Special Containment Procedures: As SCP-6364's effects are no longer active and all known SCP-6364-1 instances have expired, active containment is limited to suppressing public knowledge of its occurrence. Additionally, Foundation web crawlers are to scan the Internet for criteria that meet possible new occurrences of SCP-6364 or related anomalies. Search efforts for PoI-82/6364 are ongoing.
A regular hexagon, the primary focus of SCP-6364 infection.
Description: SCP-6364 is a memetic cognitohazard relating to the geometric concept of the hexagon, defined as a regular 6-sided geometric shape with the sum of interior angles equalling 720°. When a sapient being views SCP-6364-affected media, they have an approximately 0.2% chance to become an SCP-6364-1 instance. The factors affecting likelihood of becoming an SCP-6364-1 instance are unknown, but it has been observed to occur at rates upward of 5% among people who perceive hexagons on a regular basis, such as organic chemistry students and beekeepers.
Early stage SCP-6364 infection is characterized by viewing hexagons as "perfect" shapes. At first, SCP-6364-1 instances will develop an aesthetic appreciation for the shape. After a period averaging three days, SCP-6364-1 instances will begin to modify their environment to be as close to a hexagon as possible. During this time, SCP-6364-1 instances will express anxiety when in a completely hexagon-less environment. However, exposure to large numbers of hexagons during this stage accelerates the progression of SCP-6364 infection.
After an average of two weeks, SCP-6364-1 instances will progress to late-stage infection, which is characterized by a religious devotion to "The Six-Sided One", an entity consistently portrayed as a hexagon with a single human eye. Late-stage SCP-6364-1 instances will use hexagons as religious iconography, construct shrines dedicated to the Six-Sided One, and pray to it for guidance and instructions. It is unclear if the Six-Sided One actually exists; SCP-6364-1 instances who pray to it for guidance universally bemoan a lack of response but continue to wait for instructions. SCP-6364-1 instances become increasingly psychologically dependent on the Six-Sided One, and increasingly desperate to receive instructions.
After an average of six weeks, SCP-6364-1 instances become unwilling or unable to do anything other than what is necessary for survival, prayer, and acts perceived to win the Six-Sided One's favor, up to and including human sacrifice.
After an average of nine weeks, SCP-6364-1 instances cease performing any acts not dedicated to the Six-Sided One, including eating and drinking. All SCP-6364-1 instances have expired naturally due to neglect of basic needs by twelve weeks after infection.
In the early stages, SCP-6364 can be treated by targeted amnestics and preventing exposure to hexagons. However, late-stage mental changes are irreversible.
Addendum 6364.1: Discovery
On 25/10/2020, the animated edutainment video Hexagons are the Bestagons was posted to YouTube by user "CGP Grey". The video itself is presently non-anomalous. However, it became the primary infection vector of SCP-6364 on 26/10/2020, when PoI-82/6364.The unidentified creator of SCP-6364. began performing an automated thaumaturgic ritual using an as-of-yet unlocated EVE-manipulating device to cause its effects. The Foundation did not note the anomalous properties of the video until 29/10/2020, by which time an estimated 700,000 people had been exposed to SCP-6364.
The original video was removed from YouTube, but continued to act as an infection vector when reposted elsewhere. Foundation thaumatologists developed a means of counteracting SCP-6364's memetic effects, but discovered that the meme mutated in response to containment efforts. The above containment procedures were put into place in order to both neutralize SCP-6364's spread and automatically predict and account for adaptations. Grey and his associates proved to have no connection to the video's anomalous effects, and were amnesticized and released. The video was re-uploaded with no further complications on 3/11/2020.
Addendum 6364.2: Investigation
Provisional Task Force Zeta-6 "Black and White" was established to locate and contain SCP-6364-1 instances and discover the creator of SCP-6364, provisionally designated PoI-82/6364. Over 10,000 early-stage SCP-6364-1 instances were identified and amnesticized, while approximately 1,400 late-stage SCP-6364-1 instances were identified and transferred to Site-94. Below is an interview with Zoe Bennett, a late-stage SCP-6364-1 instance who had attempted to organize a communal gathering at her home in Albany, New York, prior to containment.
Interviewed: SCP-6364-1/184 (Zoe Bennett)
Interviewer: Dr. Liam Campbell
[BEGIN LOG]
INTERVIEWER: State your name for the record, please.
SUBJECT: Zoe Bennett.
INTERVIEWER: To begin, when was your first exposure to the hexagon meme?
SUBJECT: Meme? Like a funny image?
INTERVIEWER: No, I mean, when did you become so fixated on hexagons? What was the trigger?
SUBJECT: Ah, my awakening. It was back in late October, when a YouTuber I watch posted a video about them. It really opened my eyes to their perfection, and how crude everything else is compared to them. It was honestly distressing, to realize how imperfect and weak everything is.
INTERVIEWER: What happened next?
SUBJECT: I wasn't in a great place for a while, because the world just seemed more wrong every day. But then I had a vision. I saw the unbreakable lattice of carbon in its forms, the endless perfection of a massive beehive. I found God in a snowflake, with six sides and a great lidless eye. It did not speak to me, but I know what it is and what it needs.
INTERVIEWER: And the snowflake was the Six-Sided One you have spoken of?
SUBJECT: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: What, then, is the Six-Sided One?
SUBJECT: Perfection itself, given geometric form.
INTERVIEWER: What does it need? Has it spoken to you?
SUBJECT: I don't claim to know its plans, but its will is for those of us blessed with its grace to achieve our own perfection and spread the word. We are its children, the divine servants of its perfect will.
INTERVIEWER: What perfection do you need to achieve?
SUBJECT: We must reject the gross imbalance of lesser shapes and materials, and embrace the purity of its shape and favored element wherever we can.
INTERVIEWER: One of your fellow adherents wrote a manifesto about the superiority of carbon, is that the reason why?
SUBJECT: Yes. Carbon's hexagonal bonds are strong and tessellate on and on. Such strength, such durability, such clean geometry! The weakness of everything else disgusts me.
INTERVIEWER: You've mentioned that before, that everything besides hexagons is weak. Why is that?
SUBJECT: The strength of steel is nothing to the certainty of carbon. I aspire to the purity of the blessed graphene.
INTERVIEWER: I know graphene is strong, but blessed?
SUBJECT: In the end, the divine materials favored by the Six-Sided One will protect us. Is such endurance and strength not something to aspire to, in your eyes?
INTERVIEWER: Protect you from what?
SUBJECT: The withering decay of the world. You will suffer the failures of the imperfect, but we will be saved. The Six-Sided One watches over us, though it does not speak to us.
INTERVIEWER: Why doesn't it? Do you know why?
SUBJECT: I wish I did. We are its loyal servants and soldiers, waiting for orders. I pray to it every day, but it only watches. Why doesn't it guide us? Why?
INTERVIEWER: Does it actually hear your prayers?
SUBJECT: I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it hears me. In my heart, I know it should be guiding us, but it is silent. That is why I need to purify myself, so that I will finally be a worthy instrument of its will.
Silence except for scratching of pencil for several seconds.
INTERVIEWER: This has been extremely informative, thank you. One final question: when will you know you're pure enough? How will its guidance come?
SUBJECT: I— we will hear its voice and it will tell us what we must do to glorify it and survive as the end comes.
INTERVIEWER: Thank you.
[END LOG]
Afterword: Given the subject's insistence that the Six-Sided One will guide the SCP-6364-1 instances to enact its will, I consider it probable that SCP-6364 is an attempt to create an army of brainwashed devotees. Why no orders have been given is unknown.
Addendum 6364.3: Neutralization
On 25/12/2020, SCP-6364 abruptly lost its memetic properties, although SCP-6364-1 instances remained infected. At 14:24, Dr. Alicia Hart, then-head of SCP-6364 containment, received an email from an unknown source, claiming responsibility for SCP-6364. The full email is attached below.
To: Dr. Alicia Hart
From:
Subject: An apology
Hello,
Sorry about the whole "hexagon cult" thing. It turns out it was broken and didn't work the way I intended. The good news is: you managed to stop most of the cases! I think under 20,000 people were affected. Thanks for preventing a right shitshow of a misfire. The bad news: Because it didn't work as planned, the converts won't respond to commands and eventually forget how to eat. That wasn't supposed to happen, but I think it was tampered with. I'm still working on finding out who dared to sabotage me and how, but I stopped it completely now that I know the effects of the tampering. Thanks for handling it in the meantime.
If I find out who did this, I'll give you a call.
Yours truly,
⬡
