SCP-3188
This Man Must Die
Special Containment Procedures
SCP-3188 is flagged for the following heightened containment protocols:
- Potential CK-class reality restructuring catalyst
- Infohazardous phenomenon
- Related to one or more members of Overwatch Command
Knowledge of the existence of SCP-3188 is restricted to personnel holding Level 5 security clearance and others who have been approved directly by a vote of Overwatch Command. All currently serving personnel formerly assigned to Project TRAILHEAD are restricted from participating in any activities of ancillary importance to the containment of SCP-3188.
The full account of SCP-3188 has been subject to informational fragmentation. Database restrictions have been enacted to ensure that no individual receives more than approximately 15% of the relevant details of SCP-3188. Specified sections of the account of SCP-3188 have been keyed for access only to specific members of Overwatch Command.
The records of Project TRAILHEAD have been expunged. Senior personnel associated with the project have been retired, and memories of remaining staff deemed to be critical to ongoing Foundation operations have been altered to remove knowledge of the project. Previous directives ordering research into waveform collapse alteration have been countermanded. No information concerning Project TRAILHEAD or the possibility of waveform collapse alteration is to be made available outside of Overwatch Command.
Extant information on SCP-3188 is to be maintained solely as deemed necessary for the safety of remaining members of Overwatch Command. Further research into SCP-3188, especially attempts to establish a responsible party for SCP-3188 or otherwise impose overarching interpretations on the events thereof, is forbidden.
Description
SCP-3188 is the murder of O5-9, occurring 27 April 2018. Emergency informational protocols have revealed to the entirety of Overwatch Command that O5-9 was Helmut Roth, a former regional director of the Deutsche Bundesbank and an influential international financier controlling assets valued at approximately $25.8 billion at the time of his death.
The following account of SCP-3188 has been approved for dissemination to cleared personnel in accordance with infohazard security protocols:
O5-9 was found dead by Austrian authorities on the morning of April 27, 2018, in the dining room of his residence in Vienna. Detectives are certain that a crime was committed.
Addendum 3188.1 - Project TRAILHEAD
As part of standard post-mortem procedures for a member of Overwatch Command, Foundation personnel were granted access to the entirety of O5-9's records upon the verification of his death. As part of this review process, researchers learned of the existence of Project TRAILHEAD, an extensive program utilizing a small number of high-level Foundation personnel and a series of outside parties under established blind contracting procedures.
The purpose of TRAILHEAD appears to have been to design a sophisticated personal defense system for O5-9. Utilizing research1 into the nature of quantum decoherence and the possibility of establishing passive control over the wavefunction affecting a specified number of pointer states in observed reality, Project TRAILHEAD ultimately established a limited degree of control around O5-9's place in this established plane of existence.
O5-9 and the Foundation personnel overseeing TRAILHEAD came to believe that the project was successful in establishing a state in the universal wavefunction in which O5-9 would only die as the result of a naturally-occurring, age-related illness. This was seen as a bulwark against the possibility of violent death or grievous incapacitation on the part of O5-9. Researchers appear to have been preparing to reveal the existence of TRAILHEAD to the rest of Overwatch Command at the time of O5-9's death, and evidence exists that the project was intended as a test case, to be implemented for other Foundation personnel deemed to be indispensable.
Researchers' confidence in the success of TRAILHEAD was such that O5-9 tested its efficacy by ordering a contractor to fire a loaded 9 mm handgun at his head. Despite being inspected beforehand by armory staff, the gun misfired, failing to discharge after numerous attempts by the contractor. This process was repeated for five different handguns, supplied from numerous Foundation sites, each failing to discharge in each instance.
Nonetheless, O5-9 was documented to have died violently on 27 April 2018. Why TRAILHEAD apparently failed at that date is unknown.