Redline research
Oh my, Bill was a hero.
God rest his soul
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2664
Addendum 2664.2: Investigation of SCP-2664
Following aerial reconnaissance of the Verkhoyansk Range and confirmation of the existence of the Psionics Research Facility, Mobile Task Force Lambda-9 ("Mind over Matter") was dispatched to investigate the facility and ascertain the status of SCP-2664 and any other anomalies within.
Addendum 2664.1:
The majority of the Foundation's knowledge of SCP-2664 comes from a former GRU Division "P" researcher, designated "Iceman", who led numerous research and development projects for the Division, including the development of SCP-2664. On 25 December 1962, Iceman defected to the Foundation through an attaché in the British Embassy in West Berlin, carrying several thousand classified Division documents and records on ultrafiche encompassing ███ different projects and initiatives, including SCP-2664. The Soviet government officially denied knowledge of the existence of both the project and the facility during the clandestine Paraweapon Cessation Treaties of 1963. As a result, the Foundation implicitly assumed custody of both SCP-2664 and the facility.
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LEVEL 4 ACCESS CONFIRMED
[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]
Questioner: Please state your name and previous occupation for the record.
Iceman: My name is [REDACTED]. I was a project manager in the Psychotronics Division of the Main Intelligence Directorate.
Questioner: What was the aim of Project Redline?
Iceman: Officially, Redline was an initiative commissioned by Stalin in 1950 to create an ultra-powerful psychic weapon: one that could mentally convert people to follow the tenets of Marxism-Leninism doctrine. Internally, however…
Questioner: Internally?
Iceman: Almost all the members of Psychotronics Division, myself included, were veterans of the Second Great War. More than twenty million Soviets died in that war - friends, siblings, lovers. Not a soul in Psychotronics, not even the chain of command, was eager to build another weapon so soon. Indeed, we dreamed of freeing mankind from the necessity to make and use weapons at all. Thus, while Redline was officially a weapon for converting people into proper Soviet socialists, we secretly designed it to convert people into pacifists. Everything was done under the utmost secrecy, of course… if the KGB had had even an inkling of the truth, then every member of Psychotronics and anyone whom they had even spoken to would have been shot or dragged off to a gulag.
Questioner: Summarize the process of creating Redline in a manner understandable to laymen.
Iceman: The process was… complex. We had to distill more than twenty years of psionics research and theory into a workable engineering problem. The basic theory was that the psionic capabilities of humans were limited by their bodies - thus, a child might have a thousand times more potential psionic energy than an adult, but only be able to practically output a tenth as much due to their underdeveloped body. We hypothesized that by subjecting a capable mind to massive psychological trauma and then inducing brain death, this mind, its associated consciousness, and all of its psionic potential would disassociate from the body at the moment of death. We could then lock that mind into a controllable avatar.
(cont)
Questioner: How did you carry out the actual process?
Iceman: We initially tested and then refined the process on political prisoners. Once we were confident with our methodology, we began to look for children - more malleable and easily trained. We struck gold in 1960: that May, the KGB brought in a set of conjoined triplets. These children were horribly deformed and yet immensely capable - we determined that it was almost entirely their psionic abilities keeping them alive. We spent another year assessing and measuring the triplets' psionic capabilities, and once we were ready to proceed… over the course of forty-eight hours, we treated them with massive dosages of LSD, forced them to watch specially-made propaganda, and electrocuted them to death. The triplets' consciousnesses disassociated and we were able to capture them with [REDACTED]. I want to be clear - I am not proud of this. I did it because I believed that their sacrifice would change the world for the better.
Questioner: How exactly did you control and operate Redline?
Iceman: [REDACTED]
Questioner: Was Redline tested? How was it tested?
Iceman: Five times. The first four times, we brought it in front of increasingly larger groups of incarcerated violent criminals, activated it, and then asked them to attack people whom we claimed had had them incarcerated to begin with. The fourth time, we brought Redline in front of the entire population of the Norillag gulag. Fifty thousand of the most vicious criminals known to man - looters, murderers, rapists - dropped their makeshift knives and refused to move an inch, even as we threw the gates of the camp wide open.
Questioner: Wasn't the Norillag gulag closed in 1957?
Iceman: Only officially.
Questioner: What was the fifth test?
Iceman: Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy. Even ten thousand kilometers away, in the middle of the Verkhoyansk Range, we were following the events in Cuba - we were certain that nuclear war was inevitable and all our work would be for naught. We were terrified for humanity. We fired Redline on Moscow, four thousand kilometers away, then on Washington, twice as far. We had no idea if it actually worked. All we cared about was that war had been averted.
Iceman chuckles.
Iceman: Perhaps we even caused our own downfall.
Questioner: What do you mean?
Iceman: Less than a week after the Crisis ended, Khrushchev ordered that the Division be closed down and all of its projects destroyed or put into storage. Psychotronics Command was furious - it meant they were almost entirely impotent in Soviet politics. They brought in a new psychic and ordered us to rework Redline into a more aggressive state. Thinking about it now, I suppose it was inevitable. With Redline, we could strip entire armies of the will to fight… to resist… to breathe. First the Kremlin, then Russia, and then…
Iceman pauses for one second.
Iceman: We were to perform a conjunction: implanting Redline's consciousness into the new prisoner and then disassociating it again. This would drastically amplify its powers, but for conquest. I was disgusted by the idea; it was a betrayal of the ideals for which we - and the children - had sacrificed so much. I decided to defect. I was lucky enough to have near-unlimited access to the entire GRU Division "P" library and need to leave for Berlin during the week of Christmas. Those were the most terrifying weeks of my life.
Questioner: Did you follow through with this conjunction process?
Iceman: No. I left for Berlin on the week of the procedure. Then I fled and came here.
Questioner: Thank you. That will be all.
[END TRANSCRIPT]