Time shenanigans always go way over my head, but this is written well. Neutral vote, though, because I can't judge something if I don't understand it.
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Unless there's some implication that I missed, there's no real meat to this article. The experiment logs don't do anything other than confirm what the description says, and the bit about the D-class running away doesn't add anything in my opinion. There are also a few glaring tone issues:
We recommend not testing this portion of the anomaly with claustrophobic D-class during high water.
Technical documents are generally written in a passive voice. "It is recommended that no tests are performed with claustrophobic D-class during high water" would work better
Dr. Burns reported that he observed D-26912 was half-way through SCP-2691 when he heard Agent ████████ discharge his firearm and saw D-26912 hit the deck.
"Hit the deck" is a slang term. "Fall prone" would be better
Excellent wording advice, changes made.
Not sure any "meat" could be added, it's a passive object with a standard measurable effect, only weird side effect could be temporal clones, letting you duplicate things as long as you interrupt actions just over half way through the bridge.
I don't have any ideas for how you could expand on that, but I would recommend exploring the temporal cloning aspect a little more.
It's fairly simple at its core, but I'm a sucker for a good "thing what screws with the space-time continuum".
+1
It is recommended that no tests are performed with claustrophobic D-class during high water.
Shouldn't this be in the Special Containment Procedures?
Echoing this sentiment. I was about to copy-paste that exact same sentence.
Shouldn't that be part of the procedures?
+1 for the interesting twist and keeping it simple (and I think someone's been watching special relativity videos :P). I do have a couple of suggestions though:
The writing in the last paragraph was somewhat confusing to me, I had to re-read parts of it a few times over until I understood what happened. I recommend mentioning whether Agent Redacted had visibility of the interior of the bridge canopy and changing:
The test was aborted and D-26912 returned back to Dr. Burns' side of SCP-2691.
to
The test was aborted and D-26912 was requested to return to Dr. Burns' side of SCP-2691 and complied.
Might be a good idea to clarify that Burns saw D-26912 fall prone of his own accord - this follows the statement that Agent Redacted wounded his side's D-26912 lethally, so there's no spoiler here.
I also think we're left wanting a bit more here. One more experiment testing the temporal cloning would be nice. If you want to leave this as a surprise twist at the end, without another experiment, I'd recommend replacing the last experiment or rewriting it so that the punchline is stronger and at the actual end. The way it is kind of feels like there's more to this but strangely no note is made in the SCP record itself acknowledging the effect nor is there any mention of more experiments being planned or requested.
edit - after reading a few more new submissions and coming across SCP-2659 I'm ambivalent about whether this should have another experiment. Its length is good, so maybe a couple clear-ups on the final experiment are sufficient.
I like the rewording suggestions, changes made.
As far as further research, I was thinking about Dr. Burns requesting O5 review for upgrading this to Thaumiel as it could be used to safely duplicate useful items, but I didn't want my first SCP submitted to be an OP Thaumiel, just a weird little dupe glitch.
I think that request would be too much, as you say, but you could, if you wanted, have Dr. Burns at the end make a request (pending) for further experimentation. However, it feels like this works by itself as it is. I'm not 100% sure on it, but as I mentioned at the end of my other comment, it feels like the length is pretty good.
I was thinking there could be an experiment where they try to run the instance of the D-class that exits from the other end through the bridge again, see if they meet themselves or split recursively (SCP-1992 comes to mind). There's room to see if there's a difference in what people see on both ends of the bridge. Thing is, more stuff could be added on a lot of SCPs - that's not what makes them good. Perhaps what's improvable here is the implications - it may not feel really sinister or bizarre as it is, to some.
( lol can you tell I have no experience with this? :P )
Downvote. This doesn't do anything with temporal shenanigans that hasn't been covered in extant articles, so it doesn't feel fresh.
Hey so I posted something like this on the subreddit, but I'm cross-posting here for further advice.
I feel like this is good enough to be in the main list now, but it could be better.
Is the effect clear? It's a small, stable, temporal bump that can cause a dupe glitch if certain conditions are met. Does my SCP make this apparent?
Is it enough? I was trying to make it simple, my first thought was to have an interview with two living temporal clones, one of whom had been non-fatally shot, but brevity is wit, so I just killed the one instance instead.
Should I point out the implications? This is a dupe glitch, so I could have Dr. Burns ask for funding to replicate this glitch so that important items (500? 006?) could be replicated, or request 05 review for Thaumiel… but I didn't want my first SCP to be an OP Thaumiel.
Is it too nice? I know The Foundation is more about horror than about a collection of anomalous objects, even though it's both. I could add odd implications about duplicated people/items, try and up the creepy factor, but again I was going for simplicity, conservation of weirdness etc.
Should I cross-reference? I was thinking about having the researcher who works this one be Dr. Goto from 2265, would that detract from my article?
Thanks for your help, you guys are awesome!
Hey! I've been going around dropping personal feedback as I read through things and I randomed onto yours. My opinions on this one at the moment aren't super flattering, but I'll try and make the feedback as functional as I can.
So, the core idea is a little bland - generic time/space distortion in an area - but that doesn't mean it can't be don well, and you've got some nice tidbits scattered through the piece, like your dedication to the numbers. That said -
Its dimensions, when measured externally, are 3.1 m x 2.9 m x 24 m. When measured internally, they are 3.1 m x 2.9 m x 48 m.
This effect is expanded on the underside of the bridge. Clearance between the bottom of the bridge and the surface of the creek is variable, depending on the seasonal water levels of creek, but averages ~ 1 m, +/- .5 m. The max horizontal clearance under the bridge is 40 m, but does narrow to as little as 24 meters in places. Distances traveled under SCP-2691 appear to fluctuate with the seasonal water level, but average ~10 km, +/- 5 km.
Why is the one part of its effect(inside length, and nothing else) so static when its other effects show so much variation?(Variant horizontal AND vertical clearance, variant distance traveled and time taken going underneath).
Following up on the variation, it seems really strange to state that the horizontal clearance under the bridge is 24-40 m(and I'm not 100% sure how that changes at all, might just be architectural stuff I'm not clear on) while ALSO stating that distances traveled can go up to 15 km.
Even so, 15 km isn't really a very long way - so why is it taking someone over a day to travel through it? Even the time dilation doesn't entirely seem to match up to this, and while you mention that the time dilation 'ratio' is the same as the spatial…with your average of 10 km, and variance of 5 either way, that's only a 50% discrepancy. It would not REMOTELY take more than a day to travel that distance in a kayak, even stacking time dilation on top of spatial dilation. I could walk that distance in less than a day. Going at ~5kph, the actual distance would be covered in about 3 hours, and then stretching it by an additional 50% makes it 4.5 hours. Not nearly a day and a half.
TL;DR, it seems like your very precise scientific numbers are actually detracting from this article - they don't add up with themselves. Props for going to the effort to make it a truly testable scip though.
SCP-2691 was found when a tabloid ran a story about a group of kayakers that returned from a kayaking trip a day late, with no memory of the missing day. The tabloid also mentioned these kayakers encountered an anomalously long tunnel while they were kayaking ██████ Creek. The missing persons police reports have been purged, Class C Amnestics were administered, and the tabloid article discredited as an urban legend.
Small note here, and this might just be me. It feels odd to mention removal of a missing persons report when there was no indication that a missing persons report had even been filed. Otherwise, very nice handling of the initial awareness and containment for this situation.
Log 1
I…rather dislike these logs. The first one is 'fine' - bridge is longer on the inside so takes longer to reach the other side inside as opposed to outside, check. Also implies some interesting things because the stopwatches are showing different. Again, I take some slight issue with your numbers here - if the bridge is exactly twice as long inside, it should take exactly twice as long to cross it, and your numbers don't add up(41.7 seconds outside, 83.1 seconds inside - exact doubling would be 83.4 seconds). This could be covered by something as simple as human error or delay in when they pushed the stop button, but it still feels jarring with how precise you're trying to suggest all these numbers are.
Log 2
This one's a bigger issue. The claustrophobia thing is mentioned again, but really, it nowhere in the article is there any indication that claustrophobia is a real concern, except that the article states it…twice. You remove these mentions and nothing about the article changes at all.
Second, the disappearance of the D-Class seems like it should have been predicted based on the initial discovery of the scip, and the testing doctor just HAPPENING to be working on filling out paperwork for a new requisition…it's extraneous, tacked on. It doesn't add anything, and makes the doctor look kind of like an idiot for not waiting over a day for the test subject to come back out. We try not to make the Foundation look like idiots, or so I hear.
Lastly, is there no followup? No mention of the camera's contents or the D-Class' report on what happened during the time? Feels sloppy, that's the data they actually need/are interested in, not just 'how long was this guy MIA?'.
Log 3
This one is just…you're trying to create a hook, and that's good, and this is even a hook that you can catch something with - it takes a fairly menial and generic scip concept and implies something more, and the possibility of temporal cloning has some enormous potential implications.
But you don't do ANYTHING with it. It thus becomes worse than useless - you egg on someone's interest right before stopping completely. You need to either expand on these test logs - especially the last one - to really give the reader something to chew on, or you need to CUT this last log, and just make this scip one of those 'This is…just a really weird thing, guys'. Having a simple oddity in the world is fine - personally I like the entries that are just 'This makes the world a little…stranger' - but implying something as major as occasional temporal cloning and then leaving it is like the most brutally awful cliffhanger in a movie or show. It's a hack job.
Criticism aside, your tone is really solid overall, and everything does actually relate to your core concept. You don't have anything totally random stapled onto the article to distract from actual anomaly. It's a downvote from me for now, but it wouldn't take all that much work to dramatically improve this one.
And apologies for the walls of text. I just…tend to get wordy. ^.^;
This is an excellent breakdown of my SPC and exactly the kind of advice and constructive criticism I was looking for, thanks! I will take all of this into consideration for my next revision. I wish I could upvote posts!
Thanks for all the help on Reddit and here in the discussion forums, I've updated this SCP to reflect a lot of the advice given. It lost a bit of brevity and now spells out the weirdness instead of implying it, what does everyone think?
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I'm not sure what attribution is needed, I found it on the creative commons and it has no copyright. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_White_Bridge_in_Oxford_n.d._(3200540448).jpg has all the details.
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