SCP-224: Grandfather Clock

SCP-224: Grandfather Clock SCP-224 is an ornate wooden grandfather clock with black lacquer and gold decoration. Its hands move inconsistently, its numbers shift around the face, and its chimes might be separated by a minute or by months. Anyone treating it as an unreliable antique is overlooking the part that matters: when it sounds, time accelerates around it. People and objects within the sound's reach age. The amount varies unpredictably between events, from a negligible interval to years, but everything affected by a particular chime receives the same passage of time. The clock can age the equipment intended to contain it along with the people that equipment is protecting. It first comes to attention after a man buys it as a gift for his wife. They notice its strange behavior after winding it but apparently assume it is broken. Two days later, their house has collapsed and their bodies have aged drastically. The Foundation recovers the clock, losing two agents to exposure during transportation. The containment room is soundproofed and fitted with equipment designed to cancel the sound through destructive interference. Components must be replaced remotely every week. Moisture is kept out to reduce the risk of rapid oxidation. When the clock begins chiming, nearby staff have to evacuate rather than trust that it will stop after a harmless interval. The longest part of the entry is a report circulated because maintenance crews keep making mistakes. Dr. Simmons describes an agent who is walking past the enclosure when the acoustic equipment fails and a wall collapses. The agent has been doing his normal work, delivering a report after helping recover another anomaly. Seven successive exposures take him through decades of physical aging. He becomes too frail to remain standing and suffers serious injuries when he falls. By the time containment is restored, he is estimated to be more than a hundred years old. His family has experienced an ordinary day while his body has lost the rest of a normal lifetime. The other victims make clear that aging does not provide the experience that should accompany those years. A researcher remains mentally thirty-five in an elderly body. A pregnant colleague dies, and her son survives with an adult body and an infant's mind. Another researcher's previously undiagnosed cancer advances catastrophically. The effect accelerates what is physically happening without giving people time to understand or respond to it. Simmons also describes obtaining retirement pay for the agent. The agent volunteers for termination and examination on the condition that his family receives the benefit. The report thanks him and the director for making further study possible, combining concern for his family with the Foundation's interest in what can be learned from his condition. The memo exists to challenge the idea that functioning equipment can safely be left in place a little longer. Its examples put names and families behind a maintenance requirement. The clock's irregular behavior leaves no dependable warning interval, and the consequences of missing the next failure cannot be repaired by replacing a part afterward. Original Entry: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-224