Parasitic species that have infested humanity by using adornments and jewels that pierce the skin since (roughly) the same time humanity started to use them.
How would the Foundation have discovered this? Keep in mind that as the author, you know the entire story, but the Foundation needs to have discovered what it knows about the SCP through observation and experimentation.
Explained in the current draft. The Foundation discovered the SCP because some of the patients [REDACTED]. Which was really difficult to contain.
… yeah, I'm just beating the bushes. SCP-PBJ can turn any matter into more SCP-PBJ, as long as it is a vector (jewelry) or human tissue (specifically, subdermal, adipose and connective tissue, the area where adult instances of SCP-PBJ deposit their eggs because they need this environment. To hatch, specifically. Why? Keep reading, answer goes somewhere else). In some specific cases, particularly certain immune diseases that caused early death until the development of medical treatment to increase survival rates of those who suffered them, the converted tissue rapidly lost cohesion and fell apart.
Half of your face instantaneously turning into mites. Picture it.
The notion here is to show an entire class of parasitic Tardigrada-like animals acting as ectoparasites to humans, that they use as a necessary reproductive stage in their life cycle.
Why only humans? Animals (generally mammals) have sometimes been given such jewelry (something is telling me Egyptians here, but I'm probably wrong on that).
Mentioned in the former draft, but [REDACTED]because I didn't feel it was relevant:
SCP-PBJ is a group of microscopic ectoparasites that has the human species as their main host, although domesticated species are hosts to some subspecies of SCP-PBJ-20, 24 and 29.
Yeah.
All of these species infest adornments and await.
What qualifies as an "adornment"?
Have a bit of an issue with that, 'cause I didn't know how to say it at first… also from the original draft:
to inhabit / infest different forms of body addornments that pierce the skin of the wearer by design / are meant to pierce the skin of the wearer, such as earrings or nose piercings, and can remain there as a latent organism for periods up to 300 years, using them as carrier vectors.
This remains similar in the current draft:
SCP-PBJ must inhabit different forms of body jewelry or adornments designed to pierce the skin of the wearer, such as earrings or nose piercings.
In any case, ANY body piercing will do. Collars and the likes are for two specific subspecies.
You wear an infested adornment, you get infested by active instances. Infestation involves having eggs put into your earlobes/nose/navel/whatever and replacing your normal tissue with grown individuals that perfectly supplant subdermal, mucus and connective tissues, even supplanting sensitivity. Visually, there is no sign of infestation.
Wait, so the eggs perfectly mimic those tissues, even though the introduction of new matter into those parts of the body would probably result in nearby cells freaking out? I guess it could be part of the anomalous effect, but it just seems problematic to think about on the cellular level.
Also mentioned. The adults entering subdermal tissue release an anesthetic agent and a cocktail of chemical messengers that repress local immune response. Essentially, having some immune diseases suddenly mess this up, which leads to complications. Before, this wasn't a problem, because most of the patients with these immune diseases simply didn't have any chance to live to the point where this mattered (didn't have time to develop the infestation to this extent); medical treatment prolongs life and prevents infections that would otherwise claim that life, but does not prevent the other weird shit due to SCP-PBJ species.
Incidentally, I looked up what diseases could be and erased them after had six. The article started to look as a bloody paper.
until all of its volume is a colony to the parasites.
Colony as in habitat, or colony as in a population of the parasites? If the latter, how do they stick together? I know gold is pretty soft, but wouldn't a person get suspicious if they happened to clean their jewelry?
I might have said "all of its mass and volume." The truly anomalous effect, as in physically impossible, is the fact that PBJ species in latent state (when in vectors or forming colonies) appear to be the very same material the colony is made of. At first, they burrow under the surface of the adornment, and keep doing so when new instances come into contact with it, to the point where, essentially, there is no "jewel" left, only the colony.
Also, PBJ is only motile when eating through human tissue and migrating into the vector (the jewel), and once it burrows into the vector, it becomes latent. This makes it indistinguishable from the rest of the vector. Essentially, if you are cleaning your jewels, you are probably not wearing them; if you are not wearing them, PBJ are latent.
Also, PBJ are small. Will get to that.
Adults will go back to the vector item and gradually supplant its surface, burrowing themselves into it (no matter the material; each species have different preferences, but essentially it's a matter of time, except for surgical titanium and niobium-based jewels, that are resistant to this process; Foundation assets encouraged law and regulation to favor this materials for body piercing for a reason)
Why titanium and niobium? People have used bones and wood for piercings before, and I can't see everyone being able to afford titanium and niobium regardless of how much the Foundation "encourages" its use. Also, if the parasites burrow into the vector item, wouldn't that make it structurally unsound? Also, I don't know how big these things are.
Uh… no, you can't force them to use them, but Foundation encouragement was sort of useful because each (sub)species of PBJ specializes in certain materials and combinations of materials. There are 98 identified species, to be precise, and only two of them would ignore titanium or niobium limitations (because they don't need to burrow at all; they don't use vectors).
Also, got to that. Tardigrada, the closest living relative (phylogenetically speaking) to the Scopuligrada (yes, it seemed like a good idea at the time), measure 0.5 mm long when they are fully grown (Wikipedia is my friend), so I figured Scopuligrada would be somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3.
Finally, as mentioned, the one really anomalous quality of Scopuligrada is the fact that they can burrow into any precious metal, any wood, any ivory… as long as they have the specialized claws every (sub)species uses to burrow onto one or more of them. Jewels made of several materials usually will have more than one species. And no, diamonds (and some other cristalline materials, such as rubi or sapphire) do not get burrowed, but others, such as semi-precious stones and most metals, do get burrowed. All of these specialized claws are able to do one other thing: join individuals together in tight spaces (fake human tissue or vectors). Actually, the really unusual trait of Scopuli is their claws.
Incidentally, much of that stuff was never really found out by the Foundation. The more we know, I guess.
At this point, or if the adornment gets removed, the colony becomes latent and waits for contact with a non-infested human to wear it.
You haven't indicated why human hosts are needed yet.
Human hosts are needed in the same way that certain parasites require certain host species as part of their life cycles. If that is not enough: these parasites specialized as a memetic-rider. They "chose to be" (evolved into) ectoparasites that supplanted adornments that pierced human skin, and happened to succeed because the meme survived through human civilizations, with them sucking it dry. So, did someone make this species? Was it natural, run of the mill evolution? Did SCP-yaddayaddayadda intervene in their normal development, uplifting them into a bunch of earlobe hitchhikers?
I have absolutely no idea. Lies. Next.
In some cases (some eight percent of infested human hosts), [REDACTED] happened with some of these species, so the Foundation took to eradicate them.
This doesn't really tell me anything.
I wanted to keep it for the possible final article… sigh.
"These symptoms include rash, loss of sensitivity, facial paralysis, intense tactile pain in the affected area and, in cases involving immune disorders, direct conversion of affected facial/cranial region (resulting in whole patches of the host's fake skin falling apart) or metastasis through the blood stream which may reach brain, heart, liver, kidneys or muscle tissue, which usually ends with the host's death. Since the prevalence of SCP-PBJ infestation was too high to effectively respond to all instances of immediate tissue direct conversion without allowing the involvement of sanitary institutions, measures have been taken to control and, if possible, eradicate SCP-PBJ population globally while trying to preserve as many of its hosts as possible."
Also, the mentioned "PBJ-face off."
A genengineered virus managed to cut their capacity to migrate from their host into their vector, essentially trapping them in their hosts while preserving their hosts' lifes.
How did the Foundation discover these parasites in the first place? How did whatever [REDACTED] happen lead the Foundation to believe action was necessary? Suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain with a narrative like this.
This is not a narration, it was meant to be a description for an idea, but my love for walls of text got the best of me. Sorry. I always ramble.
I mentioned the face off, that is one of those things that sort of gets people concerned; particularly, scientists trying to make sense of how a lot of apparently normal face turns into microbugs.
Foundation efforts successfully terminated most of the species.
Again, how do they know? There's an awful lot of body piercing jewelry in the world.
True. This is a pickle. How do they know? Well… they didn't. For one, they missed 97 and 98, the last two confirmed (sub)species.
For two, there might be others out there that are still active and not yet identified (which is a scary thought). And for three, how do they know they have squashed every single one of those vectors, and every single one of the hosts has received treatment? Answer: they can't. I'll be changing that part (overenthusiastic on my end) to "nation-wide vaccination with the viral agent has reduced SCP-PBJ related events, can prevent further infestation and will be administered as part of flu vaccinations; further measures are being studied", but essentially, eradicating a bunch of camouflaged parasites that inhabit any earring on the planet is too ambitious (unrealistic), even with a virus that prevents infestation.
This one was a stretch, and should have seen it earlier. : /
Two subspecies of the same, previously unidentified species recently emerged, though,
From where?
Other species were far more efficient when it came down to entering human bodies. A few hours of contact and a wearer became a host. SCP-PBJ-97 and 98, the ones that most recently emerged, were a rarity because they could not supersede other subspecies; they could not coexist with them. (Now that the Foundation is thoroughly eradicating cutting their numbers, though…) Usually, 97 and 98 remained in localized areas, slums and marginalized zones with really nasty environments, where a lost jewel would be a boon, if not a godsend… but wear it without carrying another PBJ species and you will become a host, an exclusive host for those species, in a couple of months.
and both of them have cognitohazardous and memetic effects on their hosts,
How would a parasite that doesn't affect the brain have memetic effects? Maybe read over this guide on understanding memetics.
To be honest, and because of a comment from other member, I might lose 97 and 98 (the mentioned hunter-seeker subspecies) altogether. They can affect the brain, and do. They metastasize by following large arteries and veins.
both also previously unheard of, as well as a capacity for metastatic and aggressive infestation that will kill the host months after the infestation occurs. They don't require vectors, they can simply infest a subject by touch and develop a colony from scratch
At this point they seem overpowered.
The whole point. They are either manufactured or a nasty variation that got itself trapped into an evolutionary dead end, but they could wait. Most SCP-PBJ species survive for centuries in latent form.
… but, as mentioned, will probably lose them altogether.
(read: they make pretty jewels),
People cut jewels to shine them, don't they? And I don't know that many people who can set jewels into pieces of jewelry themselves, usually there's an appraiser involved somewhere along the line to making jewelry.
I meant that, since 98 and 97 don't need vectors because they make their own colonies shortly after infesting a new host, they make pretty jewels. Although it would be better to say that they (the hosts) "grow" pretty jewels.
while the host doesn't even notice. The first one triggers violent behavior and attempts to transmit itself from subject to subject in its latest stages.
This is cliche. Maybe read over this guide to get an idea of what elements to avoid putting in an SCP article.
… right. Read it a while ago. For some reason thought that could work here.
The other one induces a memetic effect in terminal stages of infestation; its hosts will attempt to kill all of those who know of the other species of their class.
Yeah, that's not how memetics works. Also, how would the host know who knows about the species?
Yes. Yes, that is how memetics works. It is, however, not what I should have said, though. I suck at explaining. I apologize again. It said "will attempt to kill." It should say "are programmed to kill all of those who know of the other species of their class." Once they become aware, through any means, that another human being knows of PBJ, they will attempt murder. As in:
So, yesterday I was researching this bug that becomes jewels when Susie comes to me-
Wait, what? What do you mean a bug that becomes jewels?
Oh, a thing that eats your ear, then infests your earrings, then infests someone else when they wear your earrings.
Ah, I see. You are such an asshole who deserves to die, because you clearly have no forgiveness from them.
Them who? Put that thing down, you're scar-
THE EAR BUGS!!!
…
… I should really be losing 98 and 97, shouldn't I.
Unlike previous species, these two can't infest hosts occupied by other member/s of their species' class.
How does the Foundation know this? I thought they got rid of all of one species.
The Foundation noticed a trend. This trend was that 98 and 97 were appearing rapidly in subjects clear from other infestations of SCP-PBJ that started getting piercings, or never had gotten infested in the first place. They connected the dots.
Again, 97 and 98, will probably lose them.
The idea is to give special weight to three facts:
The Foundation tried to destroy all of these species because they caused some anomalous deaths in special subjects that were becoming increasingly difficult to contain (immune disorders that previously killed subjects before aging and now can't because of medical advancements, for instance). A vulnerability was found and exploited. Yaay happy endings are boring
The Foundation deals with tons of things that cause death. I don't see why they would decide to move straight to Destroy Destroy in this case instead of Secure and Contain. I feel like the Foundation would have kept at least a few samples of the parasite colonies, for experimentation.
They threaten normalcy. For the reasons stated above, and because of 97 and 98 old shames. But indeed, they would keep (and kept) samples. We keep smallpox samples, even if we eradicated it, right? Anyways… the Foundation should just contain within reasonable parameters the SCP-PBJ species without being able to eradicate them, I guess. It makes better sense.
The Foundation successfully eradicated most of the species. Two previously unnoticed/underdeveloped subspecies appeared, rapidly "claiming" the hosts that had been recently treated; effectively, either the Foundation has eliminated all competition that kept these two subspecies in check or someone has created two subspecies designed to screw with them by exploiting the fact that people will see a colony of these subspecies and say "oh, hey, hello pair of earrings, I' gonna wear you now." Bam. You're hypnotized. turned into a sleeper agent for a third party or a bunch of physically, psychically and memetically anomalous ear-supplanting bugs. Yaaay all heil ear-mite no wait this is not good D:
I still don't see how the parasites find humans in particular vital to their reproductive cycle.
Instead of other potential host species? Well, they could. The problem is they prefer humans because they were the first species that used bodily piercing jewels.
Why did they choose that vector? I still have no idea. Yeah, that is how far I fleshed this out, didn't plan on explaining this too.
This parasitic agent has always existed associated with (and successfully survived and developed thanks to) a human cultural trait: most cultures every culture on Earth tend to wear jewels perforating their bodies.
This is not true.
… no. No it isn't. Many do use them, and most countries of the world have inherited the meme, though. And it is not worded in this way in the drafts, anyways. I don't really know why I had to put that.
We treasure them, we make them out of rich materials and use them as a manifestation of wealth and taste, we pass them down to our descendants, we happily inherit them.
We also believe some are cursed, we kill others over them, and the most valuable ones aren't worn except on special occasions, or spend their life behind glass for thousands to admire. I'm not sure how the parasites would have been able so successfully to infest things from so early on and continue infesting. Do people often share body piercing jewelry? Most don't even trade earrings, since doing so can cause infections.
They become inherited. Those pretty pearl pendants a grandma gives a grandniece her wedding day? Those will begin the process for this generation. Also, a far less efficient way of transmission is destroying a vector; if other vectors are around, surviving latent instances of SCP-TTC will infest those. They aren't motile in non-host environments, so this is rather rare, but still possible.
Included in the first draft, dropped.
Why did this emerge? And why did this parasitic agent emerge simultaneously to the cultural trait? Or did the meme appear because the parasite suggested it in the first place, and all subsequent species simply appeared following that? Yaaaay open endings are less boring
At this point, it's not so much an open ending as it is somewhat of an inconsistency. I can't see this sort of narrative being straightforwardly explained in an SCP article.
An SCP article and subsequent last-survivor-tells-the-tale supplement. Also written. Poorly. Will lose it with 97 and 98.
My question: Can this work? The draft is made and stuff, but I feel rather uncomfortable with it (perhaps because bad tone or too many wordwalls). A pair of users have already told that me the main concept is not bad, but I feel this idea has been done before. Also, that it is too fleshed out. And drags for too long. And the hook isn't good.
I would say I have the same opinion. Maybe focus on a specific culture and not the entire world population, and note the aforementioned issues.
Noted. The endemic approach might work better, yes.
Sigh. I just want an opinion; can this idea work?
Yes.
Great, then there is hope!
Would it take exceptionally good writing to pull it off?
Yes.
… crap. : (
You know, like in "better learn more and then try again?"
More like "put together some of the missing pieces in the puzzle". I like the idea of human parasites hiding in jewelry, but the presentation as it is here doesn't do the idea justice.
The pieces were there (third and fourth tabs) to begin with, but I think I'll simply rewrite it. It just doesn't work. Do you think it may work with the info in this post?
Edit: obviously, "Has this idea or similar ideas been done to nausea already?" is another question that uh worries me.
Not that I'm aware of.
Ok. That is a relief.
(account deleted)
