Terms from the SCP universe, the sciences, computing, rhetoric and history that the story uses without explaining. The numbers after each entry open the chapters where it appears.
A
- A-Space
-
In the Backrooms series by Kane Pixels, the Async Research Institute's name for the Backrooms as a whole, which it hoped to turn into units of space for storage and housing.
- Amnestic
-
In the SCP universe, a drug that erases memories. In the story, Class A removes the last few hours and Class B reaches a few weeks back, stronger classes go further, and in some countries they are sold without prescription.
- Antiderivative
-
A function whose derivative is the given function. The antiderivative of x² is x³/3, plus any constant.
Chapter: 11
- Apollyon
-
In the SCP universe, the object class for an anomaly that cannot be contained and is expected to break out.
B
- Backrooms
-
An internet legend of endless empty office rooms with yellow walls and buzzing lights. The story uses the version of the video series by Kane Pixels.
- Ballast
-
The part of a fluorescent light that gives the tube a high voltage to start and then limits the current, which would otherwise keep rising until the tube burned out.
Chapter: 11
- Broken windows policing
-
A policing method from a 1982 article by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, adopted in New York in the 1990s: minor offenses such as broken windows or fare evasion are punished so that serious crime does not follow.
Chapter: 11
C
- Campi Flegrei
-
The Phlegraean Fields, from Greek for burning (καύση): a volcanic caldera west of Naples whose ground slowly rises and sinks, last erupted in 1538. In the story, the name the reformers give their camp in the Alps: campi means both fields and camps in Italian, and both places are hilly ground. The concept page has more.
Chapter: 11
- Casimir effect
-
A small force between two metal plates placed very close together in a vacuum. The space between them holds slightly less energy than the space outside, one of the few sources of negative energy measured in a laboratory.
Chapter: 11
- Chaos Insurgency
-
In the SCP universe, a group that broke away from the Foundation and uses anomalies as weapons.
- Cicero
-
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 BC), Roman orator, lawyer and statesman, whose writings on rhetoric are still taught. Project Cicero in the story is named after him.
- Cognitohazard
-
In the SCP universe, something that harms a person through the act of seeing, hearing or knowing it. The reader's screens call such an entry a harmful memory.
- Computer algebra system
-
Software, or a calculator mode, that works with formulas as symbols, so it can give an exact antiderivative as a formula.
Chapter: 11
- Conservation of energy
-
The law that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only changed from one form to another. It follows from the laws of physics staying the same over time.
Chapter: 6
- Coreboot
-
Free firmware that starts a computer's hardware and then hands over to a payload, the program that runs next. The implant's firmware is built on it.
Chapter: 10
- Crisis negotiation stairway
-
A model used by police negotiators, also called the behavioral change stairway: active listening, empathy, rapport, influence and, last, a change in behavior.
Chapter: 6
D
- D-Class
-
In the SCP universe, personnel used for dangerous tests, usually prisoners.
- Dark energy
-
The unexplained cause of the accelerating expansion of the universe, measured since 1998.
- Decompiling
-
Turning a compiled program back into readable code, to see what it does. Ghidra is the tool Toma uses.
- Degree, radian and grad
-
Three ways to divide a full turn: 360 degrees, about 6.28 radians (two pi), or 400 grads. One radian is the angle at which the arc along the circle is as long as its radius, about 57.3 degrees.
Chapter: 11
- Docere, delectare, movere
-
Latin for to teach, to delight and to move: the three duties of an orator according to Cicero.
Chapter: 5
E
- Einstein-Rosen bridge
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The first wormhole found in the equations of general relativity, in 1935. It closes faster than light could cross it.
Chapter: 11
- Entropy
-
A measure of disorder. In a closed system it never decreases, which is the second law of thermodynamics.
- Epsilon-11
-
In the SCP universe, the Mobile Task Force that handles containment breaches inside Foundation sites, also called Nine-Tailed Fox.
Chapter: 10
- Ethics Committee
-
In the SCP universe, the Foundation body that reviews the treatment of staff and anomalies.
- Euclid
-
In the SCP universe, the object class for an anomaly that needs active containment, or whose behavior is not fully understood.
- Exotic matter
-
Hypothetical matter with negative energy. Most theories say a wormhole needs it to stay open.
Chapter: 11
F
- Fenfluramine
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A diet drug, prescribed in the 1990s with phentermine as fen-phen. It was withdrawn in 1997 after reports of damaged heart valves.
Chapter: 10
G
- G-Man
-
A character from the Half-Life video games by Valve. His line about the right man in the wrong place is from Half-Life 2.
Chapter: 10
- Genus tenue
-
Latin for the plain style: in Cicero's rhetoric, simple everyday speech used to teach.
Chapter: 5
- Ghidra
-
A free reverse engineering tool released by the United States National Security Agency, used to read and decompile compiled programs.
- GIO
-
The input and output library of GLib, the base library of the GNOME desktop, which handles files, drives and mounts. Its g_mount_unmount function, deprecated since GLib 2.22, is copied into the implant's power off.
Chapter: 10
- Golani
-
Romanian for hooligans. In 1990 Romania's president Ion Iliescu used the word for the protesters at University Square in Bucharest, who then adopted it, and the protest became known as the Golaniad. His words, mocking those who sided with the protesters, were: "Și sunt unii care le plâng de milă câtorva golani care provoacă dezordine în centrul... în centrul orașului." (And there are some who weep with pity for a few hooligans who are causing disorder in the center... in the center of the city.)
- Group of Interest
-
In the SCP universe, an organization outside the Foundation that knows about anomalies or works with them.
Chapter: 7
H
- Habeas corpus
-
Latin for that you have the body: a court order that makes a jailer bring a prisoner before a judge and show the cause of the detention. The English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 set its rules.
- Human Chain
-
A game from Casual Games for Protesters: on a shout, people link arms, then scatter into the crowd.
Chapter: 10
I
K
L
- Large Hadron Collider
-
The particle accelerator of CERN near Geneva, a ring 27 km long about 100 m underground, where particles are collided at almost the speed of light. Its visitor building at Meyrin is a large wooden globe.
Chapter: 11
- Logarithm
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The power a number must be raised to in order to give another. Growth with the logarithm is fast at first and then slower and slower.
Chapter: 6
M
N
O
- Object class
-
In the SCP universe, a label for how hard an anomaly is to contain, such as Safe, Euclid or Keter. It says nothing about how dangerous it is.
- Old light
-
Light from distant stars and galaxies that set out long ago. What is seen is the source as it was when the light left it, and it may no longer exist.
P
- Payload
-
The program that firmware starts once the hardware is ready. On the implant it is akv_recall.
- Polar graph
-
A graph drawn by turning: each point is placed at an angle theta and a distance r from the center. r = sin(4θ) draws a flower of petals.
Chapter: 11
- Project Cicero
-
In the story, the project that turns the way Toma talks to anomalies into written guidelines.
- Project KV-31
-
In the Backrooms series by Kane Pixels, the Async Research Institute's project name for the Low Proximity Magnetic Distortion System.
Chapter: 9
R
- Race condition
-
A fault in a program whose result depends on which of two things happens first.
Chapter: 1
- Rare earth metals
-
A group of metals such as yttrium and dysprosium, used in strong magnets and electronics. Several are more common in the ground than lead, but spread thin and hard to separate.
Chapter: 11
- Release candidate
-
A version of software believed to be ready, released for final testing before the finished version.
- Reverse engineering
-
Working out how a finished product works by taking it apart, or by reading its compiled code.
Chapter: 3
S
- Safe mode
-
A way to start a system with only its basic parts, to find what is failing.
Chapter: 10
- Serotonin
-
A chemical messenger of the nervous system and the gut. Too much of it at once causes serotonin toxicity: sweating, a racing heart, high blood pressure, twitching muscles and fever.
- SIGKILL
-
On Unix systems, the signal that stops a process at once, with no chance to clean up, sent with kill -9. Plain kill sends SIGTERM, which asks the process to stop.
Chapter: 10
- Silkscreen
-
The printed lettering on a circuit board, naming its parts and pins.
Chapter: 7
- SMILES
-
A way to write the structure of a molecule as a line of text, so software can read it.
Chapter: 7
- Special Containment Procedures
-
In the SCP universe, the part of a file that sets out how an anomaly must be kept.
- SQL injection
-
An attack in which text typed into a form is read by a database as a command. It works when only the user's side checks the input.
Chapter: 1
T
- Telekill
-
In the SCP universe, a metal alloy (SCP-148) that blocks or weakens mind-affecting abilities near it.
Chapter: 10
- Thermodynamics
-
The physics of heat and energy. Its laws say energy is conserved and disorder grows.
- Threshold
-
In the Backrooms series by Kane Pixels, the other name of the Low Proximity Magnetic Distortion System, the machine that opens a doorway between the ordinary world and the Backrooms.
Chapter: 9
- Tolerance
-
The body's growing resistance to a drug taken often, so the same dose works less and the dose has to rise.
Chapter: 2