Big thanks to the following for reading the draft and giving feedback:
Agent MacLeod
Shaggydredlocks
HexaDon
SunnyClockwork
LordStonefish
not_a_seagull
DrMagnus
Two days from concept to posting.
UNDEFINED / Discussion
Forum
» Per Page Discussions / Per page discussions
» UNDEFINED
This is the discussion related to the wiki page UNDEFINED.
I am… Incredibly confused right now.
That's the same question the in-universe Foundation has been trying to figure out.
Now that my initial reaction is out of my system, lemme try to puzzle this out.
My theory is that information about SCP-3942 is outright removed from reality (rather than just being rendered inaccessible — we have SRAs here, remember), but only when that information is a stage removed from 3942. The information always messes with reality, with higher-fidelity information having more serious effects. I know that information is safe to handle in its immediate vicinity because a subject did measure it, and 24390 held several conversations with it. I think this could just be an area-of-effect sort of thing, or it might be more nuanced than that, I'm not really sure.
This cleanly explains tests 16 and 17: photographs and audio recordings of 3942 reproduce too much information, and so they fuck things up near them (i.e. the people holding them), and then shit's too fucked up to even retrieve either of them. Humans can perceive it safely because we discard almost all sensory information, but after the fact, trying to access that information causes small-scale reality degradation… on the level of neurons, which causes the agitation.
I think that, specifically, causal information is attacked aggressively — there is no implicit or explicit "why" or "because" in this document. Nothing the Foundation does is given any sort of justification, to the point that this treads much closer to superstition than to science. The fact that there are containment procedures at all suggests that the Foundation is able to assess 3942, form judgments about it, and then translate those judgments into a plan of action… but they seem totally unaware of what these plans are, or why they're reaching the conclusions they do. They're just, as TL333s says, going through the motions.
It's remarkable, actually — the Foundation seems to effectively capture, contain, and experiment on something without even the possibility of awareness that they are doing so. It's like they're working on autopilot.
Following insemination, Subject undergoes a macroscopic mitosis-meiosis event, resulting in a loss of biomass.
This reads to me like 24390 and 3942 shagged, and in a very short timespan her body developed gametes, rapidly had a pregnancy, and gave birth. The baby must have had similar properties to 3942, because they didn't try to take it out and they didn't make any mention of it… still though, having a pregnancy and giving birth to a baby just from what's in your body.
But wait, if this thing is a direct descendant of 3942, and information about 3942 fucks up reality, shouldn't there be some unusual effect? The explanation I can think of is that the information-deleting effect is hereditary, but its effect on reality is not, and the baby doesn't display enough information about 3942 to trigger sufficiently weird effects. In either case, this is a weird biological monster anomaly.
I don't think this is quite a finished post but I don't think it's ever going to get a whole lot better than this.
if your reading this your gay
That makes a lot of sense, especially the rapid pregnancy thing. It makes me think that whoever enters the room has some level of mind control placed upon them or perhaps telepathic threats. I don't think that information is necessarily deleted, but it's definitely restricted to the confines of the room and the minds of whoever enters it (hence the deaths of the individuals who tried to convey previously unknown information to the outside). It also seems like contact with the entity in the room requires some level of additional sustenance either by the participant or the entity (explaining the 4 minimum trout and death or injuries sustained when offered less trout). I was also under the impression that The Foundation simply acquired the room with perhaps the information of needing trout for some reason and have had to simply deduce the contents of the room by the limited outcomes of each experiment.
My theory is that information about SCP-3942 is outright removed from reality (rather than just being rendered inaccessible — we have SRAs here, remember), but only when that information is a stage removed from 3942.
but the article contains information about the skip and so does the mind of the person entering and leaving and so does the actual containment cell etc
I enjoy this. It's so fucking weird and bizarre and just builds and builds. I can fuck with this.
…and Deci amends her transgression with a double upvote.
While this isn't as direct in its horrific implications as 579 and 3005, it's soundly constructed and disturbing in its own right, making it an easy upvote. Well done.
It's so fucking weird and bizarre and just builds and builds.
but then goes nowhere and just ends. would you like your movies to build up to a climax and then just immediately cut to credits right before it?
sequels I don't know, I don't see where you're coming from.
I don't know, this just feels too much like SCP-3005 for me to fully enjoy it.
+1 anyway.
Okay. So.
My first impression was "It's 579 meets 055 meets The Light That Died".
But I think this actually takes the concepts of all three of those articles to the next level.
This isn't anitmemetics, or not just antimemetics. It's like… an anti-concept. They don't know what's in there, and they seem incapable of understanding that they don't know this. They're just sort of going through the motions of testing and containing, without any specifics as to what's going on or why anything is happening. And what makes it work is the fact that literally no one at the Foundation (well, anyone writing this document) is questioning the lack of information.
Following insemination, Subject undergoes a macroscopic mitosis-meiosis event, resulting in a loss of biomass.
And literally what the fuck is this.
This is subtle and devious and might even be brilliant. I'm not sure I can fully grasp what this is, or what's going on, but I am assured of the logic behind it. Fantastic.
I just want to say that the quoted portion there was also the moment I knew I absolutely loved this. Such a perfect line in what was already a really great piece.
Like, it's not just 055, where you can't remember what it is, it's also like the semantic dissociation zone, you just can't understand anything related to it.
My god, I love the hell out of this thing and I hope it sticks around.
Subject had a child with Just its-self, and the materials currently in itself. That isn't healthy, by the way.
Kind of reframes the phrase "go fuck yourself" in a different light.
(account deleted)I find the premise a bit too much like 3005 for me. Not just that we don't know what it is, but the implications/statements that it was never really possible to develop a real understanding of what it was in the first place and that it breached containment after a bunch of experiments.
Certainly not objectively bad though. And I concur that "macroscopic mitosis-meiosis event" was a great line.
This. Is. Freaking. Bri-fucking-lliant! It makes the Foundation don't think about it while it makes us think about it.
+1
𝕎𝕙𝕖𝕟 𝕨𝕒𝕝𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕒𝕝𝕠𝕟𝕖 𝕚𝕟 𝕒 𝕛𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕝𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕣𝕦𝕖 𝕕𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕟𝕖𝕤𝕤, 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕖 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕔𝕒𝕟 𝕤𝕙𝕠𝕨 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕨𝕒𝕪: 𝕚𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕔𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕧𝕚𝕧𝕖, 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕜𝕟𝕠𝕨𝕝𝕖𝕕𝕘𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕟𝕒𝕧𝕚𝕘𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟, 𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕚𝕞𝕒𝕘𝕚𝕟𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟. 𝕎𝕚𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕞, 𝕪𝕠𝕦 𝕒𝕣𝕖 𝕝𝕠𝕤𝕥.
I love how this plays games with the standard tropes of how the Foundation reacts to stuff. It's practically a subversion, almost satire really. But presented with deadly seriousness. Well done.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
I skimmed through this at first and thought that this was just a reskinned 055, but then I read more in detail and really liked it. The main difference, like others said, is that the foundation doesn't even seem aware or concerned of what is going. They know the SCP is in the room, and… that's pretty much it. And that doesn't concern them. I could go on but pretty everything I wanted to say has been done by the comments already.
It was inside, then it went outside, maybe.
And now it has to breath allison eckheart, or maybe it got brought to that pink light.
I think I spent way too long thinking about the logistics of transforming Allison Eckheart into a breathable medium. Best I can figure is you string her up like a chicken, exsanguinate her, collect the blood and mix it with a non-toxic anti-clotting agent, run that through a vaporizer in the same room as the breathing subject(s). While the blood is getting breathed, treat the rest of Allison Eckheart's corpse with fast-acting dessicants, run it through an industrial grade belt sander, collect the dust, dissolve the Allison Eckheart dust in water, adding whatever non-toxic chemicals required to keep the Allison Eckheart soup from gunking up, and feed that into the vaporizer once the blood is done.
And voila. You just breathed Allison Eckheart. Shame they terminated that guy from SCP-028. He could have breathed her twice.
Huh? You just breathe Allison Eckhart because the Allison Eckhart's Allison Eckhart is composed of Allison Ekhart.
In other words you can breathe Allison Ekhart as soon as Nitrogen or Oxygen or whatever becomes Allison Eckhart.
It doesn't really require her to absorb the concept of nitrogen or oxygen. Since Allison Eckhart's saliva is part of her, and thus 'Allison Eckhart' by her anomalous property, just her sneezing would disperse a pretty hefty amount of breathable Allison Eckhart everywhere.
Not to mention any carbon dioxide she exhales, or water that was once inside her that evaporates, or various other airborne substances she might excrete
/forum/t-3530636/undefined#post-
page revision: 1, last edited: 25 Feb 2021 03:57
