The Director, the People, and the Boltzmann Jaw - SCP Foundation

The Boltzmann Brain is a fascinating thought experiment. Could a fully functional human brain, complete with the memories of a lifetime, manifest spontaneously?

Furthermore, is it really a brain? And is it a person? If it was randomly assembled, does it achieve the function of one that was not? That is the question we face today.

Or consider the Ship of Theseus. If a simple wooden ship has every one of its hundred planks replaced, one each year over the course of a century, in that hundred and first year is it the same ship?

Last night, we got the answer. SCP-096's face was randomly generated by an artificial intelligence on the internet. 265 people died and an entire city was amnesticized. This was not an artistic depiction, it was a pixel-for-pixel copy.

At first, we assumed there had been some sort of leak by a rival group, but our embedded agents and cooperative groups found nothing to indicate this. Next, we checked to see if some anomalous phenomena were affecting the output of the AI. We found zilch.

096 began clutching its head and whining at Site-19 around 03:19. After half the agents on that side of the world were assigned to deal with the impending breach, we set out to figure out the target. SCP-096 traveled 200 miles through a forest before entering a house and removing the target. At 03:57 SCP-096 was recontained.

That beast breaking out isn't what matters. I am imploring you to listen to what does. There is no way we could have expected SCP-096, an authentic photo of it, to randomly generate. But it did. No matter what, we cannot plan for everything.

Randomness is inevitable. Randomness could always strike us down. Whether or not the president itches his nose, an asteroid could destroy us. Whether or not 049 is mad, a mundane "pestilence" could take us down. Sometimes it is best to let what will be, be. And for every random breach, a thousand human beings find love at first sight. By struggling against entropy, we have become evil. Evil in pursuit of an impossible goal. What I'm saying, Overseer, is this.

Containment breaches are not a threat to humanity. Containment breaches are what it means to be human. And if I must see the new era where containment is exposed for what it truly is, the suppression of life, I will. Why should we pursue an evil goal, one we can never attain? Proceed on your mission if you wish, but Area-23 has seen enough.

Consider, Overseer, a snake a hundred feet long but only six inches thick. The snake slides along the forest floor for five years. One day, it grows a human arm out of its side, random as anything. The snake spends the next year struggling to press itself against the rocks to cut the arm off, as the snake believes it to be harmful. But one morning, the snake pulls itself up one branch at a time and by sunset, is staring down on a world it never before knew existed.

It is then that the serpent would be thankful for its hand.

Dominik Ilyushin

Director of Area-23

"The Serpent's Hand"