| Item: | Neural Headphones |
| Type: | Anomalous Acoustic Device |
| Living: | No |
| Sentient: | No |
| Potential/Current Hazards | Any sound produced by an item has the potential to affect humans within hearing distance. Additionally, an item can activate spontaneously if it receives a sufficient signal. |
| Required Wear/Weaponry | All personnel wishing to test item must wear sound-proofed acoustic earmuffs. |
Usage
Until such time as items can be reliably mass-produced, they are not to leave their storage room. Any and all testing or handling of item must be approved by Alpha Command.
Items are highly dangerous and in limited quantity, so they cannot be reliably and effectively used at present. However, due to some of items' effects on test subjects, the potential medical or martial uses of items are widespread. Some potential uses include:
- Creating an army of "supersoldiers"
- Brainwashing/amnesticizing double agents or unauthorized witnesses to experimentation
- Safe, efficient slave labor
- Reliable treatment of mental and physical disorders
- Weapons of Mass Destruction
Report
Items are a set of 16 pairs of Bluetooth headphones of an unknown make and model. The headphones lack a charging port and are colored black with white earpads. Said earpads are reported to be unnaturally comfortable and noise-dampening, so much so that some test subjects had to be forcibly separated from the headphones after testing was completed. Additionally, the volume and power controls on the left side of the headphones have no function or effect on the headphones.
Despite being Bluetooth headphones, they do not appear to have any sort of internal battery. Instead, the headphones utilize a very dense, previously unknown metal in their wiring and circuitry, which conducts any low-frequency electromagnetic waves. As such, the headphones will receive and play any radio frequencies or cellular transmissions, but the closest and strongest signal will be favored over all others.
If an item picks up a signal containing music, it will begin emitting a series of inaudible, low-frequency sound waves through its speakers. Recordings of the resulting sound reveal it to be an infrasonic version of the song being received, but test subjects claim to hear the song at its normal pitch while wearing the active headphones.
The audio produced by the item greatly alters a listener's mental and physical state. The state of the listener seems to depend on the genre and sound of the song being replicated. For example, smooth jazz music tends to lower a listener's blood pressure and brain activity, while Electronic Dance Music sends the listener into a manic state closely resembling amphetamine consumption. There are, of course, some outliers; if a song from any genre is notorious for its poor reception, the sound produced will nearly always cause permanent damage to the listener's brain and/or body.
The effects of the items are not confined to within the headphones, however; any sound produced by the item has the potential to reliably affect any human within a 5-meter radius. (Note: These effects do not apply to recordings of the low-frequency sound produced by the headphones.)
Items are to be kept in an anechoic chamber 5m x 5m x 4m in volume, with Faraday shielding lining the outer walls to prevent unwanted electromagnetic interference. A continuous broadcast of white noise is to be maintained in the room at all times. Items are not to be removed from containment except for reverse-engineering and testing purposes.
All activities involving the items are to be performed in an adjacent 5m x 5m x 4m room, with Faraday shielding insulation and active noise reduction speakers placed in every corner of said room. During testing and reverse-engineering, all personnel (minus test subject) are required to wear sound-proofed acoustic earmuffs. Reverse-engineering must be done inside the vacuum glovebox embedded in the Northern wall to prevent unwanted infrasound production.
Acquisition Records
Items were recovered by the Insurgency on █/█/201█, when Item Acquisition Team A-53 raided an SCP Foundation convoy in [REDACTED], Belarus. The convoy had been transporting several anomalous items, presumably from one Site to another, and contained 24 Agents, all of whom were slaughtered in the ensuing firefight.
After disposing of multiple useless items, the Team came across the headphones in an armored car. This car had been heavily damaged in the firefight, and many of the containment measures had failed, including a localized white-noise signal and a significant portion of the Faraday shielding. Nevertheless, Item Acquisition Team A-53 commandeered the damaged car, choosing to drive it to Facility [REDACTED].
During transit to Facility [REDACTED], the unshielded items passed through multiple radio broadcasting signals, some of which contained various genres of pop music. The items promptly activated en masse, affecting the Operatives in the armored car in various manners, mostly involving mental state. By the time Item Acquisition Team A-53 returned to Facility [REDACTED], ██% of the team had suffered a severe lapse in mental health, resulting in severe cases of major depression, misophonia, schizophrenia, and (in one case) Dissociative Identity Disorder. Of those affected, ██% would eventually commit suicide.
Addendum 1: Following test NH-001-11, a sudden broadcast of "Never Gonna Give You Up" is to be used as a kill agent if tests produce violent, toxic, or destructive results.
