SCP-254

SCP-254 SCP-254 is an Employee of the Month plaque that supplies its own employee. Put it on a wall in a workplace with at least four people, and somebody new shows up at the next shift or after a break. Everyone treats this person as a coworker, even though they're incorporeal and weren't there before. Their identity comes from the workplace's shared idea of an ideal employee. Their name, appearance, and personality can change between locations. A photograph appears in the plaque once that identity settles. They can handle objects, do ordinary work, and carry on conversations about things the people around them already know. For a while, they're genuinely helpful. They have a good attitude and get routine tasks done efficiently. Specialized work is a different matter. They don't magically acquire professional expertise just because somebody assigns them a technical job. They'll enthusiastically attempt it with the competence of an ordinary person, which is already something you would want to keep in mind at a Foundation site. The real problem is what happens if you keep them around. After their good-employee period, performance starts declining. They become forgetful, unhelpful, and increasingly hostile. If you fire them early enough during that decline, they leave and disappear. Wait too long, and firing them leads to deliberate sabotage on the most destructive scale available in that workplace. The Foundation limits use to twenty-six days. Off-site personnel have to handle removal because the people working around the employee become reluctant to remove the plaque or fail to remember to do it. That is a nasty detail. The same workplace that benefits from having an extra pair of hands becomes unreliable about ending the arrangement safely. The extended-employment log shows how ordinary the early warning signs look. A dirty rag is left on a desk. Cleaning gets sloppy. The employee curses at somebody who trips over a bucket. There are reprimands and arguments, and apparent drunkenness despite nobody ever seeing the entity eat or drink. Later, irreplaceable experiment records get shredded, a knife appears in a researcher's whiteboard, and a secure document safe is opened. Another janitor is found trapped in cold storage with severe hypothermia. A guard is injured, and a threatening little figure made from cleaning equipment is left in a desk chair. They finally remove the plaque on day sixty. The employee leaves. Then, the following night, it appears on camera again. Power and backup systems fail, multiple containment breaches follow, and people die. Leaving the building did not mean the situation was resolved. There is another very direct warning in the file. A researcher tries to cut the photograph out of the plaque while its current employee, Gus, is present. Gus initially helps and then asks him to stop. The experiment continues, and the recording ends in a violent attack. The plaque was originally recovered intact from a gas station destroyed in an explosion. After watching the Foundation's own attempt to stretch its usefulness past the safe window, that discovery feels considerably less mysterious. They know the deadline, know why an outside person needs to enforce it, and still have a documented case of letting the situation deteriorate until the entire site pays for it. Original Entry: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-254