The SCP Experience - Hot Potato | SCP-2635

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Want to listen ad-free? Try it FREE for 7 days here: patreon.com/TheSCPExperience SCP Foundation EUCLID class object, SCP-2635: Hot Potato This story was derived from https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2635 and is released under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Author: Jessica C. * * * DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #thescpexperience #scp #scpfoundation #scpencounters #securecontainprotect #scpstories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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the voice that we love that we've been working at the tax office in Moscow for 30 years. It's a long time to be working

somewhere so dull. But I've made my way up the ladder. And now I'm the manager of my entire floor. leading over 100 accountants and auditors. I like to think I'm a pretty good boss who balances getting the job done right

and taking care of my people. I think of myself as the dad of the whole floor, and I've got all these kids depending on me. I've got to be strict with the kids when they're out of line, but praise them when they've done a good job. It's the same routine with my team most of the time, until someone like Alexei Kotov gets hired. This guy was transferred to us from working in the courts.

Whenever anybody's transferred to us from within another government sector, it's seen as punishment. They've done something that's not bad enough to be fired, but bad enough to be sent to go tear your hair out from boredom over at the tax offices. So as soon as Alexei was transferred to us, I was trying to figure out what he'd done wrong over in the courts. His records were clean. So I suspected something was swept under the rug.

But after a few weeks, I started to think it was because he was annoying and just plain weird. I'd brought in some steak and boiled potatoes that my wife made the night before for my lunch. It was all sprinkled with dill and drenched in butter, just the way I liked it. After I heated it in the cafeteria microwave, and was deciding which group of employees to barge in on, like the uncool dad they said I was. Alexei snatched the container of food from my hands. Whoa, hold up.

I shouted. Where do you think you're going with that? Alexei stormed away with my lunch and walked out of the cafeteria exit. I followed him and found him smashing my potatoes under his shoes on the concrete outside. It was a perfectly good meal ruined. Hey, what the fuck do you think you're doing?

No whole potatoes. He shouted at me. Only mashed, or diced, or sliced. He squished the soft potatoes under his shoe, and the white mash squeezed out from the sides of his shoe. Some people from the cafeteria had followed and were watching, waiting to see how I'd respond. Is this guy mental? I wondered.

I would have kicked him in the gut if it wasn't for the fact that he handed me back my steak untouched. You, uh, got something against potatoes then? I asked him. No whole potatoes. I don't want to take any chances. Chances with what? He tried to change the subject.

Let's get you something else other than these awful whole potatoes. I'll buy you something nice. You like Poroshki? This guy's just fucking weird, I thought to myself. I wasn't going to let my team see me get pushed around by this nutcase. I had an image to uphold. Well, you better clean this goddamn mess up. Make sure this never happens again, and hope that Parashki convinces me not to have you out of here by tomorrow morning.

Alexei left, presumably to find something to clean this mess with. And I found the Parashki on my desk when I went back to my office. It wasn't really the meal he bought that convinced me to let him stay. I knew he had been an outstanding worker so far. He learned the ropes faster than any of the other new hires, and there were no mistakes when he ran the numbers. for his tasks. He may have been an odd guy, but there was no denying that he was talented.

Alexei's talent was what made me let even more incidents with him slide. I didn't have hard evidence for this one, but I knew in my gut that it was Alexei. I heard him the evening before, muttering to himself in the hallway. I swore I heard him say, I have to make sure it's not here, and they could have hidden it anywhere. The next morning, the supply room was completely ransacked. Cabinets full of pens and staplers and paper had their contents emptied onto the floor. Printers were taken apart so their innards could be thoroughly searched, and shelves were overturned, so no corner behind them was left unseen.

Even the ceiling tiles had been removed so that whoever had done this could search through the rafters. They didn't leave an inch of the room untouched. There were no cameras, so I couldn't prove it. it was Alexei. I mean, what if I had heard him wrong in the hallway? Would I sound like the madman for randomly accusing Alexei? I was too afraid of what might happen if no one believed me, so I let it drop, but I assigned Alexei to help the janitors clean up the mess. A few months after that, he caused another scene. I first heard the shouting from down the hallway. It was Alexei shouting at someone angrily. With that kind of voice someone uses,

when they're ready to start a fight. I rushed over to see him shouting at a poor janitor in front of the electrical closet. Just open the fucking door! Alexei was shouting. He vigorously yanked the door handle up and down, trying to break the locking mechanism. The janitor shouted back at him. You don't have any business going in there.

Get off the door! There were a few other employees trying to figure out what had panicked Alexei as I approached and raised my voice. What's going on over here? The janitor turned to me. This guy wants to search the electrical closet, but he's got no business going in there. I need to check. I'm not taking any chances. Alexei shouted.

If you don't unlock the door, I will break it down. You're not breaking anything. I grabbed Alexei by the shoulder to pull him off the door, but he swatted me away. It could be in there. It can't stay in here. It needs to be passed. He shouted. That's the hot potato. That's how you're supposed to play the game. Pass the hot potato or you'll be the hot potato. Everyone that had gathered around exchanged worried looks. I could sense their eyes boring into me, expecting me to do something because I was the boss.

I didn't want to get into a fight. Everyone knew the repercussions of starting violence. I could lose this job that I'd worked 30 years to get to. I'd have to calm him down or call the police of things escalated. Alexei, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Are you on something? I can't let it stay here. The hot potato needs to be passed to someone else before we ran out of time.

He barely stopped his rant when his cell phone started ringing in his pocket. But the ringing bothered him enough that he pulled the phone out to silence it. When he looked at the screen, his face became pale. I couldn't see the number or the contact's name. Alexei went quiet, and he answered the call. Hello? We all went quiet too as we listened. Alexei said nothing. He just nodded his head as if the person on the other side could see him nodding.

Okay, he said. Then he hung up and just walked away at a brisk pace. Clearly something wasn't right, so I followed him. Hey, who was that? What's going on with you? He went down the stairs, refusing to talk to me and went outside. In front of the building, Alexei looked around until his eyes locked onto something. He went straight for a gray SUV parked on the front. Something about it spooked me. Maybe it was the way it looked too unsuspecting,

in a moderate gray and a moderate size, and only moderately old. So I stayed behind and watched. The driver lowered their tinted window enough to speak to Alexei. Alexei shouted something vulgar at them as easily as if he was exchanging a greeting, which made me think this could be some sort of family drama that I shouldn't get involved in.

If it was, I'd for sure write him up for bringing personal matters to the workplace. And if it wasn't already causing enough of a disturbance when he was screaming at the janitor. Then Alexei got in the car, and they drove off. No goodbyes and no explanations. He just left. I should have fired him and told him not to come back to work. Not only did he make a huge scene at the electrical closet, but he abandoned his shift in the middle of the day.

Maybe I was letting my feelings get the best. better of me, but I wanted to give him another chance to fix whatever was going on in his life. Besides the strange outbursts, Alexei was still a model employee. His work was flawless and efficient, better than 95% of the other employees at our tax office. I didn't want to lose him. And I thought I had made the right decision at first. When Alexei came back the next day, he was extremely professional and apologetic. He explained that he would see a doctor, and that something like this would never happen again. He told me that the driver of the van was his father,

who came to pick him up because he knew Alexei was getting out of hand lately. Alexei apologized to his co-workers for the incident the day before and humbly asked me to keep the job. You can stay, I told him. As long as you drop the whole thing about potatoes. Alexei stared back at me in confusion. What thing about potatoes? I laughed.

Exactly. That's the attitude I want to see. I get to work. So Alexei did his job without any problems after that. No outbursts and nothing about potatoes. So I thought that was the end of the whole situation. It wasn't until a few months later that everything came together in a horrifying disaster. Fan of soccer, you could assist a moment historic. You could gain the bill for the final of the Cup of the World of the FIFA 2006 with Visa. Just to have a card of credit visa BMO for participate.

Inscribe you at BMO.com bar-obliq concourse. The reglements of the concourse is applicable. I was leading our weekly meeting when I gave my team updates on our progress and had to pretend like anyone actually gave a damn about how many audits we completed that week. We're behind by ten days according to Katerina's schedule, I said to the team. Can anyone tell me why the Lebedev Construction Audit is holding us back so much? I was met by bored silence. and drooping eyes that stared straight through my presentation slides and into nothingness.

My team members on the far end of the conference table leaned back in their cushioned chairs, thinking they were far enough away that I couldn't see them trying to get some shut-eye. Come on! Why is everyone looking so dead? Working too hard? I laughed at my own joke. But nobody else on the team seemed to find it funny. Maybe it was the wrong way to make light of the situation. Fine. Let me rephrase that. Is there anything management can do to help you guys along with a Lebedev audit?

I don't know why, but I felt a sudden wave of heat hit me. I immediately looked to the windows, but they were still closed, and it wasn't even hot outside today. I thought for a moment that it was in my head, but my team felt it too. They all sat up at full attention and looked around. Do you guys feel that? They said. Some of them were clearly more affected than others.

Some pulled at their shirt collars, fanned their faces, and started dripping sweat, while others just looked confused. What the hell? It's fucking hot! Hey, Ivan, you're looking really red! Another said. I don't feel good, man. I think I'm gonna... Then half the team spontaneously combust it into flames. I don't know how it happened or why. The scream started as quickly as the flames erupted, and chaos broke out.

Katarina leaped from her chair and shrieked as fire lit her entire body. Ivan dropped to the floor and convulsed in a ball of fire. Petra cried for help as her big head of hair lit like a bushfire, and she reached for her co-workers who inexplicably hadn't caught fire, but they stumbled away from her in terror. Even Alexei wasn't safe. The white of his round eyes stared at me through the curtain of flames covering his body. The potato!

He screamed. The potato! He gripped the edge of the table. as his entire body trembled. The flames ate through his clothes and charred his skin and burned his hair to a crisp. He didn't fight it. It was like he accepted that today was the day

the devil had come for him. The fire alarms went off. The meeting room flashed with emergency lights and my ears were bombarded by the screech of the alarm. The sprinklers were set off and I prayed for a moment that the water falling from above would be our savior. But all it did was put out the collateral damage.

It quenched the sun. spread of the fire on the furniture that my burning workers touched, but the fire on the humans themselves raged on. I opened the door to look for, I'm not sure what I was looking for, anything to help my dying team. But I saw that the same disaster was happening outside the meeting room too. Half the people on the main floor were lit ablaze with the ceiling sprinklers doing nothing to end their torture. Their clothes were already disintegrating and working on eating away their skin next. Co-workers who were closest to the victims tried to help. Whether it be spraying them with fire extinguishers or smothering them with jackets.

All I could think about was Alexei, still screaming about the potato behind me. The sensible side of me didn't want to believe that his irrational fear had anything to do with this. But sense was out the window at this point. Whatever this thing was, a real potato or some code word for something much more dangerous and evil, it was destroying my team. This went beyond work and don't tax audits. These people that I led, the men and women that I nurtured in this place, these people who were basically my family away from home, they were dying, and I couldn't do a thing.

I ran back to Alexei. He was crumbling to the floor, his face rigid from his facial muscles being burnt away. Parts of his skull poked through the holes burnt through the skin on his face. Potato. He muttered. What potato? What does that mean? I shouted at it.

I didn't dare touch him. afraid that he was cursed. I... He could barely speak as the flames consumed him. I can't remember... ...that he was gone. His head dropped to the floor, and he continued to burn. I started crying.

I almost lost my balance, but I fell against the wall and just leaned there. Watching my team burn away as the water from the sprinklers showered me. I don't know what the rest of my team who was safe did. They must have evacuated. without me. I think I must have stayed leaning against the wall like that until they showed up. They looked like a mix of SWAT team and scientists. I was so out of it that I barely remembered

what happened before they found me. But the conversation between two of them just outside the meeting room windows is what remains clear. The guy who escaped the mind wipe from the last SCB 2635 incident should have been a red flag, the first man said. Your team should have investigated the matter further. My team had reason to believe Alexe Cotov had nothing to do with it. He was just another victim who wound up in the wrong place twice. The second man coughed. Jesus, that's a lot of burnt human.

There should be 411 of them, exactly half of the 822 employees in this wing. But why 411 tax workers? From what we found so far, it looks like someone meant to hide the potato in a different government building. But it ended up on the outskirts and the tax workers. buildings instead. My guess is they snuck it into one of Alexei Katov's belongings when he got transferred out of the foreign policy team after he survived the SCP 2635 incident there. But they had their bets on him being transferred somewhere more suitable to his skills and his clearance level. As I was leaning against the wall, I clung onto one word, potato, the potato, the second man's side.

At least we have the correct potato now. The one we recovered from the last time must have been a decoy. Our documents tell us there can be six total instances of SCP 2635. The fact that the decoy doesn't decompose like this one could mean that it was a failed prototype. But follow the same protocol for both until the other one is thoroughly investigated. Pass it between one of our sites and a UIU site every six months. And don't let it sit in one place for any longer than ten months if you have to.

Yes, sir. There was a pause. Wait, I think there's someone over there. They looked through the meeting room windows from the outside and saw me. Then the second man called over part of his team. You know the procedure. Sit here and bring him in. Two men in combat uniform approached me and looked into my unwavering eyes.

That was the last thing I remember before everything went black. SCP 2635 is an uncooked red potato. If any organization maintains possession of SCP 2635 for an entire calendar year, One half of all members of said organization will die as a result of spontaneous combustion. If an organization is made up of an odd number of individuals, the number of affected individuals will be rounded up to the next highest whole number. If SCP 2635 is possessed by a single individual for a year, they will die in the same manner.

SCP 2635 is also believed to possess some antimimetic properties, as such events and their consequences go almost entirely unnoticed by the world at large. SCP 2635 does not degrade or decompose. SCP 2635 is believed to have been created by one or more members of the artist collective known as Are We Cool Yet, sometime in the early 2000s after being commissioned by an unidentified Chechen anti-Russian organization, presumably for the purposes of assassinating pro-Russian politicians and public figures. The object was confiscated by GRU Division P operatives in November of 2002, but was recovered within days by covert individuals,

believed to have been working at the behest of AWCY.