SCP-105: Iris

SCP-105: Iris Iris Thompson has an ability that should have made for an incredible life. When she holds a photograph taken with her personal Polaroid camera, the image becomes a live view of that place. She can reach through it and physically move things near the spot where the picture was taken. Somebody on the other end sees a hand reaching out of nowhere. The camera isn't a magic tool anyone can pick up and use the same way. It behaves normally for other people. Iris can do a little with other photographs, but the pictures from her own camera give her the precision and control that make the ability really useful. In an interview, she says she has managed to focus on ten at once. That distinction gives the power some interesting boundaries. She isn't simply opening a doorway anywhere she imagines. Her access is tied to photographs and the locations they captured. The picture preserves a connection to a place, but what she sees through it is happening now. There's a lot you could do with that before anybody even considered turning it into a weapon. Unfortunately, her introduction to the Foundation follows the murder of her boyfriend. She witnesses it through a photograph, then tells a story about a phone call because the truth sounds impossible. The phone records don't support her account. When she eventually offers to demonstrate her ability in court, the Foundation gets involved and contains her. Her parents are told she died. That detail is devastating in a story where the unusual person is cooperative, healthy, and capable of explaining herself. Her family doesn't get to understand what happened or decide how to respond. Her life outside containment is effectively taken away while she is still there to remember it. The Foundation later recruits her for Omega-7. Her team's reconnaissance and intelligence missions go well, with more than twenty completed without incident. Then the demands change. They want assassinations, and Iris refuses to use her ability that way. The trouble begins when she draws a moral boundary, rather than when she proves unreliable at the work she originally agreed to do. She attempts to convince them her abilities are gone. A researcher helps her try to escape. Neither attempt gets her freedom, and she eventually demonstrates her powers again to recover limited privileges. Her camera is kept apart from her, with access controlled by the people holding her. The idea of reaching through a photograph is imaginative enough to carry a story on its own, but Iris makes the consequences matter. She can interact with places far outside her room while remaining unable to choose where she lives or what happens next. The Foundation sees extraordinary usefulness in her. She still has to fight to have an ordinary refusal taken seriously. https://t.co/A44TpwsvA0