Weird Random Thoughts, Dreams, and General Brainstorming
"Cemetery Feeder" - What if the practice of ritual burial by humans was a response to some subterranean organism reaching above ground to feed? What sort of unusual things might occur in a cemetery that would require disinformation on the part of the Foundation? What would happen in parts of the world where burials aren't practiced? Examples: Tibetan Sky Burials, funerary cremations along the Ganges, cliff caskets, mummifications.
Inspiration: Did elaborate mummifications (such as drying and wrapping, jade or mail suits of armor, etc.) and tombs such as mausoleums or pyramids served as early attempts to protect the bodies of nobles from being consumed? Does this even fit in with the whole idea of keeping the whatever-it-is from eating people above the ground? Work at it some more.
Dental Everything - A carton of dental floss that produces anything that might be conceded "string-like" such as snakes, barbed or razor wire, instrumental strings, intestines, copper wire, electrical wiring (live), the trunk of an elephant, shoe laces, explosive tripwires, jellyfish tentacles, spider silk, and pipe cleaners.
Consider: would anyone actually want to read about that? Can it be made interesting? Ask around and tinker with some ideas.
Ideas from the Forums:
- possible subtle sentient hints for a few cartons? Relevant "strings" produced according to tester, researcher, or environment?
- Include a page for Test Logs
- Consider gimmick and black humor (but avoid lolFoundation!)
"Internal Disarticulation Syndrome" - will need a lot of research into both medical and biomechanical laws. What is the maximum pull/push strength of human muscle fibers? What is the failure point of long bone connections. What are the accurate medical terms for what you want to communicate?
Stage 1 - Weakness in joints, feeling of weakness in muscles, mild difficulties with coordination
Stage 2 - Moderate to severe muscle spasms, joints crack almost constantly with unusually frequent dislocation, advanced difficulty with coordination
Stage 3 - Constant severe spasms of muscles, joints dislocate at the slightest provocation, coordination becomes impossible. Subject requires increased care and attention.
Stage 4 - joints have reached a critical point of fragility. The muscles go into violent spasms, separating the ends of all long bones. Ligaments and tendons are not damaged by this but the stretching that ensues causes extreme pain.
Final Stage - The muscles contract with such force as to pull away from the bones.
Although coordinated movement is impossible at this time, the muscles still retain connection to the central nervous system and will respond to both willful and external stimuli. Such movement causes the subject's limbs to jerk and twist about in a completely random fashion and is reported to cause moderate to severe nerve pain.
Advanced IDS
In advanced IDS, all bone joints are affected. This causes especially serious complications in the spine, pelvis, and skull, and without proper support there is risk to the subject's internal organs, most specifically the brain and spinal cord.
All the Important Facts About "Dental False"
- This object is Safe, it can be locked in a box and it will not do anything. It only manifests its anomalous nature when it is used.
- Looking into the size of dental floss shipments the standard amount was between 10K-20K individual cartons of floss. One of the listings included offered a minimum order size of 5K. I'm going with the 5K.
- Important: look into product recall protocol.
- In metric measurements this object is 2 cm long x 1 cm wide x 3 cm high
- Comes in a pack of five
- FDA handles the recall
Math Matters
5,000 cartons of floss split into 1,000 packs of 5.
417 have been catalogued
if each pack contains 5 cartons of floss and each report involved 1 carton, how many cartons would be opened to account for 53 reports
=265 cartons in packs of 5 = 53 reports
Class A amnestics, for purposes of police and medical reports as well as stories in the paper and local news
Work in stages and in areas where material comes to you as it comes to you. Don't force it, let it come to you naturally.
Personal Reminder: you need to get back on track with the "Discovery" section, it needs to be specific about how the Foundation knows to look specifically for dental floss cartons.
SCP-XXXX
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: All instances of SCP-XXXX are to be kept in Storage Room 3 at Site 11. Intact instances of SCP-XXXX may be stored in labeled cardboard boxes. SCP-XXXX-1 through SCP-XXXX-417 are to be stored on adjacent shelves in labeled plastic zip bags sorted by number and all newly tested instances of SCP-XXXX are to be catalogued accordingly. All testing on SCP-XXXX must be cleared by Senior Researcher Bradley and all instances of SCP-XXXX, either intact or catalogued, that leave storage for testing must be signed out and scanned on removal and upon return. Following Incident XXXX-257-L, scheduled testing times are to be reported to Security Officer Reynolds beforehand.
Description: SCP-XXXX is the collective designation of a bulk shipment of ████ brand dental floss. Most instances appear identical, being approximately 2 cm x 1 cm x 3 cm in size and are off-white in color with the ████ brand name and a logo depicting a mint leaf centered on the front. Designations SCP-XXXX-1 through SCP-XXXX-417 are individual floss cartons that were either recovered from █████ or removed from their original five-pack by Foundation personnel at a later date for testing purposes. (See attached Testing Logs and Addendum for SCP-XXXX variants)
SCP-XXXX's anomalous properties manifest when the strand of floss protruding from the carton is gripped and pulled, at which point the carton will produce any manner of material deemed through testing to be thread or string-like in makeup or appearance. To date, no cartons tested have ever produced dental floss.
Analysis of the object's components uncovered a ring-like structure consisting of a layer of cut sapphire set between two bands of quartz crystal embedded within the opening through which floss is fed from the inner spool. Both quartz rings sport five symbols etched into their outer face. These symbols are similar in design to alchemical transmutation circles but sport a two-dimensional representation of a cube enclosing a smaller depiction of a circle with small triangles emerging from the upper-right and lower-left slopes in place of the traditional triangle, square or other associated polygons. Suspended within the structure is an insubstantial prismatic field of undetermined composition.
Macroscopic video taken during testing has shown floss extracted from SCP-XXXX to only be affected by the object after passing through this field, which envelopes the generated strand until it is separated with the cutting blade. Anomalous strands have been shown to expand rapidly from a point to their respective diameters rather than generating spontaneously outside of the carton as they appear to do. This rapid contraction and expansion also occurs on either side of the object's cutting blade, allowing for generated strands of any width or circumference to pass beneath without difficulty and is believed to be a direct effect of the enveloping field. All generated material behind the cutting blade will revert back to normal floss once this field is broken, which testing has shown can only be done with the object's blade; analysis of this component's make-up revealed a composition of 98% steel, 1% copper, 0.5% lead, and 0.5% gold.
Recovery: SCP-XXXX came to Foundation attention during the period of 2/11/19██ through 2/16/19██. Surveillance personnel monitoring police radio communications and news broadcasts of █████, South Dakota, intercepted a series of unusual 911 calls, from individuals such as a woman who claimed to have been attacked by a moray eel that "just came out of the floss box" in her bathroom and a dental hygienist who suffered serious injury after attempting to wrap what was later determined to be a length of razor wire around his fingers. In total, 53 reports (27 serious casualties, one fatality due to lightning strike) were documented; the origin of each anomaly was consistently reported to be a carton of dental floss. Field agents and a recovery team were dispatched to the area to collect the cartons from private residences under the guise of a product recall. All cartons proved to come from one shipment which was tracked back to a local █████ pharmacy and taken into Foundation custody without incident and Class A amnetics were dispersed among the general populous, with Class B amnestics being administered to hospitalized witnesses.
Test #XXXX-53-1(Initial Recovery)
Primary Researcher: Dr. Harvey Mueller
Subject: D-8173
Procedure: An instance of SCP-XXXX is removed from the original package. The subject is then instructed to open the object and pull out a length of floss.
Results: The subject extracts a leafy vine from the object. The vine is animate, wrapping several coils around the subject's fingers and hand at an accelerated rate before halting abruptly when the subject, clearly startled, pulled back from the carton. At the time of severance, the vine reached a length of 2.3 meters.
Analysis: The sample of vine is identified as belonging to the species hedera helix (Common English Ivy). Analysis of the plant at the point of severance revealed it to be both living and non-anomalous.
Test #XXXX-109-19
Primary Researcher: Dr. Madeline Bradley
Subject: D-427
Object Notes: SCP-XXXX-109 has consistently produced strands of an organic nature.
Procedure: The subject is presented with the object and instructed to remove a length of floss from the carton.
Results: Subject pulls out a short length of dark material from the object and cuts it from the carton blade, at which point a sound described as "bubbles being blown underwater" was briefly heard.
Analysis: The sample is a damp black hair with a grey root coated in grains of a fine particulate determined to be consistent with the type produced from coal mining. A degraded DNA sample provided a 62% genetic match to [REDACTED], who was reported missing in 19██.
Comments: "This is one result I feel like I'd rather not know." -geneticist ███████
Test #XXXX-167-3
Primary Researcher: Dr. Patricia Lynch
Subject: D-0491
Object Notes: Two tests previous produced thin wires composed of base metals, one iron and the other tin; possible "anomalous repeater" instance.
Procedure: Subject is instructed to remove the object from sealed sample bag and remove a length of floss.
Results: The subject extracts a thin rod of yellow material. Over complaints of a smell likened to "rotten eggs", the subject is instructed to continue extraction until a length of 45 cm. is reached. Upon being cut, the entire length of material crumbled onto the chamber floor.
Analysis: Chemical tests performed on the sample are consistent with pure sulfur.
(Test Logs Additional, community-written testing logs link will go here)
Incident XXXX-257-L: On 9/26/2007 while performing tests on SCP-XXXX-257, a thin metal wire was produced. The subject, D-4261, reported that the wire felt "very tense" and was apprehensive to pull it from the object. Researcher ██████ ████ was required to instruct the subject twice to separate the wire from the carton, at which point both the room and the subject were engulfed in an explosion strong enough to breach the testing room. Security Officer Reynolds was required to lock down the entirety of Sector 4 until remote surveillance could verify that none of the nearby testing or containment chambers had been compromised, resulting in the deaths of Researcher ████ and █ of his assistants due to medical staff being unable to enter the area.
Addendum: Extensive testing has shown a small number of instances of SCP-XXXX to be more focused in their anomalous generations. For in-depth documentation on all of these instances, refer to document XXXX-G-Variants.
Instance |
Example Productions |
Characteristics |
SCP-XXXX-12 |
Bolt of lightning (initial), icicle, sonic boom, [REDACTED], a spray of water, beam of light |
Elements & Natural Forces: A sound and/or smell corresponding to each generated strand was experienced upon separation. Sonic boom took no physical form and was reported to feel like pulling against "great resistance". |
SCP-XXXX-109 |
Artery, tentacle of E. dofleini (Giant Pacific octopus), strand of mucus belonging to Researcher █████, stalk of T. angustifolia (American Bulrush), colonial chain of C. foxtoni (Salp), 1/2 m. length of large intestine (indeterminate genetic make-up) |
Organisms/Organic Compounds: All organisms produced are animate and behave normally for their species, marine specimens do not require water to survive. Severing via the blade is instantly fatal/ceases animation. Separation of large intestine produced a smell similar to methane gas. |
SCP-XXXX-257 |
Greased bicycle chain (initial), hydraulic tubing, live copper wiring, a brass pocket telescope, fluorescent light bulb |
Machinery (Loosely): All generated anomalies requiring power operate as normal. Severing via the blade halts this operation. Following Incident XXXX-257-L, instance is partially charred and covered by irremovable trace chemicals. |
SCP-XXXX Test Logs: Additional Documentation
All testing logs must be filed in the following format:
Test #XXXX-(instance number)-(experiment number)
Primary Researcher: (enter name)
Subject: Individual and/or equipment employed in testing
Object Notes: Any relevant information about the object's appearance or behavior
Procedure: Purpose of experiment
Results: Brief, detailed account of anomalous events, productions, and experiences
Analysis: Brief, detailed account of production's properties
Comments: if applicable