Dr. Cimmerian called to order the regular meeting of the Ethics Committee at 20:00.
The Secretary conducted a roll call. All committee members were present.
Foreword: Concerning the events of 12/01/82, former researcher Gary Harding stands trial for treason against the Foundation & illegal use of Foundation resources and information. Below is a transcription of his evaluation.
<Begin Log>
Cimmerian: Please begin by describing to us how you first got involved with this entire situation.
Harding: Well, that can be answered fairly simply. As head of O5-9's personal research team, we were the first to be chosen to work on Project Sepulchre.
Cimmerian: And what exactly would you say this "Project Sepulchre" was concerned with?
Harding: The whole ordeal contains a wide range of reasons, but if you'd like me to boil it down, it was O5-9 obsession with his… might I say, "immortality crusade"?
Cimmerian: Would you elaborate?
Harding: Well, you know how he is. He has this air of professionalism, but deep down you know he's scared, right? You spend a bit o' time with him, talk with him in the same room, you can see it's all a ruse after a while. He becomes an open book. I should know; I spent six months working side by side with the man. He's a human being. There are some things I know he's seen that would make a man crave death, just to escape those ends. There's probably a million world-ending anomalies behind locked doors that only he and the rest of the council got keys to. Beyond his goal to prevent his own untimely demise, he also gets to prevent anything and everything earthly from ever being harmed ever again.
Cimmerian: Where did this concept come from then? Who gave him the idea to use artificial generated ontokinesis to achieve this goal?
Harding: We know he's made attempts in the past to bypass death, and this is just one of them. He's essentially the SCP-963-2, seeing as he's tied to the damn thing. Also, I don't know what's going on with █████████, but the phrase V 20.0 came up a lot during testing, and I can only guess where that rabbithole goes. It's essentially the next step he could take. All the digging I've done leads back to SCP-2718, and it's locked to me for some god-damned reason. You Ethics Committee knuckleheads may have a better chance at it, since you're all much above my paygrade, even if I did have Level 5 clearance.
Cimmerian: I would think you would be better off realizing who oversees this discussion here. You are present only because you are a seriously valued member of staff. Otherwise, you would have already been reassigned.
Harding: I'm pretty sure my fate is sealed as it is.
Cimmerian: (sighs) How did this entire debacle go unnoticed for some time? I would think something would fall through the cracks eventually.
Harding: It did. Christensen, or at least, I think it was him, leaked to someone. You know, I never quite liked that guy. He tried to get me removed from the program entirely at one point. But before that, we were meticulous. Everything was under "Expenses" of Site-120. Our team grew only slightly, but the people we nabbed were important. Mantell was pivotal in the construction of the Slug-
Cimmerian: Excuse me, the "Slug"?
Harding: Oh, yeah. The SLHG. Scranton-Locke Hume Generator. Easier on the tongue.
Cimmerian: Please continue.
Harding: Anyways. Jesse was necessary to build that scrap heap through and through, Danton was instrumental in the calculation and… well, Dreul was our biological expert, but we know what happened to him. The payroll was nonexistant, and we had to borrow components, etc. Until Christensen.
Cimmerian: We are… well versed in where he came in. What caused the failure in the… "Slug"?
Harding: I'd assume the structure construction failed in some way. The machine was never supposed to be powered up at that time. Mantell never did quite finish them structural supports, only the internal wiring. I watched as one of them crystals got messed up in the process. All our months of research to shit over a leak, an information one and a literal one. I'll tell you what, too: that thing woulda worked. The Hume Ball was there, I saw it with my own eyes. If we'd had enough time, we'd all be on a new level of existence with how this thing operates.
Cimmerian: Do you have any idea of the ramifications of such an action? The potential outcome of giving anyone, even if they are a member of the O5 council, abilities like this? The horrible things people with power do in this position?
Harding: Alright, Mr. Committee 'Director'. Imagine you're faced with a big red button. Say you press that button, and there's a 50 percent chance you and everyone in the world dies… and a 50 percent chance whatever you want most in the world would occur instantly. Would you press it? I'd say, if I may speak for me and the rest of my staff, that that chance was too big to turn down.
Cimmerian: You would risk the life of every human being on this planet to the whims of someone with near infinite power for your own progression of goals?
Harding: It's not just our own progression. With power like our predictions specified, every Apollyon & Keter class could be zapped away in the blink of an eye. Overpopulation, world hunger, anything, all solved with a wave of your hand. Distant galaxies could become exploitable in an instant. Nothing ain't too far fetched.
Cimmerian: I take it you fail to grasp the concept of all the innocent billions of lives populating this planet, not knowing a single thing about what lies under the bed, living their lives peacefully. 3498 is likely to go superhume, and if we fail the transport, who knows what kind of CK our reality will undergo? Something of this magnitude has never even been simulated, let alone tested.
Harding: Would you think perhaps for a second past this situation? How many things out there are inches from doing exactly that already, how many things are unpreventably growing out of control right now? 2 minutes faster isn't going to alter anything. It's meaningless to attempt to struggle.
Do you fear… death, Director? That's exactly what got us into this mess originally. Of course, if we didn't, the Foundation wouldn't really have a purpose, would it then?
Cimmerian: Excuse me, Dr. Harding-!
Harding: How many times will this happen! How many times does a researcher have to suffer horribly after being exposed to some kind of anomaly? How many times do we have to destroy an entire world simply to plunder the resources or simply dispose of our "hazardous waste", as you so eloquently described my esteemed colleague. Even if I never treated him right… he had a name! His name was Mantell! Jesse Mantell!
Cimmerian: Gary, this course of action-.
Harding stands up in his seat, straining against his restraints.
Harding: O5-9 would have been a fluke anyways, and I realized that too far into the project! There's no one way to run this place, because absolute power corrupts absolutely, and fear makes good men do horrible things! Give someone an opportunity to be self generous at the expense of others, and they're gonna do it! It doesn't matter that someone already tried to play nice and failed thousands of times before, because every person thinks "I can do it way better than the last guy." They just fail to get the fact that the next guy will think the same of them, until someone DOES inevitably end the chain by blowing us all to holy hell, and even THEN-
Cimmerian: Thank you for your time, Gary. I think we have heard enough.
Harding: No, you don't understand. It's a time bomb! We're sitting on a time bomb, and there's no wires to cut! No-
Researcher Gary Harding is forcefully removed from the function.
Cimmerian: We're going to have to make an example out of this. I don't want to see anything like this ever happen again.
<End Log>
Closing Statement: Pending sentence.
Dr. Cimmerian adjourned the meeting at 20:15.
