SCP: Find Us Alive - 19: The Body Code

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Harley finally gets into a Department Head Meeting. Things are looking up, but some of the 107 staff still have secrets. This episode was written by Anna Maguire and features the voices of Logan Laidlaw (Harley), Jackson McMurray (Lancaster), Tabi Bardall (Agent Love), Taschia Ritter (Klein) and Anna Maguire (Raddagher). Original music by Jackson McMurray. Follow us on Twitter @Site107 or visit findusalivepodcast.com for updates, info, art, and more. CONTENT WARNINGS: death mention, creature death mention. Join us on Patreon for exclusive behind-the-scenes content! Word of mouth is the best advertising, so be sure to share with your friends if you like the show! This podcast and all content relating to the SCP Foundation are released under a Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 license. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey, everybody, Anna here, writer and director of Find Us Alive. I'd like to take a second to thank a few of our new patrons. Reckless Dwarf, Seamus Vandenbrink, Killrog, Samurai X-1818, and Tia. Thank you so much for your support. We are so glad you like the show. If you'd like to join them, go to www.org.com to check out our Patreon rewards. Thank you and enjoy the episode. Ah, so welcome back to real life, I guess.

In the last 48 hours since our last reset, we have combed the building for any pests or bugs. We have quickly repaired the fallen ceilings, and we have noticed that some of our peers would rather not acknowledge their behaviors during what some are now calling the bloodbath. Because, boy, that game certainly did raise morale. Perhaps not in the way that psych intended, but did allow us to purge ourselves of some of the more volatile emotion. I've never seen the field agents as calm as they've been for the past few days. Recovery from resets is getting faster every time we do it, allows us to focus more time on more important things. On the docket this week, Lancaster has been hard at work on his research concerning the memetic effect.

Engineering is working with maintenance on the chunk of reality anchor we found. Research is planning on detonating an explosive to see its effect on the risk. Rift, and I am attending a department head meeting this evening. They're not officially letting me in, not yet, but I'm pitching the idea I've been working on, and I hope something can come of that. Fingers crossed. It's just always bug me, you know? I just wish there was a better way of doing things.

I feel like a hypocrite, because it's not... Like, I don't have any solutions. Some anomalies only affect humans, and we can only know how to stop them if we test them on humans. But how is that supposed to happen ethically? Because somebody has to do it. And it's not like there's a line of people who are volunteering to get turned inside out or teleported into wherever we are. A lot of the time, the morality here is just compromise. Does that make sense?

Yes. I think so. Let me go over it again. Okay. So each word is a diamond, and each consonant is a smaller diamond in the big one, right? And you line up the diamonds to make a sentence? Yeah. And different types of messages go on different parts of the body.

Basically. For example, research could use the left arm for notes about dash twos, and the right for notes about dash ones, eliminates the need to specify using inked characters. The fewer notes we use, the better. I want one. You can probably get one. Good, because I want one. But do you, um...

Do you guys think it'll go over well? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I do not know how we're going to mass tattoo everybody, though. I've been talking to engineering about doing something with lasers, but I've got one already. Look! Love helped me with it. What does it say? It doesn't say anything.

It's just a dot. I got it to make sure the tattoos carry over between resets. They do. It turns out. Well, aren't Dot's vowels? Yeah. So you do have a vowel. Okay, okay, yeah, I have an E and or A on my ankle.

I like it. That's good. I've ever had a tattoo before. It hurts. Love said you were a big baby about the one she gave you. I was. I wasn't a big baby. It just stung a lot.

You're going to do great, Harley. I think they're really going to like it. Yeah. Are you ready? Do you want to practice it again? No, I think I've got it. I'm ready. Honestly, it's been a long time since I've felt this good.

We have so many promising leads. We're busy as all hell. We're running tests and writing up experiment procedures and having meetings. I'm kind of exhausted, but it finally feels like we're getting somewhere. Not only that, but nobody got hurt during the dash two attack before the last reset. Yeah, there were a few minor injuries, but nothing severe enough that it couldn't be fixed with some stitches or a bandage or two. Nobody died.

We haven't had to put a body in the incinerator since after the shift. I'm a little worried that I'm getting my hopes up. Clearly we aren't out of the woods yet. Still have threats we don't understand. We still have questions unanswered. We don't know how to get out yet, obviously. I can't let myself get comfortable. quite yet.

Damn, if it isn't tempting sometimes, though. So as you all know, we are in desperate need of a system to preserve our research between cycles. We've been set back in our work by how much we've lost, and I believe that solving this issue would boost the integrity of our research enormously. I've spent the last several weeks designing and testing a system for keeping our findings intact, through resets based on what we've observed from how living organisms are not affected

the same as inorganic objects. To demonstrate this, I do need to take off my shoe. My apologies in advance. I guess I could ask Dr. Schau about it, but I don't know how much they would be allowed to tell me. Can people in containment

like see the viewing booths, or is it just like a one-way mirror or something? Do they put cameras in the bathrooms? I could ask Alves, she would definitely know about what am I talking about? I cannot ask Alves if we put cameras in the bathrooms.

But, but do we? Esteemed colleagues, I present to you the body code. This is a cipher system designed to be tattooed onto the body to preserve information

between resets, as tattoos are not subject to setting. As you can see, the similarity in characters and integration of other factors like locational context and modifier symbols make it very difficult to read at a glance, even by people with the system memorized, thus keeping classified information relatively safe within our own site. Also, as you can see from this example sentence, it looks pretty cool as well. Did they find any more nests? No.

Oh, bummer. Why? Maybe I'd have better luck taming one of the smaller ones. It works great on this guy, didn't it, dump truck? He doesn't do anything. He does plenty of things. Like what? Loves me.

You made him, though. You created him. Yeah, maybe you're right. Do you think if I made a bigger one, it would listen to me to? Bad idea. What? Why? You haven't told anybody about the first one?

Well, Klein knows. You still need to explain. I know, I know, I know. But what if she wants to contain him? You live here. You can visit whenever you want. Whatever. I'm not going to like it.

Nobody likes it. This grid shows the modified alphabet used for the code. And here, you can see each letter's corresponding symbol. You'll notice that it's missing a handful of letters in order to. to reduce the number of symbols needed. This means a good amount of understanding this correctly relies on context and phonetic a pronunciation, rather than proper spelling. As you can see in the example I've written out here, there's no F,

so you would spell foundation with a V instead. It's some, it makes sense in practice. You know, if a person, has the tendency to involuntarily destroy everything around them. The most humane thing to do is to keep them safe and far away from anything or anyone they could hurt, right? And you hear it just constantly, just over and over again. The greater good, the greater good. Everything's for the greater good.

We lock them up because it's the best option for the greatest number of people. But it's not, it's not the best option for them. Nobody wants to be kept in a box Nobody wants to never be able to see their family and friends again And we're not even supposed to call them humans And that's messed up Well it's at least better than it used to be

There's, you know, furniture and stuff now That has to be worth something And what about Like us? I guess I haven't given much thought into what You know what happens when foundation employees become anomalous It happens.

Everybody knows it happens, but are there different procedures? Are there different accommodations? There's a dash one on my leg. And I don't know what that's going to mean for me. Even if we don't find another piece of it, at least we know there was one, don't we? And who knows, maybe we will find it. But seriously, nobody knows why there's half a reality anchor here. Maintenance hasn't been able to find the other half.

Engineering can't figure out why it would still be fun. functioning with only half the machine there. Containment doesn't know what it's for in the first place, because it isn't a functioning reality anchor at all. It doesn't have the capabilities to anchor reality. So if it's not doing that, then what the hell is it for? Well, the answer to that is everyone. My hope is that every department can use the code for their own unique needs,

and this is where locational meanings come in. If you'll take a look at this diagram I drew, please be nice to me. As you can see, words in the code can take on entirely different meanings, depending on where they are located on the user's body. Hence the title, Body Code. For example, if the medical department designates the upper left arm as people re-injured in the reset and the right forearm as post-shift mental illness developments, The same name in both locations has different meanings entirely. Considering the speed of our escape progress so far, I think this project could speed up our pace exponentially.

How do our least tattoo thing go? Do I know. He's still on the meeting. God, what a dweeb! I would have beaten him up in high school. He's nice. He's nice? What? I've never heard you call a person nice before.

Nice how? Like sibling nice? You're an only child, aren't you? Yes. Why? Sibling nice. So, how do you feel? I feel pretty good.

I feel pretty good. I think it went well. What did botany ask you? They wanted to know if tattooing leaves on their dumb plants would work too, and I think it probably will, provided they do it on live ones. Okay, were you nice to them? Only as nice as they deserve. Harley.

I was nice, okay. Any word from upper management? Not yet, but they're going to deliberate it. But Klein seems optimistic. I'm proud of you, buddy. I'm, I'm proud, too. It feels like things are really starting to go my way. How about you, though?

What's all this? Your work on the... No, that's just for, that's for something else. Oh. Okay. Um, is it anything you want to tell me about? It's personal stuff. It's just, it's a personal issue and it's not, you don't need to be, you don't need to be worried about it.

It's not a big deal. All right. I'm not going to pry. Thanks. I don't, you're, you're probably going to be really busy training people in the code if they implement it. If they do implement it. So I'll, I'll, I'll tell you about it. sometime later.

Okay. So are you going to get one first? What? Oh, a tattoo? Yeah, I think I'm going to get a key for the main cipher. Where? Back. Your whole back?

Probably. Harley, that's really going to hurt. It will almost definitely hurt very badly, yes. Well, I'm glad this whole thing's working out, Harley. Really, you deserve it. We all deserve it. Everybody in this place deserves to have things go well after what we've been through. Yeah.

Yeah, we definitely do. Episode 19 was written and produced by Anna Maguire. The voice of Harley is Logan Laylaw. The voice of Lancaster is Jackson McMurray. The voice of Klein is Tasha Ritter. The voice of Agent Love is Tabby Bardol. The voice of Radiger is Anna McGuire. If you like our show and want to support us,

follow us on Twitter at Site 107 or visit www. Find Usal Live Podcast.com. This podcast, along with all content relating to the SCP Foundation, is released under a Creative Commons Share-A-Like 3.0 license. Thank you for listening.