Item #: SCP-7336

Object Class: Thaumiel

Special Containment Procedures: Each Foundation facility is allowed at least one instance of SCP-7336-1 to put on display in a prominent location. Facilities of at least 15 research staff may submit requests for more instances to the Department of Paramathematics. Main storage of SCP-7336-1 instances is at Site-11.

Personnel may request to rent an SCP-7336-1 instance to study. The instance is to be returned to its display within two weeks of rental. After the rental period, personnel may opt to extend their rental by a week or take an SCP-7336 aptitude test, administered by an available MX-Qualified Foundation staff member in order to earn their own MX-Qualification1. Employees who gain MX-Qualification are encouraged to relocate to Site-11, as that is where most MX-Qualified personnel are currently situated. Rental requests may be denied at the discretion of the facility Director.

Civilian lunar exploration is to be heavily restricted until the surface is sufficiently cleared of SCP-7336-1 instances. After a 11-1 vote held by the O5 Council on 17/03/2021, most restrictions on civilian lunar exploration have been lifted. Remaining restrictions are due to unrelated anomalies2.

Verifiably non-anomalous traditional mathematical papers written with assistance from SCP-7336 are not to be disseminated among the public.

As of 01/05/2012, all MX-Qualified personnel are to be implanted with a chip that emits GPS coordinates and biometric data. Personnel may opt out of this program at the expense of relinquishing certain benefits offered to MX-Qualified personnel3.

Description: SCP-7336 is an axiomatic system logically independent of ZFC4.

Communication of SCP-7336 and derived theories is limited. Communication appears to require not only the exchange of verbal language, including tone, volume, timing, and use of non-standard phonemes, but also body language, physical touch, use of ad-hoc props, and traces of short-range subconscious psionic transmission. As such, written and remote voice/video communication is insufficient for the exchange of ideas between individuals regarding SCP-7336. Despite the apparently complex suite of communications required to discuss SCP-7336, MX-Qualified personnel report that discussions between 2-4 individuals about SCP-7336 are easy to participate in for all involved parties, but get considerably more difficult as more join the conversation.

While written communication between individuals about SCP-7336 is ineffective, MX-Qualified personnel are able to hand-write proofs that will only be coherent to the individual who wrote them. Collaboration in SCP-7336 almost always requires all collaborators to keep their own notes on the project in parallel.

Simple facts entirely in and about SCP-7336 are rarely, if at all, specified in traditional language. For instance, the exact number of axioms that make up SCP-7336 is unclear. When pressed to give a number, the same researcher may give different counts depending on the application of SCP-7336 logic they most recently used, but will ultimately prefer to say that a "count" of axioms is not a meaningful concept in regards to SCP-7336.

Application of SCP-7336 has led to many important results. For example, it is not uncommon for unproven conjectures in traditional mathematics to be proven using SCP-7336. Such proofs may then have use of SCP-7336 worked out of the logic until only traditional mathematics remains. 4 of the 7 Millenium Prize Problems5 have had traditional proofs developed using SCP-7336 as an intermediate step, and 2 have proofs using a combination of ZFC and SCP-73366. Among the Millenium Prize Problems, the Riemann hypothesis is the only problem remaining unsolved in both ZFC and SCP-7336. A 3-5 page proof of Fermat's Last Theorem exists using a combination of ZFC and SCP-73367. SCP-7336 has been particularly helpful in the fields of quantum mechanics, algorithms, and oneirology. It has also directly helped Foundation understanding of other mathematical anomalies such as SCP-033 and SCP-5921. While exact results and their justifications are difficult to communicate, procedures derived from SCP-7336 have shown to be effective.

SCP-7336-1 are small objects (22-25 cm in diameter) found on the surface of the moon. SCP-7336-1 appear to be composed of a tangled cluster of smooth metal wires, each approximately 8 mm thick. No two SCP-7336-1 instances are identical. Spectral and chemical analysis of SCP-7336-1 indicate they are made of vitallium8, which contradicts with its melting point of 6,500 Kelvin and density of 2.4 g/cm3. SCP-7336-1 anomalously emit a weak electromagnetic signal at approximately 62.2 GHz9 with Kolmogorov complexity of approximately 41.6%. No attempts to decode the signal have been met with success.

Mathematically inclined personnel in possession of an instance of SCP-7336-1 will claim to find the object markedly elucidating. Most individuals who find SCP-7336-1 interesting will go on to study the instance over the course of 1-3 weeks, either until losing interest or gaining sufficient understanding of SCP-7336. While most personnel gain their understanding of SCP-7336 through the usage of an instance of SCP-7336-1, it is not impossible to learn SCP-7336 entirely through mentorship by an MX-Qualified individual, although this has been shown to take significantly longer than through SCP-7336-1.

The first SCP-7336-1 instance was found during the Apollo 11 mission by Buzz Aldrin. Its anomalous properties were not noticed until return to Earth, immediately after which it was relinquished to Foundation custody where it lead to the discovery of SCP-7336. An additional instance was then found by the Apollo 14 crew, and two more by the Apollo 17 crew, leading to restrictions on lunar exploration put in place by the Foundation, and bringing an end to the Apollo program. Since then, the Foundation has engaged in a clandestine cleanup operation to clear the lunar surface of SCP-7336-1 instances. SCP-7336-1 as they were found would show no evidence of impact upon the surface, and were partially buried in the lunar regolith. Instances were found to be in a uniform random distribution across the entire moon. As of 11/02/2021, the Foundation is in possession of 40,241 SCP-7336-1 instances, believed to be most if not all instances originally on the lunar surface.

Addendum-7336-1: Spontaneous disappearances of Foundation staff have been observed to happen more frequently among MX-Qualified personnel compared to non-MX-Qualified personnel. Since 2009, approximately 0.2% of MX-Qualified staff have disappeared each year, which is over 8x the average among all Foundation staff. In 2010, it was determined that the increased rate of disappearances of MX-Qualified Foundation staff was statistically significant enough to tie the disappearances to SCP-7336, and containment procedures were updated10. Disappearances happen instantaneously, usually witnessed to happen to personnel actively researching SCP-7336, with no accessories left behind by the disappeared person. MX-Qualified personnel are generally unbothered by this pattern.

Addendum-7336-2: MX-Qualified Agent Max Willow ended his employment at the Foundation for personal reasons during February 2016, and opted to have his memory wiped of his experience at the Foundation. After amnestization, Agent Willow was confirmed to no longer be MX-Qualified. On 14/03/2021, Foundation webcrawlers flagged a blog post by Willow to his personal website ████████.cafe as relating to SCP-7336. The following is an excerpt from the post.

My wife has no idea what I'm talking about. Maybe it's from my graduate classes. I don't know how I could've possibly come up with this on my own, but that doesn't make sense because I don't even know how I could've possibly ever forgotten this, much less learn it in the first place. I don't even know what it is I really learned! It's like a switch just flipped in me and now I'm seeing the bigger picture?? But what bigger picture? Reasoning? Yeah, I feel like I've cracked the code of all of logic and I can't even describe it. But it makes perfect sense. Oh god, I sound like such a crank.

The post was taken down and Willow was contacted by Foundation agents. Willow demonstrated that he regained his understanding of SCP-7336, and subsequent amnestization showed said understanding to again be lost.

Addendum-7336-3: On 02/02/2024, Max Willow died in his sleep. Autopsy revealed the cause of death to be sudden non-existence of the entire nervous system. His wedding ring was also noticed to have gone missing on the night of his death.

In light of this incident, testing has begun on a selection of D-Class personnel to study the long-term interactions between SCP-7336, amnestics, and intellectual isolation.

Footnotes

1. MX-Qualification is an official label bestowed to individuals who have demonstrated an ability to communicate and comprehend ideas pertaining to SCP-7336.

2. For instance: SCP-3655, ██████████, SCP-2824, SCP-4411. See document LDSR.2222XSCP.97.2 for a full list.

3. Including, but not limited to, increased yearly pay, a larger year-end bonus, more vacation days, and a fast-track to promotion.

4. Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice. Commonly used as the foundation of mathematics.

5. The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness, the Hodge conjecture, and the Poincaré conjecture. The Poincaré conjecture was proven within ZFC and SCP-7336 by Foundation researchers in 1980 and just ZFC in 1982, 2 decades before Grigori Perelman's proof published in 2002 and 2003.

6. Yang-Mills existence and mass gap, P ≠ NP.

7. Around 1637, Pierre de Fermat claimed to have proved that an + bn = cn has no positive integer solutions for n > 2, but did not provide any such proof. This remained Fermat's only unproven claim by civilian mathematicians until Andrew Wiles's 129 page proof in 1995. It is a common legend/joke among SCP-7336 researchers that Fermat had knowledge of SCP-7336 prior to the discovery of SCP-7336-1.

8. An alloy of 65% cobalt, 30% chromium, and 5% molybdenum.

9. Within the IEEE V band of 40-75 GHz. Used for satellite crosslinks and short range Wi-Fi.

10. As of the last update to this article, GPS tracking has had no success in determining the fate of disappeared staff.