SCP-3620 as photographed on initial discovery

Item #: SCP-3620

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-3620 is to be contained in a medium-sized animal containment cage of internal volume no less than one cubic meter. The cage must be airtight to allow for monitoring of CO2 output.

The cage is to be cleaned daily before feeding, with the mass of any droppings or eggs produced measured. The daily amount of feed and water provided must equal the mass output within an allowed variance of 1.5g/day.

Description: SCP-3620 is a living entity confirmed by genetic testing1 to be an approximately 5-year-old female domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus). Behavior and vocalizations are consistent with those of a chicken, as are the appearance of all tissue samples taken.

SCP-3620 presents visually as a two-dimensional white plane featuring a pictograph and a series of curved lines hypothetized to be language, although they match no previously-encountered alphabet. The size of the plane appears the same relative to the observer's field of view, regardless of distance, and the plane appears parallel to the observer's field of view, regardless of viewing angle. Roughly 1 in 5 observers report mild to moderate headaches after viewing SCP-3620.

Testing indicates that SCP-3620 is physically invariant. It weighs 724.33g, regardless of factors that would normally affect mass. Any tissue samples removed from the specimen, such as drawn blood, plucked feathers, and even entire removed body parts, are instantly replaced. Separated mass appears non-anomalous and degrades at a normal rate. Factors indicating age have consistently pointed to SCP-3620 being approximately 5 years old, despite having been in Foundation custody since 1983-07-05.

As the amount of material produced and consumed by SCP-3620 do not appear to adhere to the standard laws of conservation of mass, any mass shed naturally or removed during the course of testing must be replaced by an equal mass of food to prevent long-term planetary mass discrepancy.

Document 3620-1: Post-recovery interview

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Interviewed: J███ P█████

Interviewer: Agent S████

Foreword: Interview conducted on 1983-07-05 following recovery of SCP-3620 under protocol "ORNOT". Agent S████ posing as an agent of the Ripley Entertainment Inc.

<Begin Log>

Agent S████: So tell us about how you came to acquire this… animal.

Mr. P█████: I mean, I'm pretty sure she was a normal chicken. I counted 'em after and, with this weird one, there weren't none missing. So I guess I acquired her in the normal way chickens get made, if you understand my meaning. Then something got her all weird like this.

Agent S████: Can you describe what happened exactly?

Mr. P█████: Well, I didn't see it happen or nothing. A loud noise woke me up, like… like a thunderclap mixed with an orchestra going through a wheat thresher. I thought I'd dreamt it at first, you know how it is when you just woke up, but when I went outside I figured it was connected with this thing. Looked enormous when I saw it at first, but it shrank when I walked closer or something. Like not exactly that, but like it always looks the same size, no matter how far away from it you are? But when I got close, it was just down there walking around and clucking like nothing was out of the ordinary. Other birds seemed a bit wary of it, though.

Agent S████: Have you told anyone else about this?

Mr. P█████: Naw, pretty much called you Believe It Or Not guys first thing. I 'spect you pay pretty well for weird shit like this, so I didn't want anyone else taking pictures or whatever.

Agent S████: Well, this certainly is an exciting item. Come along with me and I'll take you over to our purchasing department and we'll work out a good price for this girl.

Mr. P█████: Sounds good!

<End Log>

Closing Statement: Mr. P█████ was administered class C amnestics, paid $10 for the loss of one chicken, and returned to his farm.

Document 3620-2: Suicide note of Dr. F████████

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None of it matters.

You understand what 3620 is, right? It's not a chicken, it's a fucking bug. It's an [sic] glitch. An error message. She's a 404-not-found that shits out eggs.

So what does that make the rest of us? Software, running on some higher-order computer somewhere. We're just a simulation. None of it fucking matters.

Control alt delete.

—Dan

Document 3620-3: Interview with Dr. Charlene M████ following death of Dr. Daniel F████████

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Interviewed: Dr. Charlene M████, lead researcher, SCP-3620

Interviewer: Agent R███████, internal review committee

Foreword: On 20██-04-12, junior researcher Dr. Daniel F████████ was found dead in his office of apparent suicide. Autopsy revealed a massive overdose of injected paralytics. A classification-review investigation was launched to determine whether or not the suicide would indicate a cause to change the "Safe" classification of SCP-3620.

<Begin Log>

Interviewer: Can you tell us about Mr. F████████?

Dr. M████: Well, I can tell you he'd get pissed off at you calling him "mister" instead of "doctor".

Interviewer: My apologies. Dr. F████████.

Dr. M████: No problem. He was pretty new to the team — pretty fresh out of grad school, in fact — and this was his first assignment here. We were working on seeing if Spongy could-

Interviewer: (interrupting) I'm sorry, "Spongy?"

Dr. M████: Oh. Yeah, it's kind of a nickname we gave SCP-3620. Spongy. Short for 'Data Expunged'. I know we're supposed to stay detached, but it's hard when you work with one of the animate ones for years, and frankly, 'SCP-3620' is a bit of a mouthful.

Interviewer: I see. Please continue.

Dr. M████: We were working on seeing if SCP-3620 could be used as a food source. She's basically a chicken, and so when you pull off a wing or a leg or cut off a chunk of breast or whatever, it's made of regular old chicken meat, and a new part pops right back no matter how much we chop off. But we have to keep things balanced. "Wanted Buffalo wings so much the extra mass threw off Earth's orbit" would be one of the more embarrassing XKs to cause, you know?

Interviewer: Right.

Dr. M████: So Dan was helping me out with making a denser feed and measuring how much we could get her to eat in a day, and I saw him just stop and get this far-away look in his eyes. Then he said he had to go to his office. That was the last I saw of him. The last anyone saw of him, I guess.

Interviewer: Could the feeding protocol have triggered an effect?

Dr. M████: Unlikely. After it happened, we brought in a few D-class to try and recreate it, and none of them had a problem.

Interviewer: So in your professional opinion, do you believe that Dr. F████████'s suicide was due to an anomalous effect created by SCP-3620?

Dr. M████: I do not. At least, not like a memetic or telepathic effect. I've personally been studying this for three years now, it's been in custody since the 80s, and this is the first time anything like this has happened. You tend to become a bit numb to the weirdness around here, but someone as new as Dan… We think of the Euclids and the Keters as the scary ones, so we forget that even quote-unquote-safe skips can destroy someone's whole worldview, you know?

<End Log>

Note: Reclassification committee voted to retain current "Safe" classification of SCP-3620.

Footnotes

1. >99.9% certainty