Hello internet - and welcome back to the most inquisitive channel on YouTube - Life’s
Biggest Questions - the place where we all calmly stand around a digital water-cooler
and discuss the not-so-surreal real world implications of the SCP Foundation and its
hideous host of anomalies.
What’s going on guys - as per usual, I’ll be your disembodied floating voice Jack Finch
- as we once again dig through the archives of the SCP Foundation, try and figure out
our ELO rating - before remembering that we’re - thankfully - terrible at chess - and curiously
ask the question, What If SCP 1875 Was Real?
It’s easy to think that - on the surface, SCP 1875 is merely all about chess - but in
reality, it’s a precursor to an entire other level of the terrifying depths so often found
in the foundation’s deepest records.
It poses a wider question, one which is rarely explored in the world of horror.
What if - in this digital age - we had a ghost, in the machine?
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On with the show.
As the record states - SCP 1875 is an Euclid class object - a Victorian-era chess automaton
- that consists of four principal components - neatly referred to as SCP-1875 - one through
four.
You’ll sense a pattern here - because on the surface, or on their own - none of these
things are particularly terrifying - but, well - it takes a while to kick in.
The first component is a steel chess board table with a standard eight by eight grid,
of 64 checkered squares painted neatly on its surface.
Based on it’s compositional makeup - research staff have identified the exact material to
be English crucible steel - that was likely cast sometime in the mid to late 1800s.
The chess board itself was retrieved by the Foundation sometime in the 90s - from an abandoned
laboratory facility discovered beneath the former residence of an undisclosed University
Professor in Northamptonshire, England.
Now - here’s the kicker - the table contains a sophisticated mechanical and biological
system that controls a matrix of 64 electromagnets - which is hooked up to the combined brain
tissue of two young girls.
The twin daughters of an undisclosed Russian chess prodigy.
The foundation holds record of the two girls existence - where subsequent historical records
indicate the disappearance of his twin daughters.
They were never found, and the Russian authorities failed to identity the person - or persons
- responsible.
The leading theory is that SCP 1875 is indeed sentient - and the twin girls are responsible.
The second component is a 32 chess piece carved in the Oriental style from human bone - samples
of which have been genetically matched to tissue samples from the infused biological
matter relating to the twin girls.
The third component is a stationary steam engine manufactured by Maudslay, Sons and
Field - which was also acquired from the estate of the same University Professor.
As demonstrated in several test incidents - this engine is responsible for powering
the chess table.
The fourth component - which incidentally is perhaps the least bizzare - is an 18th-century
suit of Samurai armor in the Gusoku style - that serves the purpose of being seated
on a chair beside the chess table - acting as a performance prop for players.
Nothing to see here, really - although several researchers have reported prolonged feelings
of anxiety after making eye contact with the armors face plate.
Like I said - it all seems pretty innocent, right?
If not remarkably unsettling and a tad - Victorian, shall we say?
It’s a chess automaton with a sprinkle of theatre, right?
Well - when all of these components were combined, and researchers began undergoing tests on
the entity - that’s when things started getting weird - even with the Foundation’s
track record.
When researchers tested it on it’s 5th setting - the board began to make illegal and random
moves - ramming pieces across the board and generally being a pig-headed and not-so-nice
chess-solving machine - and then, five minutes after testing completed - the entire staff
of SCP 1875 were sent a random email - with a bizarre heading in Russian, and an image
attachment.
A black and white photograph of two young girls … distorted and twisted in a deeply
unsettling image.
Queue memetic traumatic event, because this is where things get really weird.
Researchers who clicked the image soon started reporting mild anxiety - headaches, restlessness,
insomnia - and reports for auditory hallucination - often heard as quiet, child-laugh laughter
- the twin girls giggling.
At the end, it culminated in researchers self-mutilating themselves - while wildly demanding access
to a computer, so they could view the image again.
Reportedly, the only final outcome is death.
And well - this is where we’re brought full circle - because in the wide array of data
and digital fingerprints across the internet - is it plausible to believe that one day
- perhaps not now, but in the near future - that there will be the lingering memory
of consciousness in the vast ocean of information?
Let’s take a brief look at Whole Brain Emulation - and the hypothetical process of mind and
brain upload.
Have you ever thought about uploading your mind to a machine, and living forever in an
immortal synthetic shell.
Of course, you’d technically be a robot, but you’d still be you.
Or would you?
It’s a question that has stumped modern philosophers for decades.
You’d still possess all of your memories, all of your emotions, identity and individual
psychology - but your consciousness would be digitized.
According to Randal Koene, a Neuroscientist and founder of the Carbon Copies Foundation
- he states that it is entirely probable that our human minds can be uploaded and digitally
recreated - and technology is merely on the brink of this discovery.
So - if we can imagine that, then in the age of connectivity - an entity like SCP-1875
could theoretically exist.
Unwittingly, we could be our own creators - the makers of our own personal ghosts.
What would happen if code harbored a grudge?
What if with every whole brain upload, a trace of that consciousness lingered - waiting in
the dark corners of modernity to enact their paranormal revenge?
Well - I think that’d be enough internet for me.
Unfortunately folks, that’s all we’ve got time for in today’s video - cheers for
sticking around all the way to the end.
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As per usual, I’ve been your host Jack Finch - you’ve been watching Life’s Biggest
Questions - and until next time, you take it easy.