Keep the Life

Last revised: 20 December 2029

SCP-████redacted is held at a temporary site pending the Overseer Council's review of containment, scheduled for 14 March 2030. No term for release applies, since amnestics have no lasting effect on SCP-████redacted and the implant cannot be removed under its supported procedures.

Amnestics are not to be administered to SCP-████redacted. Repeated doses have produced tolerance and spill-over effects without clearing his memories (see Description).

SCP-████redacted is not to be exposed to cognitohazardous material until device testing is complete. His earlier result with SCP-2316 came from reading only, and testing has not confirmed that the device protects against images or sound. While the device remains Euclid, SCP-████redacted will not be transferred to other sites.

Magnetic resonance imaging requires approval from the medical officer. A magnetic sensor on the implant cuts its power inside the scanner, and the effect of a power cut on retrieval is undocumented.

Bench units of the implant are designated SCP-████redacted-1. They are kept sealed in item storage, and removing one requires written approval from one staff member with Level 4 clearance. One SCP-████redacted-1 unit was wiped, locked and powered off during Incident ████redacted-2 and is now logged as an unused implant. A second unit is implanted in Researcher Pell (see Addendum ████redacted-D).

SCP-████redacted is a human male named Toma, a former programmer at AKV Solutions. The Foundation lists AKV Solutions as a dissolved Group of Interest. SCP-████redacted shows no anomalous properties of his own. His classification comes from the anti-amnestic implant he designed, which sits behind his right ear.

The implant copies memories to NAND storage outside the biological brain. When a memory is recalled, the function retrieve_recode skips the stored emotional (affect) channel and keeps only a pointer back to it. This produces two effects:

1. After amnestic exposure, the subject keeps every memory the dose was meant to erase.
2. Cognitohazards that work through emotional or subjective perception have little or no effect on stored material. SCP-████redacted was able to read SCP-2316 as a plain article.

Amnestic exposure leads the implant to mark memories with a delete flag. The flag is stored in tissue as a serotonin analog in which the terminal NH2 group is replaced by S-PO3H2 (C10H12NO4PS). The proposed designation for this compound is SCP-████redacted-2. The flag clears whenever a marked memory is relearned with similarity above 0.72, and no function checks where the flag came from. Dr. I. Kellerman recorded this as a design omission in the refresh path. Left in the body, the compound cannot be cleared naturally and is expected to act like serotonin toxicity. Over months it is expected to cause 5-HT2B valve damage similar to that caused by fenfluramine.

The firmware is coreboot with the payload akv_recall 1.0-rc4, built as a separate image from akv_core. Both are parts of the akv package. The first string in the binary's read-only data is the warranty disclaimer of the GNU General Public License, which shows that AKV meant to release the implant as free software. The source repository and the circuit design files were destroyed.

The board has two areas. The test area has WRITE, READ and DEBUG pads behind a hardware switch. The usable area has the NAND chip and ten pins: VIN, GND, REF, RX0 to RX2, TX0, TX1, SNS_SP and SNS_T. Updates go through an inductive coil placed over the test pads. Document ████redacted-2 shows how the parts work together. A cluster of unlabelled components in one corner holds the magnetic sensor. Very small text on the silkscreen beside it, estimated at under 0.3 mm in height and legible only under a bench microscope, reads "Magnetic Distortion System".

SCP-████redacted has extensive knowledge of the Foundation and of the anomalies it contains, up to Level 4. While at AKV Solutions, he followed the metadata of leaked Foundation documents to an unclassified copy of the Foundation's database that was reachable from outside. At its end was a sortable index of every anomaly at Level 4 and below. He was the only member of his team to look at the metadata. The gap that exposed the copy has since been closed. Since amnestics have no lasting effect on him, this knowledge cannot be removed.

SCP-████redacted states that his brain now depends on the implant, and he declines removal.

SCP-████redacted was downgraded from Keter to Euclid once regular interviews began. Under Keter, his meals came through a hatch in the cell door, at fixed times.

During the June 2029 containment breach at Site-██redacted, SCP-████redacted did the following:

• He used an SQL injection on the canteen terminal to read his own file. The terminal checked input only on the client side.
• He contacted SCP-079 through the site network and gave it a virtual machine. The original old_ai.safetensors.xz and SCP-079's UPLOAD.TXT were later recovered from it.
• He built a local language model, called "Peachy", from SCP-079's port.

The canteen terminal was taken out of service after Dr. Kellerman's report.

Bench testing of SCP-████redacted-1 units found ordinary NAND behavior:

• Random writes stopped at the capacity printed on the die.
• The unit keeps a bad block table and wore out on schedule.
• A full wipe left it blank.
• The delete flag behaved exactly as the disassembly predicts.

The Council signed the Level 4 authorization needed for cognitohazard testing. In the image test, Researcher Pell looked at the SCP-2316 photograph for ten minutes. He described a lake with bodies in it, recognized none of them, and did not move toward the water. The sound and text tests are pending.

During the Site-██redacted loading yard incident, on the night of 1 December 2029, two SCP-████redacted-1 units were taken from item storage to protect SCP-239 from a cognitohazard released by MTF Epsilon-11 (see Document ████redacted-1).

The first unit ran on SCP-239 through electrodes. Using setup mode, SCP-████redacted returned the unit's stored memories to SCP-239, cleared the marker compound through her immune system, then wiped, locked and powered off the unit.

SCP-239 placed the second unit behind Researcher Pell's ear. Surgeons at a valley clinic later pushed it the rest of the way in, and it remains implanted.

Project Cicero turned the way SCP-████redacted talks to anomalies into interview guidelines. The Ethics Committee decided on the project at a remote hearing in conference room 3 of Site-██redacted, chaired by Dr. T. Lindqvist. Points 6 and 7 of the decision concern SCP-████redacted:

6. Toma: while the device remains Euclid, he will not be transferred to other sites. If the device is Explained, the Committee recommends that he shall not be assigned to anomalies he has declined, and that each assignment require his consent.

7. The Committee supports the request for a level four signature for the cognitohazard test on the device and forwards it with this decision.

Staff have documented an attachment between SCP-████redacted and SCP-239 since their first audio session, during which SCP-239 offered to remove his implant and accepted his refusal. Site-██redacted later chose to keep regular contact between the two, and her revised procedure kept her shut down whenever SCP-████redacted was unavailable. Both are now held at the same temporary site.

The night log of the humanoid wing documents an attachment between SCP-████redacted and Dr. Iris Kellerman, the researcher assigned to his file. Her contract forbids friendships with anomalies. During his review of the file, Acting Site Director Dr. Pryce removed her from it pending a conflict-of-interest review based on the night log. The review was postponed, and Dr. Pryce was relieved pending review after Incident ████redacted-2. The outcome of her review is not recorded.

SCP-████redacted is counted as part of the reformist faction, an informal group of Foundation staff with an inter-site working group. The working group took its motto, "Some hooligans are causing disorder", from his notes on Project Cicero. During Incident ████redacted-2 he read the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 to the staff gathered in the loading yard. The temporary site where he is held is a camp in the Alps occupied by the faction.

In the weeks after Incident ████redacted-2, the containment engineer present at the removal of the first SCP-████redacted-1 unit from SCP-239 wrote a report on it. The firmware version, akv_recall 1.0-rc4, and the serial number AKV-RC4-000193 indicate that the software is presumably the fourth release candidate of version 1.0. The report states that the removal was difficult and records the following faults:

• Power off is not implemented in the default mode. A forced power off is available only in setup mode, through the DEBUG pad.
• Power off uses g_mount_unmount, a GIO function deprecated since GLib 2.22, copied into the firmware.
• Immune clearance of the marker compound stalled at 2 of 6 marked sites.
• The synchronous unmount stalled in uninterruptible sleep, waiting for a lock the wipe had already taken. The firmware lists this as a known issue.
• Ending the stalled process while it held the store lock crashed the unit. It restarted and saved an error state.
• The unit then required safe mode and a check of its store with akvfsck before it reported an unused implant and could be shut down.

The report concludes that the device has bugs and is not perfect, and that its safeties exist because it can fail.

If the device is reclassified as Explained, SCP-████redacted could be granted Level 4 clearance and become Class C personnel. In accordance with the Ethics Committee decision, he could instead become Class B personnel, since point 6 recommends that he not be assigned to anomalies he has declined. Some staff believe he would be valuable to the Foundation, and that the implant would be valuable to staff handling high-risk anomalies.

Should the device become Explained, it is not to be administered to D-Class personnel. It may be administered to E-Class personnel.

After Incident ████redacted-2, the staff of Site-██redacted were moved to the temporary site, SCP-████redacted among them. The containment engineers wrote down their reasoning for these provisions while they were being moved, before they reached the temporary site:

• Class C: amnestics have no lasting effect on SCP-████redacted, so he can never be released, and Explained status would make him staff for life. He already knows files up to Level 4 and has worked in direct contact with SCP-079 and SCP-239. Class C would let him keep that contact, and one Level 4 clearance across files would let any team assign him.
• Class B: SCP-████redacted has declined work with the most dangerous anomalies, and point 6 recommends that each assignment require his consent. His protection against cognitohazards is confirmed for reading only. Class B keeps him away from anomalies he has not agreed to and keeps his knowledge available to the teams.
• Use of the device: the Foundation filed AKV Solutions as a Group of Interest for building a device it did not want built, since a chip that keeps what amnestics remove works against the veil outside the Foundation. The engineers judged that objection to be weaker, considering logistical needs. Long-serving staff on high-risk files already cannot leave with their memories, so the implant costs them little, and it protects them from cognitohazards that work through perception. During Incident ████redacted-2, two units protected SCP-239 and Researcher Pell from such a cognitohazard. The faults they saw during the removal of the first unit (see Addendum ████redacted-G) and the marker compound remain risks, so use is limited to cases where the protection outweighs them.
• D-Class and E-Class: D-Class personnel receive amnestics at the end of their term, and the implant would defeat them. E-Class personnel have already been exposed to dangerous anomalies and are held under observation, so the implant adds protection without changing whether they can leave.