SCP-260

SCP-260 SCP-260 is a rock that picks a person and spends however long it takes trying to reach them. Their name appears on its surface in Cyrillic, and from that point forward, it keeps moving toward them. That's pretty much its entire purpose. It doesn't need to be fast when it can keep doing this indefinitely. Under ideal conditions, the estimated speed is only about 1.22 centimeters per second. In practice, friction usually slows it down even more. It sticks to whatever surface it's moving across, works its way over obstacles, and doesn't seem to wear down from the trip. Shooting it or putting it under extreme mechanical pressure hasn't solved anything either. That gives the person a lot of time to get away, assuming somebody knows where the rock is. The problem comes when someone decides they can stop watching it because it's just a slow-moving rock. Once it touches its target, attempts to separate them fail. It starts forcing its way through the person's body toward the chest, destroying the organs along its path. After the person dies, it comes back out, changes the name on its surface, and starts after somebody else. Usually that's whoever happens to be closest, although the tests show that rule has exceptions. The Foundation tries some fairly sensible ways to contain it. First, they lure it into a concrete cell. It reaches the wall, climbs partway up, flickers, and disappears. The target dies soon afterward. The rock turns up inside their chest during the autopsy, and the doctor conducting that autopsy becomes the next target. Then they try a rotating cylinder, basically putting the thing on a gerbil wheel so it can keep moving without getting anywhere. That lasts 57 hours and 22 minutes before it does essentially the same thing. Once it's trapped in a way it apparently won't tolerate, being somewhere else no longer protects the target. The hamster-ball test is somehow worse. Enclosing it in a smooth plastic sphere discourages the teleportation, but the ball can still move toward the person. When the ball makes contact, the rock begins the attack anyway. The target panics, Foundation agents shoot them, and the stone immediately chooses the agent who fired first. They also discover that the ball can roll downhill normally. So their attempt to contain the extremely slow murder rock gives it a way to pick up speed. By the end, the targeted agent is being transported between sites near Asia and North America. The route keeps the rock traveling across the floor of the Pacific, through Challenger Deep. They're using the terrain and the sheer distance to buy time rather than trying another box. I like how much of this entry is the Foundation learning that keeping something away from a person and actually containing it are two different jobs. They can keep that agent alive by moving him. They still haven't made the rock stop wanting to get there. Original Entry: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-260