Did you ever have to perform a dissection
in school? Maybe you had to carve up a fetal pig or slice
into a frog while nightmarish visions of Kermit and a widowed Miss Piggy danced in your head. Though it’s rarely a pleasant experience,
unless your tastes are on the morbid side, most biology teachers would agree that the
best way to learn how something works is to take it apart. As distasteful as it can be to hold a frog’s
tiny liver in your hands, it definitely does give you a better sense of the pieces that
make up the complete creature. But what if there was an easier way to look
at the individual parts of a living thing? What if you could take it apart without ever
having to prep a scalpel or stain your hands with the blood of innocent frogs? Like most of the seemingly impossible things
in our world, the SCP Foundation discovered something that allows its users to do just
that. In fact, it can handle a lot more than just
a frog, and its applications go far beyond the confines of a high school science lab. SCP-291 is a small, plain steel building with
a larger door on one side. The door has no handle or knob, and functions
similarly to a garage door. The door cannot be pried open by any ordinary
means, and the inside of SCP-291 can only be accessed if the structure is connected
to a suitable power source. Once a power source has been connected, the
door raises and exposes the room inside. It is small, about 4x2 meters. It contains a console board, a large screen,
and a plexiglass container resembling a coffin. How very sinister. The coffin is large enough to contain a human
under 7 feet tall - so sorry, Fernand the Cannibal, you’re going to need to sit this
one out. The coffin sits on a conveyor belt, with several
tubes connected to the wall above it. On the opposite side of the room, there are
holes of varying sizes, each containing a small door that can be opened or closed. Because initial observation indicated that
SCP-291 was intended for some kind of human testing, a D-class test subject was selected
for experimentation. The subject was instructed to lie down in
the coffin, and wait to see what would happen next. The display screen lit up, depicting a grid-lined
image of the test subject. Buttons along the console board adjusted the
image, showing the skin, muscles, and organ systems of the person in the coffin. There were no words or numbers on the screen,
and all of the buttons appeared to have only two settings: on and off. When one of the researchers pressed the first
button on the console, the tubes above the coffin began pouring a blue liquid into it. The test subject reacted with confusion, but
did not experience any adverse effects. They quickly lost consciousness, indicating
that the liquid was some sort of sedative. The liquid continued to pour into the coffin
until the vessel was completely filled, at which point it congealed into a thick gel. The test subject’s breathing and heartbeat
slowed to a stop, and the conveyor belt suddenly creaked to life. The coffin was carried, test subject inside,
through a small door that immediately locked behind it. The small room was filled with the sounds
of gears turning, machinery clinking, and motors whirring. The display screen was taken over by a large
rectangle, resembling a traditional “loading” screen. After thirty minutes, the process was complete,
and the back door of the room unlocked itself. When a researcher walked through the back
door, they found another room with a conveyor belt and a row of two dozen lockers. Each locker was opened, one at a time, and
its contents removed for examination. Inside each, the research team found a different
portion of the test subject’s body, in a block of some unidentified clear substance. The body was divided in the lockers into these
separate parts: brain, lungs and diaphragm, heart, digestive system, reproductive organs,
left eye, right eye, upper left torso and arm, upper right torso and arm, lower left
torso and upper leg, lower right torso and upper leg, lower left leg and foot, lower
right leg and foot, lower left arm and hand, lower right arm and hand, neck and head, upper
skeletal system, lower skeletal system, lymphatic and circulatory system, and skin. Phew, the miracle of the human body, right? Boundless in its fascinating complexities... Each block of body parts was placed back in
its designated locker, and the second button on the console was pressed. At this point, the doors to the organ lockers
sealed themselves shut, and the sound of the machinery working filled the small space once
again. This continued for a duration of approximately
45 minutes. When the machinery went silent, a new plexiglass
coffin emerged into the main room, with the test subject inside. He looked identical to how he had looked at
the start of the experiment, with no evidence that he had previously been disassembled. The blue liquid slowly evaporated from the
container, and the test subject opened his eyes. The lead researcher conducted an immediate
interview with the reassembled subject, who reported no memory of the process after initial
exposure to the blue liquid. They insisted that the process had been like
a good night’s sleep - which honestly makes us pretty eager to take it for a spin. A medical examination determined that there
were only a few changes to the test subject during the disassembly and reassembly: when
they returned to consciousness, the test subject’s stomach was empty, they were naked, and all
of their hair was gone. With this new understanding of SCP-291’s
anomalous properties, the Foundation decided to continue their experimentation. With each new test, the experiments became
more creative, and unsurprisingly, more depraved. First, a D-Class subject was placed in the
coffin and disassembled. Then, instead of placing the various body
parts in their designated lockers, the vital organs were removed from their storage before
reassembly was attempted. This resulted in the equipment shutting down
completely. A researcher pressed the third button, which
forced a hard reset of the entire process, causing all of the blocks of body parts to
eject via an exit hatch. During the next experiment, non-vital organs
were removed before the subject’s body was reassembled. The appendix and gallbladder were left out,
and when the subject regained consciousness, these organs were still gone. However, there was no visible damage or scar
tissue in their place. They were simply gone, as if they had never
been there in the first place. So, if body parts could be removed from a
test subject, could new body parts be added? Could existing body parts be replaced with
different ones? A D-class subject in need of a skin graft
following a flamethrower-based accident was placed in SCP-291. Once taken apart, a portion of healthy skin
donated by another, somewhat unwilling, D-class subject was placed in the locker along with
the skin already present there. Once the subject was put back together, the
healthy skin had replaced the damaged skin with no adverse effects. Repeat attempts at this test showed it was
effective for limb transplants, heart transplants, and kidney transplants, with a 0 percent failure
rate across all tests. After determining that SCP-291 could be used
for an untold amount of good, making organ donations easier and safer than ever, the
Foundation naturally had to pivot to something more useless but interesting and likely horrifying. After all, it’s not like they could ever
just make anomalous technology available to the public. Two D-class subjects, one man and one woman,
were disassembled by SCP-291. The brains of the test subjects were swapped,
and then they were reassembled. When they awoke, the subjects had the personalities
and memories of the brain placed in their body. In a turn of events previously only seen in
blockbuster comedies like Freaky Friday and the live-action Scooby-Doo movie, the subjects
had swapped bodies. They were subsequently disassembled - their
requests to look at their new bodies naked having been swiftly denied - and the brains
were returned to their rightful bodies. After the experiment was finished, the subjects
appeared mostly normal. However, they did complain of disorientation
as well as mental and physical discomfort over the next several days. After going through two brain transplants
in one day, though, that’s really the least you can expect. After perfecting the practice of swapping
body parts between different human subjects, the ghoulishly curious research team decided
to take things in an interspecies direction. A variety of test subjects, including cats,
dogs, lizards, fish, mice, and of course, humans, were selected for this next round
of experimentation. Twenty tests were performed using these new
subjects, and only three of the experiments were successful in transferring body parts
from an animal of one species to another animal of a different one. Attempts to swap body parts between mammals
and reptiles or fish proved disastrous. When a fish and a human were both disassembled,
and the fish’s gills were placed with the human’s body parts, neither creature survived
the reassembly process. The human awoke, with a new set of gills embedded
in their neck, and immediately began gasping for the oxygen they could not take in. Within minutes, they had suffocated. The fish’s fate was even worse. It did not reassemble so much as it became
a pile of goo, scales, and two floating eyeballs. Experimentation with a human and a lizard
yielded similar results, turning the lizard into a puddle of organic matter and killing
the human test subject after only a few moments. As disastrous as the failed cross-species
tests were, the successful ones were almost as bad. Trial 001 involved a cat and a human. Not wanting to attempt too much at once, the
research team opted to just swap out one organ: the left eye. Both subjects survived this transfer and were
able to use their new eye. The human subject reported full use of the
cat eye, with improved night vision in addition to trouble seeing color. The cat did not enjoy its new eye nearly as
much as the human subject, and had clawed its human eye out of its head by the end of
the following week. In trial 007, a successful brain transfer
was performed between an adult human man and an English mastiff. The man in the mastiff’s body expressed
discomfort with walking on all fours, and asked to be returned to his body as soon as
possible. The mastiff in the man’s body adjusted to
bipedal locomotion in a few hours, but was disassembled after urinating on a researcher’s
shoes. The final successful trial, and the most unnerving,
was trial 016. A female D-class test subject’s reproductive
organs were swapped with those of a pregnant Labrador retriever. An ultrasound conducted after the transfer
indicated that the Labrador fetuses survived the procedure, and could conceivably be carried
to term by the human subject. Several members of the research team began
to take bets on whether or not she would end up giving birth to puppies, but the transfer
was reversed within the day, so we’ll never know what exactly would have happened. Perhaps that’s for the best. Personally, we hope the Foundation’s Ethics
Committee gives some of these scientists a very stern talking to about their behavior
on this one. When not in use for testing, SCP-291 is to
be disconnected from any power sources. At least two personnel are positioned outside
of its containment at all times, standing guard, and these personnel must be swapped
out every week. When it is not connected to any power sources,
SCP-291 is considered harmless, though it should still be treated with caution. The main entryway remains closed and locked
when there is no available power source, but the door can be opened manually from the inside
in the event of an emergency. Any disassembled organisms are stored in a
locker in the containment facility, labeled with a sharpie marker in order to keep track
of what specimens are stored where. Whether this is the same sharpie used to label
food in the break room fridge is unknown, but just like Dr. DiRamio’s ham sandwich,
it’s best to leave these items untouched. Any personnel found to be responsible for
missing specimens will be transferred to another project, and receive a strongly worded email. Now go check out “SCP-1981 - Ronald Reagan
Cut Up While Talking & SCP-095” and “SCP-2295 - THE BEAR WITH A HEART OF PATCHWORK” for
more scintillating Safe-Class SCPs!
