Item#: 4933

Containment Class: euclid

Secondary Class: none

Disruption Class: ekhi

Risk Class: warning

Still from broadcast corrupted by SCP-4933, during lecture intended to educate viewers on the nutritional content of onions

Special Containment Procedures: Foundation global listening network PANOPTICON is to monitor all electromagnetic broadcasts placed within the 98-100 MHz frequency range for any transmissions made by SCP-4933. If one is detected, interference signals are to be transmitted via satellite and radio tower to the area affected by the broadcast, with any resultant signal corruption witnessed by the populace to be dismissed as a technical malfunction.

The area 300 meters surrounding SCP-4933-01 is not to be entered by any persons not wearing specialized high-amplitude radio wave dampening equipment, and is to be cordoned by a permanently stationed Foundation security team.

Description: SCP-4933 is a phenomenon which interrupts, corrupts, and alters live or prerecorded television broadcasts.

SCP-4933's effects on television programming typically take the form of significant audiovisual corruption, which is essentially indistinguishable from ordinary satellite interference or other forms of technical malfunction. Approximately 86% of SCP-4933 broadcasts have been determined to consist solely of this signal corruption, with the only indication of SCP-4933's presence being an additional subtle, but distinct, visual wavering pattern which oscillates at approximately 99 Hz. This distortion is present in each SCP-4933 manifestation regardless of content, but is not detectable by the unaided eye and as a result goes unnoticed by the majority of the civilian populace.

The remaining 14% of SCP-4933-affected broadcasts will have their content noticeably altered in some way. This varies greatly in both extent and substance. Recorded alterations have consisted of as little as a single word of character dialogue transposed for another, or as much as programs with new characters and entirely restructured plots which deviate significantly from their originals. Content alterations with dialogue will be predominantly coherent in terms of sentence structure and grammar, but may contain unknown words, and will occasionally allude to or address esoteric, enigmatic, or inscrutable topics in an oblique fashion. Non-dialogue alterations appear to possess no discernible pattern, but will frequently involve characters performing actions or engaging in behaviors entirely divergent from their established and scripted norms. A selection of notable examples follows below.

Broadcast Example 1

Broadcast Example 2

Broadcast Example 3

Date: 04 April 1959

Localized Broadcast Location: Boulder, Colorado, USA, approximately 40,000 televisions affected

Scheduled Program: I Love Lucy, Season 2, Episode 10, “Lucy Is Enceinte”

Program Deviations:

Episode deviates from baseline at 2:30. Lucy returns from her appointment at the doctor's office as normal, but upon being informed, Ethel reacts to Lucy's news of her newfound pregnancy with vehement negativity as opposed to positivity, to the point of overturning tables and breaking furniture while shouting various expletives. The remainder of the episode consists entirely of a debate between Lucy and Ethel concerning the moral implications of choosing to raise a child in contemporary society. Lucy remains stoic and calm and argues in favor of contemporary childbearing with uncharacteristic eloquence, while Ethel perches upon an overturned couch and angrily demands that Lucy terminate the pregnancy, claiming that bringing a child to term in modern America is tantamount to infanticide. Episode cuts to black abruptly and at the scheduled time with no resolution to the debate, with no end slate or credits.

Date: 22 February 1976

Localized Broadcast Location: Manchester, United Kingdom, approximately 100,000 televisions affected

Scheduled Program: The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 2, “One for the Angels”

Program Deviations:

Episode deviates from established plot immediately. The primary character, Lou Bookman, portrayed in the original episode as a kind and friendly old man, is characterized instead as a foul-tempered, bitter, and miserable retiree who lives alone and is dying of COPD1 resultant from a lifelong smoking habit. The character of Mr. Death is played by an unknown middle-aged actor rather than a young Murray Hamilton, and is smoking a cigarette in each scene.

Mr. Death is silent upon his appearance, and the bedridden Bookman spends the initial part of the episode angrily protesting against the presence of this apparent intruder, before suddenly realizing of his own accord that the stranger is Death and has come for his soul. Bookman then begins pleading and proposes various bargains, including volunteering to murder children and offer their souls in exchange for his. Mr. Death listens silently to these protestations for approximately 12 minutes as Bookman becomes increasingly desperate, then speaks, asking Bookman why he clings to life so strongly when he clearly has nothing to live for and has never indicated a desire to participate in anything that life has to offer. Bookman is unable to muster a response to this, and lapses into silence. Mr. Death approaches Bookman's bed and offers him a last cigarette. Bookman wordlessly accepts, and upon finishing it, Mr. Death disappears. Bookman expires.

Remaining 9 minutes consist of an extended shot of Bookman's motionless corpse, and episode fades to end credits.

Date: 06 March 2014

Localized Broadcast Location: Anchorage, Alaska, USA, unknown number of televisions affected

Scheduled Program: Worst Cooks in America, Season 5, Episode 3

Program Deviations:

Episode deviates from baseline immediately following introduction and previous episode recap. Series host Anne Burrell spends entirety of episode firmly insisting that each contestant incorporate an inordinate amount of onions into each of their dishes, occasionally to the point of demanding that their meals should consist entirely of various preparations of onions. Contestants and other judges react to this with hesitation and confusion, but acquiesce when Burrell strongly implies that any contestant that does not provide a meal entirely composed of onions will be eliminated from the competition.

Individual camera asides with Burrell, during which a judge generally reflects upon the events and state of the current round of competition, instead consist of Burrell determinedly lecturing the viewer on the health benefits of eating onions as well as highly specific and detailed scientific facts concerning the plant genus Allium, to which onions belong. During the evaluation portion of the program, wherein contestants provide their meals to the judges for tasting, each judge reacts to the contestants' highly onion-centric meals with distaste and refuse to continue eating after initial tasting.

The exception is Burrell, who energetically and sloppily consumes her meal without the use of eating utensils before seizing the other judges' plates and consuming their meals in their entirety, without consulting her colleagues or otherwise speaking. This process occupies 7 minutes of unedited, uninterrupted footage, during which all other individuals present observe Burrell in visibly uncomfortable silence. Burrell then eliminates contestants Ken Hsu and Joe Slaughter on the grounds of “disrespecting the true value of the onion”, and the episode ends as normal.

Addendum 4933-01: On December 2nd, 2017, operatives within Information Task Force Lambda-99 “Code Sharks”, in conjunction with Foundation global listening network PANOPTICON, successfully triangulated the SCP-4933 broadcast waveform with the assistance of experimental thaumic energy detectors, placing its origin point to approximately 200 kilometers south-southeast of Tiksi, Russia. A Mobile Task Force was immediately dispatched to the area, with orders to determine the precise nature of the equipment or entities responsible for the transmissions.

SCP-4933-01

At the location of the projected coordinates, operatives located a large (≈ 30 meters tall) stone structure, situated upon an outcrop overlooking a section of the surrounding taiga. A temporary forward camp was established at the site following preliminary hazard analysis, and the structure was given the tentative designator SCP-4933-01.

SCP-4933-01 is made of non-anomalous granite, hewn seamlessly from a single contiguous monolith. The immediate space around the structure (to a distance of approximately 300 meters) is saturated with an extremely loud omnidirectional radio flux with a frequency of precisely 99MHz and as-yet immeasurable amplitude.2 The strength of this radio flux renders it dangerous for unshielded humans to approach, as the total energy carried by the wave results in the boiling of fluids contained within the body. The vegetation surrounding the structure is undamaged by the intensity of this radiation, however – the mechanism responsible for this is currently unclear.

SCP-4933-01 does not physically appear in any satellite images of the area taken to date, nor does its ambient radio signal remain detectable at a distance greater than approximately 300 meters from the object. Individuals living in the surrounding area have consistently professed ignorance of the object's presence within the forest near Tiski.

The north-facing side of SCP-4933-01 contains a rectangular aperture 4 by 2 meters in size, which provides access to the interior of the structure. This aperture is precisely cut into the surrounding granite and does not feature a door or any other form of sealing apparatus, leaving the monolith's interior open to the air. Both manned and unmanned investigations into this space have been successful, with the aid of specially radiation-shielded clothing and equipment.

The interior of SCP-4933-01 consists of a single cubic room, 9 meters long on each side. The walls of this chamber are comprised of the same material as the exterior, and are blank. This space contains two objects. The first is a cubic stone pedestal measuring .9 meters per side, contiguously carved from the stone of the floor. Atop this pedestal is a 1951 Zenith “Aldrich” porthole-style CRT television set. This television set is not connected to a power source and has not been seen to activate at any time. A significant layer of dust rests on both the television and the pedestal, the composition of which is consistent with the soil surrounding SCP-4933-01. Radiological dating of both the structural material of SCP-4933-01 and the television set have indicated that these objects have existed in their current state for an amount of time not less than approximately 250,000 years.

Investigation into both the stability of local spacetime in the vicinity of SCP-4933-01 as well as the history of the Zenith electronics company are both currently underway.

Addendum 4933-02: On June 4th, 2018, a routine inspection of SCP-4933-01's interior revealed that a single yellow Post-It brand adhesive note had been affixed to the screen of the television. On the note was a message written in cursive with a blue ballpoint pen, reading “We're ready and receiving, but we haven't heard back from you. Your transmitter may be malfunctioning. Please stand by while we make a minor adjustment.” Roughly three hours after this item was discovered, the positions of Earth's magnetic North and South poles rotated upon their central axis approximately 9 kilometers laterally toward the equator.

Analysis of the 99MHz broadcast frequency has resumed, with devising a method of contacting the entity or entities communicating within the channel placed at Level 2 priority.

Footnotes

1. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

2. Each and every radio receiver used by Foundation analysts to measure SCP-4933-01's ambient radio field has been destroyed upon tuning to 99MHz. This indicates that although the signal remains at a static and commonly-used radio frequency, the amplitude and therefore “loudness” of the signal is greater than human technology has been designed to practically detect. Investigation into the development of a radio receiver capable of withstanding and accurately measuring SCP-4933-01's signal is underway.

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