A Man At the Top of His Profession / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page A Man At the Top of His Profession.

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name 21 Mar 2009 18:22

I came up with the outline for the plot a while ago, and knew i would have to alter the mechanics of memory erasing for this to work, but i only really decided to add focus on that part of it when i read a tv tropes description on our page named "Laser Guided Amnesics" which is a troup about fictional memory erasers that work easily and efficient, in one second, without any problem, and i guess i wanted to, in their terminology, subvert it.

So the subversion is in this tale and if its liked it could become "official". I think it would make a good addition to canon, because it just adds another layer of lies and secrecy to the foundation, and makes them even darker and more ruthless.

Last edited on 21 Mar 2009 20:54 by name Show more

Yubi Shines 22 Mar 2009 00:04

I'm not sold on it, honestly. Torture has gone out of fashion for a simple reason: It doesn't work. It's not clean or efficient or reliable. It's comparatively easy to break someone, but it's not easy to make sure the person is still going to be functional afterwards. As a method of extracting information, it's wretched, because they'll say anything just to make it stop, and "anything" isn't necessarily going to be the truth.

There's a case where a nun was kidnapped and tortured over 24 hours (among other things, she was made to kill another captive that she had bonded with), and as a result she lost all her memories. She remembers the torture in perfect detail, however, and that's not what Class A Amnesiacs are supposed to do.

(Wiki article.)

If the Foundation was about being bloody little sadists, perhaps, but remember: TV Tropes has us down as "Necessarily Evil."

Last edited on 22 Mar 2009 00:05 by Yubi Shines Show more

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Gallus Weegie (guest) 22 Mar 2009 00:56

This.

And perhaps more seriously, it appears to blatantly contradict SCP-231.

Re:

Ekzentric Lohner 23 Mar 2009 02:52

Agreed. I always figured Class A Amnesiacs were more than just a drug, but in the sense of being something very advanced, possibly derived or reverse-engineered from something SCP-level.

Torture, drugs, and hypnosis are all unreliable. Whatever the Foundation uses when it has to be really, really sure people forget, it can't be any real-world method, so I figured Class A Amnesiacs would have to be a super-version of one of those three. And a super-drug is more convenient than super-hypnosis or super-torture - you don't have to spend years learning to do it right and it can be carried around and used in the field. Seriously, if it's a long, drawn-out, horrific process that can wear off anyway, why would the Foundation bother using it instead of just terminating people?

Plus, the Foundation has to carry out procedure 110-Montauk every day. If Class A Amnesiac = long period of torture, that raises two problems:

1. How could the Foundation have time to "administer Class A Amnesiacs" before hand?
2. Can you really torture someone to remove memories of torture in order to make the next torture more effective? I'd expect it to reduce her emotional response to 110-Montauk even more, not preserve it.

Echoing other posts, though, maybe this is what Class A Amnesiacs used to be. Maybe all those former patients didn't end up in the same place by accident - maybe Dr. Glut is about to become the last recipient of the old version, starting with something to cause a psychological breakdown, so the Foundation can cover up a darker part of it's past.

That said, yeah, it's really well-written.

Daemon Bomb 15 Oct 2012 01:06

i like the above theory, also this is incompatible with Ethics Commitee Orientation, which is my favorite article on this site.

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name 23 Mar 2009 03:23

I've implemented a solution that i mentioned previously, seems to be easier and in the long run will probably make more sense. Its been edited so it takes place in a earlier time period.

name 22 Mar 2009 01:43

you only saw a small part of the process. There were multiple facets briefly mentioned; drugging, mind games, electrocution,chemicals. Torture itself is inefficient, yes, but when psychological and physical torture is performed for the purpose of mental conditioning its relatively useful; brainwashing is comparatively easy to do because the response to it (submission) is ingrained in us. Consider Patty Hearst. She was kidnapped, and developed a completely new personality weeks later. Maybe i didn't make that clear enough, he wasn't just torturing them until they said, "ok, ok, its hurts so much i promise not to tell anyone" he was doing it until they couldn't form rational conclusions anymore, couldn't think or sleep, until they gave in out of pure exhaustion and became moldable. He reprogrammed them, something that is completely possible in the real world.

But you also briefly touched upon a point I was making. Its not reliable. Its a wretched method of doing anything. I meant it to come across like that. That's the whole point. you say its "gone out of fashion" Really? Well what do we have in its place? Hmmm. Its the best we can do… and what else do they have? Because Class A Amnesics are a lie. Consider it, if you were an overseer, wouldn't you make up something like that so most of The Foundation personnel would never have to realize exactly what needs to be done in order to protect their secrecy? And it probably turns out that most of the conditioning fails later, its only a temporary fix, and the Foundation has to hunt them down later, or just wait until their mind completely shatters. But how many people in The Foundation do you think would know this or want to know this?

And of course, it doesn't contradict anything, because Class A Amnesiac is a cover up, its doublespeak, and its inclusion in any article is paradigm manipulation. We have data expunged, of course other things are altered as well, and probably in a less noticeable way.

However just because the truth is different from what is perceived doesn't mean it has to be constantly alluded or mentioned; after all it is a deep dark secret.

(This is just my suggestion; i could simply put 1985 on the top as a date and say Class As started out as a lie, but then they eventually discovered the tech. still the same eerieness that there's secrets within the Foundation itself.)

Last edited on 22 Mar 2009 01:59 by name Show more

Kain Pathos Crow 22 Mar 2009 01:57

While I appreciate the reality of the situation, wouldn't all of these "broken" people tend to stick out in places?

And yeah, I agree with Yubi too.

That said, it is a pretty good piece of literature. Nice work.

Re:

name 22 Mar 2009 02:28

Thanks! This issue that we're talking about now was simply suppose to be an interesting idea on the peripheral anyways.

As for the broken people, I'm sure they're functional, if dull and disturbed, in their normal lives, probably going about their days like robots, simply "burning" out earlier then the average person, fall into one of those deep depression for no concious reason that seem occur more and more in this day and age, or frequently have terrifying and unexplainable dreams… The only time when there's a 100 percent certainty that they'll start to go wonky is when they come in contact with Doctor Glut, which is definitely not suppose to happen.

Last edited on 22 Mar 2009 02:35 by name Show more

Re:

Gallus Weegie (guest) 22 Mar 2009 11:58

And of course, it doesn't contradict anything, because Class A Amnesiac is a cover up, its doublespeak, and its inclusion in any article is paradigm manipulation. We have data expunged, of course other things are altered as well, and probably in a less noticeable way.

Um … have you actually read SCP-231? A lot of the creepiness of that article hangs on the idea that people who participated its in containment have their memories erased. To quote directly -

Yes, staff members who have been assigned to SCP-231 are allowed to take a Class A Amnesiac before leaving the project if so desired. Yes, false memories are then implanted. No, none of the supposed methods for recovering or detecting false memories work. Yes, there are some of you who've worked on SCP-231 and don't remember it.

What you're suggesting would remove about 50% of the creep factor from that article. And on a more general note, I personally find the idea of mind rape a lot more disturbing than physical torture, and I suspect I'm not alone in that. To me, this just seems like an attempt to make the Foundation even more eeeeeeeeeviiiiiiiiiil than it already is, which is frankly unnecessary.

All that said, however, I agree with Kain that it's a very well-written story. My objection is solely to its inclusion within the SCP "canon", not to the quality of the writing. Heck, if you filed off the serial numbers and presented it just as a story about some nameless MIB-style agency, you'd probably have the basis for sellable short story.

Re:

name 22 Mar 2009 13:03

No, I'm not saying the workers at 231's installation didn't lose their memories, I'm just saying it wasn't done simply by injection. Memories can still be erased in my world, just not as easily, although i do think it would go rather smoothly if 1) they willingly wanted to forgot and 2)they went under a rigorous hypnosis session before arriving, one that later could be triggered making them believe something else. If you could put a mental block in before something happened, I'm pretty sure it could be covered up quite well, in comparison to first receiving treatment afterwards. (the mental suggestion would be before and then if they wanted a cover story, they would have it activated after, as opposed to going in with nothing in place)

It's like this:

Termination=Death

Monthly rotation of Class D Personnel: gassing thirty prisoners every month

Class A Amnesiac= long process that on the willing involves hypnotic blocks and on the unwilling entails mental and physical torture

And like I said before, this twist wasn't originally my main point,i just realized i had to explain it somehow if i wanted to include torture scenes, which i thought was the only way to do it because

1)more visceral and dramatic

2) it just didn't make sense to me to have the people freak out around Glut if they didn't undergo something as traumatic as torture, as opposed to the relatively gentle action of injection, and this freaking out was needed to que that something was going wrong

Now my intention is people read about class As, find them rather innocent, just a throw aside reference causing no trouble, put it in the back of their head, and then read this and learn that it's not a humane method, The Foundation is still doing it rather primitively and horribly, and they're lying to themselves and other more naive personnel (like the cubicle dwellers who write the SCP reports), implying that there are even more terrifying truths hidden in seemingly safe phrases and sentences.

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DrClef 23 Mar 2009 06:08

name, you're basically taking it one step too far.

The Foundation does engage in torture, yes, but the method you describe is… sloppy. Why the hell would they use something as unreliable as torture, when a bullet to the head would be much more reliable and effective?

The reason that Class A Amnesiacs are even used is because they are MORE effective than simply eliminating the target. This implies a 100% success rate without any possibility that the tampering has been detected.

I like the story a lot, but I place it in Class B Canon: that is, to say, it could be true, but it seriously contradicts a lot of prior precedent: references to administering Class A Amnesiacs to 231-7 during Procedure 110-Montauk, for instance, or Dr. Rights' prior statements that her boyfriend has been drugged repeatedly using Class A Amnesiacs to cover up the evidence of her real job. Your theory could be true, but it would require a lot of finessing of canon.

Anonymous (guest) 23 Mar 2009 03:35

Well, you certainly succeeded witn that intention, at least from my point of view. I found the ending a trifle anticlimactic; I don't like to interfere with somebody else's story, but what I was hoping for and what I, personally, would have found disturbing, would be a Dr. Glut who came out of the experience a bit grimmer, a bit worse for wear, but willing to continue with the dark work so necessary for the world's continued function; an implication that this practice, horrible even to contemplate after one has first become familiar with the term "class A amnesiac", will continue, echoing the ongoing act of torture itself.

But that's just me! Needs a bit more grammatical polish, but it remains effective. It's good to see a bit of the terrifying side of our good Foundation. Too often it's just a big benign science place that pokes at curiosities.

David B Brown 27 Mar 2009 07:28

I'm not sure this is an idea worth considering, but I'll throw it out there.

Considering how unlikely this interpretation of Class-A amnesiacs seems to be, according to several people… What if this is less an example of what the amnesiac is, so much as what happens if someone in charge of administrating it… breaks. In the head. And somehow goes unnoticed.

Perhaps him living in a town of his previous victims is just the Foundation's idea of punishment. Or maybe it's in his head. Either way, considering how many people- some of them important- in the foundation have likely received this amnesiac, I don't see how this story could be about a sane person.

Then again, I'm sick and have a headache, so make of this as you will.

A great story

Nate Zorblack 11 Aug 2011 13:12

I love the story, but I would hate for this to be the canon of class A amnesiacs. Wouldn't it be more humane (and tons easier to explain away) to just terminate all witnesses, always? Even recruitment into class D might be better than this. Anyway, that's my two cents, but I'm still upvoting because that was very well written.

Re: A great story

AdminBright 11 Aug 2011 17:41

There is no canon. If this is how you do not want class A's to work, then this is not how they work.

---

Admin, SCP Wiki

spikebrennan 11 Aug 2011 13:38

I'm not enough of an old hand to have an informed opinion as to how this would fit into the [There is no canon], but…

holy cow, this is a well-written, creepy story.

Dr Voss 31 Jan 2012 10:09

What exactly is canon anyway? There's a foundation tale where Kondraki is killed by one person, there's another foundation tale where he is killed by someone else. There are foundation tales where the world ends, each time in a different way. The SCP Foundation has more internal contradictions than the bible. It doesn't matter. You want the truth? You can't have the truth. Why hide a needle in a haystack when you can hide it in a stack of needles? It's all true. Don't believe me? Good luck trying to sort through it then.

Daemon Bomb 15 Oct 2012 01:20

KONDRAKI WAS KILLED? AS IN DOCTOR "RODE ON FUCKING 682'S BACK" KONDRAKI? NO. NO. FUCK THAT.

Djoric 15 Oct 2012 01:44

Deep breath.

There is no canon.

Kondraki's exploits were exaggerated and rather silly anyway.

Dr Sinister 18 May 2012 07:33

Very well written, convoluted and chilling, and I liked it, alot, so very much. Snazzy stuff man.

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