Special Containment Procedures: Due to SCP-9099’s remote location, monitoring the surrounding area for trespassers and maintaining a standard controlled entry perimeter is sufficient on-site containment. Satellite and aerial imagery depicting SCP-9099 with enough detail to confirm its size are to be expunged from public sources, with any and all public records indicating that it is a Soviet-era storage silo of unremarkable scale.
Only D-Class personnel with no prior contact with other SCPs or access to any sensitive information may be assigned observation platform duty within SCP-9099. Under no circumstances should personnel not meeting these criteria enter SCP-9099, and no activity other than observation should be undertaken while in SCP-9099. No electronic recording or storage equipment is permitted within SCP-9099. All items brought into SCP-9099 must be directly approved by the head researcher, and D-Class must be checked for contraband before each shift to ensure compliance.
Standard equipment for observation duty includes:
• Pen and journal
• Mechanical timepiece
• Mechanical depth gauge
• Bottled water
• Field rations
• Emergency kit
• Portable latrine
All other items are at the discretion of the head researcher.
At least one D-Class personnel, and preferably up to three when resources permit, are to staff SCP-9099’s observation platform during each rotation cycle. If three or more consecutive rotation cycles are missed, an on-site containment breach should be considered to be in progress. In this instance, SCP-9099 should be sealed, its ladder retracted, and its singular point of egress defended by an aerial assault squad who are to maintain a minimal distance of ten meters from the top of the structure. The structure itself is to be flooded with fatal concentrations of carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide should not be pumped out until appropriate D-Class personnel are on standby, with testing resumed as quickly as possible.
Update 05/03/████: A petition by former Head Researcher Vogle to keep SCP-9099 permanently flooded with fatal concentrations of carbon monoxide and discontinue active research has been officially denied by an O5 vote of 9 to 3, as this only neutralizes SCP-9099-A instances. The full capabilities of SCP-9099 itself are not yet sufficiently understood to justify passive containment procedures.
Update 05/09/████: As of Incident 9099-108, preference for D-Class is to be given to individuals with below-average intelligence, reasoning, insightfulness, and visual acuity, even when such traits may detract from the quality of test results. D-Class personnel are to be instructed to refrain from looking down in order to avoid vertigo.
Description: SCP-9099 is a concrete silo approximately seventy-five meters in diameter and two hundred and twenty-five meters in height, located approximately seventy kilometers northeast of ████████, Siberia. Though it came under Foundation control after the fall of the Soviet Union, it is not known if it was originally created by the Soviets, as all pertinent GRU-P records were destroyed prior to their dissolution.
Though its brutalist style is consistent with mid-20th-century Soviet architecture, dating methods to confirm its age have all proven inconclusive, and there is otherwise nothing about SCP-9099 itself to suggest a Soviet origin. It is possible that the exterior of SCP-9099 was constructed around a much older structure.
There is no ground-level access to SCP-9099, as SCP-9099 does not possess a ground level. An exterior ladder must be climbed to reach the only entrance at the top of the structure. The interior perimeter of SCP-9099 is ringed by ninety-nine levels of ninety-nine two-meter-wide containment cells, nearly all of which are sealed by a five-centimetre-thick sheet of one-way glass. When the lights inside these cells are off, occupants are not visible to outside observers.
Note that SCP-9099 does not possess any source of electricity or electrical wiring, and each of the caged light fixtures within SCP-9099 contains anomalously piezoluminescent salt crystals. Light emission is stimulated by a continuous, gentle vibration throughout SCP-9099, and terminated by detaching the fixtures from the walls.
The overall design of SCP-9099 is highly suggestive of a panopticon-style prison, and the prevailing hypothesis is that this was its original purpose. In the center of SCP-9099 is an observation platform suspended between three rails. The observation platform will ascend and descend these rails at a rate of one meter per minute, remaining stationary for two separate fifteen-minute periods, causing a full cycle to take eight hours. There is no known method of stopping or altering this cycle, and further attempts to do so are no longer permitted.
The first of the fifteen-minute rest periods is always at the top of the structure, allowing personnel to embark on and disembark from the platform. The second rest period will occur at a random point during the eight-hour cycle. Approximately once every two months on average, this will occur when the observation platform is at ground level. Since SCP-9099 does not possess a ground level, Foundation personnel who disembark from the observation platform during this time are considered irretrievable.
Approximately thirty percent of the time during a typical cycle, at least one cell visible from the observation platform will have its lights on, revealing its occupants. There does not appear to be any obvious patterns as to which cells are illuminated or when. Visible occupants almost invariably take extreme interest in the occupants of the observation platform, maintaining line-of-sight for as long as possible.
It is generally presumed that the same applies to non-visible occupants, as well.
Occupants of SCP-9099 (henceforth SCP-9099-A), are generally humanoid, though typically gaunt, pallid, and hairless with noticeably elongated nails and teeth. Instances of SCP-9099-A universally possess a singular, cyclopean orifice in the center of their foreheads of unclear purpose and origin. Clothing is generally simple, dark linens of premodern but otherwise uncertain make.
The majority of the time, SCP-9099-A are content to simply watch the observer, but they frequently also make threatening or lewd gestures, bang at the glass to get attention, etc. Occassionally, they will even hold up signs or write messages on the glass for observers to read. These messages are typically succinct and cryptic, and observers are instructed to record but otherwise ignore them. Written messages are always in the observer’s native language, and to date, all tests with illiterate D-Class subjects have not produced any written messages.
The current, unconfirmed hypothesis is that some form of quantum observer effect allows SCP-9099-A to gain access to information regarding any entity observing them, and that the one-way glass doors were put in place to mitigate this effect. The seemingly random activation of cell lights within SCP-9099 is presumed to be an unintended development.
If an instance of SCP-9099-A in an illuminated cell is not viewed by a human observer within a rotation cycle, it will remain illuminated for the next cycle, and the total number of new illuminated cells will increase by the square of the previous number of illuminated cells. This compounds quickly, and it appears that the strength of the hypothetical observer effect increases non-linearly. When this effect reaches a critical threshold, capable of occurring in as little as three unobserved cycles with optimal starting conditions, all cells within SCP-9099 will open, and all instances of SCP-9099-A will attempt to breach containment. Raising CO2 within SCP-9099 to fatal levels has proven to be an effective means of reestablishing containment without exposing Foundation personnel to the effects of SCP-9099-A.
Upon resuming observation of SCP-9099, SCP-9099 appears to effectively reset, with all instances of SCP-9099-A being both alive and back within their cells. To date, no cadavers of SCP-9099-A after a containment breach have been recovered. While it is not yet clear precisely what is occurring, the aforementioned quantum observer effects are believed to be involved, with SCP-9099’s wavefunction returning to a stable state to prevent the loss of all conscious observers within it.
It should be noted that several of the messages written by SCP-9099-A at least imply that they recall past asphyxiation.
Addendum: The following is a journal entry taken from D-14409, the most recent D-Class to reach the ground floor of SCP-9099.