SCP-4410

rating: +187+x

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You are attempting to access a Foundation Special Database and network. Access to this database requires special departmental clearance. All access attempts are recorded with RAISA. Please enter your credentials.

user: Z. Saxon, Level 3, id: 9722410 Rho
pass: 1twothr3e4ourtheta'walls_brainbugs_jack0ftales_starw1zards_fullarc_denouement@thefinalfrontier

Credentials Valid…
User possesses LAMPSHADE Class clearance…
Department of Pataphysics membership confirmed. Welcome Dr. Saxon.

.call Enkidu

Hello. I am Enkidu.aic, an Artificially Intelligent Construct used by the Foundation Department of Pataphysics for narrativistic analysis and data archiving. How can I help you today?

Hey Enkidu, are you busy?

Not particularly. Looking through what the webcrawlers are giving us, searching for tropes, character arcs, and plot devices. The usual. What do you need Zack?

Oh it's real simple, don't want to distract you from your work too much. I just need the major iterations of SCP-4410's abbreviated file, maintaining the portions relating to its artistic development and history.

Alright, but first I've got to ask. Does the black moon howl?

When it need not convey a meaning, only inspire unity.

Sorry about that, I have to do it to everyone. Got to make sure you're clean and all.

It's totally fine. Whatever you feel like you need to do, I trust that it needs to be done.

Aww, you flatter me. I'm working on modifying and formatting the files now. What do you need them for?

Have to go do a presentation for some site directors.

Ding! They're finished. I've taken the liberty of highlighting changes from a previous iteration in green.

Indispensable is too weak a word for you, Enkidu.

Item #: SCP-4410

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: By an 8-5 vote of the O5 Council, SCP-4410 will be allowed to remain on the internet, accessible to the public. The writings on the SCP-4410 website are to be monitored by Foundation personnel and Foundation-made pattern-recognition algorithms for similarities to existing anomalies. All SCP-4410-1 instances are to be identified and monitored. Proposals to further interrogate or test SCP-4410-1 instances must be approved by the SCP-4410 research lead. SCP-4410-1 instances should be amnesticized to remove memories of interactions with Foundation personnel, but personnel should not attempt to remove memories of SCP-4410 itself.

Description: SCP-4410 is a fictional organization known as the PAC Institute, a global, super-national entity dedicated to the containment of anomalies and the preservation of normalcy.

If an individual who is introduced to the concept of SCP-4410 subsequently feels inclined to create stories about or related to it, they (henceforth designated SCP-4410-1) will be subject to SCP-4410's anomalous effects.

The majority of SCP-4410 stories created by SCP-4410-1 instances bear striking similarities to actual anomalies and events documented by the SCP Foundation. Furthermore, SCP-4410 itself bears striking similarities to the SCP Foundation, in terms of its goals, methods, and organizational structure. Though in principle these similarities could be due to non-anomalous coincidence, the chances of such similarities occurring incidentally are so low that the Foundation considers this possibility negligible.

Notable Features of SCP-4410:

  • The PAC Institute gives anomalies it contains designations consisting of PAC followed by three numerals.
  • Like the SCP Foundation, PAC is a double entendre which refers both to the motto of the organization (Preserve, Acquire, Contain) and the methods by which it contains anomalies (Protocols for the Anomaly's Containment).
  • The PAC Institute classifies anomalies with the object classes Pandora, Yesod, and Fenris, which are identical in meaning and use to the Safe, Euclid, and Keter classes respectively.
  • The PAC Institute has a clearance level system identical to the Foundation's.
  • The PAC Institute employs Special Response Teams (SRTs), which are analogous to Mobile Task Forces.
  • The PAC Institute employs Class-C Personnel, which are analogous to the Foundation's D-Class Personnel.
  • PAC Institute operations are centered around Bases, the largest and most significant of which is Base-27, which are headed by Base Directors. Base Directors answer to the A5-Council, which has 13 members, each referred to with a numerical designation.

Investigation into currently known SCP-4410-1 instances indicate to a high degree of certainty that none of them are aware of the existence of the anomalous in general or the Foundation in particular. To an SCP-4410-1 instance, conceiving of an SCP-4410 related story is no different than creating any other story. The mechanism by which SCP-4410 story concepts are transferred into the minds of SCP-4410-1 instances is unknown. Memetic analysis has revealed no memetic agents that could bestow information in any SCP-4410 work or the concept of SCP-4410 in general. Testing of D-Class SCP-4410-1 instances under controlled conditions have indicated that no psionic transfer of information is occurring either. Indeed, it is possible that no information transfer is responsible for SCP-4410's effects, and instead the effects are caused by anomalously induced coincidence.

The first known piece of SCP-4410 media was posted on the /x/ (Paranormal) board of the imageboard 4chan on June 7th, 2007. It took the form of the primary documentation of PAC-244, a statue that becomes highly mobile and hostile when direct line of sight is not maintained, which clearly parallels SCP-173. Several other users, inspired by the work, became SCP-4410-1 instances and created their own PAC documents, most of which paralleled existing SCP objects such as SCP-076, SCP-087, and SCP-682. PAC Institute threads became very popular on the board, leading to irritation from users who felt they were crowding out other discussion. As a result, SCP-4410-1 instances transferred their work to EditThis, a public wiki-farm. Foundation webcrawlers discovered this board on July 5th, 20071. By this time, numerous stories had been created, among which were parallels of SCP-008, SCP-096, SCP-239, SCP-343, SCP-529, SCP-882, and SCP-914, among others. Most notably, one work seemed to parallel an as of yet undesignated anomaly contained by the Foundation2, but was written four days before the Foundation learned of the anomaly's existence. Since its initial discovery by the Foundation, SCP-4410 documents have led to the discovery of 2 anomalous objects.

It has been proposed that the Foundation should attempt to support and popularize the SCP-4410 website and community, and raise SCP-4410's profile in the public consciousness so that more useful intelligence can be gleaned from related stories and so that, in the event of an LV-Class Lifted Veil Scenario3, the widespread shock of learning of the existence of the Foundation will be reduced due to familiarity with a similar, fictional organization. The merits of this proposal are currently under debate.

Addendum - Commentary on SCP-4410 Fiction:

Though superficially similar to SCP documentation (Consisting of containment procedures and a description), SCP-4410 writings would be considered very unprofessional by today's standards. They are often un-clinical, often use imperial units, use ALL CAPS for emphasis, and often include unimportant details and phrases regarding researcher's opinions of or attitudes towards the object or its protocols for containment. That said, the style on display in SCP-4410 works is reminiscent in some ways of documentation I've read from the early 1900s era of the Foundation.

There is an interesting attitude of collaboration among SCP-4410-1 instances. Often they'll post a new PAC file, go to bed, and the next day see that another user has modified their work in some way, adding a new idea. This practice of editing the work of others is welcomed, so long as the modifications improve the original work. Interestingly, when this happens to articles that have noted similarities to actual anomalies in containment, the revisions that are well received often make the PAC file mirror the corresponding SCP file even more closely than before.

I now want to shift focus, and talk about the PAC Files by themselves, on their own terms, as works of fiction. Being made in an open community of amateur writers, they are not all winners. They are often simple, even crude works of fiction. But I do not wish to disparage them, because in many of them there is an elegance in their simplicity. They are straightforward, easily digestable accounts of disturbing monsters and cursed artifacts. These stories haven't gained such popularity for no reason, after all. A perfect example of this is the original, PAC-244. The PAC-244 file is anything but conventional, it doesn't rely on a surprise or repulsive imagery for horror, as much other horror fiction on /x/ does. The brilliance of PAC-244 is that it inspires horror and wonder in the same breath. It isn't a ghost, or vampire, or zombie, or any other conventional monster that readers have a strong background understanding of. It's novel, and this inspires both fear and curiosity. Even better is that big serial number: 244, implying there are at least 243 other things as strange and mysterious as this statue. It doesn't just scare, it fires the imagination as well.

This resonates with me personally, it takes me back to when I was a fresh-faced post doc, got recruited by an international conspiracy and was shown the new frontier of human knowledge that was under my nose my entire life. I spent hours on end on my new work PC reading the files that all the new recruits are shown (One of which was SCP-173). I was horrified, and entranced.

Online collaborations such as this are often fleeting, but there are some very passionate SCP-4410-1 instances. I'm hoping this community can stay active for three, maybe four years. We'll see.
— Latisha Benson, Foundation Department of Literature.

So, do you need anything else?

No, that should do it. Thanks a bundle.

Are you able to tell me what you're working on in any more detail?

Sure. The O5s told us that we should brief the Lampshade-cleared site directors on the innovation hypothesis. You want to see the intro I've written so far?

Certainly.

Okay, here you go.

Hello. I am Dr. Zachary Saxon, of the Department of Pataphysics. We all know about SCP-4410, and all the issues it caused. I must give a tip of the hat to Bard.aic, for his excellent work in containing the Escapist events. But I'm here to discuss the implications of Escapist events for the Foundation's future. I know that time is valuable in any line of work, especially our own, so I'll cut straight to the chase. After a lot of research, we believe that SCP-4410 is made up of three distinct anomalous effects: the anomalous inspiration of the PAC Institute writers, the causal protection of the narrative entity, and the Escapist events. Now, my colleague Dr. Latisha Benson has made a very compelling case that the PAC Wiki is a microcosm of the development of narrative fiction generally. But what took Humanity on the whole thousands of years to develop took the PAC wiki only ten, likely due to their focused, close writing community, shared basic narrative concept and format, and high standards. I have copies of Dr. Benson's paper with me, if any of you are interested in reading it. In her estimation, Series IV or V is roughly equivalent to where human fiction is now. This concept leads to an alarming possibility: What if Escapist events aren't an aberration, just ahead of the curve? What if, after postmodernism and metafiction's examination of tropes and the relationship between fiction and the reader, the next step in the development of fiction is the actualization of fiction? You may think the idea is ridiculous, but I implore you to take it seriously, as we in pataphysics do. Pataphysics, as a field, is very new, and very difficult to study, and there is still so much we don't know. The PAC Institute writers aren't reality benders, they're just normal people writing stories for fun, and look at the headache they caused us. Maybe the events are unique to our universe and universe group, some emergent property from the interaction between pataphysics and the anomalous. But it's also possible that this is simply how pataphysics functions across every narrative layer. If that's the case… Well, I guess our authors may have something interesting to look forward to. I'll now accept questions.

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