class C will then retrieve the existing containment medium, leaving the new containment medium in its place. Class C will then exit the containment area. No other personnel are permitted to touch the existing containment medium and at no time should the existing containment medium be opened. Class C is to deposit the existing containment medium into the quarantine incinerator and activate it. Quarantine personnel are then to administer Class A amnestics to Class C before they are allowed to depart.

Description: SCP-XXXX is currently contained in a hard-cover book containing 322 pages. The containment medium measures 7.2 x 4.6 x 2.2 inches. The cover of the containment medium is plain blue and bears no markings on its cover.

SCP-XXXX is a memetic contagion that inhabits printed text. SCP-XXXX was recovered by the Foundation in ████ by Dr. ████ from the library at ██████████ where it had infested the library’s collection, rendering the entire collection useless.

SCP-XXXX contaminates its subject through physical contact. On first being infected the subject is indistinguishable from any other. It will retain the same text and meaning it had when printed. Over time, the text of the infected book will undergo changes as SCP-XXXX incubates. After three weeks, small typos and punctuation errors will appear where none were present on first printing. After five weeks, the words of the text will be arranged in unorthodox ways, though still grammatically correct, causing any reader to have to expend more effort to decipher the unusual phrasing. This transposition of the text will continue for a further week, during which time the text will slowly metamorphose into prose resembling stereo instructions or a legal document. Over a further three days, the characters on the page will begin rearranging themselves at random, making the text unreadable. Additional characters such as obscure punctuation marks and scientific notations not present in the original texts will also begin to manifest at this time. Twenty-four hours after this, the text will be reduced to meaningless, haphazard symbols scattered across the pages at random with no regard to line spacing or margins.

The infection becomes contagious at the point where words begin to disassemble into individual characters. At this point, any text that comes into contact with the contaminated text will be infected, beginning the incubation process and proceeding through the same transformation sequence.

If contained in the same text for an extended period of time, directly proportional to the length of the text infected, SCP-XXXX has been shown to exhibit adaptations to its normal behavior in order to spread infection. See Incident Reports below. The theory has been advanced that SCP-XXXX uses the meaning contained in the words of the text as sustenance and that after consuming all meaning in a particular text, the entity begins to “starve” and seeks alternate means of transmission to spread to other sources of sustenance. The term “Memetivore” has been suggested to describe this behavior.

No method for reversing SCP-XXXX’s effect has been found. The only means of destroying SCP-XXXX that has been found is burning the infected media or administering amnestics to carriers in the case of memetic transmission. Research is ongoing.

Incident Report XXXX-A: After containment of SCP-XXXX for a period of four months, Dr. [REDACTED] who had been studying the anomaly discovered that his name badge no longer correctly displayed his name. After further alterations of the text manifested themselves, he began to suspect infection by SCP-XXXX. Further tests confirm that SCP-XXXX has the ability to infect any text it comes into contact with rather than only that of books. Containment procedures have been revised to prevent SCP-XXXX from breaching containment again.

Incident Report XXXX-B: SCP-XXXX was found to have infected a warning sign in the hall outside its containment area. Containment protocols were designed under the assumption that SCP-XXXX was unable to spread through means other than physical contact, as that was its only observed behaviour. Containment protocols have been further revised to prevent line-of-sight transmission.

Incident Report XXXX-C: Despite increased containment protocols, SCP-XXXX was found to have infected several books in the library in the facility where it was secured. Standard epidemiological methods were used to trace the infection back to its transmission vector. Investigation uncovered that SCP-XXXX has developed the ability to use the human mind as a carrier. On viewing a contagious book, SCP-XXXX enters the carrier's memory where it remains dormant. When the infected carrier is exposed to another suitable transmission medium such as a book, the dormant contagion infects the new medium and begins the incubation process. Once the carrier has transmitted SCP-XXXX to a new suitable text, they are no longer capable of spreading SCP-XXXX to other texts unless exposed again to a contagious book. Administration of Class-D amnestics have proven effective in removing the dormant anomaly. SCP-XXXX has been reclassified as a memetic contagion due to this behavior and containment methods have been further revised.

Addendum XXXX-A: After review, Class-A amnestics were found to be just as effective in the removal of the contagion despite its memetic nature. Containment protocols have been revised to reflect this.