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UPDATE, 2018/08/12: Security personnel are to escort any researchers who handle SCP-4374 to ensure prompt re-containment after testing is complete.
Description: SCP-4374 is a pair of unbranded, over-the-ear headphones. It has no wires to connect to audio devices and contains no electronics that would allow for wireless transmission or audio playback.
SCP-4374.
When worn, SCP-4374 plays audio of a voice with no discernible qualities (e.g., no clear age, gender, or regional background). The voice will describe a specific scene from the second-person point of view. This scene takes between 30 and 60 seconds to be described in full. At the end of each scene, the voice will say "This is you," and SCP-4374 will go silent unless worn continuously for four hours or until worn by another subject.
Attempts to record or amplify SCP-4374's audio have failed. If two people listen to SCP-4374 by each holding a different headphone, each will report hearing a different scene.
To date, 819 scenes have been recorded via transcription by subjects wearing SCP-4374. No patterns, naming conventions, or other details suggest a clear source or intention behind the audio. Investigations into transcribed scenes have found 12 positive matches to people or places mentioned during playback, but investigators cannot determine whether such matches are coincidental.
• Listeners report mild cognitohazardous effects, including intense empathy, dissociation, or disorientation. These effects typically dissipate within one hour after a single use; prolonged usage has unpredictable, and potentially more severe, results (see test logs and the 2018 containment breach report).
A sampling of transcription tests follows.
Sample: SCP-4374-26 Listener: Dr. Hal Reardon, 52, male; Site-15 researcher Transcription: It is a chilly autumn morning, and you are waiting for the school bus. Your sister has saved a strawberry lollipop from yesterday's visit to the doctor, and she refuses to share. When you tell her that you hate her, you see her face crumble at the thought that you are telling the truth. She laughs a moment later, but the crumbling remains in your mind to this day, deep in the pit of your coward's stomach. This is you.
Notes: Dr. Reardon volunteered for SCP-4374 testing. During his post- sampling interview, Dr. Reardon confirmed that he is an only child, but also stated that he would be able to describe his sister if asked and that her name was Darlene. When interviewed two hours later, Dr. Reardon did not remember saying this and had no such recollection of a description or name.
Sample: SCP-4374-243 Listener: D-616, 42, male Transcription: Kate had wanted apple pies, but you'd insisted on red velvet, and now, as you press a bite through her lips, the gleam in her eye says that she knows you were right. Then she moves to smear icing on your dress, and you laugh, as a flash from the photographer's camera blinds you both for a perfect instant. You think back to last night's dinner: Mom, retelling the old story of the deer in the backyard. Mom loves you again, you think. After all these years, love has returned. This is you.
Notes: D-616 wept in the containment chamber for 20 minutes before collecting himself for the post-sampling interview. D-616 claimed to have once known a woman named Kate, but eventually confirmed that no other details of the recording meant anything to him.
Sample: SCP-4374-316 Listener: D-7602, 34, female (Note: This was D-7602's seventh test of SCP-4374.) Transcription: Danny's cheeks puffed red, and you knew at once it was the allergy. The drive to the hospital took ten minutes. It should have taken fifteen, but really you needed it to take you back in time, before the pine nut grazed your baby's esophagus. He asphyxiated in the waiting room alone as you tried to park. What you remember are the blinking hazard lights on your Sonata and someone else's car honking, demanding that you move. All else was dust. This is you.
Notes: D-7602 laughed off her emotional response to this sample and confirmed that no details matched her life experience. Two days later, D-7602 attacked fellow janitorial staffer D-7311, locked herself in a Site-15 broom closet, and was ultimately hospitalized for a psychotic break. Repeated testing of SCP-4374 is no longer permitted except on staff who are already under regular observation or confinement.
Sample: SCP-4374-508 Listener: Dr. Jack Gillespie, 72, male; Site-15 research lead Transcription: You pull out your travel set of Connect Four, and as the plane hums and rumbles through mild turbulence, you let Jenna win again and again. She knows you're throwing each game, but she grins and gently boasts all the same, and you let her, because the grinning was your goal all along. When she finally grows bored and reaches for her neck pillow, you close your eyes and try to memorize the serotonin high fluttering along your throat. This is you.
Notes: Dr. Gillespie volunteered for SCP-4374 sampling. During the post- sampling interview, Dr. Gillespie noted lightheadedness and giggled unprompted several times.
Sample: SCP-4374-716 Listener: Candace Fields, 28, female; Site-15 research assistant Transcription: It's the series finale of Hell's Mendicants — nine damn seasons! — so of course you got the old watch party together. Steve and Bran, Jenna, even Kris came by (but not Dan, of course, they broke up so long ago). You got out the popcorn and ginger beer, just like that first night.
Everyone laughed and sobbed and gasped all together in front of the television's glow. During the last commercial break, Bran said, "I'm gonna miss the shit out of this stupid show," and you wanted to cry and hug him and say, "I'm gonna miss you, too," even though you see Bran every other week.
This is you.
Notes: No television program with the title Hell's Mendicants exists. In her post-sampling interview, Ms. Fields reported a powerful sense of nostalgia, but in relation to a memory of her father taking her camping as a child. She could not explain the connection, but insisted on recounting the latter memory in detail. Further investigation revealed that Ms. Fields' father died when she was 18 months old.
+ Addendum: 2018 Containment Breach Between 2018/03/12 and 2018/07/19, SCP-4374 was missing from its Site-15 storage locker. Foundation investigators cross-referenced personnel logs with SCP-4374 test logs and ultimately tracked it to the home of Dr. Gillespie, who had formerly volunteered for sample SCP-4374-508. Dr. Gillespie had resigned his post on 2018/03/14, two days after SCP-4374-508.
Dr. Gillespie returned SCP-4374 willingly and consented to an exit interview before submitting to amnestic treatment and re-integration into civilian society.
INTERVIEW: Dr. Jack Gillespie, 2018/07/20 Dr. Manning: We're recording. This is Dr. Kate Manning, Site-15, conducting an exit interview for… well, doctor, why don't you state your name and age for the record.
Dr. Gillespie: Of course. Dr. Jack Gillespie. Seventy-three. You know it was my birthday just two weeks ago?
Dr. Manning: (pause) Yes, it was. Happy birthday, doctor. How are you feeling this morning?
Dr. Gillespie: Same as I was when the task force folks asked that question in my home, Kate. I'm fine. No cognitive dissociation, no anomalous effects.
Dr. Manning: Usually someone who thinks they're fine doesn't consent to a brain wipe, Dr. Gillespie.
Dr. Gillespie: Are you suggesting I had a choice in the matter?
Dr. Manning: No. I'm simply— Dr. Gillespie: Besides, I wouldn't call it a "brain wipe," personally. It doesn't concern me.
Dr. Manning: That matches what you told the retrieval team. Could you explain that to me, Dr. Gillespie? Even without a choice, most people in your position would feel some… consternation about the situation.
Dr. Gillespie: Sand on the beach, Kate.
Dr. Manning: I'm sorry?
Dr. Gillespie: Let me ask you something. Have you ever had half a memory stuck in your mind?
Dr. Manning: I'm… not sure I follow.
Dr. Gillespie: Well, I've had half a memory stuck in my head for years. In it, I'm saying goodbye to my old coworker, Jenna Graves, from back in my MIT days.
Dr. Manning: Dr. Gillespie — Dr. Gillespie: Oh, I had such a crush on Jenna, you wouldn't believe. It was because of how quickly she could beat me in a game of Scrabble, and how much she enjoyed winning. Made me want to tackle her, and learn her secrets.
Sound of Dr. Manning hand-writing notes as Dr. Gillespie speaks.
Dr. Gillespie: Anyway. This memory, it's of the last time I ever saw her.
Nothing… happened to her, I don't think. We just lost touch. I was at Site-15 barely three months later, most of my old connections severed by the employment agreements. An amicable parting, yet no less melancholy. So: I'm saying goodbye to her, only it's just another Thursday at the time, I have no idea what the future holds. And she says to me: "Next time we play, Jack, try." Dr. Manning: Try?
Dr. Gillespie: Try something. Some word. A high-scoring word in Scrabble, I suppose. I remember laughing, nodding, knowing, and now I cannot for the life of me finish that sentence. That word was our in-joke, our central shared memory, and it vanished from me decades ago.
Dr. Manning: Dr. Gillespie, you reported— Dr. Gillespie: Let me finish, please. Now, I didn't expect that SCP-4374 would reveal that magic word, but I thought… well, that's just it. I thought and thought, and imagined that in the thinking, a simple word might float to the surface, and I could perhaps remember an extra detail of her face, as well.
Small joys can be so much, at my age.
Dr. Manning: If I can just refer you to your file… Dr. Gillespie: I know what's in the file. You're missing the point, Kate. I wanted to think, so I took the headphones home, and I kept them on.
Dr. Manning: Continuously?
Dr. Gillespie: Mmhm. (laughs) New memories every few hours, Kate, for four months. Funerals. Poker games. Bar fights. Temper tantrums. Arrests, promotions, vacations, and the joy and the shame and the fear and the love in the eyes of people I had known forever and never known at all.
Dr. Manning: Never known at… Jack. I need to tell you — Dr. Gillespie: — about my file? Kate. (chuckles) I already know. In fact, it was some time in early June when I first thought to check and confirmed that, of course, I never went to MIT. I'm sure there was a Jenna Graves, or is, out there somewhere; perhaps I knew her. Perhaps not. But it's so wonderful to remember her.
Silence. Dr. Manning taps her pen against the desk.
Dr. Gillespie: You're wondering how this doesn't qualify as a cognitive dissociation.
Dr. Manning: No, I think I understand. You're consenting to amnestics because you've already lost… because you already don't know who you are anymore, because of SCP-4374.
Dr. Gillespie: (laughs) Not at all! I think I understand myself better than you do, at this point. Did you ever take a philosophy class in your undergraduate studies, Kate?
Dr. Manning: Did I…?
Dr. Gillespie: As I recall — or do I? (chuckles) — David Hume defined the self as a culmination of our collective prior experience. The past few months have led me to reject that almost entirely.
Dr. Manning: Because your experiences, your memories, are no longer entirely your own?
Dr. Gillespie: Precisely. Yet at no point did I lack conviction in the knowledge of my identity, of my memory, of the frame of my silhouette. It doesn't matter that the silhouette warped and shifted over time. Don't you see? It always does.
Dr. Manning: I'm sorry, but I still don't understand how you're so content.
Dr. Gillespie: I am content because I know myself, Kate; I know my mind. It's a wonderful, plastic thing. Our self is redefined with new information and erases contradiction. We are who we always were. We re-conform and find a new peace, a new understanding, which is, of course, the same as it ever was.
Dr. Manning: But it's not. Even if you've rationalized it, your sense of identity is still damaged.
Dr. Gillespie: I know myself, Kate. Experience is merely detail. I stole ten dollars from my mother's wallet; I killed the class goldfish; I ate three hamburgers at 2 AM and vomited scotch onto my girlfriend's bedsheets; I sprained my ankle in the last leg of the New York City Marathon; I met the pope; I cried myself to sleep beside my granddaughter's casket. Through all of it, true or false, I remain Jack Gillespie.
Dr. Manning: So this… your decision here isn't SCP-4374, is what you're saying. You've had a philosophical revelation, not a cognitive break.
Dr. Gillespie: Mm.
Dr. Manning: I… can't say that I agree with that, Jack. I think we're about done with this interview. I'm truly sorry.
Dr. Gillespie: Don't be. You'll wipe my mind, and I'll lose some lies and a few truths, too, but I'll still be here. And what's left… well, it's like my half-memory of Jenna. Truer than most days I can recall in full.
The chamber door opens. Dr. Manning rises from her seat.
Dr. Manning: The guards will escort you to the amnestics room.
Dr. Gillespie: It's okay, Kate. Really. They'll take a handful of sand and leave me on the beach to watch the waves smooth things over once more. I'll still have myself. Come say hi some time, if you can.
Dr. Manning: Goodbye, Dr. Gillespie. Thank you.
Recording ends.
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