SCP-4314 is the irrational number defined as π (pi).
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-4314 is ubiquitous across mathematics and cannot be contained. However, SCP-4314's anomalous properties do not appear to manifest until after the 1.25 × 1020th decimal place, while the current public world record sits somewhere past 1014 digits. A pending investigation from the Department of Esoteric Mathematics will determine whether active containment efforts are necessary.
Description: SCP-4314 is $\pi$ (pi): an irrational number1 defined as the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter; in base 10, its decimal expansion is $3.1415926535$ out to ten decimal places.
Beyond the 1.25 × 1020th decimal place, despite being defined statically, the decimal expansion of SCP-4314 appears to fluctuate every time it is computed. Subtracting two measurements of SCP-4314 and converting the resulting decimal to base 5 yields a message in the anomalous language Ortothan. While each attempt at this procedure yields a different message, each one contains sets of coherent sentences that convey similar themes, which appear to be from an unknown sentient being or group tentatively designated SCP-4314-A (see Discovery). It is currently unknown whether such messages, or the use of SCP-4314 at this level of precision, have other anomalous effects.
Discovery: The Applied Mathematics Department's Athena.aic stumbled across SCP-4314 when double checking its work during a standard calculation of $\pi$'s extended decimal expansion. Upon discovery, Athena.aic confirmed that the discrepancy wasn't a computational error and successfully flagged it as a potential anomaly. Manual review yielded the first known message from SCP-4314-A, designated SCP-4314-A-1, which is printed below.
we watch and wait and [wade/weave] through eternity ever wakeful forever wandering never wanted wreaked with [pain/bliss] under the weight of the wheel and its [beauty/symphonies] we wish you could [see/hear]
Addendum 4314.01: Interim Researcher Note
Pi is, on all accounts, an ordinary number. An essential number for countless fields of mathematics, of course, but still ordinary in every regard. The ancient Greeks thought numbers like pi to be illogical heresies (hence the term "irrational") and forbade them from being thought of as true numbers—but in this day and age, we know better. Sure, pi can't be expressed as a finite combination of the natural numbers, but it is just as well-defined as any rational number—more well defined than most, perhaps, given its extensive history and the numerous techniques we've invented to characterize and study it.
Pi's decimal expansion, on the other hand, is a more complex matter. For most practical purposes, you only need to use pi out to five or so decimal places—the rest is negligible in the face of approximations and other sources of error. NASA goes out to fifteen, and leaving out the rest doesn't even introduce enough error to be off by more than the width of your pinky. Hell, using it out to 37 decimal places when estimating the size of the observable universe would give you subatomic precision.
Yet in spite of this, mathematicians have spent centuries computing the digits of pi out to unfathomable lengths, knowing that their search will neither end nor attain any sort of meaning along the way. Why? Well, perhaps they don't really believe its decimal expansion is infinite. By the time the human mind makes it to ten digits of any number, it's already lost track of the true scales involved—so how could we possibly expect it to comprehend infinity? When we find something truly infinite—such as a bottomless pit or an endless hallway—we secure and contain it, because no matter how hard we try, it fundamentally doesn't make sense to us, and perhaps never will. I suspect that SCP-4314, and the numeric threshold between logic and the unknown that characterizes it, is no different.
Whatever lies beyond that threshold, we certainly have its attention now.
—Dr. Evelyn King
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