ITEM#-008: Jade Mask
Stabilization Criteria
ITEM#-008 must be permanently housed flat inside an opaque, lead-lined containment safe inside Secure Vault 14. The front stone facing of the artifact must remain continuously draped beneath a thick, multi-layered black velvet blackout cloth to suppress facial synchronization loops [peer-validation].
Personnel conducting physical cleaning cycles or surface mineral diagnostics are strictly forbidden from maintaining direct eye contact with the open jade sockets for longer than thirty (30) consecutive seconds. Mirror arrays, polished chrome panels, or active camera monitoring apertures are entirely prohibited inside the vault cell during maintenance windows.
Description
ITEM#-008 (Jade Mask): An ancient, life-sized human facial mask measuring approximately 5 centimeters in height, meticulously hand-carved from a single block of highly polished, deep emerald-green jade stone. Mineral forensics and structural carbon-dating track the geological origin and carving sequence back to the pre-Columbian eras of Teotihuacán, Mexico, where it was discovered by exploration teams hidden beneath the dark mud layers of the Pyramid of the Sun.
While the mask sits in a completely inert, passive state when isolated beneath its blackout cloth shroud, its primary anomaly activates the exact millisecond a living human observer maintains direct, unmonitored eye contact with the empty jade socket apertures for a duration crossing the 45-second threshold. ITEM#-008 acts as a local physical anchor for a unique spatiotemporal visual override loop.
Upon activation, the target subject suffers an immediate, painless transfer of facial latency. The subject's real-world face completely stops rendering in baseline reality—appearing to outside onlookers and mirror reflections as a completely flat, featureless expanse of smooth, gray concrete. Simultaneously, the victim's living facial expressions, eyes, and mouth are physically projected onto the hard stone surface of the jade mask inside the vault container [peer-validation]. While trapped in this state, the victim cannot blink, close their eyes, or sleep; their consciousness is forcefully flooded with a silent, freezing sensory blackness matching whatever the mask is "looking at" inside its dark container safe until handlers replace the blackout cloth to reset the timeline anchor.