SCP-197: The Greenhouse

SCP-197: The Greenhouse SCP-197 is a greenhouse where the plants can think, talk, and move around. They don't develop brains, nerves, or vocal cords. They just start doing things that their bodies shouldn't be capable of doing. They also grow faster, live longer, and stay unusually healthy. Some flowers that normally open only at night or bloom briefly remain open the whole time they're inside. The plants are friendly. Even the carnivorous ones introduced during testing show affection toward the staff and other living things. The Foundation starts sending people there after particularly stressful or traumatic assignments because spending time with them helps. For a while, working with this anomaly is considered a reward. Taking a plant outside makes it ordinary again, apart from its unusually good health. Bring it back and its awareness returns with the same personality. Most of them are actually happy to leave, even knowing they won't be able to experience the outside world the way they experience the greenhouse. The original containment rules require the plant's permission before anyone takes it away. Dr. Kingsley begins distributing plants to the surrounding community, and the neighborhood improves. Crime drops and the standard of living rises. His theory is that the greenhouse encourages a cycle where people and plants take care of each other. The file records the improvement, but leaves that explanation as his theory. Either way, the Foundation appears to have found something that is helping people. Then Kingsley's daughter, Dahila, goes into the greenhouse alone. She's a trained botanist. An ivy that has been there since the site's discovery kills her and places her head in a flowerpot. When questioned, it compares what it did to picking a pretty flower. The ivy doesn't show remorse. It does worry about how Dr. Kingsley will feel and whether he'll be okay. That combination is what makes the incident so disturbing. It can care about someone and still fail to understand what it has taken from him. Nothing in the entry establishes that every friendly interaction was a trick or that the plants had secretly planned an attack. This is the first recorded act of violence. The Foundation retrieves and destroys the plants it gave away and removes and destroys the greenhouse's remaining plants, with the ivy's fate redacted. The building and nearby properties are condemned. Security checks for new vegetation every week, and herbicides are applied every month to keep anything from growing back. As the greenhouse deteriorates, the neighborhood deteriorates with it. The earlier improvements are reversed. The file ends with a place that once helped traumatized staff and a struggling community being kept empty. The danger was real, but so were the benefits people lost when it was shut down. Original Entry: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-197