SCP-2601
rating: +37+x
church.jpg

SCP-2601 was retrieved from this church in █████████, ██, USA during early 2013. At the time of acquisition, the church had been empty and unattended for decades, despite a well-maintained exterior.

Item #: SCP-2601

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: The locus of SCP-2601 is to be secured to a rectangular steel conveyance assembly using bolts. The assembly must be further encircled by a welded steel cage with gaps wide enough to permit physical contact with the locus. The conveyance assembly is to be located at the center of four specially-constructed long term humanoid containment units numbered A through D. Maintenance access to the conveyance interior is possible only via remote-controlled doors inside the containment chamber.1

The construction of rooms S176/4/2601/A through S176/4/2601/▒ is largely typical, with the exception of maintenance hatches, a titanium grate aperture to allow voluntary physical contact with SCP-2601, and a circular one-meter aperture in the ceiling for dispensing concrete. Finally, the floors are capable of sliding into the wall and exposing a sheer, concrete-walled pit thirty (30) meters deep.2

In the event of a breach or noncompliance event within the conveyance access chamber, procedure 2601-MALCHIAH3 must be performed in all four chambers simultaneously. If this is insufficient to resolve the noncompliance event, procedure 2601-JULIAN4 must be implemented except by order of the O5 council within ten (10) minutes of the noncompliance event.

D-class personnel selected for testing must not be eligible for the amnestic recycling policy, unless otherwise required by SCP-2601's conveyance maintenance schedule.

Test logs must not be numbered sequentially, and should convey no information about the order or number of tests performed.

Description: SCP-2601 is an unstable equilibrium of antimemetic and infocaustic phenomena which combine to form an extremely potent, slow-progressing, biologically bound infophage. The phenomenon is transmitted by physical contact with an object catalogued as SCP-2601-Locus. SCP-2601's locus was retrieved from an American church in 2013, presumably by Foundation personnel, but no records of the object's acquisition have survived.

SCP-2601's first-order effect is comprised of two parts: an antimemetic component, which renders information about the subject unrememberable or imperceptible, and an infocaustic component, which physically deletes information from reality. As such, mnestic treatment is only partially effective in persisting knowledge about SCP-2601 and individuals affected by it.

SCP-2601's second-order effect is similar, but affects all individuals perceiving or attempting to perceive SCP-2601's locus. Information about the locus's appearance, creation, discovery, and durability are impossible to observe or confirm by any means, including indirectly through electronic surveillance or recorded data.5 Although the second-order effect seems to have the same dual antimemetic and infocaustic components, it does not in itself progress to full infection by SCP-2601's first order effect.

At first, highly personal information is erased, such as parental relationships, sibling relationships, and fundamental preferences. This is not purely an amnestic effect: with time the information is erased directly from reality, rather than rendering it imperceptible or impossible to remember. As the infection progresses, it radiates outward into the subject's Errol-Klein boundary, erasing the history of events external to the subject's direct influence but causally connected to their actions. Finally, information about the subject's thoughts, identity, and appearance is erased. At this point, the subject is impossible to perceive by any means, and will have ceased to meaningfully exist.

SCP-2601 is thought to only affect living creatures coming into contact with the Locus of their own volition. Exposed individuals may report mental distress and fatigue as a byproduct of their memories being altered. This is immediate and affects written or digitally encoded information as well as human knowledge. There is no known maximum range for this erasure, with core biographical data erasure occurring in family members up to [DATA REDACTED] kilometers away.

In rare cases, enough data is retained to make useful inferences about an experiment or test subject. Though traditional methods are not effective in tracking research yield, the Wheeler-Ki̴m method6 estimates approximately █% of experiments remain auditable to some extent.

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