Item #: SCP-109-CS
Object Class: Safe-Explained
Special Containment Procedures: An expert group working with the Department of Containment and the Department of Administration is currently evaluating the information contained within SCP-109-CS. The document has been declassified under Security Clearance Level 0. Neither the text itself, nor the information contained within, as well as any conclusions derived from the contents, can be used as valid referential details to determine the correct containment procedures of any anomaly. The same aplies to modification of containment procedures and their rejection.
The Department of Administration is asking the authors of SCP-109-CS, should any exist, to contact the administration and explain their intentions. Foundation personnel with any information that could lead to identification of the author/s or personnel wishing to submit evidence leading to further understanding of the document, can submit them anonymously.
Description: SCP-109-CS is a 1887 page long study, which seems to have been requested by the Department of Containment and contains a complex comparison of SCP-173 and SCP-17300. The point of the study was to find out whether the containment procedures for SCP-173 could be updated with new knowledge based on the containment of SCP-17300. Furthemore, to evaluate the accuracy of its factual description and re-evaluate its containment class. (This is a standard information revision process with anomalies that have been in containment for longer periods of time and its aim is to unite the level of anomaly understanding and make sure it is in line with newest discoveries on the field of anomalous science as well as to create a wide containment standard.)
The SCP-109-CS document was found within a protected archive of Site-01CS alongside similar studies of this type. However, it was never created on behalf of the Department of Containment. Its origin is a mystery, as well as the means through which it was inserted into the protected archive. The authors of the document, if there are any, have not been found and their initials are not a part of the text. Immediately after SCP-109-CS was found, it was also confirmed that there is no item in the database matching the number SCP-17300. Additionaly, no item matching the anomaly described in the document exists.
As part of SCP-109-CS, the study contains the complete containment procedures for SCP-17300 as an appendix. From the given description, SCP-17300 seems to be a perfect copy of SCP-173; despite the Description portions of both documents differing greatly, it is almost impossible to find any real difference when examined more closely. Both can be said about the Special Containment Procedures for both — the document for "SCP-17300" is almost hundred times longer than the document for SCP-173 but a practical execution of both described procedures would be identical.
SCP-109-CS describes both anomalies in an exhaustive manner and compares their respective documents both in their entirety and their individual parts, doing so using verifiable scientific proof. This analysis features a whole scale of abstract metaconceptual comparisons as well as isolated ideas (e.g. about 40 pages of text is dedicated to a discussion about the correct usage of the word "container" when refering to SCP-173's containment chamber).
Individual comparisons are always followed by a pasage in which the author explains why the formulation within SCP-17300 is more suitable or accurate. It should be noted that the examined sections within both documents describe the same concept, with only form, references and length of the text being different. As such, the author usually rejects a given formulation within the SCP-173 file as insufficient, only to arrive at the same conclussion after a lenghty analysis of the corresponding pasage within SCP-17300.
Thorough examination of SCP-109-CS further revealed that the sources cited for argumentation are often only tangentially related to the subject, or cited incorrectly and sometimes non-existent. Infered conclusions about the correct or incorrect wording of any given passage is often not supported by any arguments or taken from outdated theoretical knowledge as if they were irrefutable axioms. In other cases, the arguments are substantiated by immensely advanced and often experimental unpublished information (that is oftentimes misinterpreted), which make it impossible to estimate the age of SCP-109-CS, especially in combination with the outdated sources.
The very idea that SCP-173 and "SCP-17300" are supposed to be similar in every aspect, is never explicitly anoted within SCP-109-CS and it is not even apparent, whether the author of the document was aware of it.
Bellow are a few excerpts from SCP-109-CS.
Chapter 102 (abbreviated)
The Euclid Object Class is not form-fitting for the anomaly. As Dr. Klaus Schwab writes in his guide "Methodology of Random and Safe Class Objects": "The overuse of the Euclid Class leads to a lot of problems in practice, the incidence rate of which copies the Thünen curve — this statistical connection used to be demonstrated. Euclid, the kitchen scrap of the containment classes, is approaching a state of conceptual emptiness on the semantic curve." Euclid is a term just as archaic as it is vague and it is completely misplaced in the modern containment theories. The containment class Gödel-Dedeking, which is described in SCP-17300, is an alive category, form-fitting and concrete. (The specific parameters of Dedeking-class anomalies will be further discussed in chapters 109-111).
Note: The Dedeking containment class in not currently in use.
Chapter 114 (abbreviated)
The inconsistency of describing the basic security principles is fully visible in the first sentence of the Special Containment Procedures. "Item SCP-173 is to be kept in a locked container at all times." (The inappropriate usage of the word "container" will be further discussed in chapters 140-141). The reader will surely notice the paradox stemming from the fact that it should be impossible for three (or any amount for that matter) members of personnel to enter a locked "container" (the optimal amount of people that should enter the "container"will be further discussed in chapters 146-150) for either maintenance or any other activity. "Duds within SCPs are often found only after catastrophic containment failure," writes Jan Petrosian, the Security Chief of Sector-45A in his now notoriously famous security bulletin from 1987. The reality of such an essential mistake was left undiscovered for so many years tells us more about the nonsensical structure of the Procedures, rather than about its irrelevance. It is hard not to consider a comparison with the Special Containment Procedures of SCP-17300. We shall leave the discussion about the topic of closing the "container" for another time. Let's take a look at a key component in a perfectly brief description from SCP-17300, which relates to the isolated need for a lock. "The chamber should belocked when it is necessary." An observant reader will immediately see the correctness and elegance of this formulation.
Chapter 146 (abbreviated)
"When personnel must enter SCP-173's container, no fewer than 3 may enter at any time and the door is to be relocked behind them." Let's imagine a situation in which a Site during a peak operating strain must make a seemingly simple decision about the maintenance of a Euclid class object. A designated technician will order a simple routinne maintenance, leading administration to order a given number of people to complete this task. An immediate problem occurs. Should the personnel director send three people, five people or fifty? As Dr. Václav Klaus, the former economic deputy of ČROD, writes in "The SCP State: Limits of Trickle-Down Economy": "There is no place for open intervals in exact macroeconomics."; general validity of his assertion has been confirmed by years of practice. This specific instructional ambiguity represents perhaps the most severe problem of SCP-173. The real question is however, whether this is a problem that can be solved. SCP-17300 is not only extensively dedicated to determining the amount of people, but it also submits a detailed mathematical proof of the optimal amount of people that should enter the container. (The full wording of the proof is a part of the appendix for pages 97-497). Without loosing time by disecting this proof, it is indeed stated that the optimal amount of people for this task is 3, just like SCP-173 so clumsily implies. However, the reliance on experience and intuitive inference is not in line with the current standard for containment and this was never the case in the history of this organisation, as we can see outlined within Directive 2921.
Note: The ČROD is still denying that a person by the name of "Václav Klaus" was ever a part of the Czech SCP Branch Administration.
Chapter 160 (abbreviated)
"SCP-173 is animate and extremely hostile." Calling SCP-173 "animate" is a misinterpretation that borders on amateurism. The term "animate", as the Foundation uses it, is taken implicitly from Ackermanns monography "Earth — Life — Anomaly". There he outlines life as a result of evolution, which follows the principles of random distribution and is without intention. Calling SCP-173 animate and also "constructed" is an oxymoron. In the following chapters we will examine the results of related studies about the "origin" of SCP-17300 which easily demonstrates, using Hegels principle, that SCP-17300 was indeed constructed and does not disprove its animated state using the interpolation method.
Note: The SCP Foundation has employed two people with the surname Ackermann in the past. Derek Ackermann was a pathologist at Site-16, while Arnold Ackerman was an enginner at Lunar Area-32. Both of them are dead as of the writting of this document.
Conclusion (abbreviated)
SCP-173 is a document that suffers from shortcomings that push it almost to the brink of unintelligibility. It seems impossible that anything but a complete rewrite of the article could change this poor state; surely that which Dr. Elliot Emerson wrote, in his essay Contain about "rejection of outdated ideas", still holds true. It would be nonsensical to disregard the aspect of objective similarity of both items; the metaphysical dyad of SCP-173 and SCP-17300. It is impossible to think about SCP-173 without the research stemming from information described in relation to SCP-17300. It is thus my final recommendation to the Classification Committee, that the SCP-17300 should replace the file for SCP-173. This duplicity will best ensure our ability to handle the object properly.
Note: While searching through the database for related informtion to the SCP-109-CS investigation, a file named "SCP-17300" was discovered. It contained a full copy of the SCP-173 file. This file was afterwards deleted from the database.
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