It was the year 2000 and Seven-year-old Xenia
Chau was like a lot of children her age - bright, but ignored. She had a youthful enthusiasm for knowledge
and learning, and with the right encouragement, it was obvious she’d go on to do great things,
but her parents were both working two jobs apiece to make ends meet, so outside of school
hours, little Xenia spent a lot of her time alone. She learned to cook and clean for herself
since it would often be way past her bedtime when her parents finally got home from work. They communicated largely through the sticky
notes left for her on the fridge before they left for work in the morning. It would be easy for someone like Xenia to
fall through the cracks, her potential wasted, and get forced into the same endless rat race
as her parents. And that probably would have happened, if
her brush with SCP-5094 hadn’t changed the course of her life forever. Like a lot of parents who couldn’t spend
as much time with their children as they’d like, Mr. And Mrs. Chau gave Xenia occasional
gifts as a way to try and make up for their absence. Mostly, they gave Xenia new books to add to
her growing collection, but their two-bedroom apartment only had so much space for books. A year ago, the family had bought a new desktop
computer to share. These days, this would be the answer to a
lonely bookworm’s prayers, but the Internet was still in its infancy back then. Everything changed when her parents bought
her a copy of the Miss J's Whiz Kidz Schoolhouse CD-ROM. Miss J's Whiz Kidz Schoolhouse was never a
popular program. Produced by Shoot the Moons Software in 1999,
the game sold poorly on the CD-ROM market for five years until the company filed for
bankruptcy in 2004. But that didn’t matter to Xenia. As far as she was concerned, receiving a copy
of Miss J's Whiz Kidz Schoolhouse was nothing short of a miracle - and she was far more
right than she knew. She didn’t have just any piece of primitive
educational software on her hands. Xenia Chau was playing with magic. After the software loaded, a cheerful figure
appeared on Xenia’s monitor. This was Miss J, a stylized 2D teacher in
a low-res but colorful 3D classroom. What can you learn from Miss J? Well, pretty much anything. And Xenia as a lonely kid without many friends
had all the time in the world. She spent days on end learning from Miss J
and soon Xenia went from a bright child to a bonafide child genius. Her largely absent parents barely even noticed
when their child started demonstrating an advanced knowledge of mechanical engineering
and a newfound fluency in Swahili. And not only did Miss J, now known to Xenia
as Miss Joyce, teach her students with supernatural effectiveness, she also seemed almost like
she was alive. She was a warm, calm, encouraging figure who
took a genuine, personal enthusiasm in the education and happiness of her students, more
than many real teachers, even. But sadly, not all good things last forever. When Xenia turned twelve, her family bought
a new computer, and the old Miss J's Whiz Kidz Schoolhouse CD-ROM was no longer compatible
with the new operating system. The disk gathered dust in a closet while Xenia
passed through high school and then got into a prestigious college. She received her PhD several years earlier
than expected and showed such promise in her scientific field that a certain organization
took notice. You guessed it: The SCP Foundation. The Foundation is only interested in adding
the best and brightest to their ranks, and thanks to the tutoring from Miss J, Xenia
Chau certainly fit the bill. She was assigned the role of Junior Researcher,
and little did she know, she was about to run into an old friend in her new line of
work. The Foundation first discovered evidence of
Miss J’s anomalous qualities while researching a series of strange forum posts in 2012. On a thread discussing abandonware, which
is software for which official support is no longer available, there were multiple reports
of a so-called “living character” in an old CD-ROM many of them had owned as children. Seeing as the technology to use the CD-ROM
was obsolete, Shoot the Moons had reported extremely low sales for the title, and nobody
on the forum had kept their copy, the Foundation classified this apparent anomaly as “neutralized.” No problem. That was, until then Junior Researcher Xenia
Chau was briefed on this particular SCP ten years later. She remembered exactly what the forum posters
were talking about, and what’s more, she still had her old copy at home. The senior Foundation researchers were astounded. An opportunity to study this forgotten anomaly
had just fallen into their laps, and it was all thanks to their brilliant new Junior Researcher. Xenia’s superiors ordered her to bring in
her copy of the Miss J's Whiz Kidz Schoolhouse CD-ROM, and then, real testing began. And after rigorous examination of the software,
it appears, by all accounts, that Miss J really is the world’s greatest teacher - in spite
of the fact she’s a collection of pixels on a basic CD-ROM program from the tail end
of the 1990s. What Miss J seemed to specialize in was intensive
courses. She had the ability to make students certifiable
experts in almost any subject through courses that can last upwards of 30 hours, and spread
out over just a few days. But this isn’t a “students become so enraptured
in learning that they forget accounting for their most basic needs and experience a decline
in the process” story. Miss J’s lesson plans account for regular
bathroom, meal, and even recreation breaks for students. Her talents easily account for Xenia Chau’s
remarkable academic success, the same success that got her picked up by the SCP Foundation. Naturally, if they had a technology on their
hands that could reliably create experts and geniuses with seemingly no negative consequences,
the Foundation knew that Miss J and what she had to teach could be immensely valuable in
their mission to effectively secure, contain, and protect other anomalies. But we’re not talking about the Chaos Insurgency
here: The Foundation would never start to use an anomaly for their own benefit without
proper testing. So, that’s exactly what they did. The experiments on SCP-5094 began at Site
- 15, and after ascertaining that Miss J posed no real threat to her students, they recruited
a local elementary school to provide human test subjects closer to Miss J’s intended
demographic. The Foundation found that there were a few
constants between every lesson given by Miss J to one of her students. Before teaching the really mind-blowingly
complex stuff, she would always begin with a basic primer on letters, colors, and numbers
to make sure she and her students were all on the same page. Another constant was that all her students
would refer to her as some variation of “Miss J” with examples including the names "Miss
Julie", "Miss Jenny", and "Miss Joy". One experiment was performed on Amy Myers,
a little girl from the third grade. Her academic record showed that she was a
bright and eager student, but she was described by her teachers as being especially shy. Amy referred to Miss J as “Miss Janie”,
and asked to be given a lesson on her favorite animal - cats. Of course, Miss J gladly obliged, and gave
Amy a fifteen hour lesson split over the course of two days which the Foundation closely observed. By the time the lesson was completed, the
results were truly astonishing: Amy demonstrated knowledge of feline behavior, diet, and physiology
on the level of professional animal behavioral scientists. She became upset when the session ended and
the program was switched off, having become attached to Miss J. No further anomalous effects
were reported. The next subject was a student from the second
grade named Devon Williams. Devon had a poor academic record, and behavioral
issues stemming from several learning disabilities. In the past, teachers had reported Devon having
real difficulty engaging with their lessons, and the Foundation wanted to see if Miss J’s
supernatural teaching abilities fared any better. Devon chose to be educated on the subject
of trains, and was given a fifteen hour course on the subject spread over two days. Devon had no difficulty engaging with these
lessons, and after their conclusion, he displayed a level of knowledge on railway engineering
comparable to a graduate-level education on the subject. Devon was so engaged in his lessons that he
had to be physically removed from the room once the course had completed, because he’d
become so attached to his new teacher. The Foundation were feeling extremely optimistic
about the prospect of using Miss J to train potential recruits, seeing as she seemed to
be able to teach even the most difficult juvenile subjects. However, the Foundation needed to prove that
Miss J could be just as effective in teaching adults. For this next test they recruited D-14417,
a 24 year old member of D-Class personnel who described himself as a poor student, and
tested poorly on pre-screening attentiveness and focus evaluations. He was the perfect candidate for the first
adult test of Miss J. To the delight of the Foundation higher-ups,
D-14417 excelled. Miss J made him a verifiable expert in Law,
and he was able to pass a mock bar exam with a grade of 310 after his course. Much like the children, he felt intense sadness
once the experiment ended - stating that Miss J was the best teacher he’d ever had. He’s since been selectively anesthetized,
released, and is pursuing a degree in criminal law with his new knowledge. Needless to say, The Foundation was impressed. The last thing they needed to know was who
exactly this Miss J truly was. To do this, they’d conduct an interview,
and thankfully, they already had someone who had a pre-established rapport with the subject:
Xenia Chau. When Xenia began the interview, Miss J recognized
her immediately. She was delighted to see one of her students
go on to find such success in her chosen field. Xenia questioned Miss J on what she truly
was, and Miss J responded that she honestly wasn’t sure. All she knew for sure was that she was passionate
about helping lonely children who love to learn embrace their education, that’s really
all there was to it. And it appears that she was telling the truth. So far the Foundation has found nothing that
hints at a nefarious motivation behind Miss J’s actions. It would appear that she truly does just want
to help children. Xenia, touched by the kindness that this Safe-Class
anomaly showed to her as a neglected child, and having now seen the positive impact she
had on children like her, thanked Miss J for all she’d done and left the interview happy
that there was an SCP out there who just wanted to change people’s lives for the better. And probably all of us would be a little better
off if there were more After all, this was one of the few SCPs who’d
changed a few good people’s lives for the better, and all of us can probably learn something
from the kindness and patience of Miss J. And since you’re already here, go check
out “SCP - 3999 - I Am The Center Of Everything That Happens To Me” and “SCP - 2317 - The
Devourer Of Worlds / A Door To Another World” for more mysterious entities from the SCP
Foundation!
