SCP-074: Quantum Woodlouse

SCP-074: Quantum Woodlouse SCP-074 is a good example of the Foundation reaching a point where more research might make the situation worse. It's tentatively identified as a woodlouse, except it's roughly the size of a compact car. Its inertial mass is about 1,700 kilograms, while its gravitational mass is only around 375 grams. It can also appear outside its chamber in a way the researchers compare to quantum tunneling. The really difficult part is that its abilities seem connected to what nearby people understand about physics. Investigating whether it can do something can result in it developing or displaying that very ability. The current instructions therefore ban further research into its anomalous properties. Anyone with advanced physics education, anyone who previously researched it, and anyone who reads the detailed archive has to stay five kilometers away. Learning enough to properly understand the containment problem can disqualify you from going near the thing you're supposed to contain. Its reproduction makes the situation even stranger. It releases what the file describes as packets of probability that can become eggs inside a host. Human flesh is preferred, particularly when the person has knowledge of physics. That doesn't just mean scientists. Ordinary knowledge picked up from living in a technological society can be enough. Containment uses sheets of living human skin around the chamber to intercept those eggs. Staff inspect the sheets and remove and destroy any that appear. Ultraviolet light is excluded because exposure increases reproductive activity and speeds development inside hosts. There's an almost ridiculous practical detail mixed into all of this. If the creature gets out, personnel can occupy its four sets of jaws with apples and physically guide it back. You have this elaborate physics problem that still sometimes needs to be handled like a very inconvenient animal. The full life cycle remains unknown. That feels especially important here, because finding the missing answers might create another problem before it solves the first one. https://t.co/C4b5RjTSnT