Item #: SCP-2017

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-2017 is to be kept in a standard humanoid containment cell furnished with a bed, a set of drawers, and a bookshelf with age-appropriate books. A pediatrician and a child psychologist specializing in early-onset psychosis and anxiety disorders are to be assigned to SCP-2017 at all times. Except when isolated in containment or during a testing scenario, SCP-2017's skin is to be completely covered at all times, and all personnel handling SCP-2017 are advised to wear full-body protective suits.

Description: SCP-2017 is an African-American human female, about 7 years old, formerly named █████ ████████. It is underweight compared to non-anomalous children, displays symptoms of anemia such as gray pallor and cold extremities, and is unusually shy and withdrawn. Its anomalous effect manifests when a human subject makes unprotected skin contact with SCP-2017. The subject experiences a condition tentatively called Sudden Onset Dissociation Disorder, or SCP-2017-Triggered Derealization Disorder. The affected subject recognizes itself as an entity but perceives the external world as foreign and nonsensical. SCP-2017-Triggered Dissociation Disorder will cause subjects to have difficulty understanding or internalizing even the most basic facets of human behavior. Subjects in the late stages of STDD will eventually perceive the entire physical world as lacking order or sense. In addition, affected subjects uniformly speak of a place or plane of existence they claim possesses the consistency the physical world lacks. Subjects eventually descend into complete self-neglect before experiencing heart failure and a longer than normal period of post-mortem brain activity. Brain death will often be attended with other anomalous phenomena.

Worth noting is the fact that other than SCP-2017's taciturn nature, it is psychologically healthy and does not suffer from any type of dissociative disorder, anomalous or otherwise.

Document 2017-A

D-3500 was exposed to SCP-2017 on 01/03/████. Subject displayed literary talent above the general D-class population. Researchers predicted that subject would shed light on the more subtle, abstract effects of SCP-2017-induced dissociation through his personal writings

Day 1: My field of vision is so oddly limited. It reminds me of a panoramic movie screen, the ones they show you nature documentaries on. These appendages in my view-screen… can I believe they are mine? They put the words I think onto those paper. I order them, but the hands are not me. My face feels hollow. It feels like a thin coat of paint that touches the world, and behind it…nothing. Is my face me? I can't see it. It doesn't exist. I have no face.

Day 2: Nothing here makes any sense. These people in coats run performing rituals with all the effortless non-thought of lemmings jumping off a cliff. I have far-off visions of an avuncular-sounding male voice narrating the courting dance of small, scurrying things. I wonder what the animals think of their strangely structured habits.

Day 3: It's worse than what I thought. They've got this huge, invisible edifice of rickety, anarchic, patchwork rules and mores and unwritten thou-shalt-nots. What architect built this? I think they did. Do? They're part of it, and build it, but the groundwork was laid forever ago. Why? Who the fuck is in charge around here, anyway?

Day 4: This isn't how it's supposed to be. There isn't a single part of this monolith that makes any goddamn sense. Are all of them in on it? Can they be said to be in on it? Is a bee "in on" building a hive?

Day 5: I have no body. The viewscreen works with scaffolding to move me, I, myself in this strange plane. It takes in, it excretes, but none of it is me. It's an avatar into the land of chaos. I'm not from here. There has been some sort of huge mistake.

Day 6: Somewhere Else. I have seen it in my dreams, can touch it with the me that is me and not the projection they call my body. It vibrates with the sort of fractal perfection I yearn for. It is crystalline, cold, clean. Perfect. The order of things is woven tight into its fabric, is not the fraying net that binds things together here. That. Somewhere Else is my home.

By Day 7, subject refuses to move or eat. Subject requests recorder to continue his notes.

Day 7 Transcript: I am haunted by visions of hands that touched other hands, faces, bodies, that were beings like myself. The visions have an odd… tint to them, but not like a tint. They operate with dream logic where bizarre and confusing things happen and are accepted as perfectly normal. The faces in the visions were people, not faces. Now I do not see people, but bodies. And they aren't right.

On Day 7, D-3500's heart and respiratory activity completely ceased. His brain continued to remain active for an inexplicable three hours and twenty minutes. After this time, subject underwent brain death and vanished. Subject's cot suddenly transmuted into a large, perfectly rectangular prism with a reflective index of zero. Mass of the object was determined to be the exact mass of the cot plus the mass of the subject's corpse, and testing indicates that the mass is indivisible and not composed of any atoms. Item classified as SCP-████.

SCP-2017 has proven uncooperative with Foundation researchers and has not adjusted to containment. Most questions posed to SCP-2017 are met with blank silence, quiet crying, or requests to be reunited with its parents. SCP-2017's mother and father, Derek and Abigail ████████ of ████████, California, are the only two people known to the Foundation to have made physical contact with SCP-2017 and not suffer its anomalous effects. Medical records of the couple show that Abigail ████████ was diagnosed with depersonalization disorder in her early college years, was successfully treated, and has not had a relapse in over ten years. Derek ████████ displayed many commonly recognized risk factors of dissociative disorders1 and received psychiatric treatment similar to that recommended for dissociative disorders2 while never actually having a dissociative episode. SCP-2017's mother and father were aware of SCP-2017's properties and attempted to conceal them from notice from a group such as the Foundation.

Interviewed: SCP-2017

Interviewer: Dr. Alexis Baxter

Foreword: Dr. Baxter is one of the few Foundation personnel SCP-2017 will respond to. It is suspected this is the case because Dr. Baxter bears a striking resemblance to SCP-2017's mother.

<Begin Log>

Dr. Baxter: Hello, SCP-2017. I'm glad I get to talk to you today.

SCP-2017: Hi, Doctor. I really wish you'd call me █████

Dr. Baxter: I'm sorry, SCP-2017. But we've been over this before and we can't do that.

SCP-2017: Why?

Dr. Baxter: Well…lots of people here are named █████! Why, there's a doctor in this very division named █████! We don't want to get mixed up, do we? You deserve to have your very own name that nobody else has.

SCP-2017: Like a nickname?

Dr. Baxter: Exactly. Now. I'd like you to tell me about what life was like before you came here.

SCP-2017: Mommy and Daddy told everyone I was sick and if they touched me I'd die. But that wasn't true. If people touched me they acted funny.

Dr. Baxter: Do you know what happened to them after they acted funny for a while?

SCP-2017: Mommy said not to worry about it.

Dr. Baxter: It must have been hard with just your mommy and daddy all the time.

SCP-2017: shakes head

Dr. Baxter: Really?

SCP-2017: Mommy and Daddy would take me to the zoo and beach and stuff. They covered me up so people wouldn't touch me.

Dr. Baxter Do you remember how you came to be here?

SCP-2017: I was playing in the cul-de-sac with Jenny and Richie when the Alton boy hit me with his car. Mommy rode in the ambulance with me. She was glad they were there but she worried someone would touch me. I think that's what happened at the hospital. Then I was here. Pauses. Can I ask you a question?

Dr. Baxter: Anything. And I will answer if I can.

SCP-2017: Pinky swear you'll be honest?

Dr. Baxter: Reaches across table and grasps SCP-2017's gloved pinky in her gloved pinky Absolutely.

SCP-2017: Am I here 'cause I was bad?

Dr. Baxter: Absolutely not. You're here so we can protect others from getting sick and protect you from others that might want to hurt you. We're doctors, and we study these sorts of things so we understand what's happening and can help you.

SCP-2017 Then why can't I see my mommy and daddy?

Dr. Baxter: Because it's still very dangerous. There are bad people out there that might hurt you or use you to do bad things because you're different. Worse, they might do that through your parents. When we can understand what's going on a bit more clearly, maybe that can change.

SCP-2017: I guess.

Dr. Baxter: Now, I'd like to talk to you about something you said the other day.

SCP-2017: About the Other Place?

Dr. Baxter: Yes.

SCP-2017: I see it when I dream, and sometimes when I'm awake. It's different there. Everything is all lines and stuff, and things are simpler than they are here. No rules about when to go to bed or what to eat or what to say to grownups. I don't think there are any rules there at all.

Dr. Baxter: Do you think this place is real?

SCP-2017 Daddy said it was just a dream and dreams aren't real. But if it's not real, what about all the people there?

Dr. Baxter: Well, sometimes people see things that aren't…Wait, what people?

SCP-2017 They aren't really people. Or maybe they are, but they're not like us. They're really different. It's scary. I don't like them. I feel cold every time they pass through me.

Dr. Baxter: They interact with you?

SCP-2017: They what?

Dr. Baxter: You can touch them?

SCP-2017: Only when I see the Other Place and I'm not dreaming.

Dr. Baxter: That's…very interesting. This is the first time you've told us this. When is that?

SCP-2017: When someone touches me.

<End Log>

Closing Statement: Interview was terminated when Dr. Baxter expressed signs of surprise and alarm. As this was Dr. Baxter's first un-mentored interview with an anomaly, she was given a verbal reprimand before being allowed to contact SCP-2017 again.

In light of SCP-2017's comments during this interview, we took readings of subjects' brain activity before and after contact with SCP-2017. The results show a marked distinction from all recorded human brain waves, normal and abnormal. I submit the hypothesis that subjects who come into physical contact with SCP-2017 do not suffer dissociative symptoms, but are actually overwritten by a foreign entity from this 'other place'. As we are receiving possibly hostile entities from an undisclosed location, I recommend that exposure testing with SCP-2017 be suspended. - Dr. Alexis Baxter

Request denied. However, testing to support or debunk Dr. Baxter's hypothesis is recommended at this time. - O5-9

Footnotes

1. early childhood abuse, prior hallucinogen use, depression

2. Cognitive behavioral therapy and a year-long regimen of antidepressants