Item #: SCP-3678

Object Class: Keter1

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-3678 is currently uncontained. A Task Force of Foundation organizational sociologists, psychomathematicians, and thamaturges is currently investigating the source of SCP-3678, possible vectors of transmission, and possible patterns between 3678-Milliarium Events. As ██% of Foundation employees (and ██% of employees at Level 3 and above) fit the profile of SCP-3678 affected individuals, identifying possible vectors of transmission is a top priority.

Description: SCP-3678 is an anomalous probabilistic phenomenon that affects individuals fitting a specific profile within an organization. Affected individuals will advance through the organization non-anomalously until the conditions for a 3678-Milliarium Event are met. After a 3678-Milliarium Event, the affected individual will suddenly and invariably suffer an irreparable loss of prestige in the organization or leave the organization altogether. This will happen against all statistical models of organizational inertia, psychological analysis, or sociological prediction.

Profile of SCP-3678 Affected Individuals

Membership in Organization: All SCP-3678 affected individuals are members of some organization. These organizations range in size and power, but include non-profit organizations, public office, activist groups, political parties, and hospital groups. For an exhaustive lists of organizations in which SCP-3678 affected individuals have been found, see Appendix SCP-3678-A

Neophytes: SCP-3678 affected individuals are almost always in their twenties or early thirties. A longitudinal study of SCP-3678 affected individuals2 (n=██) found that the median age of infection by SCP-3678 was 24, (σ=1.5 years).

Charismatic SCP-3678 affected individuals are unusually socially intelligent and charismatic. Foundation organizational psychologists have found that SCP-3678 affected individuals are extremely skilled at forming and maintaining strategic relationships conducive to rapid advancement within their organization.

Ideologically and Personally Motivated In addition to being single-mindedly committed to their organization, SCP-3678 affected individuals have personality traits that are perfectly suited to the ethos and goals of their organization. For example, SCP-3678 affected individuals in corporations will be individualistic and unusually ruthless, while SCP-3678 affected individuals in public office will be extremely effective communicators who value compromise and procedural norms. Anderson et al found that SCP-3678 affected individuals were statistically highly significantly (p=0.0092) more likely to be described as being the embodiment of the organization. Furthermore, those surveyed were statistically significantly (p=0.05) more likely to refer to SCP-3678 affected individuals in those exact words or using a similar metaphor in the local cultural context.3

On SCP-3678-Milliarium Events

There are a few conditions that will trigger 3678-Milliarium Events, including:

An SCP-3678 affected individual's impending promotion to a leadership position within their organization

If an SCP-3678 affected individual has already achieved a leadership role, the eve of a significant policy/mission shift enacted by the affected individual

Instability within the organization and the impending ascendency of the faction led or championed by an SCP-3678 affected individual

Prolonged conflict with hostile organizations, especially at a point where these conflicts are at an all-time high

Notable Examples of SCP-3678

Name of SCP-3678 Affected Individual
Organizational Affiliation
3678-Milliarium Event and Aftermath

Irakli Tsereteli
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party-Menshevik Faction
Rising from the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet to Minister of the Interior in the Russian Provisional Government, Tsereteli was able to consolidate his influence to the point where he was the Prime Minster of the RPG from July 7th-25th 1917 in all but name. Suddenly, despite the long running power struggle between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks for control of the Petrograd Soviet, Tsereteli successfully campaigned for the release of Bolshevik Leon Trotsky from prison. Once released, Trotsky campaigned to seize control of the Petrograd Soviet on September 25, 1917 and summarily exiled Tsereteli.

Carl Walters
Renaissance Technologies, LLC
In 2010, twenty-five year old Carl Walters was hired as an analyst for the hedge fund management firm Renaissance Technologies, LLC, having recently received a PhD from MIT for research on stochastic processes. In a mere two years Walters had risen through the ranks of Renaissance analysts, and by December 2012 Walters had been offered the position of junior manager of the 3.3 billion dollar Medallion Fund. On the afternoon of December 5, 2012, Walters was served with a termination letter due to a clerical error. In a rage, Walters responded with an email to the entire department, his direct supervisor, and all his current clients laden with profanity and invective towards the company. At the moment before Walters sent the email, the entire office building experienced a three minute brown-out and email services crashed. Realizing his near miss, Walters left his office for a walk to clear his head and reflect upon his fortune. Two blocks outside his building, Walters was accosted by a homeless man asking for spare change. When he stopped to berate the man, Walters realized that the homeless man, Virgil Cantwell, had been a postdoctoral fellow in the MIT mathematics program at the same time Walters had been in a PhD student. Cantwell told Walters that he had been hired as an analyst by a different firm after his time at MIT, but the high pressure environment had driven him to amphetamine abuse and eventual ruin. As recounted to Foundation interviewers, Walters was "struck by the futility of gathering wealth", embraced Cantwell, threw his own amphetamines down a storm drain, and quit his position at Renaissance. After giving away all his worldly possessions, Walters joined a commune twenty miles south of Humboldt, California, where he lived for one week before being expelled for forming a black market for processed, genetically modified junk food. Walters is now a call-center manager in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Mark Yeager
The People's Liberation Front of Greater Bushwick
In 2008, Mark Yeager graduated summa cum laude from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor's in Philosophy and moved to Williamsburg, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City. In 2009 Yeager joined the The People's Liberation Front of Bushwick. From there Yeager became a powerful force within the group, spearheading the initiative to change its name to "The People's Liberation Front of Greater Bushwick" (PLF-GB), including the neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant. In the meantime, Yeager was discussing the possibility of an anti-capitalist protest with Mark Graeber. It was Yeager who suggested the location of Zuccotti Park, as it was privately owned and protestors could not be evicted without the consent of the property owners. On September 17th, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street protest began in Zuccotti Park, with Yeager leading a cadre of twenty trained PLF-GB members. Over the next few weeks, Yeager grew his personal following to over seventy-five members of the 100 to 200 consistent protestors in the park, spreading a blend of neo-Maoist and Situationist philosophy dubbed "New Bushwick Thought". On the night of November 14th, protestors recieved word that the New York City Police Department would be clearing the park within the next twenty-four hours. Yeager immediately assembled a human megaphone4 of fifty people. Yeager drew the attention of the entire park by laying out a detailed platform of anti-capitalist stances, as well as a clear and specific program of direct action guided by the philosophy of New Bushwick Thought. Ten minutes into the speech, Yeager was interrupted by his girlfriend, Annalyn Barnett. Despite Barnett's use of an intrauterine device and Yeager's consistent condom use, Barnett had become pregnant. This instigated an hour long argument between Barnett and Yeager, intermittently amplified by confused members of the human megaphone, as Barnett wanted to keep the pregnancy and Yeager wanted to terminate it. Continuing to argue, Barnett and Yeager left the park and went to Barnett's apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. After two weeks, Yeager threatened to end the relationship and work solely for cash as to prevent Barnett from securing child support, after which Barnett agreed to terminate the pregnancy. On the morning of November 30th, Barnett arrived at Joan Malin Brooklyn Health Center for the termination appointment to find that the clinic had been closed for the day due to a telephoned bomb threat. Barnett's call to Yeager to inform him of the delay was interrupted by a call from Barnett's mother. Barnett's mother informed Barnett that her father had suffered a stroke and was now partially paralyzed, and requested that she move back to the Charlottesville, North Carolina area to help her care for him. Barnett and Yeager sold their possessions and spent their savings to move to the Charlottesville area, renting an apartment and working six part time jobs between them. By the time Barnett's father died on April 15th and Barnett had settled the funeral and estate arrangements, the pregnancy had advanced past North Carolina's twenty week abortion ban, and Barnett could not afford to leave the state to obtain an abortion elsewhere. Yeager and Barnett were married in 2012, and in 2015 Mark Yeager's father died and left him a substantial inheritance. As of 2017, Mark and Annalyn Yeager live in a house in an affluent Charlottesville suburb along with their daughter Lucy. Mark Yeager has not been involved in political activism since he left New York.

Mailie Brown
The Fifth Church
Mailie Brown was a twenty-two-year old resident of Liverpool who joined The Fifth Church some time in 1999. Raised in a strict Catholic family, Through Brown's dogmatism, loyalty to the Fifthist hierarchy, and chanting abilities, she achieved a mastery of Fifthist practices at an unusual rate. Merely one year after she was inducted into the Fifth Church, Brown was made a Fifthist pastor. According to Fifthist apostates and the coerced testimony of Fifthist moles, Brown received some sort of anomalous revelation in May 2000 and began training Fifthist acolytes to infiltrate Foundation offices across the United Kingdom, apparently in response to the future actions of Project [REDACTED] and the events of [DATA REDACTED]. On the evening of October 5, 2005, Brown gathered her congregation in Stanley Park, Liverpool to harness the power of "the falling of the Star Veil", an astrological event still poorly understood by the Foundation. As Brown led her congregation, they began to exhibit a reality warping effect that encompassed a hemisphere centered on Brown that grew at a rate of 0.05 m/sec. Fifthist defectors described such phenomena as congregants beginning to merge psychically, physically, and metaphysically (with each other and with local flora), eddies of anti-time, and "ideas manifesting in physical form, so that we could kill them".5 Meanwhile, against all meteorological and astrological predictions for the night, a large cloud formation had formed over the Isle of Man to the northwest of Liverpool and was blown towards the park by winds of 75 km/hr. This cloud formation did not seem to be anomalous in any way. The reality warping phenomenon in Stanley Park was still well below cloud level by the time the cloud formation arrived at around 10:05 PM local time. For reasons that are still not well understood, this cloud cover interfered with the ritual so as to instantly collapse the radius of affected space to the space Brown was occupying. This coincided with a small, natural fluctuation in global Hume levels, which lead to the metaphysical annihilation of Mailie Brown. At this point, a Foundation counterintelligence unit along with Mobile Task Force Lambda-5 "White Rabbits" descended upon Stanley Park and apprehended the remaining Fifthists. Foundation metaphysicians and thaumaturges found that the woman who had been Mailie Brown (denoted Brown-1), while retaining all her memories, was metaphysically identical to Marie de Dugnirie, a peasant woman who lived around Pontivy, France in the late 18th century. As the Mailie Brown-1 is not a Fifthist, and arguably never has been, she was amnesticized, released from Foundation custody, and has lived in Liverpool under EID surveillance. Brown-1 is now married and a supernumerary in the lay Catholic organization Opus Dei. By all accounts, Brown-1 is a traditional Catholic with no anomalous or even heterodox beliefs or practices.

Selected Diary Entries from SCP-3678 Affected Individual, María de Leon:

de Leon was an intern for Hillary Clinton's congressional office, before joining Clinton's presidential campaign, and rising rapidly through the ranks to become Clinton's main campaign advisor for the Midwest.

March 5, 2016

I've been promoted today!!!! I had to step out of Robby's office and call Máma the second he told me. I'll be advising on the entire Midwest! I can't believe I've come this far. Robby said I was really something special, and he was proud to have me reporting directly to him. He said that to me! This really is the Year of the Woman. I'm so honored to be a part of this movement, to be here for Máma and my tías and my Abuela. And her Abuela! I'm proud to be at the forefront of the fight against bigotry, and keep this country truly great.

October 2, 2016

Dozens of local MI activists have been calling us non-stop asking for signs, asking for other organizers and canvassers to be diverted to them. They say they're in trouble. Robby called a meeting today and reiterated that we are not to promise them any more aid. According to him, all the models say MI is ours, and that we've got science on our side and local organizers don't. I spoke up at that point. Pápa had been in the UFW6 long enough for me to know that the people on the ground know the ground. But as everyone's eyes turned to me, I remembered everything that had happened this morning. Connor and I got into a huge fight the night before. We made up, but as he was leaving for work he kissed my forehead and told me sometimes I let my emotions get away with me. That I'm fiery and that's a good thing but sometimes I need to remember to center myself and listen to reason. My desk calendar of inspirational quotes for today says, "Sometimes intuition can lead you astray. Remember to align yourself with your higher nature". And I'm on my period today, so maybe I'm not thinking straight. After all, Robby keeps talking about the data and the model. I've never been afraid to offer my input (isn't that what I'm getting paid to do?), but maybe this time I should trust that these smart people know what they're doing. I excused myself and sat down. I felt like it wasn't even me, but it was some other person taking the pen of my life from my hand and writing my story for me. I have to believe that we've got justice and reason on our side.

November 7, 2016

I don't even know why I got out of bed to write this. My head is still pounding. I could get myself some Advil but it won't fix my heart. How could this happen? All my life Máma had told me that the world can be a harsh, cruel place, but thanks to people like me it is becoming steadily less so. Was she wrong, or is it just me? The one upside is that the world ending distracts me from the fact that my career is over. This is one hell of an albatross around my neck.

Now, everything I've believed in and strove towards my whole life feels like some stupid joke my Abuelo used to tell me and my cousins, building and building for ages, all of us waiting with bated breath, and the punchline is nothing.

Or maybe the punchline is me.

+ LEVEL 3 CLEARANCE REQUIRED

- ACCESS GRANTED

On March, 3, 2020, Researcher Brendan Kowalski, SCP-3678 Research Head, surrendered himself to Foundation custody claiming that statistical analyses showed that he himself was being affected by SCP-3678. As SCP-3678 is now targeting Foundation members, it has been reclassified as Threat Level Black.

+ LEVEL 4 CLEARANCE REQUIRED

- ACCESS GRANTED

The Foundation is the only bulwark against the utter destruction of the world. Behind every corner lies horrors unimaginable to the minds of the uninitiated. And as they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't all out to get you.

But maybe you are just paranoid.

It is my belief that SCP-3678 is not anomalous at all. Researcher Kowalski is brilliant, motivated, utterly devoted to the Foundation…and young. This is not an insult to him. Young people are a source of nearly infinite promise, but have not yet learned resilience. Thus obstacles become tragedies, and a life that has not even truly started yet seems a endless and pointless digression into a cruel and meaningless punchline. Then, one goes searching for similar tragedies to try and justify this loss of hope. I recommend an intensive round of psychotherapy for Researcher Kowalski and his transfer to a different project.

-Senior Researcher Avvaiyar Chandrasekar

Recommendation received. Request denied. The evidence is too strong and the cost of a mistake is too great.

-Site Director Alexandre Basquiat

Formal complaint received. Decision pending.

-O5-2

Footnotes

1. Under review.

2. Anderson, Caliguiani, and Kowasami. A Longitudinal Study of Possible Organizational Anomalies. Journal of Probabilistic Anomalies.

3. Research into whether this wording itself is anomalously selected is currently underway.

4. As New York City ordinance bans electronically amplified sound, Occupy Wall Street protestors pioneered the use of the "human megaphone", by which audience members would amplify a speaker with their voiced by simply repeating the speaker sentence by sentence.

5. For a full description of the reality warping events of October 5, 2005, please see Interview 3678-B

6. United Farm Workers of America, an agricultural labor union founded by César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong.