A novel concept.
SCP-1877 / Discussion
Forum
» Per Page Discussions / Per page discussions
» SCP-1877
This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-1877.
Sorry, but I can't in good conscience upvote any SCP that reminds me of the "Lemmiwinks" episode of South Park.
(account deleted)Special Containment Procedures: Due to the impossibility of transport, each instance of SCP-1877 is contained in situ at the subject's origin point. When practicable, the Foundation shall secure ownership of the origin point, soundproof the subject's living quarters, and install inward-facing locks on any interior doorways adjacent to the subject. Foundation medical staff are to review subjects' condition on a 48-hour cycle, measuring any visible extracorporeal intestine. Any intestinal retraction of over 10mm in a single 48-hour period is to be immediately reported to Research Director ████.
This seems logistically sound and thought-out from a layman's perspective.
Any publicly-accessible infrastructure containing any length of extracorporeal intestine is to be rotated out of service if practicable, or serviced only by Foundation-approved personnel if impractical. Endoscopic discovery of any additional extracorporeal intestine is to be reported immediately to the Research Director.
The "when practicable" bit implies a lot; is someone passing food through part of my local infrastructure due to practicality concerns? Overall, this is a good example of containment procedures holding the reader's attention and getting them interested in the object without sacrificing realism.
Description: SCP-1877 is an anomalous gastrointestinal disorder affecting a number of geographically disparate individuals, designated SCP-1877-01 through SCP-1877-03. In addition to their abnormally long and continuous gastrointestinal tract, subjects exhibit severe neuropsychiatric symptoms including left hemispatial neglect and mild aphasia. While subjects' immobility renders most medical imaging impracticable, preliminary EEG results demonstrate unusually high levels of electrical activity in patients' right parietal lobes.
Nice attention to detail. The ancillary symptoms make this feel like a real condition and not just magical weirdness.
To date, over 30 km of continuous intestine has been endoscopically mapped. Subjects' intestinal tracts have been observed to intersect with numerous manmade artifacts, including pilot lights, electrical conduits, lightbulb sockets, telephone receivers, water mains, sewage pipes, and subway tunnels. 31 hours after entering SCP-1877-01's digestive tract, objects which have entered that tract can be observed passing through SCP-1877-02's entry stoma and exiting 30 minutes thereafter. Presumably, they then travel to SCP-1877-03, and are passed to additional individuals or excreted.
This mental image, man. Also, is it just me, or is "stoma" one of the creepiest words in the language?
4cm beyond the pyloric valve, SCP-1877-01's duodenum turns outward through a painless stoma in his abdominal wall, extends across subject's living room, and enters a light fixture located in the ceiling of his apartment.
Architectural and endoscopic investigation of his gastrointestinal tract seems to indicate that it then descends through the wall of his apartment, enters a water line, diverts into the Washington DC metro system, and then takes a sharp southward turn which renders endoscopy impracticable without severe injury to the patient.
More concise, evocative exposition; you have a lot going on and relate it without saying too much or too little.
At present, subjects' condition is unstable. Beginning in 2007, both known subjects' extracorporeal intestines began to retract into architectural features of their apartments. At recovery, SCP-1877-01 presented with 24m of slack extracorporeal intestine, permitting him limited mobility within his quarters. At present, SCP-1877-01 only possesses 8m of taut extracorporeal intestine, confining him to a single room of his apartment. SCP-1877-02's retraction has been less severe; at recovery, subject presented with 41m of slack intestine. Postrecovery retraction has reduced his intestinal slack to 34m.
God, the sense of impending doom that this generates. This could be a whole short story about a man being eaten by his drainpipe and, here, it's all in the negative space. That's one of the coolest things about this format.
Dear General Electric,
I have long appreciated your products. But now I draw close to the socket and there are questions.
For instance what is the problem? I think the problem is that there is a bad disease. My stomach hurts. And I own a General Electric dishwasher, model PD968DPBB, and it does not even help me. Everything growls and boils and whips. There is a stink. I have called my cousin in America and told him that there were difficulties with sickness. He told me to call you, because you are where the problems come from, that there is an electrical wave which comes from my dishwasher and goes to my guts.
Also what will happen? The problem is now very bad. I have to stand so close to your socket that I can hear the electrical wave. Like whalesong. I will have to go in soon. My guts will make me. I know that General Electric cannot make it stop. But there needs to be an answer to the mystery of the appliances. The answer should come in the manual which goes with the socket. So that there is less anxiety when we all have to go into our appliances and live in the guts of the earth, as all of us someday shall do.
Tomorrow I think I will have to go in. When it ends, will I live alone in the names of appliances? How does one traverse the guts of the earth so that there is no problem? Is this a sickness that shoots in an electrical wave from all dishwashers, or just mine?
Please call me tomorrow, General Electric. There will not be much time. I have so much anxiety.
Thank you so much for all your products, ██████
Speaking as someone who's read a fair amount of online tech support requests and online medical issue stories, the tone here is spot-on. There's a sort of polite desperation going on as the writer goes from frustrated to confused to almost poetic and then back to courteous.
Though the letter appears never to have been sent, a review of telephone logs indicates that a call was placed to the apartment's telephone from General Electric's headquarters in Fairfield, CT. The precise origin point of that call, and the individual responsible, remain undetermined.
See, this is how you do a hook without resorting to sweeping implications. This SCP actually left me with questions, which indicates a good balance between incomprehensiblity on one side and predictability on the other.
You've checked numerous boxes here: body horror, psychological horror, tech support horror, and pure galloping weirdness, and they all totally work. I wish upvotes were on a points scale or something like that, because I've given +1s to things that are significantly less inventive and well-crafted than this, and it's a slight to this article that they have the same amount of approval registered from me.
We need more line-by-lines like this. It's just as useful for people to know what they're doing right as what they're doing wrong.
if your reading this your gay
wow. uh, what? I kind of understand this…not really…upvote. it's weird enough.
Extremely weird - endless intestines that travel across the world? - but the interview and the body horror pull it off spectacularily. +1
Although why a dishwasher causing the effects? I'm not sure I understand that bit.
This is made like twice as good by the fact that you chose a real, well-known company rather than making one up. I can't put my finger on it, but General Electric is perfect for this.
if your reading this your gay
I can explain it:
The theme of this SCP is that the mundane is horrible. Underneath the most trivial things in our lives — dishwashers, subways, light fixtures — there is a pulsing, world-spanning web of living intestines. The existence of that horror is not the responsibility of some external force. It is not an imposition on mundanity.
Rather, the horror comes from precisely the same source as the mundane.
At General Electric, there is apparently someone who understands that dishwashers make an electric wave which attracts the guts — whatever that means. And he was polite enough to respond. Perhaps he even explained. But we will never know what he said.
I don't like this because it's a cross between the monster arm, the lady with the Nazi bunker in her nose, and the Human Centipede, and yet I upvoted because the writing is just so damned compelling. Probably also for the phrase "extracorporeal intestine". Am I reading this correctly that their intestines are actually just hanging around the world, for everyone to see? I had initially anticipated that it was just a spatial anomaly linking them together, along with the architectural bits.
Without implying a common GOI or proposing any overt connection between the two (other than the "cousin in America"), this is actually intended to be the same phenomenon that's responsible for the Buried Giant. I have a tale in the hopper about… not the connection, necessarily, but about the phenomenon in general.
And, yes, the intestines are hanging out for everyone to see, though almost their entire length is hidden inside subway tunnels, electrical conduits, sewer pipes, and similar structures.
My only issue with this is that it is extremely difficult to map more that a few meters of intestine due to the pressure from the air needed to insufflate the intestine to see, as well as the amount of tubing/power to run the endoscopy machinery. Capsule endoscopy would have been more efficient.
However, this is so well written that I have to upvote.
/forum/t-617790/scp-1877#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06