SCP-4703

Item#: 4703 Level2 Containment Class: esoteric Secondary Class: truculent Disruption Class: keneq Risk Class: warning link to memo



SCP-4703 interior.

Special Containment Procedures: Due to SCP-4703's status as a perfectly legal establishment, any direct attempts to shut it down or otherwise prevent members of the public from patronizing the business are considered unlawful. Instead, a Foundation-run grocery store has been established adjacent to SCP-4703 to draw away potential customers. Advertising campaigns showcasing the Foundation's superior products and offers are to be sustained in perpetuity.

Description: SCP-4703 is an independently owned supermarket in Midland, Texas, operating under the name 'Yeah, We're Totally Going to Sell You This'. It has maintained steady patronage and a legal right to operate despite its engagement in deadly and unethical business practices, which are perfectly legal, thank you very much.

SCP-4703 is distinct from anomalies which directly affect subjects at a baseline memetic or cognitohazardous level, and instead affects underlying bureaucratic systems and semiotic constructs independently from personal cognition (see Addendum 4703-01). Significant cognitive dissonance may still occur due to inherent incongruities between SCP-4703 and normative human comprehension. In addition to sustaining the legality of SCP-4703, these anomalous influences may also form new legal restrictions against certain activities within the property. Violation of these restrictions may result in the spontaneous manifestation of violent animals in or around the offending party.

Examples of unethical (but perfectly legal ) hazards:

Shelves are mounted on pneumatic actuators and frequently rotate, altering the store's layout to increase consumer traffic and/or prevent egress. Occasionally, two opposing shelves will thrust together and crush any merchandise, customers, and wildlife caught between.

Children who are separated from their parent(s)/guardian(s) will be forcibly detained until the parent(s)/guardian(s) either pays an upfront fine of $47.67 cash in exact change or undergoes immediate and permanent eyebrow removal via laser follicle surgery.

Trapdoor mechanisms are installed in several dozen sections of tiling. Each is triggered by a particular action (e.g. saying the word "Wednesday"; not saying the word "Wednesday") and deposits victims in a deep shaft containing some form of hazard (e.g. metal spikes, glitter pile, poisonous snakes ). The triggers change daily and are listed on the business' website in Latin, with translations available in Koine Greek and extinct languages such as Phoenician and Punic.

There is a section at the far side of the store marked "Starving for SAVINGS???" and "Discounts ad bestias!!!" wherein all merchandise is marked off by 70% or more. The area is partitioned with chain-link fencing and constantly patrolled by a minimum of 15 malnourished lions. Store-branded fishing rods, telescopic grabbing mechanisms, and drones are available to rent for the explicit purpose of retrieving items remotely, albeit at a dramatic markup. Outside items intended for this purpose are not permitted. Steel doors along the perimeter allow customers to access the area directly, but will lock from the inside after a certain amount of time has elapsed.

There is a ~5% chance that cashiers will ask customers for a kiss on the lips after checkout. Should the customer accept, there is a further ⅓ chance the cashier will be wearing lipstick poisoned with an anomalous toxin that kills instantly. Should the customer refuse, their purchases will be promptly incinerated without refund.

Customers may volunteer to have lipids extracted at checkout in exchange for store credit. If the sum of every digit in a customer's credit card number is odd and the first letter of the card holder's name matches the 'letter of the day' in the most recently aired episode of Sesame Street on the local broadcasting network, extraction of lipids is immediate and mandatory and perfectly legal, thank you very much.

Every day at an arbitrary time between 3pm and closing, alarms will sound, the lions will be released from the discount section, and all but two checkout lines will immediately close. Products purchased during this period will be free of charge, but must still be scanned one at a time.

The owner of SCP-4703 has not been identified. No correspondence of tactical or scientific value has been made with the owner of SCP-4703.



Addendum 4703-1: Memo regarding ongoing bureaucratic obstacles per Foundation senior legal counsel.

The legal department considers the countervailence of SCP-4703 to be a top-level priority. We are taking every possible effort to quickly resolve the matter in a way that minimizes loss of life and economical impact. Over the last few years we have received a significant number of inquiries regarding the mechanism of SCP-4703's legality and our present inability to dispute it; unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Law is a human concept. It exists on paper because we write it down. It exists in practice because we enforce it. Generally we interpret and exercise the law through the scrutiny of semantics, reasoning, and precedent, yet bureaucratohazards such as SCP-4703 are not necessarily predicated on such things—in fact, the law as most know it has very little to do with the matter. To put it broadly, baseline law is to anomalous law as arithmetic is to algebra: both are recognized as mathematics, but the latter is more abstract. Imagine that Timmy and Sally each have two apples. If Timmy gives Sally his apples, then Sally should then have four. But she doesn't. She has ten. How can this be? Sally recounts the apples and reenacts the scenario over and over, but there is no mistake. Two and two make ten. It is an incontrovertible fact. You see, even if anomalies are irrational, they are factual, and it is essential that one accept this if they wish to develop a countervailent methodology. Once Sally accepts that her four apples have become ten, she reevaluates her radix and decides to recount the apples in base four. Suddenly, the "ten" apples are "10" apples. "10" is four in base four, which is the appropriate number of apples. Eureka! Sally collects another four apples, bringing the total to "twenty", which is "20", which is eight, which confirms that her new paradigm aligns with the abnormality. The form follows the function according to the function of the form. Everything makes sense now. Except none of it does, really. A well-behaved reality oughtn't conflate the concrete with the abstract. If you initially perceived a countable sum of ten apples in base ten, then the equivalent number of apples in base four should be twenty-two, since it stands to reason that changing your perspective on the outcome oughtn't change the physical processes of the equation that preceded it. However, we live in a very naughty reality, and the inarguable fact of the situation is that the tangible quantity of apples is not constant. It is your subjective reading of the equation that realigns the scenario with objective fact. This explanation is inadequate, of course, but hopefully it goes a small way toward helping you understand why the legal department is currently occupied with a comprehensive redrafting of Texas corporate law in a quaternary semiological system. This in itself would be an exceptional feat even for the most skilled of bureaucromancers, and it is further compounded by the necessary incorporation of contingency clauses against the self-aware fact patterns that keep legitimizing rabid lions into existence inside my goddamn bathroom. We are grateful to you, our colleagues, for your continued patience as we work toward a solution. SHELDON M. KATZ, ESQ.

FOUNDATION LEGAL DEPARTMENT



Mission Log: The following is a transcript excerpt from an early field investigation of SCP-4703.