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Re:Assignment to SCP-7132

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From: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

Subject: Assignment to SCP-7132

Junior Researcher Myron Bridges,

As of next week, you are reassigned to SCP-7132 containment duty. It is critical that we have someone of your artistic talent on the job. Report to Site-81 by 0800 on Monday. Good luck.

Regards,

Site-81 Senior Supervisor Rita Brackett

Secure, Contain, Protect

Item #: SCP-7132 The Pauper Teal, she makes her deal to set the captives free; the Parents move to fit her groove; the dance for all to see.

Object Class: Keter The stage is set, and even yet the Parents strain to hear; the dancers' feet tap to the beat, it rocks the atmosphere.

Special Containment Procedures: No personnel not matching personality profile 7132-FOSSE may interact with SCP-7132. SCP-7132 shall be kept in a standard humanoid containment cell with the following extra requirement: the cell's walls, ceilings, and floors must support, by hook-and-loop tape or by other means, a modularity enabling a frequent replacement of their aesthetics. The stock of such aesthetics must include a variety of different styles, colors, and cultural backgrounds; various of which must be imprinted with subtle cognitohazards inducing various emotions, including calmness, sadness, anger, and fear. The therapy, works best you see, in every state of heart. To comprehend thoughts without end, each feeling plays a part.

No fewer than three daily shifts of 7132-FOSSE personnel must be on hand to execute Procedure 011-AMOS. They shall be supported by a contingent of researchers, makeup artists, psychologists, and costume specialists. They play the role, to reach the goal, of closure and self-worth. Else sorrowful, to fill the hole, will fertilize the earth.

In case of a failure of operation 011-AMOS, the current form of SCP-7132 must be terminated with prejudice. The critics boo the dancers, who refuse to change their path. They seek to cheat the dancing feet, the Pauper's ruthless math.

Description:

SCP-7132 is a humanoid of variable appearance, though biologically it resembles a human between ██ and ███ years of age. At least once per three-day-period, SCP-7132's current form appears to die of various natural causes, and is instantaneously replaced with a new form. Memory, personality, clothing, and physical damage do not persist between manifestations; each manifestation claims to recall a separate, detailed personal history. They come from all, like leaves that fall, to glow before decay; for wounds deny them tears to cry; they fear to quit their stay.

Each naturally occuring death has the potential to manifest a variety of anomalous effects on a large scale. Such effects have, for example, dramatically influenced the motion of the earth's tectonic plates1. It is projected that if such activity continues, ████████ ██ ███ ████████████ ██ ███ ██████ ███ █████████ ██████ ████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ██ █ ████████████, █████ █████ ███ ████ ███ █████ ██████ ██ █████ ███ █ ███████-██████ █████ mass extinction event. Notably, manifestations which did not claim to have traumatic memories are statistically 2.3 times as likely to manifest these effects than manifestations which did claim to have such memories. Following this discovery, Procedure 011-AMOS was instituted to reduce the number of such effects.

The traumatized, through haunted eyes, know best what needs to heal. Less obvious, inglorious, are difficult to seal.

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Re:Assignment to SCP-7132

To: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

From: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

Subject: RE: Assignment to SCP-7132

Site-81 Supervisor Rita Brackett,

Thank you for considering me for this opportunity. I must, however, respectfully decline the offer.

Best Regards,

Junior Researcher Myron Bridges

To: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

From: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

Subject: RE: RE: Assignment to SCP-7132

Myron,

I applaud your sense of conscience. I thought as you did, once.

But years of serving here have taught me otherwise.

I thought we were the good guys, once. I saw how we preserved the world we live in, how we kept it safe from the monsters that would kill us all.

But lately, I don't know.

Our mission is to preserve what's normal. But not all that's normal is good. We lock up people merely because they have superpowers, and we subject death row prisoners to fates worse than death.

Is that ethical? I don't know.

We stand, all too often, at the track-switcher in a supercharged trolley problem. We choose to kill the few, to make a few people suffer, to preserve the rest of the world. It's not pretty. But we're all too often the bad guys, Myron, up against greater evils, and it's something you're going to have to accept.

Your refusal to join the SCP-7132 containment effort has been denied. We'll see you at 0800 Monday morning.

Regards,

Site-81 Senior Supervisor Rita Brackett

Secure, Contain, Protect

To: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

From: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

Subject: RE: RE: RE: Assignment to SCP-7132

Dear Site-81 Supervisor Rita Brackett,

Keep telling yourself that.

Sincerely,

Myron Bridges

Sent from My SCiPhone

To: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

From: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

Subject: Where Are You

Dear Junior Researcher Myron Bridges,

I am writing this at 1100 hours on the first day of your assignment to SCP-7132. You have shown up neither to Site-81 nor to your previous site. Furthermore, HR has no records of you calling in sick.

Let us be concrete and specific. Do I like Procedure 011-AMOS? No. But we have to keep the bigger picture in mind.

As to the ethics of the situation, I can only repeat what my supervisor told me, back when I was in your shoes, back when I had so little clearance that everything outside of the first thousand SCPs or so read [ACCESS DENIED] when I tried to click on them.

No matter how humanoid they may seem, anomalies aren't people. In this job you must learn the difference. You may ask, "What about SCP-105? Are you telling me Iris isn't a person?" No, I'm not. Iris is not the anomaly; the anomaly is an anomalous ability she has. And using her as the example risks conflating the people stuck with an anomaly with the Trojan horses defined by them. Look at SCP-076. Able is a regenerating murder monster; a being defined entirely by the anomaly. Thinking he was human enough to work with was one of the worst decisions the Foundation has ever made. I am in complete support of people who happen to have an anomalous ability. Beings defined by anomalies deserve no such respect.

Look at SCP-7132, then, in this framework. Is it a human who happens to be a superhero? No, it's an entity with a completely different facade every three days. If Able disguised himself as a different researcher every time he regenerated, would you consider him any less alien? Look at the file. Able never caused a mass extinction event.

Please come back to work. I really don't want to escalate this.

Regards,

Site-81 Senior Supervisor Rita Brackett

Secure, Contain, Protect

To: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

From: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

Subject: RE: Where Are You

Dear Site-81 Supervisor Rita Brackett,

The only reason I didn't reply sooner was my pressing need to dismantle the SCiPhone to get rid of every last GPS tracking tag.

I'm going to disappear for a few years. Don't come looking for me; it's not worth it. I'll live a mundane life, quiet about the past.

Sincerely,

Myron Bridges

Sent from My SCiPhone

To: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

From: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

Subject: RE: RE: Where Are You?

Dear Junior Researcher Myron Bridges,

We have no desire to capture you. Frankly, if we had wanted to do so, you would have been tied up in the back of a MTF van five minutes into your ill-conceived trek into the Salmon-Challis Forest. You didn't get rid of all the trackers on your person, you know, and you'd need a surgeon to get some out.

If persuasion doesn't work, how about threats?

We know where your parents live.

Regards,

Site-81 Senior Supervisor Rita Brackett

Secure, Contain, Protect

To: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

From: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

Subject: RE: RE: RE: Where Are You?

Dear Site-81 Supervisor Rita Brackett,

If you want to kill my parents, that's on you. If you want to kill everyone I've ever met, that's on you. You're trying to make me think this is a trolley problem. That I'm the person at the track-switcher, able to make the choice. But the truth is, I'm not the one in control of the wheel here. You are.

If you go through with it, I will be sad. But I will have no regrets. My parents wouldn't want to be around to see a version of me who would commit emotional abuse, anyway.

Sincerely,

Myron Bridges

Sent from My SCiPhone

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Re:Assignment to SCP-7132

To: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

From: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

Subject: Assignment to SCP-7132

Junior Researcher Myron Bridges,

You are now cleared to access file 011-AMOS. We hope that once you read it, you will be convinced despite your earlier objections.

Please end this farce. We really do want you on board. After all, your actions have shown you to fit into Personality Profile 7132-FOSSE, and there's very few of those around.

Regards,

Site-81 Senior Supervisor Rita Brackett

Secure, Contain, Protect

1 attachment 1.5 kB 011-AMOS.txt

To: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

From: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

Subject: Acceptance of Assignment to SCP-7132

Dear Site-81 Supervisor Rita Brackett, Audition passed, the die is cast: the dancer joins the crew. The Pauper's will, for good not ill, is more than he yet knew.

Thank you for finally clarifying what procedure 011-AMOS actually is. I was, to say the least, shocked; having inferred from the redacted article that it was something unconscionable, I realize now the wholesome nature of the service we are providing SCP-7132. From the document you sent:

Each incarnation of SCP-7132 carries its own distinct unresolved emotional tension, such as, for instance, never forgiving a specific action, never having told someone it loved them, never having had the chance to work through its own feelings about a specific event, or never getting to express its sexual or gender identity. If this emotional tension is unresolved by the time of the incarnation's natural expiration, then the instance's outside anomalous effects trigger.

Procedure 011-AMOS comprises an accelerated diagnostic and therapy regimen tailored to each SCP-7132 incarnation in order to resolve this emotional tension.

I still, however, have concerns. 011-AMOS is a good thing, true, but I imagine the Foundation's accountants can't be too happy with it. Especially since, in the long run, it is much cheaper not to enact it.

Because somehow, the consequences of not doing 011-AMOS are good.

"It is projected that if such activity continues, activity at the intersection of the Scotia and Antarctic plates will lead to the rise of a supervolcano, whose ash cloud may cool the earth enough to stave off a climate-change based mass extinction event."

In the name of all that is good and holy, why would we want to prevent any of that?

I have no further objections to joining this project and look forward to working on it.

Sincerely,

Myron Bridges

Secure, Contain, Protect

Sent from My SCiPhone

To: ten.PiCS|segdirbm#ten.PiCS|segdirbm

From: ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr#ten.PiCS|ttekcarbr

Subject: RE: Assignment to SCP-7132

Hello Myron,

I hope your time so far on 011-AMOS is doing well. You're doing the Lord's work, and I salute you for it.

It is because it is the Lord's work that we must imply what we do in the main article. We need people who are, for lack of a better term, pure of heart to execute 011-AMOS.

Do you know how many people I selected for the position before you, Myron? Thirty-four. Thirty-four people who believed the implications of the article and still agreed to participate in horrible deeds. They failed the test. And you passed, Myron. You refused to do awful things in the name of greater safety.

Now, as for why we do 011-AMOS at all. I know the Foundation aren't always the good guys. I know it would be cheaper and more our style to let SCP-7132 rot in a containment cell. Who cares if the petty concerns of one anomaly go unresolved? We've got bigger fish to fry. And if not doing anything results in something good happening, then all the better, right?

Wrong. The thing about anomalies designed to do good is, they're all means to some greater, mundane end. Whoever made them thinks that their end justifies taking an anomalous shortcut. But the thing about deus ex machinas is they hardly ever look to the long-term consequences of their actions. Look at SCP-6044, whose effort to prevent flooding created a weapon that could end the world in the wrong hands.

The supervolcano is only a stopgap solution. And the thing about stopgap solutions is, while they're very good, they tend to make people think they can stop working on the long-term solutions.

It's still a trolley problem, Myron. We've got to choose the lesser good if we want to prevent the greater.

Regards,

Site-81 Senior Supervisor Rita Brackett

Secure, Contain, Protect

Footnotes

1. Foundation satellites have registered the unique EVE frequencies of individual manifestations of SCP-7132 spiking across areas of such events before remaining there at low levels for up to seven months.

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