SCP-8367

Official Foundation usage of SCP-8367 has been discontinued circa 11/12/1967.

Item #: SCP-8367

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: Official Foundation usage of SCP-8367 has been discontinued circa 11/12/1967. In accordance with this policy, the instructions on how to perform SCP-8367 have been omitted from all Foundation medical training courses, seminars, and literature. References to SCP-8367 in Foundation disseminated media are to be made purely in a historical context. One digital document with instructions on how to perform SCP-8367 is to be kept for posterity and restricted to Level 4 clearance or higher.

Description: SCP-8367 refers to a series of medical procedures that when applied in a mostly correct fashion on a human patient allows the practitioner to remove and augment their memories and experiences. Each requisite step of SCP-8367 in isolation is non-anomalous, however when each step is intended¹ to be performed correctly within at least 10 minutes of each other in a coherent order², an anomalous effect will manifest that causes a heightened degree of suggestibility in the consciousness of the afflicted individual.

SCP-8367 was adopted by the Foundation as an official medical procedure sometime in 1877, a few years after the Foundation’s establishment, although records suggest that the procedure itself was practiced as far as 200 years prior. Documents from this period indicate that SCP-8367 was adopted as an early form of amnestic treatment. Due to the limited resources and funding available to the Foundation in its first decades of existence, obtaining large quantities of amnestics was unfeasible, and their use was relegated to rare large scale instances. SCP-8367 was favored due to the ease of which it could be employed, as it only required rudimentary medical tools and could be performed without anesthetic. The skill required to successfully execute SCP-8367 was far lower than those of even non-anomalous procedures at the time to the extent that medical training was not required for practitioners of SCP-8367.

These factors, combined with the “acceptable” risk of injury, disfigurement, or psychosis made it the primary method of memory-altering treatment in the early years of the Foundation. In 1946, the Foundation officially mandated practitioners of SCP-8367 to have obtained a medical doctorate or equivalent.

Addendum-8367-1: Early Documentation of SCP-8367: Between its first adoption in 1877 and the period wherein usage of conventional amnestics outstripped usage of SCP-8367, there has been a total of ████ recorded applications of SCP-8367. ██% have been performed successfully. A partial log of applications has been compiled below.

Patient: Eliott Farendall
Required Alteration: Removal of classified information following a security breach.
Status: Successful. The subject had trouble walking the following week.

Patient: George McCullen
Required Alteration: Knowledge of extended family following their deaths to avoid distress.
Status: Successful. Excess bone matter was found and given a proper burial.

Patient: Felix Heidenkampf
Required Alteration: Removal of traumatic memories.
Status: Successful. The subject is reported to suffer from “sleepless dreams”. He was found in a closet 5 days and 3 hours later attempting to consume the tendons in his left arm.

Patient: ████ ████
Required Alteration: Removal of cognitohazard responsible for mild reality warping effects.
Status: The subject was not impeded in such a way that their faculties are not useful to the Foundation. There was more cleanup than usual.

Patient: Felicity Burgess
Required Alteration: Hysteria.
Status: Unsuccessful. The screaming has not yet stopped, even as her remains were recremated.

The last recorded instance of SCP-8367 being performed was in 19██, whereupon amnestic treatment became more affordable across the wider Foundation. The Ethics Committee later announced a moratorium on the practice, but it was largely unenforced and only served to halt its documentation. The number of instances of its application between then and its official discontinuation as such is unknown.

Addendum-8367-2: Later History and Discontinuation: Concerns voiced regarding excessive usage of SCP-8367 peaked in the waning years of the 19th century. As Foundation medical knowledge advanced, SCP-8367 began to be seen as an archaic and dangerous procedure, with the risks associated with it now being increasingly seen as unacceptable. In 1907, the Foundation required medical practitioners performing SCP-8367 to have not taken or have recanted the Hippocratic Oath due to the degree of invasiveness the procedure entailed. The nonstandardization of the procedure also inhibited attempts to make it safer. By the time a single patent for the Foundation's method of SCP-8367 was released in 1935, ████ permutations of SCP-8367 were known to exist.

Following Incident Report 8367-65-08, the O5 Council enforced an edict which mandated the end of SCP-8367 as part of official Foundation practice.

+ Level 3 Clearance or Higher Required

In the early years of the Foundation, expansion attempts prioritized quantity over quality due to the poor infrastructure of the time and the Foundation's limited resources. As a result, the early Foundation was very decentralized in nature, with many sites being isolated and expected to be self-sufficient. As the Foundation centralized and grew in influence, many of these sites began to be interconnected and centralized around Site-19. However, some sites evaded centralization due to their extreme isolation. Subsequently, they were not able to receive annual supply renewals or modern technology, with many sites falling into disrepair. Some remained, however, and continued to function under archaic guidelines and procedures. This would include rampant usage of SCP-8367 due to a lack of amnestics. Although most of these sites were forcibly shut down after 1955, only 95% of these “dead sites” have been confirmed to be liquidated.

On 1/8/1965, a fax message was sent to the mailroom of Site-19, addressed from the location of a previously unheard of dead site. The message is transcribed as follows:

“After the 5,657th time performing the procedure, my tools have worn away and I have resorted to using my hands. May I request a shipment of scalpels?”

The site was promptly located and terminated. It is unknown how many cases of SCP-8367 have occurred in dead sites.

Footnotes

1. Intended in this context is defined as attempting a step of the procedure on a live subject. Success in performing a step is not relevant.

2. Coherent order is defined by at least ██% of the steps in SCP-8367 as a whole being in their correct order.