You Can Say Hi - SCP Foundation

Between 1983 and 1989, the United States Department of Defense spent 6.5 billion dollars training fifth-graders to kill magicians.

It really did make sense at the time. They were a plentiful workforce, plastic enough to be turned into counter-psychics with some targeted lobotomy, and more than willing to place themselves in the caring hands of Uncle Sam. Most importantly, higher-ups believed even the most devoted Russian agents wouldn’t dare lay hands on schoolchildren.

Unfortunately, none of them considered the inverse might also be true.

Tom Rosenbloom was the program’s first success. A bright-eyed eleven year old with an interest in dinosaurs and better marksmanship than most of the FBI, he was covertly moved into an apartment above an Italian restaurant suspected to facilitate GRU dead drops. Two months afterwards, he was given the kill order and a Beretta hidden in his T-rex lunchbox.

His handlers had planned for many contingencies. Heart attack induced by his psychotropic regimen. Demonic possession, classes A-I to VII. Remembering he used to have parents.

None of them anticipated a tearful confrontation with the elderly telepath-slash-line cook over veal parmigiana, his impromptu adoption, and subsequent defection to Russia within the month.

Clearly, they had made a mistake somewhere down the line. The scientists looked over the reports, reviewed their methodology, and came to the conclusion that their problem was the children being conscious.

They only managed to fix that issue half a year before their funding was cut for good. Over the next decade, they released three of their remaining candidates back into the general population after thorough deconditioning. After all of them ended up having higher killcounts as freshmen than assassins, the fourth and final subject was instead transferred to an organisation that would be able to handle her.

Little Chessaline Broad was fifteen years old when she was placed into containment. She was thirty-nine by the time she left.

Excerpt from Release Form A233-91: Anomalous Personnel Application Form

Current Designation: SCP-2370-ARC

Prospective Position: Archival Department, Armsmaster and Security

Character Witness: Dr. Adileh Khayyam, Psychology Department

Why do you want this position? (750 words or less)

The doctor says it will be good for me to reinter reind reintegrate into a working environment. She says I have made a lot of progress in my sessions with her and that Lefty and Righty need additional simtimulation although she is worried about trua traumatic experiences from my childhood.

I also want to help the Foundation. They were kind to me growing up and saved me from a very bad place. I do not want to shoot people as my job but Righty is very good at it. If it means protecting good people—the ones that saved me from the doctors—I will do it.

Why are you qualified for this position? (upload supporting documents)

- Range_Scores_2018-09-13.csv

- Field-Readiness_Report_B103_G_SALAZAR.pdf

- Physical_Overview_2018-06-11.pdf

- Psych_Profile_2018-03-01.pdf

What accommodations will you require?

I am on medication which wakes me up automatically now but I should still be tied to the bed. I should be searched every time I go to my room so Lefty and Righty cannot act up while I am asleep.

If my eyes have been closed for twenteeny minutes, my coworkers must induce a coma immediately with barbiturate guns. If they have been closed for thirty minutes, they should use lethal force instead: first by activating my bomb collar, then by using high-explosive devices if that has been dict deactivated.

If they have been closed for an hour, aerially bombard my position until the kill can be visually confirmed.

Excerpt from SCP-2370-ARC App. C-3: Psychological Evaluation, 2018-03-01

Let me begin this report with some context for the layman.

There is no ‘nice’ way to overwrite somebody’s memories. The Foundation is at the head of the pack in terms of psychotropic pharmacology. Our newest formulation of Class-A amnestics is, frankly, a miracle drug: they are the safest, cleanest method of targeted memory removal known to mankind, and in 40% of cases, they still don’t fully take.

The subconscious holds on to what the conscious lets go. Hard memories of a monster next door become impossibly vivid nightmares; waking up bolt upright in the dead of night; the certain, terrible knowledge that there is something out to get you, and you have no idea what it was. And these are the side effects of a substance we’ve spent half a century perfecting, with the help of the greatest minds in biochemistry.

Now imagine what an organisation with none of the expertise nor moral scruples of the Foundation was using—on children, no less—thirty years ago.

Whatever you’re picturing, it was much, much worse.

I’ve read the initial biopsy reports. When we took her in, 2370’s heart was pumping equal parts kratom tea and blood.

By all rights she should resemble a late-stage rabies patient. Instead, in the year I’ve spent with her, 2370 has revealed herself to simply be a shy, anxious woman—one with a sleep condition and aphasia, yes, but in temperament no worse than most of the agents I work with on a monthly basis.

Whether that is an indictment of the Foundation’s work conditions, or a compliment towards her progress as a patient, is ultimately up to the reader.

Excerpt from SCP-2370-ARC App. C-6: Field-Readiness Report, 2018-09-16

Alright, okay, field evaluation. Gonna be honest: do you even need me to fill this out?

I mean, just look at her. She’s built like a monster truck. We took her out to the training grounds and she managed to run a four minute mile. That’s twelve whole seconds off the world record, unless you’ve got an anomalous middle-distance runner locked up somewhere. No shit she passes the physical component of the exam.

Then there’s her range performance. Look, I know Command is probably worried about the whole bandana thing in a live fire situation, but couldn’t you just give her- I dunno, some Ray-Bans or something? Alpha-3 got a real life Gauss gun for their designated marksman last year. Surely the big Five could spare a couple hundred to buy their golden girl a pair of blackout goggles.

And that’s not even mentioning what she does when she’s in the zone like that. After her first run, I had the range techs set up a wall between her and the target, just to see if the file was bullshitting me. Yeah, I know what the score is. No, that’s not a malfunction. There’s a scan of the grouping in the PDF, you tell me that’s a fluke.

So, uh, yeah. Maybe don’t send her off to the Mole Rats—she wouldn’t be able to fit through the door to their dorm—but aside from that, top marks all round.

Oh, and if she offers to shake your hand? Take it from me: don’t.

Excerpt from SCP-2370-ARC App. C-3: Psychological Evaluation, 2018-03-01

The most unusual behaviour 2370 displays is the belief that her hands are sentient, but even this is relatively explainable. I would attribute this firstly to the circumstances of her anomaly: as a twelve year-old girl, how do you explain the fact that you lose motor control if your eyes are closed? More importantly, how do you explain your ability to wield a gun you don’t consciously know how to use?

Her answer was anthropomorphism. It’s a fairly mundane response to the unpredictable, and one that children and adults alike engage in. Chances are you’ve seen this done with computers: people talk to them when they’re acting up, even if they (usually) aren’t able to understand their instructions or respond to them.

Understandably, the average reader probably thinks of their limbs in a different way to their workstations. The average reader, of course, was also not indoctrinated as a child assassin. Combine the effects of her anomaly with a half-lethal cocktail of psychotropics and the depersonalisation that comes with childhood violence, and you begin to understand why she might have started engaging in this behaviour.

Granted, 2370 isn’t eleven years old anymore. I confess, I’m still unsure whether this is an affectation preserved out of habit or a genuine belief; in either case, though, it’s not something I believe would cause problems further down the line.

Now what happens when she does fall asleep: that is something which merits concern.

Excerpt from SCP-2370-ARC App. A: Pentagram Documentation of Subject

Dr. Jacobi: You know who this is, don’t you? You’ve been pretending to forget when we asked you. Naughty.

(2370 looks at the body on the table for some time, before violently shaking against her restraints.)

Dr. Jacobi: That’s good. That’s very good. We want you to eat him.

(2370 shakes her head repeatedly.)

Dr. Jacobi: Unfortunate, but it’s what we expected. Blind her.

(One of the masked guards successfully applies a blindfold to 2370, although he is bitten in the process. Jacobi takes out a stopwatch from his pocket and starts it. Over the next five minutes and fourteen seconds, 2370 appears to totally fall unconscious. Notably, the tremors in her hands have totally ceased in addition to other, voluntary movement.)

(Once this period has ended, Jacobi unlocks 2370’s restraints and presents her with a knife and fork.)

Dr. Jacobi: Let’s try this again. Lincoln: dinner time.

(2370 slowly rises to a standing position. She spends the next sixteen minutes removing the subject’s intestines via their oral cavity using the provided tools, demonstrating clearly abnormal strength for her age.)

Dr. Jacobi: Lincoln? Give the cutlery back. You can eat with your hands.

(2370 obeys the command, handing over the knife and fork before beginning to consume the now-deceased subject’s large intestine. Jacobi nods to the guard from before, who removes the blindfold.)

(As he does, 2370 appears to jolt awake, looking visibly distressed.)

Dr. Jacobi: You know who this is, don’t you?

(2370 vomits. Fragments of bone are clearly visible.)

Dr. Jacobi: That’s good. That’s very, very, good.

Excerpt from “Welcome to Archival: Your First Day in the Stacks”, Employee Manual (1963-)

What do we do here?

Archival’s primary job is preservation. Everything that doesn’t merit active study by another division—sub-Safe anomalous items, old pieces of supertechnology, unsubstantiated reports of supernatural events—these all fall under Archival’s remit.

Did you know: the Foundation has over 5000 tonnes of paper documentation from the last century alone?

As a member of Archival, it’s your job to help us catalogue, record and contain these items for future reference by the rest of the Foundation.

Where should I go to start my first day?

New employees should report to my office (first floor, Computer Labs 1A-319A, Archival Site-00) for orientation and an introduction to the rest of our workforce.

What should I do if I have questions?

If you’re ever confused, feel free to ask me by using one of the intercoms installed around the Site. Through the magic of distributed neural computing, I’m always available to answer any question you have, no matter how small or large. If there isn’t one nearby or I’m otherwise incapacitated for maintenance, one of your more experienced coworkers will also be more than willing to assist you in your enquiry.

—P. Olympia

Head Librarian, Magnetic Storage Human Interface

Archival Division

Next: The Slow Bullet