SCP-055: "???"

Item #: SCP-055
Object Class: Explained

Tags: Antimemetic, Featured, Heritage, Infohazard, Keter, Memory-Affecting

IMAGE NOT FOUND

Welcome back to SCP: Uncovered! Today, we'll be talking about SCP-055. Don't worry about the picture up above, it's not actually an error. It'll make sense once we get into it. There's only 1 vocabulary word this time.

• Antimemetic: Straight from the wiki, it says: "An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it." Basically, it's a self keeping secret.

With that said, let's get this started!

Special Containment Procedures: Object is kept within a five (5) by five (5) by two point five (2.5) meter square room constructed of cement (fifty (50) centimeter thickness), with a Faraday cage surrounding the cement walls. Access is via a heavy containment door measuring two (2) by two point five (2.5) meters constructed on bearings to ensure door closes and locks automatically unless held open deliberately. Security guards are NOT to be posted outside SCP-055's room. It is further advised that all personnel maintaining or studying other SCP objects in the vicinity try to maintain a distance of at least fifty (50) meters from the geometric center of the room, as long as this is reasonably practical.

The Special Containment Procedures don't tell us very much about it unfortunately. We'll have to skip past this part and move on to the description. 

Description: SCP-055 is a "self-keeping secret" or "anti-meme". Information about SCP-055's physical appearance as well as its nature, behavior, and origins is self-classifying. To clarify:

• How Site 19 originally acquired SCP-055 is unknown.

• When SCP-055 was obtained, and by whom, is unknown.

• SCP-055's physical appearance is unknown. It is not indescribable, or invisible: individuals are perfectly capable of entering SCP-055's container and observing it, taking mental or written notes, making sketches, taking photographs, and even making audio/video recordings. An extensive log of such observations is on file. However, information about SCP-055's physical appearance "leaks" out of a human mind soon after such an observation. Individuals tasked with describing SCP-055 afterwards find their minds wandering and lose interest in the task; individuals tasked with sketching a copy of a photograph of SCP-055 are unable to remember what the photograph looks like, as are researchers overseeing these tests. Security personnel who have observed SCP-055 via closed-circuit television cameras emerge after a full shift exhausted and effectively amnesiac about the events of the previous hours.

• Who authorized the construction of SCP-055's containment room, why it was constructed in this way, or what the purpose of the described Containment Procedures may be, are all unknown.

• Despite SCP-055's container being easily accessible, all personnel at Site 19 claim no knowledge of SCP-055's existence when challenged.

All of these facts are periodically rediscovered, usually by chance readers of this file, causing a great deal of alarm. This state of concern lasts minutes at most, before the matter is simply forgotten about.

A great deal of scientific data has been recorded from SCP-055, but cannot be studied. 

At least one attempt has been made to destroy SCP-055, or possibly move it from containment at Site 19 to another site, meeting failure for reasons unknown. 

SCP-055 may present a major physical threat and indeed may have killed many hundreds of personnel, and we would not know it. Certainly it presents a gigantic memetic/mental threat, hence its Keter classification.

So SCP-055 is a thing that can prevent people from remembering it. Observers completely forget everything about it and subsequently everything that had happened over the last few hours. In fact, people don't even remember that it's a thing. The file we're reading right now is periodically rediscovered. 

It's super dangerous. It's dangerous to the point where it could have killed entire sites full of people and we wouldn't remember a thing. 

The next passage suggests that SCP-055 could have been placed there to spy on the Foundation. However, there are no possible ways for the Foundation to  defend themselves from that. 

Addendum A:

Hey, if this thing really is an "anti-meme", why doesn't the fact that it's an "anti-meme" get wiped? We must be wrong about that somehow. Wait a minute, what if we were to keep notes about what it isn't? Would we remember those? Bartholomew Hughes, NSA

This question is never answered, but Bartholomew Hughes is an important figure. You see, SCP-055 is a must read for people who are planning on reading the Antimemetics Division tales. Hughes is a decently important character in those tales. Just a small plot point.

Then, you see an interview log between Hughes and a blanked out name. From it, you can see that both of them are losing knowledge on SCP-055, even while talking about it. What you can deduce is that you can figure out what SCP-055 is from what it isn't. This turns into a huge game of 20 questions, except the only answer is no. 

SCP-055 is a decently short SCP, but it's extremely famous. It leads into so many new sections of SCP lore that it was put in the heritage collection of SCPs. I'll start going over the Antimemetics Division next week. In the mean time though, thanks for reading!

tl;dr: what?