Follow-Up Seminar - Personnel Levels and Classes Session
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Good to see you.

This time I'm prepared to give a perfectly coherent, simple and straightforward seminar - so straightforward that my esteemed colleagues from the Archive and Memetics Research Sector, D-1378 and D-1382, are going to hand you a short booklet with everything you need to know about a vital subject! Which, of course, doesn't stop me from sharing with you another wonderful slide presentation.

Clearance and security.

Clearance, noun, official authorization; act of an authority by which someone is allowed to carry out an otherwise forbidden action; document in which this act is recorded.

I would like to add one more meaning to the word clearance. It refers to the most important part of your identity in the Foundation.

It's more difficult to learn than it sounds, believe me. Almost all of us tend to think that the Foundation works with five or six security levels, you know, one through five, with the vestigial level 0 at the bottom of the bag. In reality, we don't work that way. Not just like that. Because neither Level 0 lacks privileges nor Level 5 has absolute freedom.

Let me show you something. This is SCP-500, or, as my esteemed colleagues at Command HQ have called it, the panacea. It's a drug capable of curing any human disease, any illness, absolutely anything, and we only have forty-seven pills left.

You know what? Not a single O5, no matter how many superiority and veto they have in the Assembly, will have access, ever, to SCP-500.

However, if a Level 0 staff member has to receive emergency medical assistance, they'll have access to it. Have no doubt that, should the Ethics Committee or the Overseer Assembly itself see fit to authorize the use of SCP-500, a simple Level 0 receptionist in one of the Foundation's more mundane and quiet administrative offices will receive a unit of the panacea. And we will have forty-six left.

But never an O5. Do you know why? Because the O5s, the Overseers, the Level 5 Clearance and Security staff members, are the highest authority in the Foundation, and therefore cannot come into contact with anomalies that could contaminate them.

(…)

Many of you understood this immediately. Indeed, the Foundation acts suspiciously because, over the years, at great cost to our predecessors, our contemporaries and those who will follow us, as well as, of course, to ourselves, we have discovered that the anomalies are not only untrustworthy. They are insidious. Incredibly/ insidious. Sometimes it can take decades or centuries before the seed of an anomaly germinates and becomes a tree of doom that has spread throughout a town, a city or an entire nation. And then what? We can only exterminate the entire population.

Just imagine what could happen if an O5 was affected by such an influence.

… Ah, you don't see the importance of one/ person being affected. That's because you still don't know or understand the true nature of the Foundation's hierarchy. Nor its reason to be.

This is a functional, simplified diagram of Foundation personnel. We have, as you can see, the Clearance Levels, 1 through 5, and the Security Classes, A, B, and so on. These are names that I use for clarification, the official ones are those you may have already seen on your ID cards and, of course, on your assignment reports.

Security Classes refer to the expected, recommended and acceptable amount of contact for a staff member. Yourselves, for example, belong to Class C. Class C personnel have three fundamental roles: maintaining containment, researching anomalies, and protecting operational safety on a local or timely basis. In other words, basically dealing with the anomalies in front of you. This doesn't apply to Class B, which must have little, and if possible minimal, contact with anomalies of all kinds; and it certainly doesn't apply to Class A.

Clearance Levels refer, and you probably already know this, to the information you need to access in order to do your job. You don't need to know too much. I know how that sounds. Believe me, not knowing too much is the best thing that can happen to you in this world, but especially when you work for the Foundation.

Not knowing too much, however, doesn't mean you don't know anything. Here's what you need to know.

Level 5 staff are, almost without exception, Class A. You know what this means, so I'll just say what you don't yet know but need to. Level 5 staff are part of the O5 Assembly or Council. You don't know how many members it has, or who they are, or, certainly how they are or how to contact them. You shouldn't know that. You should know, however, that each of them is responsible for the oversight of multiple SCPs, projects, Sites and Areas, as the ultimate authority, and that the combined O5s comprise the Assembly, and that they may gather together in certain circumstances to make major decisions. The O5s are the Foundation's main brain. That is why you, its fingers, will never have the slightest idea who they are.

Now you'll understand, I suppose, why we're so careful with the Council and its members, or why we're so persistent in our refusal to give them access to anything that looks anomalous. Or with our persistent refusal to give them access to anything that appears anomalous. You know, if one of you found out that an O5 was trying to enter a containment room or to hunt down an anomaly on their own, you would have full authority to arrest them, restrain them or, if you had no other choice, execute them.

No questions asked.

Of course, that won't be the case, but it's hypothetically plausible, save for exceptional conditions involving multiple Assembly members coming to an executive vote that overrules authority. Of course, you don't need to know that.

The majority of Level 4 staff, with a few exceptions, are Class A staff. They're facility directors, for the most part. You may run across them or see them walking by their office on occasion, but I wouldn't bet on it. Area-08 Level 4 personnel don't even live here, as you may know, but at the Access Points, for the same reasons that Level 5 personnel aren't allowed any contact with anomalies.

Level 3 personnel may be Class A, B or C, but they're generally department, security, or project heads… in short, they're the ones you'll meet, and you'll call them bosses, superiors, officers, and supervisors. They're the ones you'll meet in person, the ones who will send you your orders by interoffice mail, the ones who will forward you memos from higher-level staff. For all practical purposes, Clearance Level 3 personnel to whom you are assigned to are the rulers of your destiny. The Foundation is not a democracy.

Level 2 personnel are usually Class C, with a noticeable proportion of Class B staff members. I won't bother to warn you that, no matter how much their authority is only one level above you, they're still your superiors. That means you'll have to show them a minimal amount of deference, at least in public. But, despite this, Level 2 staff aren't your bosses so much as they are your managers. They're in charge of giving you short-term orders and coordinating the efforts of small groups of workers within research projects, maintenance teams, containment teams or patrols. Despite this, Level 2 personnel have a lot to hide from you, the Level 1 personnel.

That is why there are no Level 2 staff members here today. They will receive a video class recorded by yours truly, in their offices. I hope the Level 3 staff won't need seminars on how to do their job, because anyone who makes it that high up the ladder has to be sharp, or they don't make it that high up.

(…)

No, I wasn't implying anything sinister. Look. No, pay attention. Please, let's be serious. No matter what stories you hear from your senior colleagues or your Level 2 colleagues, we're serious at the Foundation. No stupid jokes based on anomalies, no jokes about who spends more hours with SCP-1004 or who we could throw into SCP-106's containment cell. At least not in front of me. They're not funny at all, believe me.

I meant to say that Level 3 personnel doesn't survive to gain all that much work experience precisely because of how dangerous their job is, not because their colleagues make it even more dangerous.

Yes, the death of your colleagues will be a constant in this work. I wish I had a more comforting story, but there isn't one. There never is. The Foundation contains the worst, the most horrible, and the most impossible things that exist on this planet. That doesn't mean that we are particularly capable or better than most human beings. Few of us are truly "gifted," and most are reclassified as anomalies as soon as they manifest their "gifts." Yes, it happens too.

(…)

No, it doesn't happen on purpose.

(…)

Would you really want to? Would you really want to not die? Would you really want to be telepathic, to run faster, to be stronger? Would you really want to be rejected, disowned, hated, feared and, in the end, to be contained by your own colleagues while the crumbs of conscience and common sense you have left disintegrate to make way for what, without any doubt, is someone, no, something different from what you are now?

(…)

Yeah, I thought so. No more jokes about it, please. They're not funny. I understand that you make them to get over the horror of a cruel, unjust world; but they're not funny at all. You'll understand when someone sitting here asks you to kill him, or her.

Huh, whoops, I got carried away again… oh, right. Class D personnel.

I'd like to read an excerpt from the Foundation's Comprehensive Fundamental Operations Manual, third edition. Ahem.

"Class D personnel are expendable personnel who are employed to handle extremely hazardous anomalies and are not permitted any contact with Class A or Class B personnel."

"D." "D" is for disposable.

(…)

Please don't be alarmed. Let me explain.

The Foundation deals with multiple entities that are extremely dangerous to human life. Sometimes they're dangerous because they affect the human mind, human sanity or human thought processes. Some anomalies are capable of causing harm to human beings unwillingly by any of the parties involved, but others are endowed with intelligence, free will and personality, and for some reason are usually hostile in one way or another to human beings. The containment teams need someone to take the risk of coming into contact with dangerous entities, either to explore their limitations, capture them or hold them in containment, and Foundation personnel are their most valuable resource. Do not be misled. Just because we lose dozens of good professionals every month doesn't mean we like it.

And this is where Class D personnel come in. "Disposable."

By definition, Class D personnel are considered Level 0 personnel. They only receive information regarding containment anomalies on a need-to-know basis. They're not allowed privileges of any kind. They don't get salaries. They're not allowed any liberties. They have no rights.

That doesn't mean we treat them inhumanely, by the way. It means that, occasionally, we regard them as literal material resources, human simulators that we put under real conditions. Think of them as those test dummies that are put behind the wheel of cars that crash at high speeds to test their safety mechanisms.

I know it's not a nice thing to hear or know, but believe me, it's better than the alternative. Than any of the alternatives.

There are two recurring topics regarding Class D personnel.

The first topic: where do we get them from? Well, you should know two things about that. The first is that we can take them from among the less desirable inhabitants of prison complexes across half the world. They're dangerous, violent, aggressive prisoners. When we can, they're prisoners on death row in almost every nation in the world, or at least sentenced to life imprisonment. We don't force them to come. They are promised sentence reductions in exchange for assistance in scientific projects of which they will not be given details until they sign all the papers. They are brought to the Foundation, or some Foundation Site, and given a cell, usually shared with others, an orange jumpsuit, three meals a day, and a basic task. Cleaning, kitchen assistant, and so on. And, from time to time, we employ them as test subjects or as a complement to the Class E recovery teams. You don't need to know anything about Class E teams, by the way. They're focused on recovering anomalies, but you're security personnel in an Area. You won't have to deal with them, and if you do, you will be given precise instructions on a case-by-case basis.

The second thing is that, for your own well-being, you shouldn't ask a lot of questions about Class D test subjects who don't look like inmates. If you're concerned, you can talk to your superiors about Protocol 12. I can't do that. It's part of the internal policy of the Area-08's Central Archives that certain aspects of the Foundation's bylaws are not open for discussion. This topic is one of them. I'll just tell you what I tell all staff members who run into this topic. You have amnestics of any kind you prefer at your disposal.

The second most discussed topic regarding Class D personnel is their monthly "termination". Let me be clear and straightforward.

Class D personnel never cease to be Class D personnel.

They're allowed to live, to continue working for the Foundation, until the day they die. Yes, the turnover rate for a job as unfortunate as theirs is high, and indeed, it's necessarily high. But, again, let me be clear and straightforward.

We don't kill our Class D members systematically at the end of each month.

We don't do it because it would be wasteful.

In fact, for a time, when the death penalty was a much more widespread and popular punishment, we had so many Class D subjects that we were not afraid to execute them at the end of that month. Why? Because we didn't want the effects of whatever anomalies they came in contact with to accumulate inside these subjects. Remember earlier when I mentioned the contamination of O5 security personnel? Well, we had to learn that the hard way, losing hundreds or thousands of Class D subjects and their predecessors, the so-called "contact subjects," because they simply touched, listened, watched or even knew the anomalies.

At that time we lacked the holy grail of amnestics. A pill like this, or more elaborate methods than a mere active ingredient dipped in the compressed powdered excipient, allow us to "reboot" the mind and consciousness of a Class D subject every month, making him think that he starts over and over again the same four-week period, after which, according to their supposed parole officer, they will be free.

That's monthly "termination," ladies and gentlemen. During the monthly re-evaluations of Class D staff, it is determined, on occasion, that a subject has become too unstable despite amnestic therapy; those do get executed, but the others do not. And now, many of you will be thinking, but isn't that basically a sentence to a life that could be worse than death?

I'll answer, in the name of all that is the Foundation, of all that we are and do: yes.

So what?

We need the Class D subjects. More than once I've heard from Level 3 security members that a lot of the Foundation's administrative echelon is superfluous, that the O5s are the only part of the command that really matters. But, without Class D personnel, the Foundation would run out of specialized containment personnel within a few years, the degradation of the containment services would end up enabling dozens of Euclid and Keter containment breaches, and, after a decade, something would go so horribly wrong that the Foundation would not be able to recover from its losses.

I'm not just talking. This is verified evidence. Simulations conducted by the Foundation's foremost experts in management strategy. Without the Class D subjects, the Foundation would collapse.

I once heard an O5 compare our situation to that of an army fighting an attrition war against anomalies. I consider this analogy fundamental and I often repeat it to myself. Ladies and gentlemen, we are fighting an attrition war against anomalies, and Class D subjects are the cornerstone of our resistance strategy in this war. They are our cannon fodder.

If you know that those in charge of a portion of the containment of an SCP that must be contained are going to die, go insane, or worse… and I know that sounds melodramatic, but yes, it could be worse…. would you send in a serial rapist or a specialist soldier, family man and capable of fighting battles that he might come out of alive to fight another day, and win?

(…)

Exactly.

Well, I'm afraid time has flown away… for those of you who haven't had a chance to read the Foundation's Comprehensive Fundamental Operations Manual, you have in your hands a little booklet that D-1378 and D-1382 are handing out… thanks, guys… remember, Class D staff members are human beings.

(…)

It's due to selective limbic lobotomy. Class Q amnestic, surgical, LLS type. Don't pay much attention to them, they can't remember anything beyond the last sentence. Fifteen, twenty seconds, at most. That's it, go ahead and ask them… yes. Like that. Don't let them get distracted, when they get distracted they tend to forget what they were doing. That's why I have them in my charge, as assistants. They're very useful for diagnosing mental alterations.

Anyway, that's it! Remember that you must destroy the physical copy of the Comprehensive Operations Manual within three days. If you fail to do so or keep copies in any form, your supervisor will be informed, and you will be subject to the appropriate administrative disciplinary actions.

(…)

Personnel are not demoted from Class non-D to Class D. Never. Remember those jokes we were talking about earlier? This is one of them. If we have to give a definitive and conclusive disciplinary punishment to a member of the Foundation, we don't beat around the bush.

(…)

No, it's not a joke.

We will meet again at the next seminar. Please check your internal mail; I have been informed that I have to deal with a possible memetic Euclid somewhere in Kashmir, so I don't know when I'll be back, but we'll let you know. Thank you for your attention.

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