 Item number SCP-3088 Object Class Cater Correction, Neutralized Special Containment Procedures Following its neutralization, containment of SCP-3088 is to focus purely on the removal of its existence from public knowledge. All public roads leading to the former location of SCP-3088 have been rerouted, and maps and public information listings are being edited following standard Lost City protocols. Archived Containment Procedures A perimeter extending 100 meters beyond the outer limits of SCP-3088 is to be established. Civilians attempting to cross this perimeter are to be turned away, or detained and amnesticized if necessary. In the unlikely event that an individual leaves SCP-3088, they are to be thoroughly debriefed and then detained indefinitely. Any public news releases or internet content mentioning the anomaly, the town itself, or missing people in the area are to be censored. Description SCP-3088 is the town of Cullen, Nebraska, and the area contained within the town limits. SCP-3088 is subject to an alteration of reality in which any law, by-law, or town ordinance passed by a legally empowered individual becomes an immutable law of reality itself. Individuals crossing the town boundary are immediately subject to its effects and are unable to break any existing laws within the town, either intentionally or accidentally. The most immediately noticeable effects, especially for Foundation personnel, are the total inability to leave the town and the removal of all firearms. SCP-3088-1 is the tentative classification for Thomas Ronson, the mayor of Cullen, and the only person currently known to be within the town limits legally empowered to pass laws. Whether he himself possesses any anomalous properties is currently unknown. SCP-3088 first came to Foundation attention following an intercepted call from a civilian trapped within the sheriff's office to a nearby town. The call was terminated mid-conversation at the same time that all wired and cellular traffic into or out of the town ceased. History Following the initial discovery of SCP-3088, but before the specifics of the anomaly were understood, Mobile Task Force Sigma-9, codename Kansas City Hot Steppers, were dispatched to investigate, following are the recovered logs of their investigation. Audio Transcript 1 Transcript are the first audio message from Mobile Task Force Sigma-9 following their entry into SCP-3088, received approximately 19 hours after entry. Message from Team Leader Agent Denlin Sorsby, codename Steper-1. Transcript begins. Alright, let's hope this works. Command, this is Agent Denlin Sorsby, Team Leader MTF Sigma-9er. If you're receiving this, you better give Agent Peters a raise. Okay, from the top. Immediately after our entry into Cullen, we quickly found that an anomaly is present and encompasses the entire area around the town. All of our firearms were immediately removed from our persons, as if they just vanished into thin air, and all of our phones stopped working, cellular and satellite. We also discovered we couldn't leave. Whenever one of us made a move to leave the area, we'd freeze up and become unable to take so much as a step. As soon as we tried to do anything else, though, we could move just fine. We tried weighing down the gas pedal on one of our vehicles, but it stopped as if it hid an invisible wall. The town itself seems normal enough at first glance, but everyone here is on edge. They definitely know something is wrong here, though it was hard to get anyone to talk to us. I mentioned our phones not working to a waitress in a diner we stopped at, and she said they were out all over town. Had been for days, apparently. Internet, too. Basically, there's no way to talk to anyone outside of town. Our walkies still work, but they are pretty short range. It didn't take long to work out that the mayor of this place is behind whatever's going on, or at least know something about it. The way people talk about him, they're either terrified or in awe. Or both. For what little we could glean, any laws he makes become fact. Apparently a few days ago, he passed a law banning phones in the internet, and a couple weeks ago, he wrote a law banning guns. Now all our guns are gone and our phones don't work. Obvious enough. I don't think we are in any immediate danger. The people are spooked, but not wild. So we're going to try and get to the bottom of this. Anyway, the law said no phones or internet, but it didn't say anything about... Peters, what'd you call it? High-frequency radio data pulses? Man, you made that shit up. Anyway, yeah, Peters has gutted half our radios in a bunch of parts from the supply kits in the truck, and whipped up something that will apparently get this message out to you. And if not, well, I guess I've just been talking to myself for the last three minutes. We'll send another message when we have more to report. Source B out. Alright, Peters. Hit. Transcript ends. Audio Transcript 2. Transcript of second log received from Mobile Task Force Sigma-9. Received approximately three days after initial entry. Begin transcript. Okay, this is step one reporting in. First up, we're making a number of assumptions here. The first of which is that you received our previous transmission. With that, we're also assuming that at least some form of containment would have been started, which almost certainly would have been focused on public roads. So the fact that we can't see anything on the roads past the boundary of the anomaly means it's doing more than just stopping us from leaving. Walkings and pace track the outer edge of the anomaly over the last couple of days. It surrounds the entire town out of fairways, and seems to come to a stop at the roads right by the Welcome to Cullen signs. So our best guess is that it fills the entire town limits. Apparently, if you aren't actively trying to leave, you can walk the edge of it no problem. Pace said it felt like a wall made of glass. Let's see. It looks like our initial assumption about what's going on here was mostly accurate. Anyone inside the town is completely unable to break any of the laws here. Even low-level crap that any local council passes on a whim counts. There's no litter anywhere in town because the mayor passed an ordinance prohibiting littering. We haven't been able to get close to this guy yet. Ron Sinney's called. Goddamn bureaucrats have laws for everything, so apparently we can't just bust into his office and have a friendly chat. We have no idea what his goal here is, whether he's doing intentionally or just wrapped up in something he can't control. We have an appointment to see him in four days. Fucking paper pushers. What else? What else? Oh, Peter says get whoever you've got running containment out there to set their radio to frequency 4, 5, 7.9 megahertz. We'll go down there in the morning and see if our walkies work. We can't see you out there, but we might be able to still talk, especially if these data pulse things are working. I think that's it. Shores be out. End transcript. Audio transcript 3. Audio transcript of a conversation between members of Mobile Task Force Sigma 9 and the containment team situated at the containment perimeter of SCP-3088. Conversation took place via standard-issue two-way radio. Begin log. This is Sigma 9er. Come back. Repeat, this is Step 1, MTF Sigma 9er. We read you, Step 1. This is ancient Vazquez. 3088 control. Shit, Sylvia. Thank you. What's going on out there? Yeah, it's me, Shores be. Glad to hear you're still alive in there. Where are you? We're right at the edge of the barrier. I've got your drone right here. We don't see you. We're about 20 meters down the road. Guess this thing blocks vision both ways. Yeah. Wait. 3088? Classified already? That was fast. I guess losing an MTF team inside a town-wide skip gets the ball rolling pretty quickly. Alright, report. Right. All team members currently uninjured and accounted for. Situation in the town seems stable for now, though the town folks still seem reluctant to talk to us too much. There's a bunch of weird laws in this town. We can all sort of feel them now. Like, if I even think about trying to walk out there to you now, I can feel in the back of my head that it's against the law. Apparently it's illegal to be unemployed too. Not sure on the specifics of that one, but there are a few big textile mills in town that employ a whole lot of people. Records show the mills shut down years ago. The town was actually in real trouble because of it. Well, it seems fine now. You know, besides the reality altering anomaly covering the entire town and trapping everyone inside. What weekend of which? Step back from the edge. We're sending something in. Approximately 40 seconds of silence as the containment team pilots a remote vehicle across the barrier carrying a transmitter package. Our tech boys out here say this should do the job of that thing except for three whipped up, but a bit more cleanly. The signal we were receiving from you was a mess. Peters, get over here and look at this thing. Right. It has a confirmation so you'll know it's working. And it should be bespoke enough to get around any, uh, legal issues. Still only one way, mind you. Saves you walking all the way out here for minor shit, though. It'll do. All right. Thanks, Vasquez. One more thing, Swarsby. Moncho wants some progress on getting this under wraps. You know how twitchy the higher ups get with skips this big. I'm not sure what else we can do from out here and they are reluctant to send in any more human assets. So this is all on you jokers. Don't you worry about us. We've got the meeting with this mayor in a couple of days. We'll get this whole thing straightened out and we'll all be back for poker on Friday. Swarsby! We've got a paper! He's running! Sounds of Agent Swarsby running can be heard on the line. Shit. We've been made by a civvy. Gonna go track him down and keep quiet. Swarsby out. And log. Audio Transcript 4 Transmission received approximately four days after last contact using the supplied data transmitter. Begin log. All right. Six times a charm, right, Peters? Right. Right. So we didn't catch that civilian who was watching us. Lost him in the fucking trees. I guess there's a pretty big chunk of forest within the town limits. Anyway, our best guess is he was some toady for the mayor because about an hour later a new law was passed. We could feel it happening like a song you haven't heard for years suddenly popping into your head. Yeah. Fucking weird stuff. Seriously. Anyway, this new law apparently prohibits talking to anyone outside of the town at all. Which is why I'm just having a nice friendly chat with my compatriot, Agent Peters here. And why we've tried to have the same conversation six fucking times now. Anyway, what were we talking about? The meeting with Ronson. Right. The mayor. Yeah, that didn't go well. He seems unhinged. I think meeting with him might have been the wrong play, and since it's illegal to punch people in the face or smash up public property, there wasn't much I could do. He started rambling on about fixing the town or something, and since then we've all noticed people following us around, tracking our movements who we talked to. There's one outside right now. Not very subtle. Yeah, amateurs. Anyway, I got Ronson to agree to another meeting tomorrow, so hopefully that one will go better. But he doesn't strike me as the kind of person who's going to let this shit go. And unless we can find some loophole that's going to let us take him out or break into his house or his office or something to find some answers. We're going to run out of options here pretty quickly. Too bad you ain't a lawyer. Mama always did say I should go to law school. Maybe we can just wait him out, run from there during the next election. When's that happening? Nearly four years? Shit, I doubt we have that long. Well, we'll think of something. I guess that's about it. Nice talking to you, Peters. You too, boss. End log. Incident 3088-1 Approximately three days after the last received transmission from Mobile Task Force Sigma-9, a localized C-class restructuring event occurred within the confines of SCP-3088. Following the event, all anomalous activity associated with SCP-3088 ceased and all people, man-made structures and objects within its bounds disappeared, with the exception of one house at the approximate center of the area. Two documents of significance were recovered from the structure, official documentation regarding newly passed laws in the town of Cullen, Nebraska, and the personal diary of Mayor Thomas Ronson. The journalists transcribed below verbatim. Begin the journal log, page one. I did it. I won. I've been elected the Mayor of Cullen. Well, I say I won, but I didn't do it alone. I had a great team of people to help me out. I've lived in this town for over 40 years and I've seen it steadily get worse and worse through a combination of corruption and ineptitude. But now that I'm Mayor, things are going to change. I can get the town back on its feet, help the people here improve their lives. Page two. We had our first open hall today where I laid out my plans for the future to the people of this good town. They generally seemed receptive, which was heartening. A few people were skeptical that I'd be able to reopen the mills, which is fair, but I think it'll be doable. They didn't go out of business after all. They were sold by that bastard Hastings to line his pockets before we left town. Anyway, looks like I have the support of the people. I'm going to start small though. I've guaranteed some extra funding for the high school so they can make some vital repairs. And I passed an ordinance banning littering in the town since it started to look like a real mess. It may not sound like much, but if people are going to believe things can change, they need to see tangible proof and quickly. I think small improvements like this will go a long way to changing people's attitudes. Page 3 Has some good news today. Omaha textiles are interested in getting the mills running again. I like to think it was my incredible sales pitch that did the job, but the reality is it was probably just good timing. They've apparently been looking to expand for a while now. Still, not going to question such a good opportunity. People of Cullen are honest, hard-working folk, but unemployment has been a real problem here. Getting the mills reopened may restore the hope people have lost over the years. Oh, looks like the litter ordinance is already paying dividends. Only two days in the town is almost looking spotless. Must have inspired the people to pitch in and clean the place up. Page 4 I was talking to Clayton this morning, and apparently there hasn't been a single reported crime in the week since I became mayor. It'd probably be a little egotistical to think that that's due to my influence, but it's a nice thought. We've got to work on a plan that will assure every unemployed person in the town will get a job in the mills once they reopen. Which should be in a few weeks. There should be more than enough jobs available for everyone. And once everyone is back at work, we can start looking at the local economy. Maybe people will start opening new business on the high street again. Page 5 Something strange happened today. A couple of days ago, we passed a bill mandating the repair of the flood banks on the river. Since they broke and flooded half the town a couple of years ago, it's been a huge worry every rain season. And it seemed like a trivial task to relieve the constant stress people living near the river were suffering. I went down with a couple of construction contractors this morning to assess the work requirement, and the bake was as good as new. No sign it was ever damaged at all. It would have been weeks of work, no way it could have been done quietly. And yet there it is, sturdy as the day it was made. Clayton says there still haven't been any crimes either, nearly three weeks. I'm not complaining, most mayors would kill to get zero crime. But it is weird. Not so much as a parking ticket or speeding penalty. Apparently his officers are just sitting on their hands all day. Page 6 Damien came back to town today. I guess he tracked me down because I almost walked right into him in the middle of town. I thought he was going to do something stupid. He looked like he was reaching into his coat for something. Had an angry look on his face, then he just froze. Started looking real confused. Stood there like that for nearly a minute, me and him staring at each other. Then he just turned around and left. I had Clayton pay him a visit at his motel room, and he apparently had a gun right there on the table, door wide open. Didn't even make a move for it when Clayton drew his own gun and arrested him. Violation to parole and all that? I suspect he's on his way back to Nebraska State, even as I write this. There's definitely something strange going on here. Page 7 I tested something yesterday. Passed a law mandating that all road damage should be immediately repaired, something simple that no one would object to. Easy enough to justify what with the increased traffic the mills will bring in. There's been a pothole in the road outside my house for 15 years. I watched it all night until after midnight. Woke up before dawn, and the pothole was gone. Just gone like it was never there. I checked the logs just in case, but there's no record of any maintenance crews even getting started yet. All the roads seem in better shape too. Not just the one outside my house. Tiny cracks, potholes, even tire marks, all gone. Page 8 The laws in Cullen cannot be broken. I feel like I'm going nuts just writing it, but I'm sure of it now. I tried speeding on the way down to town hall today, put my foot down as hard as I could. It stopped right at the point where the car hit 30, and didn't even go a fraction over. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get my foot to press down any harder. It was unnerving. Like some force was preventing me from moving. Like I couldn't control my own body. I've never felt such an awful sensation in my life. Page 9 The more I think about it, the more I think the situation here could be incredibly beneficial for Cullen. Something clearly unnatural is happening, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me a little nervous, but the possibilities. A town with no crime? A town where issues can be fixed instantly? The good we could do with such a gift? Oh, the mill deal went through. The mills are already beginning to reopen, and the paperwork to make sure everyone has a job has gone through. This will be a great start for Cullen. Page 10 It's been a hectic few weeks. Other people have started noticing the weirdness here, which is partially my fault. There were some logistical issues with the mills, none of the supplies and materials were delivered, and it had been held up for weeks. Stuck on a boat in the middle of the Pacific or something. But every single person who would have been working at the mills turned up anyways. The story was the same from all of them. They felt like they had to be at the mill, but there was nothing to do, and they couldn't leave until the end of their shifts, no matter how hard they tried. It came up in a town meeting. Kate Massie brought it up. It seemed hesitant at first, like everyone would think she was nuts. But as soon as she started talking, others started chiming in. The same mill story, or about how they'd been unable to speed in their cars or even swear in public. People started to panic, but I managed to reassure them I wouldn't know where to start. Page 11. There was an incident. Simon Zackwell came at me in the street while I was talking with Clayton about the situation. Started hurling abuse at me, said this weirdness was all my fault and that I'd damn us all in the eyes of God or some such nonsense. Reached into his pocket, clearly about to pull out a gun. I could see the handle. Clayton obviously could too. He shot Zackwell where he stood, right in the chest. He'd just reacted, and I guess the same isn't true with police officers. What a waste. I've declared a state of emergency. It might panic people more, but it gives me some interesting legislative power which I've used to ban firearms within the town. That'll probably rile up the gun nuts, but they'll see it's for the best eventually. We won't have a repeat of this. Page 12. People started leaving. I wish I could say I didn't blame them, but whatever happened to Civic Pride? Loyalty in your home. Did they not realize the things we could do with this? Whatever it is? Over 500 people left in a week. I had to pass a law stopping anyone else from going, so now no one is allowed to leave the town. Cullen will be restored, dammit, and I won't let any narrow-minded fear get in the way of that. Page 13. Maulings came to me today and told me people had been whispering about going to the press or the feds or whoever else. At least I still have some friends left in town. I should have thought about it sooner. It's unlikely that someone hasn't blabbed about what's going on here to someone outside. Don't they realize what would happen if the government or the press got involved here? They turned Cullen into a circus. I've temporarily banned the use of phones in the internet until I can get a handle on things here. I'll find a way to set things right, reverse all these emergency laws, and then Cullen will be better than ever. Page 14. A group of military-looking people in black trucks came into town today. They started asking a bunch of questions. I was in a lot of trouble. I could sense it. Can't imagine there's much they can do, though. The law is the law, after all, and all men must follow it. I've asked John to keep an eye on them for me. Since the phones were shut down, I stopped receiving updates on the mill deliveries. Should have thought about that. I passed a law yesterday that simply read the mills shall have the materials they need. Today, every one of them was fully stocked as if out of nowhere. The people have been turning up to work there for weeks now, and will have something to do. Hopefully, this will begin to turn things around. Page 15. John said those military folks were the edge of town today, talking to someone on their radios. Goddamn interfering sons of bitches. I've passed a law banning anyone from talking to people on the outside at all, so hopefully that'll solve that issue. The mill seemed to be working. It might be my imagination, but everyone seems happier. Apparently, everything they make is getting shipped somewhere, though no one knows where or how. But there's always plenty of raw material for them to work with. A few more weeks of this, then things might be able to get back to normal around here. Page 16. Had a meeting with that military lot today. I'll have to have a word with Sandra about why she booked that in. Anyway, they came in here and started demanding information about all sorts of things, like they had any kind of authority in this town. I told them they should have just left well enough alone and minded their own business. They looked at me like I was nuts. The conversation was a bit more cordial after that, though nothing really came of it. They're going to keep interfering. I can feel it. I've told them I'll think about what they've said, and I will. I'm not an unreasonable man. But I've been given a unique chance to make something of this town, and I won't have it wasted by small-minded military men. I agreed to a short meeting with them again tomorrow. Give everyone time to process the other's views and all that. Maybe I'll be able to bring them around, but I doubt it. Page 17. As I expected, the second meeting with that Swarsby fellow went nowhere. He demanded that I reverse all these laws and let the people abandon the town. I told him I would do no such thing. I won't be pushed around by meat-headed military fools. He flat-out said he's going to be a problem. Judging by the look on his face, I think he would have shot me right then there if he was able. I'll have to think of a solution. Obviously, I can't just leave him running around town doing whatever they want. Who knows what trouble they could cause. They just mind their own business. Page 18. That bastard Swarsby and his friends nearly started a riot today. Riling people up, some nonsense about human riots and votes and no confidence. Don't these people realize I'm trying to do what's best for them? How can they all be so blind? Well, I'm going to put an end to this once and for all. First, I'll get rid of these interlopers and then I'll see what I can do about this talk or rebel again. Cullen is a good town. Damn it! I'm going to have it ruined by the ungrateful attitude of people afraid to do a hard day's work. End Journal Log. Analysis shows that almost immediately following the final entry in the journal, a new entry was added to the recovered documentation regarding newly passed laws. The final law added mandated that all military personnel leave the town immediately. The prevailing theory is that due to this final law directly contradicting the previous law regarding the ability for people to leave town, it was a reality failure or restructuring event resulting in the loss of the town and its inhabitants and neutralization of SCP-3088. Waimea Ronson's house and its contents remained is unknown. Mobile Task Force Sigma-9 has officially been declared lost.