SCP-158: Soul Extractor

SCP-158: Soul Extractor Object Class: Euclid SCP-158 looks like an industrial robotic arm connected to a console. The Foundation recovered it from a burned-out hospital with a damaged instruction manual. Enough survived to explain the controls, but the sections identifying its creator and purpose were unreadable. Used on a thinking organism, it extracts a gaseous substance into a container. The body retains basic brain-stem activity, but loses higher brain function and responsiveness. The extracted material gives off energy, with its appearance and output varying between subjects. An accident starts answering the obvious question. A sample spills onto an unpowered laptop, which begins operating without its battery or power cable. Its glitches develop into self-written messages. Eventually, it communicates coherently, passes a Turing test, and displays traits resembling the original donor. The researcher concludes that the machine extracts what people would call a soul. The process can also be reversed. Returning the original substance restores cognition, while using a different one changes the results. The linked experiments go considerably further. Professor Crow finds controls for splitting, merging, and altering aspects of souls, with internal storage for up to ten. Working out what those controls actually change proves much harder than operating them. He eventually creates a composite called Subject Zero. Crow records that it exists across multiple planes and can survive the destruction of its physical host. It becomes a proposed component of the Olympia Project and asks for a proper name. The main entry's proposed machine-body experiments are still proposals. The documented soul manipulation and Subject Zero come from the linked experiment log, rather than a completed version of that plan. Original entry: https://t.co/q8eyIX3VBb Experiment logs: https://t.co/LdHUUxsPOU and https://t.co/5jRkmMJ9Rl By Kain Pathos Crow. CC BY-SA 3.0: https://t.co/TI86Yhe2FC