SCP Foundation

No instances of SCP-2810-1 are allowed to exist in captivity

Uh, does that include those kept by the Foundation (as said in the first sentence of the procedures)? Unless you're saying instances outside Foundation control

SCP-2810 is a disease in multicellular organisms

Isn't it "disease infecting multicellular…"?

Investigation via electron microscope and SCP-███

Does including a blackboxed SCP add anything to the overall story here? If not, it's largely an extra word to the word count.

strongly acidic or basic environment

But didn't the procedures focus more on the acidic part? Furthermore, what is the pH that will destroy them?

LogThe

There ought to be a space between "Log" and "The", since they're two separate words.

Things to mention:

• The writing is alright. However, I don't get the implied background. From what I gather, it may be a Soviet bioweapon. But I'm not sure why they would make such a thing. Is it for themselves or for their enemies?
• Concept-wise, it is distinct and weird (in the sense of "How does that fuck about with the biology of the infected?).

1) I think that as an infection, this is underexplained. Is it a virus, a parasite, a bacteria? You say that it is "spread by all known disease vectors" - I don't understand that, as some vectors will operate by different mechanisms.

2) The infection also seems over-powered. If it can duplicate a new host by any lost cells from an infected organism, and it causes hosts to behave in a way that generates lost cells, and it can infect almost anything, and hosts are hard to kill, and the infection period is only 3 weeks, then Earth should have drowned in infected organisms long before the Foundation could do anything about this. And that is completely disregarding any infection brought about via vectors - that's just the duplication via cell loss effect.

3) What does this do to single-celled organisms?

4) I'm not sure how the various layers of mini-organisms works - I can't work out how they can be copies of the original organism and still have function. You say that the stomach-humans spew bile onto food. So presumably they are different to the host human, in that they can produce sufficient bile to work effectively as a stomach? And their skin is also acid-proof? And they can tesselate with the other stomach-humans to form an impermeable layer? At some stage, the analogy breaks down - either these stomach-humans are similar to the host, in which case they are a terrible stomach, or they are perfectly adapted to digesting food inside a human, in which case they end up being very similar to normal stomach cells.

And the mini-mini-humans, of which the stomach-humans are composed: are they fulfilling the same functions as the cells of a human (in which case, what do the stomach-humans eat?), or do they fulfil the function of the sub-cellular components of a normal stomach cell?

5) Can the mini-humans think? Have we tried communicating with them?

6) I don't understand the relevance of the picture. How does it show evidence of the infection?

7) I suggest re-checking your use of SCP-2810 and SCP-2810-1 - it doesn't seem very consistent. For example:

When a portion of SCP-2810's body is removed … the separated fragment will begin to multiply itself and recreate a new instance of SCP-2810

If SCP-2810 is the disease (or more correctly, the pathogen) then instances are of SCP-2810-1. I suggest defining SCP-2810-1 much earlier, probably the first time you say "organism".

8) I don't fully understand the intended back-story. I assume that the clue is in this line, which I otherwise thought was unnecessary:

Human instances also become much more cooperative and generous, and may report hearing voices.

Was this intended to be a "communism disease", and went wrong?

1) "Cultures of SCP-2810-1" - shouldn't that just be "Cultures of SCP-2810", as that is the pathogen.

2) It's still over-powered in terms of virulence, but not by as much. I don't know why it needs both traditional disease vectors (bodily fluids) and self-replication. And when you say "10% of a -1 instance's body mass", would that include if we cut apart a single cell (which would then duplicate itself, but only into two separate cells)?

3) I still don't understand how this works once you get to the cellular level. The change to blood cells carrying oxygen doesn't fix that for me. How does a human being carry oxygen molecules? How can we see that happening under a microscope? If you're going down this path, then I think you need to bite the bullet and say that the internal systems of the -1 instance are anthropomorphised on a physiological (and even chemical) level.

4) And I still don't understand how a "blood cell" human has "cells", or (if they are a human) what those "cells" do in the context of blood cell activity.

5) No need for the colon at the end of the second paragraph of the description. Query whether you need this sentence at all.

6) Query whether you need the third paragraph of the description. None of the factors mentioned here pay off in any way, unless I'm missing it. Again the social/co-operation thing is presumably a clue, but I've not got it - and it doesn't appear to lead to anything…

7) Oh. It took me 10 minutes and two reads, but I finally think I see where you're going with the fridge horror. You're suggesting that once there are enough -1 instances, they can join together to form an exponentially larger -1 instance, with each -1 serving the purpose of cells of the conglomerate.

Does that work with what you've set up? I might be have an anthropomorphised red blood cell running around in my veins, but that doesn't appear to change my outward facing physiology at all. So then how am I able to physically carry oxygen molecules when I apply for the role of red blood cell in the humanoid conglomerate?

I'm also not certain about your maths. If (using approximate numbers) it takes 100 million cells of 10 micrometres to make a 16mm long mosquito, then taking 100 million cells of 16mm long should give you around a 25m long mega-mosquito. And note that it would be impossible to make a mega-human in this way, as there aren't enough people to make up the cells, even if the whole planet was infected.

On a simpler drafting level, I think your point would be assisted by isolating "composed of -1 instances" to a separate sentence. The brain skims over it in its current position, and I initially thought you'd made an error and referred to a giant mosquito which was a -1 instance. I would note that a giant mosquito was found and killed in the area. When the corpse was recovered, it was found to be composed of regularly sized mosquitos, each of which was a -1 instance.

And I stand by my statements in (6) above, as it relates to everything but the last sentence. Those effects don't seem necessary for the story.

8) Now that we have the second addendum, what purpose does the first serve other than to give us a locale? I can't yet see a purpose for this as a biological weapon, so the backstory doesn't hit home. Another note - I'm not sure that you can "cauterize" an area of land, as the term usually only refers to parts of the body/wounds.