SCP-351
Fluid Canon
Special Containment Procedures
SCP-351-1 is to be maintained on a standard optical disc, stored in the Site-19 archives. Unauthorized individuals who view the file or listen to an infected individual recounting the false memories induced by SCP-351-1 are to be given Class-A Amnestics immediately and held under observation until Foundation staff clears the individual. If this is not possible due to extenuating circumstances, the individual(s) are to be terminated by any means available. Personnel under observation are to be held in a soundproofed room and attended only by staff wearing sound-cancelling earmuffs. Under no circumstances are security or medical personnel to remove their ear protection or read anything which has been written by SCP-351-2 at any time.
The infected personnel, SCP-351-2, are to be contained in a soundproofed room sufficient to house all members comfortably and allowed to speak freely to one another. They are to be encouraged to discuss their recollections of past events with each other. All testing and experimentation is to be carried out via D-Class examiners who have been instructed to ask specific questions to the subject and record the responses on paper. Written information does not transfer the meme. The memetic agent is extremely virulent when delivered verbally or through audio recordings.
D-Class used in any experimentation regarding SCP-351 are to be terminated immediately following the experiment in order to prevent the spread of infection. Any available method of execution is viable, but the use of firearms is suggested for efficiency and cost effectiveness.
All researchers, medical staff and security personnel are required to carry a dose of a Class-A amnestic sufficient for their body weight at all times while involved with SCP-351 in any way.
Description
SCP-351-1 is a virulent memetic agent in the form of an ASCII plaintext (.txt) file, which causes individuals who associate with one another to "remember" events which never took place. An individual infected with the meme will remember taking part in events that never happened, while multiple individuals infected by the same person or associating with that person post-infection will remember taking part in the same events.
Infected personnel are to be designated SCP-351-2. Current testing shows normal mental stability aside from believing in fictional events. When an individual is questioned on his belief, he generally shows similar levels of emotional upset as a normal individual would if his memory was called into question. Infected persons are rather vocal about their new memories, and will gladly talk at length about them to anyone, infected or not. Whether this is an aspect of the meme itself or of simply finding the subjects interesting is as of yet unknown and bears further study. Individuals with different fictional memories will intermingle memories. Conflicting "false" memories within a group of SCP-351-2 [DATA EXPUNGED].
When a sufficiently large group of SCP-351-2 are allowed to interact daily, they will gradually come to share their false memories sufficiently that an entire false reality is formed. Beliefs about objects or ideas that individuals in the group interact with on a frequent basis are seldom altered, while long-term memory is especially prone to being rewritten. A group of SCP-351-2 sufficiently isolated from the outside world will eventually "fill in" a fictional reason for their being where they are, false pasts for all individuals, and assorted minor details. In essence, an isolated group can alter its remembered version of history entirely. Over time, even disused false memories will be overwritten, resulting in [DATA EXPUNGED] within the group. Uninfected individuals inserted into an already established group of SCP-351-2 will generally react negatively for the first month, until their own memories are altered by the meme enough to become part of the cohesive "group canon". This is due to the uninfected subject having conflicting memories in relation to the infected.
Class-A (short-term memory) amnestics are to be considered an antidote for the extremely recently exposed, but if the infection took place prior to the "cutoff point" of the amnestic used, (re)infection and memory alteration takes place rapidly. Class-B and Class-C amnestics are of moderate effectiveness in "curing" an infected individual, albeit with fairly high risk to the patient. Class-B are recommended when the time of infection is unknown, or for those individuals that Class-A drugs have failed to cure. Class-B drugs have a significant chance of erasing the memories which contain the agent (and all other long term memory), but anything still held in short-term memory poses a chance for re-infection; therefore, Class-B amnestics should be avoided if at all possible. While they will erase the memetic agent, the infectee will remain extremely vulnerable to re-infection until he is back to a normal functioning state and has been briefed regarding events transpired.
Further testing and research into possible weaponization of SCP-351-1 is currently pending administrative approval.