Item #: SCP-3543

Object Class: Neutralized

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-3543 itself requires no special containment, as all associated research is presumed destroyed1 after the death of Dr. Grant.

Instances of SCP-3543 are contained in separate Foundation-owned healthcare facilities in the northwestern United States, separated by a distance of at least 150km to prevent individuals coming into contact with multiple instances. Psychiatric staff from Site-17 should confer with local caregivers to monitor mental condition. As a preventative measure and for the general well-being of the subjects, instances are to be administered Class-B amnestics in addition to anti-psychotics used for treatment of schizophrenia.

Instances of SCP-3543 require continuous care by an LPN or licensed NP, with preference given to those who have experience with emotionally disturbed patients. Among the caregiver's duties are assisting in daily processes such as grooming and self-care, maintaining emotional and physical health through exercise and socialization, and stimulating the mind with simple complex scientific experiments complex theoretical problems visual stimulation. The caregivers should be aware that although the type of care they are providing is non-anomalous, the individuals in question are the result of anomalous events and should be treated as such.

Description: SCP-3543 refers to a defunct research project developed by former Foundation employee Dr. Charles Grant. While no known copies of this research exist, a colleague of the late Dr. Grant2 was able to provide an abstract of his proposal.

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Macro-mitosis: Being in two places at once

Dr. Charles Grant (Project Leader) and Dr. Allison Taylor (Psychological Research Support)

The Foundation faces growing demand for individuals to perform menial tasks while simultaneously requiring them to be qualified researchers and/or possess certain esoteric knowledge in their field. To address this issue, I have devised a process by which healthy human beings can create an identical copy of themselves. This process is achieved using guided meditation sessions which aid the listener in visualizing this copy. A delicate balance of machines manipulates local hume levels to anchor the manifestation in reality, allowing the two copies to interact with their surroundings for an undetermined (possibly infinite) amount of time. The manifestation would remain under the control of the subject and would be able to engage in separate tasks in separate locations, though with diminished capability. The same machines can utilize an additional set of guided meditations to aid subjects in reversing the process.

The most noteworthy side effect of this procedure is an effective "halving" of the subject's intelligence level. The strain of simultaneously operating two complete human brains tends to leave subjects functioning at approximately half their regular mental capacity. Given that this procedure was developed for Foundation scientists and researchers who are highly intelligent and skilled in multitasking, this should present little to no challenge for those who undergo macro-mitosis.

The SCP Foundation suggested to Dr. Grant that this was not a productive avenue of research, as additional personnel could be hired instead of using unreliable anomalous individuals. Members of the Ethics Committee also raised several concerns about the possible use of the procedure, accidental or otherwise, to produce other anomalies with unknown properties. As such, no testing was ever sanctioned.

SCP-3543 also includes three individual instances: a set of triplets with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities, designated SCP-3543-1, SCP-3543-2, and SCP-3543-3. To streamline communication and promote mental health, an instance of SCP-3543 may be referred to as "Charlie" when conversing with it. -1, -2, and -3 display several non-anomalous traits of emotional and psychological instability, including but not limited to aggressive and destructive outbursts, a tendency towards self-injury, prolonged periods of wailing or similar vocalization, oppositional defiance, and obsessive-compulsive behavior.

While the instances are mostly identical to each other as well as to Dr. Grant, some divergence has been noted.3 The most significant deviation comes from the subjects' intellectual capabilities: while Dr. Grant claimed to have an IQ of 184, testing and observation from psychological healthcare professionals place the IQ of SCP-3543-1, SCP-3543-2, and SCP-3543-3 at 50 or lower.

Instances of SCP-3543 appear to be aware of the existence of one another, and have displayed extreme distress during every occurrence of this realization. They have been observed trying to seek out other instances, and have been heard requesting that an unknown instance "come back". Treatment of amnestics has suppressed this trait. As of 03/17/20██, -1, -2, and -3 no longer display knowledge of each other.

Discovery Log: At approximately midnight on 04/16/20██, police were called to the home of Charles and Helen Grant to investigate a domestic disturbance. Mrs. Grant reported that her husband, while in the middle of preparing for their daughter's seventh birthday party the following day, was overcome by a sudden seizure and fell to the floor. He then became distressed and attempted to leave the house several times but was unable to do so.4

When Mrs. Grant approached him, Dr. Grant became violent and struck her several times. Mrs. Grant was able to subdue him with a blow to the back of the head, after which she escaped to the second story of her house. She locked herself and her two daughters in the upstairs bathroom before calling the police. When local officers arrived at the scene, they discovered Dr. Grant near the front door, curled up in a fetal position and repeating the phrase "One of us will never come back".5 They later took Dr. Grant into custody for his own safety and for the safety of his family.

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The official report was edited by embedded Foundation personnel to remove any reference to the second and third copies of Dr. Grant, recovered in a similar condition near the washing machine in the basement and a computer in a hidden room again in the basement respectively, as well as a fourth copy pulled from a car wreck approximately 2km from the Grant household. Officers involved in the recovery of these individuals were issued Class-A amnestics and implanted with false memories. The three instances discovered in the Grant household were recovered by the Foundation and eventually designated SCP-3543-1 through SCP-3543-3. The corpse pulled from the wreck was autopsied by Foundation personnel6 before being incinerated.

Notice from Dr. Taylor:

I have been hearing talk around the water cooler that deeply concerns me, and I'd like to address it. I'm referring to the informal references to biomedical engineering research done by "SCP-3543" and the like, as well as official reports mentioning "Dash-Two" and his dissertation on the anomalous properties and biology of entities contained within SCP-2932.

I want to make one thing clear: no, we have not changed our policy of referring to humanoid anomalies as such. When making references to the containment or study of a humanoid anomaly such as instances of SCP-3543, it is both appropriate and required to refer to them by their numerical designation. This protects our staff by helping the SCP Foundation retain an impartial perspective on containment. It also serves to remind us that many of these objects only appear to be human, and may lack the feelings or emotions our empathetic human minds might ascribe to them.

SCP-3543 presents a unique challenge to this practice. For many of us, knowing the anomaly before it became anomalous is difficult to reconcile. I knew Charles before his disastrous encounter with his own experiments crippled his intellect. I'm the godmother to his daughter. I see the differences between him and instances of SCP-3543, and more importantly, I see the similarities. I understand all too well how difficult it can be to separate anomalous instances from your friends and coworkers.

When speaking of the trio of humanoids and the anomalous event that lead to their creation, the term "SCP-3543" should be used. When speaking of the man who pioneered the use of Foundation-grade amnestics to treat severe phobias and PTSD in bipolar patients, he should be referred to as "Dr. Charles Grant". Whatever his current mental state, the man earned a doctorate and deserves to be referred to with that title. Instances of SCP-3543 no longer realize what they've lost, but that doesn't mean that we should forget as well. We may have sworn to die in the darkness, but by no means is anyone asked to live there.

What Charles did, he did to himself. No one is disputing that. This does not negate any of the work he did in service of the SCP Foundation or diminish his many accomplishments, nor should it. Dr. Grant deserves to retain any and all honors he had before succumbing to the effects of SCP-3543, and it's our job to maintain that distinction. It's the least we can do for a former colleague. I don't want to hear about this again.

Footnotes

1. Despite an exhaustive search, no records of Dr. Grant's Macro-mitosis project were ever discovered.

2. Foundation psychologist Dr. Alison Taylor

3. All three SCP-3543 instances possess a birthmark on their inner right thigh, a trait shared by Dr. Grant. -3 possesses a scar on his left hand, sustained during an outburst of stereotypic movement on 08/14/20██. This scar does not appear on -1 or -2, nor was it ever noted on Dr. Grant while he was alive.

4. Later inspection revealed that this was because he had neglected to unlock the front door.

5. This phrase was not heard in its entirety during Dr. Grant's arrest. Officers and EMTs pieced it together from repeated partial statements with recurring partial words and vocalizations. Their inferences lead to this statement.

6. Cause of death was determined to be exsanguination as a result of a traffic collision.