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It all comes down to money.
We couldn't get funding, in the early days. The various governments of the world refused to fund us, and we didn't have SCPs that made endless amounts of gold or jewels or could be used to cheat the stock market. The President of the United States said "No". The Czar said "No". The Crown said "No". They didn't believe what we were doing was right, or useful.
Despite our lack of resources, we had one thing we could use. SCP-2013. Neither of the files you just read about SCP-2013 is the actual one; the original original file doesn't exist anymore, but the gist of it was this: SCP-2013 was a clutch of eggs that we found at the bottom of the sea in 1900, brought up by a fishing trawler. The eggs were dead, but the Foundation kept them as a curiosity.
In the early days, the Foundation was obsessed with bringing the dead back to life, thanks to Frankenstein. We tried to revive the eggs in various ways, from supporting the embryos outside of the egg (which failed), to electrocuting them (which cooked them), to just plain incubating them (which also cooked them). Eventually, we tried an experimental compound that's long since been lost to history. It was made up of mercury, iridium, radium, and a few other elements that science didn't yet know about.
And then the eggs hatched.
They acted just like children, but they looked like iguanas mixed with gorillas. They had blood chemistry we had never seen before, and could mimic human speech and behavior to a startling degree. At the same time, the Foundation had been developing disguises to hide its agents in unfriendly lands, and they were so high-quality, a 50-year-old man could wear a face that made him look like an 18-year-old girl, and, except for perhaps the height, it would be impossible to tell the difference.
The creatures that hatched from SCP-2013 were cooperative, and viewed us as their parents. They also matured very quickly, and grew to adult size within 6 months. All we needed to do was educate them about the world at large, put them in a skin suit, and then we sent them out into the world to be the best at their job.
They were politicians, writers, singers, actors, kings, queens, inventors, agents… they were all important, in their own way. Five out of the last seventeen US Presidents have been these creatures, as of 2012. The Queen of England got replaced long ago, and her family still doesn't know it. Our greatest success was probably infiltrating a major cell of the Chaos Insurgency back in the 1970's.
Over the years, we've bred over 1,500 instances of SCP-2013-A, and technology improved to make their disguises more convincing; we could alter their height, their DNA, even permanently sculpt their appearance so that they never ran the risk of being exposed. That's how the Foundation got a large part of their funding up until they discovered that we could literally make gold from lead using simple fission and fusion reactions. Platinum's actually simpler to make, but that's beside the point. We eventually discontinued the SCP-2013 program, and we rounded them up and, essentially, expunged them from existence; we thought we had killed them all, except for a couple we kept alive for the sake of testing.
And then we got word that the Global Occult Coalition had been infiltrated by an SCP-2013-A instance. They had made their way up the ranks quite a way, to the point that they were a consultant for the ambassador from Czechoslovakia. Nobody was the wiser until we received a reconnaissance report from the "agent" itself. We informed the GOC, it was detained, and written off as an isolated event.
We thought that was the end of it, until the elections happened. A small constituency in England elected its MP for the term, and then we found out that all of the candidates were actually SCP-2013-A instances. We didn't know about this until after the election, and after that, it was too late to take any of them out; they were public figures, they were in the media, and any action against them would draw suspicion.
We found that on their own, SCP-2013-A had spread all over the globe. For all intents and purposes, they rule the world; more than half but less than three-fourths of the world's governments are controlled by them. We classified them as Keter, made them aliens, and said that they were effectively immortal to discourage any assassinations. But, we weren't without hope. There was always the secondary effect.
SCP-2013-A, for some reason, got weaker when people observed them. One of the researchers studying them called it a "detrimental anti-memetic effect", or "the more people know about them, the less effective they are". They grew less intelligent, lost muscle mass, underwent osteoporosis, and all-around just became easier to kill. The more of them there were, the less harmful the overall effect was; "memetic dilution" was the phrase that was thrown around.
So, we began a plan to kill them. Crack the masquerade, however so slightly, reveal the existence of them to the world at large to cancel out the memetic dilution. And it was working, for a while; people who were called crackpots by their peers realized the truth, that their governments, their world, was not their own. They were called mad, but soon, the whole world would see the truth.
The program was canceled, and the "it was all just a weird meme" explanation slapped on it, after the corpse was found. The Cardiff Compound was engineered to prevent anyone else to give into what was called a "crackpot conspiracy theory", and distributed through airplanes via chemtrail. But they are real.
But, for some reason, this order was passed down:
It has come to my attention that we have incorrectly documented SCP-2013. SCP-2013-A is non-existent, as is evidenced by the exhumations of several purported SCP-2013-A instances, as well as DNA samples and the recently recorded autopsy. Gentlemen, it appears we have been had.
SCP-2013 was clearly nothing more than a harmless memetic agent that caused mass paranoia and made us interpret certain people in positions of fame or power as something not of this world. How this happened, we don't know; who made it, or even how it was made, we don't know; why it was made, we don't know. But we will find out.
SCP-2013 is to be reclassified as Safe, and its containment file rewritten. For the sake of context, the current containment procedures are to be archived, and are accessible to any researcher with Level-4/2013 or higher clearance.
Secure. Contain. Protect.
-O5-2
By now, it has been more than 60 seconds since you opened this page. I apologize for any consequences that may come about as a result of you viewing this document. But, it eases me, knowing that the truth is out. Even if I am the one that is crazy.
Secure. Contain. Protect.
