Special Containment Procedures
SCP-3119-C's toilets must be cleaned daily; its inner and exterior walls repainted once a year; and its floor kept in a good state of repair. Ongoing containment suggests that SCP-3119-C must attract in excess of 80 people each night to avoid an Event-3119-New-Yorker. Drink prices must be competitive.
Speakers, sound decks and lighting rigs should be modular in design to allow for changing fashions. Any non-modular renovations will require enacting Procedure SCP-3119-Conga, and the containment team should consider designating a new property as SCP-3119-C rather than maintain the current property. SCP-3119-C should be open for a minimum of 6 hours per night, and must be open for a minimum of 35 hours per week. Destruction of an instance of SCP-3119-C is expected to cause an immediate Event-3119-New-Yorker and is forbidden.
The Foundation supplies a mild psychoactive substance (currently MDMA) cut with Class B amnestics to the local hidden economy with the requirement they be sold only after 1AM, and only in the locality of SCP-3119-C, and at an attractively low price.
EC-3119-A Containment Addendum: The Foundation must materially encourage local law enforcement to patrol in the area around SCP-3119-C during the sale hours of these amnestics. The Ethics Committee would remind researchers that the Foundation does not sell roofies.
Description
Instances of SCP-3119 are sentient, non-corporeal, non-visible entities that subsist on the communal expression of music and dance. There are currently two known instances of SCP-3119, designated -1 and -2, both currently contained in the Pearl District of Portland. No difference in their personality or tastes have been measured to date. SCP-3119 instances are telepathic and friendly and do not leave SCP-3119-C unless encouraged. Any researchers that have completed Telepathic Containment 102 or higher are permitted to interact with SCP-3119 directly for the purposes of containment and gathering data.
Instances of SCP-3119 inhabit non-anomalous dance halls or nightclubs. We denote these here by the suffix "-C" for "Club" e.g. SCP-3119-C. These instances of SCP-3119-C should be outfitted to compete with local dance halls or nightclubs, either by the Foundation or by the 'host' of Event-3119-New-Yorker (see below). SCP-3119 will leave SCP-3119-C only during occurrences of Event-3119-New-Yorker and Procedure-3119-Conga.
The primary effect of SCP-3119 is to heighten the sensations and imagination of dancers, musicians and DJs during an evening of dancing. In a nightclub environment SCP-3119 will temporarily infest a single dancer who will temporarily gain a euphoric sense of heightened reality: music will appear purer; dance will feel more vital; people will usually appear to radiate storge, empathetic love. SCP-3119 will infest this dancer for around one song and then move on to another dancer. Tests with both D-Class and Research personnel have shown that SCP-3119 chooses its hosts based on only their desire and ability to dance.
No verbal communication has been established with SCP-3119. If the DJ of SCP-3119-C plays a slow-paced track the infested dancer will show mild disgust; they will dance in a way consistent with a fast non-audible polyrhythm mixed into the audible music. If an area of SCP-3119-C has poor acoustics SCP-3119 will leave the infested dancer should they dance into it. The recently-infested dancer will usually express disappointment, and inform the bar staff about the poor acoustics in that area. All attempts to communicate with SCP-3119 by e.g. dancing using Morse code or semaphore flags have failed. The emotional state of SCP-3119 is available to any infested dancer.
Infested dancers can remember that they were not alone in their heads. Dancers that are regular attendees of SCP-3119-C, or who have been repeatedly infested during a single night, are to be encouraged to partake of the provided psychoactive-laced Class-B amnestics in order to discredit these memories. A list of regular attendees is to be maintained by the Lead Researcher, currently Dr. Gillard.
Depriving an instance of SCP-3119 of the minimum 35 hours dance and music during a 7 day period will trigger a "New Yorker" Event. The instance will split in two; each new instance will then accelerate away from SCP-3119-C. When this new instance's path intersects with a creative person it will infest them and encourage them to found a new business that becomes an instance of SCP-3119-C. This infested person is the 'host' of the New Yorker event. These new instances of SCP-3119-C are non-anomalous, and in both observed cases were not initially commercially successful. We conclude that SCP-3119 has no particular insight into the establishment of successful dance halls.
We have so far recorded one Event-3119-New-Yorker. Research notes from the preceding week note that SCP-3119's emotional state was "bitter" and "impatient". Our hidden economy contacts noted an increase in the sales of Speed and Cocaine during that week. The original SCP-3119-C had seen low attendance, with most locals citing the unclean toilets as their main reason for staying away. Researchers assigned to SCP-3119 are encouraged to combine their work to improve the containment procedures with their work towards certification in Administration 101 (Self-Study) and Hospitality 101 (Self Study).
We hypothesise that these 'New Yorker' events would previously have served as a last-ditch attempt to survive in uninhabited areas, or areas hostile to dancing. We hypothesise further that one or both instance might not survive this split, finding no suitable host. In modern densely populated areas potential creative hosts are pervasive, and there exists the potential for exponential growth in an uncontained population of SCP-3119.
When we found the two new SCP-3119s we retraced the path they took. There were minor scorch marks on the stonework on each of the walls between the original club and the apartments of the new hosts. The scorch marks halved in size about once every two miles. If someday we start losing containment, we could dance instances of SCP-3119 into the middle of the desert. I don't think they're strong enough to make it back. — H. Gillard, Lead Researcher
It is periodically necessary to renovate or relocate an instance of SCP-3119-C. During this time it is not possible to provide the dance party required to contain SCP-3119. Tests involving dancing with progressively larger numbers of partners (i.e. solo as in a nightclub, pairs as in tango, Cumberland Squares, interpretive dance ensembles) reveal SCP-3119 moves between groups rather than between dancers. For example, when dancing a Cumberland Square, SCP-3119 will move from one 'basket' (set of four dancers) to the next 'basket', rather than infest one basketer at a time.
The safe movement of instances of SCP-3119 therefore requires the entire club to conga from SCP-3119-C (old) to SCP-3119-C (new). A single conga line is required so that SCP-3119 has only one group of dancers available to infest. If this is done as part of a planned relocation we encourage this to be a public event for purposes of publicity for the opening of the new SCP-3119-C. If this is done as part of an emergency response then participants in Procedure-3119-American-Smooth are expected to participate in the conga line.
I want to put down in writing Hannah's dedication to the Foundation during the fire two months ago. In taking that conga line into a burning building to rescue an SCP she showed both leadership and guts. — Researcher M. Dantzler
Attendance at instances of SCP-3119-C is highly seasonal. To mitigate low attendance that could lead to an Event-3119-New-Yorker, all Level 3+ personnel at Site 64 are invited to participate in Procedure-3119-American-Smooth.
Want to learn to dance? Need to find your rhythm? Maybe just got to work off that SCP-871?
Come dance with SCP-3119-1!
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning we are joined by Site-64's house jazz band ("The Yard Birds") as we learn the Rumba, Viennese Waltz, Tango and Foxtrot under the tutelage of a noncorporeal dance entity!
We promise to put a 'twinkle' in your toes!
Participants in Procedure-3119-American-Smooth are expected to participate in Procedure-3119-Conga in the event of containment breach due to e.g. faulty plumbing or broken windows in instances of SCP-3119-C.
I thought it might like having more dance available and a variety of music, so I set up these dance lessons. It woke up when it heard the instruments, jumped into my head, and then — the mental equivalent of a blank stare. Michael and I danced the Waltz for a bit, and it … I don't know. I got my mother a silver pendant last Christmas that I know for a fact she gave to her next door neighbor. Waltzing with SCP-3119-1 in my head was exactly like Christmas morning with my mother's polite smile.
We're continuing the lessons anyway. — H. Gillard, Lead Researcher
