SCP-9041

”The lost seeker found traces of truth in the mist. And so, he set off for the material world.”

SCP-9041

rating: +6+x
Item#: 9041
Level4
Containment Class:
euclid
Secondary Class:
flor galana
Disruption Class:
vlam
Risk Class:
warning

Special Containment Procedures

As an early warning system, additional monitoring protocols have been integrated with both routine Foundation automated anomaly detection algorithms and manual surveys. Routine monitoring of all mass events are to continue with adjusted flagging thresholds for self-induced deviation from human behaviour associated with: timekeeping, language, rules, values and meaning. Large-scale events considered at-risk are to be prevented and dissolved where possible, and if not, Kant counters to be deployed with task forces on standby as a precaution.

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Humans throughout history naturally observe rites associated with timekeeping, language, rules, values and meaning.

In particular, preventative measures to regulate and rein in global wellness events, unorthodox spiritual movements and social media trends are the priority, including but not limited to:

  • A multi-pronged initiative of awareness campaigns by the World Health Organisation and at the grassroots level targeting alternative health practices are to be intensified and maintained.
  • At the same time, national governments are to be engaged to enforce stronger regulation of their respective healthcare sectors under the pretext of managing rapidly ageing populations, and/or pandemic preventative measures, with all forms of wellness events requiring government approval or strict regulation.
  • Similarly, the creation of a global legislative and enforcement framework under the pretext of monitoring misinformation and incitement of violence is in progress.
  • Monitoring and infiltration of unorthodox religious or spiritual movements, prioritising those with a greater number of members and/or more extreme practices.
  • Long-term cultural shifts easing any culturally entrenched forms of excessive working are to be steadily induced.
  • Greater investments into education, and improved physical and mental health services for the general public.

The above measures are also being rolled out across Foundation sites in multiple stages, except where required for research purposes. To alleviate suspicion, a simple explanation citing a longitudinal study showing that greater staff morale is associated with increased work efficiency is to be provided as part of all new employee welcome packages with a clearance level below 4. All employees of security clearance level 4 and above will receive this document instead.

Due to SCP-9041 naturally operating as a negative feedback loop, its robust fail-safe mechanism, and the relatively high critical mass required to trigger manifestations of SCP-9041-associated phenomena, direct intervention is seldom required. Regardless, active monitoring at a community level and intervention on a case-by-case basis is required to prevent potential escalation in the unlikely event of a mass breach.

Description

SCP-9041 collectively encompasses a set of intrinsic human behaviours which underpin conventional daily activities. Broadly, these can be categorised into core behavioural modules associated with:

Behaviour Description
Timekeeping Conducting activities in a periodic pattern
Language The transfer of information to another
Rules Any form of innate systematic behaviour
Values Principles shaping one’s character
Meaning Anything driven by a conscious purpose

In summary, these seemingly mundane activities constitute reality maintenance protocols. Deviation from these core behavioural modules have demonstrably resulted in anomalous events, scaling in proportion to the magnitude of deviation. Note that this only applies when intentionally self-induced. The act of involuntary behaviour or obstructing another from accomplishing these goals (e.g. in cases of famine or pandemic) does not appear to have a significant impact.

The possibility that additional core behavioural modules may exist has not been excluded. However, most, if not all human behaviour are emergent properties made up of at least one of the above fundamental behaviours. For example, the actions below naturally involve at least one core module:

Action Behavioural relation
Eating Timekeeping, Language, Rules, Values, Meaning
Sleeping Timekeeping, Rules
Breathing Timekeeping, Rules
Talking Language, Rules, Values, Meaning
Cooking Timekeeping, Language, Rules, Meaning

These behaviours are naturally self-containing, in that excess deviation under normal circumstances leads to death. In addition, even in the case where deviation occurs, the passive maintenance of core behaviour modules by other individuals nearby exert a natural buffer or suppressive force. As such, it is a wicked problem1 from the perspective of any attempts at containment breach.

At the time of writing, all anomalies known to the Foundation are undergoing review in the context of these five constants.

Addendum

Records of initial discovery

During a routine screen of anomaly patterns, a statistically significant non-random pattern of recurring minor anomalous phenomena were detected2, appearing to be associated with a large-scale global wellness movement primarily promoting extreme fasting and a dysregulation of sleep schedules (among other non-standard activities). Following standard procedures, a research team was assigned to the case, with pre-approved monitoring, memetic countermeasures, surveillance and intelligence gathering responses activated.

However, this rapidly proved to be perplexing, with initial investigations sometimes providing conflicting and contradictory information. Unlike conventional scenarios, the correlation was both (a) reproducible and (b) had no apparent non-mundane causative factor. Notably, each group in the movement operated autonomously. After exhausting all standard preliminary investigation protocols, the case was subsequently escalated to the department-level, site-level and finally inter-site level. After approximately 388 days without the emergence of any credible theories or validated conclusions, (well above the median preliminary investigation cycle of 90 days) budget and ethical constraints were relaxed by the ethics committee, and collaboration with a carefully curated group of Foundation-affiliated academic institutes was permitted.

For the next few months, cross-departmental Foundation teams approached the situation from every angle, including but not limited to chronology, memetics, tactical theology, and thaumaturgy. The eventual breakthrough was motivated by a researcher’s postulation: if a signal is observable in data it is also explainable by data. Following that, a longitudinal study was designed where every quantifiable piece of mundane and anomalous peripheral data (of any modality) over the long-term was collected: environmental variables, human physiological measurements from biosensor data, weather and atmospheric conditions, Kant counter fluctuations, Akiva radiation, etc. The complete list of measurements collected amounted to ~23000-27000 unique types3.

A custom deep learning pipeline was built in collaboration with the Shénjīyíng4, operating on an ensemble model of Deepseek, Gemma and Qwen. In parallel, custom parsers were developed to handle nomenclative hazards, memetic infohazards and other data which cannot be safely ingested without triggering anomalous effects. Input data was collated into a series of sparse matrices and fed through this pipeline. The majority of compute resources from all Foundation facilities were diverted to this project, running for an estimated 33550336 GPU hours over 6 months.

Five “clusters” emerged naturally from the data as visualised by a uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP). A laborious manual curation process was conducted, with multiple researchers independently reviewing the same data and taking a consensus. As a result, each of the five emergent clusters were assigned to the previously described categories: timekeeping, values, language, rules, meaning5.

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