SCP-2432

Description

SCP-2432 is Room 710 of the A██████ Hotel in State College, Pennsylvania. SCP-2432 is similar to most rooms within the A██████ Hotel, with two queen-sized beds, closet, television and bathroom, all non-anomalous elements in and of themselves. The interior of SCP-2432's walls are lined with a silver, metallic, woven aramid that is extremely tough, with a tensile strength of close to 4003 MPa. No other walls in the A██████ Hotel have been shown to contain this aramid.

SCP-2432's construction is designed in a way to induce a mind-altering effect on a guest, hereafter designated Subject, who sleeps overnight in SCP-2432. The walls of SCP-2432 can generate an oscillation that manipulates human brainwaves through an unknown process. This oscillation places subjects sleeping in SCP-2432 into a trance. Upon leaving, subjects are compelled to write a review of the A██████ Hotel on a popular travel or business review site.

The subject's experience will often be highly exaggerated, with praise for the various services and amenities provided by SCP-2432. Reviews will often be written in incoherent language, with frequent nonsensical or cryptic sentences. Subjects describe having no memories of writing each review.

The reviews generated by subjects have a minor textual memetic property of varying strength. Any individual who reads a generated review will feel a desire to travel to State College and book SCP-2432 for an overnight stay. The most powerful memetic triggers have caused a 62% increase in bookings at the A██████ Hotel.

The television on which SCP-2432-1 was located.

SCP-2432-1 is a small organic nodule, resembling a boil, located on the back of the otherwise normal LG brand HD flat-screen television located in SCP-2432. Samples from the fluid inside show a mixture of human, rockfish and unidentified porcine DNA. This nodule is stuck to the television with an adhesive mucus it generates, though it can be removed safely and easily.

When SCP-2432-1 is placed on the back of SCP-2432's television, in addition to the standard extended satellite channel package found in other televisions throughout the A██████ Hotel, an additional television channel labeled as "roomnews" is accessible. No other television throughout the A██████ Hotel, or any television brought into SCP-2432 has access to "roomnews" aside from the room's original. "Roomnews" can only be accessed by placing SCP-2432-1 on SCP-2432's television. Attaching SCP-2432-1 to any other television set yields no effect. The nature of the relationship between the set, SCP-2432-1, and SCP-2432 is unknown.

Apparent programming on "roomnews" consists of one 24-hour untitled show. The content of this show is a single still photograph of a pastoral lake scene with a sailboat, while a muzak version of the dance song Since I Left You by The Avalanches plays on repeat. Once every three days, the audio is interrupted while an unidentified male voice with a British accent reads a dramatic monologue addressed to the viewer. Contents of the monologue are similar to reviews generated by subjects and deal with exaggerated praise for the hotel, its amenities, and the lifestyle of staying in hotels. The monologue, unlike the reviews, is coherent and contains no memetic triggers, although 13% of subjects who viewed the monologue under controlled conditions describe feeling mildly disturbed or discomforted. If SCP-2432-1 has been removed, placing it back on SCP-2432's television will immediately begin broadcast of a monologue. The cycle will then begin again, with the next monologue broadcasting three days later if not removed.

SCP-2432 first appeared on 6/7/99, when the A██████ Hotel first switched from cable to satellite television. Before this, hotel administration had no record of a Room 710 existing.

Monologue recorded during test with SCP-2432-1 on █/██/14:

Let me describe something to you. This is a true story. It really happened to me. It could have happened to you.

Every day you wake up and you go to your job and there’s just something off about your boss, he’s weird and clingy and strange. Your co-workers are nice enough but they don’t communicate. They are quiet and out of it and absorbed in their own little worlds and you are ignored. Not because you are ugly or awkward or rude but because you are there. And you suspect things about your co-workers. They disappear to have sex in the bathroom for long periods of time and keep surfing social media all day every day. Despite their habits and the strange things each of them places on their Twitter pages they seem to be doing so much better than you. How are you falling behind? And you should love the job. It’s your passion. Most would die to be doing a job they are passionate about. You really should but you can’t. Wonder becomes routine and routine becomes drudgery and it’s day in and day out and you struggle to maintain your soul. This is not what should happen.

'Should' is such a tormenting word. A thinking trap. Should. Your life is ruled by shoulds.

You come home in your beat-up old car along the same boring street in your town. Everything is along that main drag and you cannot really go elsewhere. Everything is overcast and the pedestrians are idiots and the drivers are too. You get home and have a million, billion projects to accomplish.

You should compete in the rat race but you’re bone tired. You promise your grandmother you should text her because she’s going through chemo and she only just figured out texting because she’s getting old and having a hard time adjusting and it’s so painful for her and you should be there but the job is so demanding.

You have a thousand books you should be reading. You have a million projects you should complete. The rent on your tiny apartment is due and the dishes are piling high and dirty in the sink. You barely have enough money for pizza as you lie in your boxers on your greasy 10-year-old couch from an IKEA in Fishkill, New York that closed a year ago. You remember your mom taking you there as a kid. Then she left. Now you sit, fat and scared in your underpants as you shovel food in your face and masturbate to pornography of fat women feeding each other because you have kinky and perverted tastes but you also binge-watch some idiotic sitcom on the TV because you have no attention span for either one on their own. And deep inside you beneath the boredom and the half-wanted orgasm and the nauseous feeling of the horrible junky food you feel a deep, growing anxiety. The feeling of watching your life burn around you as you try and try to succeed for something great, to make your mark on society but you cannot bring yourself to do so despite your convictions. The dread is horrible. It’s all crumbling apart. The parade is passing you by and you are helpless. Immobile in your state like a great boulder made of disappointment, regret, depression and malaise.

There is nothing for you here.

You need to leave this place. You have a choice.

Get your good clean shirt and your smart pants and announce you are taking a break. Don’t even pack, don’t even bring your phone. One simple call to the office and get on your way. Take that old beat-up car from the garage underneath your apartment complex, give your cat the last of his food and some water, and hit the road. Leave the town and your ex and the promises you made and your job and your grandmother and your responsibilities and worries.

What I recommend to you is simple: Find a hotel. Not a motel or something shabby. A hotel. Even a chain will do.

Hotels are simply remarkable, aren’t they? Clean and elegant. All modernistic and designed to appeal to the eye. You don’t need to care about a thing in the world. Food is provided, they clean up after you and you can feel like you have some luxury for once. Most even have pools and fitness centers where you can finally get in shape and pick your life up. It’s a chance to step back and regroup.

Take a look at the customers around you. Travelers, most. Strange people, interesting people. People you won’t ever see again. Travel is so romantic, so mysterious. My, what stories these people probably have! And the staff, also all so attentive in their smart little uniforms. Don’t listen to the naysayers. These people all love their jobs. You know they do.

The room is amazing. The wallpaper is elegant and the paintings make you feel at ease. There are clean towels every day and the bed is freshly made. You can escape the oncoming storm outside. The thunder crashing down on the roof like ball bearings. You could live your whole life in this place. Enjoy the sugary cereals at the breakfast buffet. Get a loyalty card and pay no money. Travel really changes a man. Relaxes him. Shapes him up into a better person. You become a better person by staying in a hotel. Strong, social, a proper soldier. You adapt to the hotel mindset. Enjoy the soft music and eat that fresh waffle. Grab a beer in the evening with your fellow transients from the attached sports bar. Relax and watch that old showing of that superhero movie on your TV. Live here forever. Enjoy the hotel. Become the hotel. Never leave. Why would you want to leave? Even when you do walk out those pristine glass sliding doors, you are empty. The hotel is in your soul now and you feel a worse person away from it. You feel yourself slipping back to that grey life. A black hole is in your heart. Your soul is the hotel. Your consciousness is the hotel. You are now one with your accommodations. You are your accommodations are your life. Ascend.

Isn’t that lovely?

Addendum: On █/██/17 D-3456, who had participated in sleep studies involving SCP-2432, contracted an unknown illness while working with SCP-████. Initially ruled to be related to SCP-████, he was placed in quarantine.

During examination, medical officers found a small television-like screen made of bone tissue growing in his stomach. An unknown skin disease was also observed, with purple floral-pattern rashes covering his body. Other symptoms gradually emerged including extreme weight gain, glossolalia, the slow conversion of the lower intestine to porcelain pipes, the conversion of liver to a pillow, and the replacement of all subcutaneous muscle with the aramid found in SCP-2432. Subject was extremely delirious during this period, and would frequent repeat the words "ascending" and "relaxing". Subject expired thirty days after initial observation, as symptoms continued and increased in speed. Subject's body shape became a rough cube as weight gain increased, and glossolalia began to resemble television static. Corpse was incinerated.

Within the next thirty days, five more D-Class and one researcher who were involved with testing on SCP-2432 developed similar symptoms and were immediately quarantined. The disease was ruled to be connected to SCP-2432. All testing ceased.