O5 MEETING MINUTES DECLASSIFIED FOR SITE DIRECTORS - POTENTIAL EVIDENCE OF LETHE EVENT

ALL O5 IDENTIFIERS HAVE BEEN REDACTED PER SCP-001 PROTOCOL

Proposal Date: 5/5/2018

Update Proposal: Review of SCP-3484 Memetic Effects

Dialog:

Why are we talking about this object? It's classified Safe, we understand the memetic hazard, and it's easily controlled.

Perhaps too easily. Viewing or handling the text does not transfer any anomalous effect. The text, for itself, does not shift or alter in any way to accommodate the reader. Only by careful study and practice can a subject demonstrate the anomalous effects. I'm not concerned that this book is too hard to contain. I'm worried that it's just a non-anomalous book.

What about that memetic transmission of the anomalous effect?

We transmit memetic information every day. It's called knowledge. I teach you how to read, you can read. I teach you how to cook a turkey, you can cook a turkey. I teach you how to disassemble a person's ribcage, and you can disassemble ribcages.

But the effect must be anomalous! If it were as simple as reading a book and studying, or through simple instruction, we'd be teaching this everywhere in medical school around the world! Surgery as we know it would be a thing of the past. Why bother with chemotherapy if you can just open up a patient and pick out the tumor? Tumors, even, if it's metastasized? Or even plastic surgery? Couldn't someone just sit in front of a mirror and rearrange their parts and get a new face?

Perhaps the book is not anomalous, then, and we can call it Explained.

Is that why you've overridden protocol and allowed Dr. Argent to continue his work without labeling him E-class?

Yes. I have my suspicions that SCP-3484 is nothing more than a normal instruction manual. And after all, all knowledge has to be discovered somewhere for the first time, right?

True, but this most definitely is not the first time. The book is 150 years old, and for most of that time, it was outside our purview. There's no way it could have been kept secret for that long. It's too bloody useful.

It's a printed book, right? There must have been hundreds printed. Have we searched for any more of these?

We've looked for the books, haven't found any. We've looked for the printing house, found it, but they had no records of ever having printed the book.

Where did we find this book?

It was in a Marshall, Carter, & Dark production house located near Cape Fear. A boutique biochemical and electronic craft house, apparently involving programmable mnestics. The owner collected antique books in bulk. A cardboard box of them was found by a hastily abandoned workstation.

Mnestics? Are you sure?

That's what the folks down in Pharmacology said. Why, you think it's important?

Could the anomalous disassembly be knowledge we've forgotten?

Forgotten? What, you mean all of humanity just woke up one day and didn't know about taking ourselves apart anymore?

Maybe not in so dramatic a turn, but it has happened before. The native Tasmanians did not know how to make a bow and arrow, despite being common Aboriginal tools, and apparently never learned how again for thousands of years. In Europe, sailors knew how to cure scurvy in the 1200s, then forgot all about it and had to rediscover methods all over again 500 years later. We're only now able to reproduce Damascus steel. Maybe. Whole populations forget things. It happens.

Yes, but this isn't some technique that is passed down by word of mouth. This is written down in a book. Actually, not even written. Printed. Bound. Someone assembled plates with these words and pictures and ran this book through a printing press. Probably at least a hundred such books were made and disseminated into places of learning. And it's such a fascinating skill that people would be compelled to look it up. Try it out. Make a business out of it. But what do we see in our history? Nothing. Heck, if this is not anomalous, what does that mean for SCP-291? SCP-418? Are they not anomalous? Just using some technique we forgot?

Well, perhaps Page 87 can shed some light on this.

How so?

Page 87 describes palpation markers for the disassembly of the human brain. Of note is a diagram that purports to show how to detach the "Augenlappen." The literal translation of this word is eye-lobe, and the diagram shows a human brain with an additional cerebral lobe, located directly posterior to the ocular orbit. This lobe does not exist.

Wait, are you insinuating that everyone around the world just decided to open their heads up, remove a section of their brains that just so happened to contain the knowledge of how to open people up and put them back together, then, while no longer knowing how to reassemble people, since that part was just removed, still somehow put ourselves back together and forgot about the event in its entirety? No, sorry, I can't believe that. We deal with the impossible daily, and that still makes no sense. If we're going with this forgetting hypothesis, then we can accomplish these effects with good old fashioned amnestics.

Amnestics? For the whole world?

We've done it before, you know.

And we keep records of it, yes. We've only dosed the world a handful of times, and we specifically keep records of each time on purpose. Because it's that risky to lose information. If we dosed the world, we, of all people, would know it.

Unless we're not the people dosing.

Conclusion: SCP-3484 is to remain Safe for now and not updated to Explained. No update to SCP-001 is to be made at this time. O5 directs MTF Alpha-1 ("Red Right Hand") to be placed on LETHE protocol alert.