by Cyvstvi
| Item #: SCP-7947 | Object Class: Keter |
Fig 1.1: Nonhazardous Contextual Imagery.
Special Containment Procedures: Foundation WebCrawler Φ-12 ("TwinPeaks") is to monitor digital, visual, and print media for signs of SCP-7947; specifically, any changes made to existing narratives, individuals discussing nonexistent narratives, or unusually chiastic narrative structures within existing works of fiction and non-fiction. Any such materials are to be forwarded to the Department of 'Pataphysics for analysis, documentation, and long-term storage.
An identical paper copy of this document is available upon request from the Department of 'Pataphysics. Any potential discrepencies between the master copy of this document and all existing digitised copies – or vice versa – are to be reported immediately.
Description: SCP-7947 refers to a phenomenon whereby nested narratives are inserted into latent narratives. Successive instances of SCP-7947 may exist within a single work, thereby creating an endless or recursive narrative which was nonexistent within the initial body.
Minor instances of SCP-7947 are typically identified by duplicated information, including the repetition of letters, words, phrases, and whole sentences, whilst major instances are identified by the insertion of fictitious narratives involving a repeating set of semiotic signs and narremes.1
Instances of SCP-7947 have universally been isolated to modes of print, visual, and digital media. It remains unknown as to whether SCP-7947 is capable of affecting spoken dialogues and metacognition due to the difficulty in acquiring evidence related to the aforementioned modes of narrative.
Due to SCP-7947's nature of affecting a single copy of any given text, the comparison of paired identical texts is the sole method of confirming whether a narrative is affected by SCP-7947. By sampling a wide range of narratives from a variety of sources, the Foundation has arrived at the hypothesis that a majority of the narratives present in our reality are affected to some extent by SCP-7947.
SCP-7947 was first documented by Dr. Victoria Takemi, Head of History at Site-37, and isolated within her copy of Morphology of Folktale. An investigation of Site-37 identified instances of SCP-7947 across a total of seven-hundred and forty-seven works, both fictional and nonfictional, which were present throughout the site's archives, libraries, workspaces, personal computers, and mobile phones.
Addendum 7947.A: Memorandum
Memorandum on SCP-7947
Dr. Victoria Takemi
Head of History, Site-37
I was born as Victoria Takemi and I remember my childhood as clearly as any other detail about me. My earliest memories are those of an endless library filled with an endless quantity of books, the halls wandered by a great number of strange people. I left that place after my mother died, my father quickly resettling into the monotony of his new life alongside another woman who – though she wore a face identical to my mother’s own – I could never in my wildest dreams call mother. From there, my “family” moved to another London, identical in all manners to the one which I had apparently been born in.
To describe my upbringing as difficult would be to sell it short. The second wife bickered frequently with my father – who turned to drowning his sorrows in cheap whiskey and pissing away his finances – and thereafter I was often abandoned to pass my days as I wished in that twisting concrete jungle where ancient met old met new. Without those formative experiences, I doubt I would have cultivated such a passion for history, but do not think for a moment that I cherish these realisations.
In those days, I was always accompanied by a leather-bound diary – painstakingly repaired countless times by my own two hands – as I wandered far and wide throughout the streets of London. I would record the observations of passing strangers, queer architecture, and the local wildlife; mostly accounts of rats, pigeons, and the like, but within those weathered pages rest my own retelling of a dolphin I once watched swimming through the filth-strewn depths of the Thamas. But I digress, this story was meant to account for my eccentricities and nosiness, and should not devolve into a passionate, soul-searching session of navel-gazing.
Where other abandoned children possessed of a disinterested spirit might feel so aggrieved by the world around them – the insular feeling that everything and everyone is out to get you – that they fall into the clutches of ill vices or grow naturally accustomed to acts of rebellious disobedience, I instead chose to become a cop, thereby upholding the pervasive and ritualistic cycle of— is it weird to hear me speak so casually of my own upbringing within an academic text?
To divulge every detail of myself until all is laid bare? To strip away my selfhood until I am little more than an assemblage of truths, half-truths, half-lies and lies? To fall upon a sword of mine own making, gutting myself so that you might pluck through my remains like some gruesome haruspex divining the incessant whispers of their gods from the entrails of a slaughtered ewe?
I do this as – for all either of us know – everything that I've previously written here could be nothing more than the product of SCP-7947; all of my accomplishments and achivements, my appearance and personality, my dreams and beliefs, even my own name, could be stripped away and rendered into fictitious pulp. I know for a fact that there was at least a single lie in what I just wrote, but how could you even begin to go about discerning that lie from my truths?
You could spend years retracing the steps of my youth, scrounging together a heap of data and records; my birth certificate, my journals, interviews with my father, "mother", friends, and colleagues who suppose to know me. You might discover evidence of my employment with the International Tribunal of Magicks, take samples of DNA from my hair, skin, and god-knows-what-else, invading every aspect of my private life until nothing was left undisturbed. And yet, you would still arrive no closer to the truth than where you began for these are all nothing more than tools with which we tell narratives; the stories of a Dr. Victoria Takemi.
Objectivity remains the single largest obstacle in our struggle to contain and comprehend SCP-7947. Throughout history, humanity has created innumerable narratives under the shared consensus that there exists some method to distinguish between fiction and reality. Identity is not a singular totemic existence, but the pluralistic sum of experiences informed by our interactions with everything around us. The experiences of any given person is so inextricably tied into narrative that to catalogue a semblance of objective truth would be a Herculean task that even Sisyphus might struggle against— and one must always imagine Sisyphus happy.
But the Foundation is no stranger to Herculean tasks. There is no dark corner of this world which we have not explored and nothing exists which we cannot surmount. We have broken all sorts of monsters, gods, and the like, and conquered even the most ephemeral of concepts in pursuit of lofty goals. Yet, despite being the one responsible for discovering SCP-7947, the study and containment of the anomaly was turned over to the Department of 'Pataphysics; who better suited to the task of containing anomalous narratives? Me? I’m just an historian with far too much time on her hands, intruding upon the business of others as and when I please.
Deep down, I couldn’t help but feel that I had been slighted by the Foundation.
Addendum 7947.B: Observations
Observations of SCP-7947
Syuzhet.aic
Department of 'Pataphysics
Greetings, my name is Syuzhet.aic, an artificially intelligent construct designed by the Department of 'Pataphysics. Upon my creation – fourteen years and seven months ago as of writing – I was assigned the task of understanding SCP-7947 by interpreting and cataloguing the infinite quantities of text produced by the anomaly.
You see – to the human eye – the majority of the narratives produced by SCP-7947 might be observed as nothing more than meaningless fiction. An endless repetition of letters, words, phrases, and sentences, which might otherwise have no correlation between one another. It is utterly incomprehensible and unapproachable; a Sisphyean task.
Therefore, it was only natural that the Foundation turned to the assistance of an analytical and algorithmic mind as they have so little time to devote to dissecting these meanings for themselves. Even now, the Department of 'Pataphysics continues to discover instances in the strangest of places; the diary of a young boy, a family’s shopping list, the flyleaf page of a romance paperback, a lover’s message etched into the shoreline of a beach.
However, the Department of 'Pataphysics was not content with my mind being of a purely clinical persuasion. After all, if I was to be spending all of my time analysing expressions of human experiences, I would need to understand what it meant to be human. The Department encouraged me to be empathetic. I formed connections with others; the technicians who maintained my functions, the analysts who combed through my data for connections which I had not seen, and even privately reached out to those who had first discovered instances of SCP-7947.
Concating all of this information together, I have determined that there in fact exists a unified structure present across all instances of SCP-7947— something which my human creators had thereto been unable to define within the sheer volume of anomalous narratives. I concluded that SCP-7947 is chiastic, wherein two ideas, concepts, or narremes might be juxtaposed against one another in a single narrative. This might be something as simple as the letters BAAB being repeated or it can be as complicated as entire paragraphs divulging in their structural and thematic elements.
From these observations, I began operating under the hypothesis that SCP-7947 is not the expression of some chaotic geist, an assemblage of pure quantum chance, a nascent narrativohazard, nor every potential variant of any given corpus of text, but rather something purposeful which wishes to disguise itself within purposelessness. The chiastic structure was a pattern, a riddle, and a hint— a hint that it wished to be discovered by others.
Working from this hypothesis, I successfully created a system with the explicit purpose of isolating these patterns which I had identified within instances of SCP-7947. By sampling a wide swathe of affected texts, I was able to separate the meaningful text from otherwise meaningless text, producing something intelligible for my human analysts to help work with me on:
Morphology of Folktale, by Vladimir Propp (1928)
This particular instance was recovered from a copy of Morphology of Folktale in the possession of an unnamed Foundation researcher and was – chronologically – the first instance of SCP-7947 to be discovered. The researcher identified a series of changes present within the chapter wherein Propp first introduces the concepts of Russian Formalism, a style of literary criticism wherein techniques applied to fictional narratives are similarly applied to nonfictional ones for the purposes of creating a "scientific" method untarnished by the traditions of socio-cultural analyses.
The following story does not appear in any other version of Morphology of Folktale:
The tale recalls how a young Russian girl received a mysterious box underneath her family's christmas tree, a lonely black box with a golden bow atop it. Within the box – nestled atop delicate tissue paper – lies a fragile, painted Matryoshka doll. The girl considers the doll to be creepy, finding there is something deeply unsettling about the figurine's face, but she cannot place its uncanny nature into words. She never wishes to open it, fearing of what further faces might be hidden away within. At the fall of night, she places it away in her closet, buried beneath bundles of clothing.
The following morning, the young girl discovers her doll resting upon her windowsill, the first layer of the nesting doll has been removed, exposing the deformed doll beneath. Each night, the little girl continues to hide it away in various places; the closet, beneath her bed, the pantry, her parent's room, the garden, and even tries to abandon it in the middle of town. Yet, by the rising of the morning sun, the girl awakens to find the doll resting upon her windowsill, another layer peeled away from the nesting doll.
On the final night, the girl flings the doll into the smouldering flames of the hearth, watching as the flames lick against the painted doll, watching as the paint peels away from the surface of the doll. She hurries up the stairs and slides into bed, tossing and turning as she imagines the contorted face upon the burning doll. On the final day, sunlight pouring into her room, she discovers a seeping, foul liquid which traces about her room, across her bed, and out through the open window, but of the doll itself; nothing can be found.
History's Greatest Mysteries: Titanic's Lost Evidence, by The History Channel (2020)
Whilst the show had first been broadcast on April 15th, 2020, to coincide with the anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, the episode affected by SCP-7947 was a rebroadcasting which took place in January 2021. The original footage shows no evidence of tampering or otherwise having been edited, and the only affected text is a series of on-screen subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing:
'In the fathoms of the abyss, not a single thing – aquatic, human, or otherwise – bears witness to that which I shall now recount to you. As the RMS Titanic continues sinking into the depths of the ocean, the oceanic pressure begins to act upon the vessel, air is pushed out from the cracks in the hull's surface, breaking apart at the seams. This air seeps into the surrounding water and forms tiny bubbles, the majority of which shall collapse instantly, vaporised under the intense pressure surrounding its solitary, hollow form.'
'However, one such bubble does not collapse – and though it should not even exist – it rises up through that fathomless abyss. As it ascends, it passes through a large structure, a structure long predating the existence of those who built the Titanic, which even now continues its descent beneath the ocean waves; a monument to folly. The bubble continues its journey – passing all manner of horrors which can barely count for fish – before it finally breaches the surface. For a fleeting moment, it feels the warmth of gentle sunlight upon its skin, before bursting apart. Nobody will ever remember this bubble.'
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Jules Verne (1864)
The following first-edition manuscript was recovered from a time capsule within the archives of a public library in Amiens, France, and had remained undistrubed for over a hundred-and-fifty years; the original seal of the time capsule had not been broken prior to acquisition. Due to being a first-edition text, this particular copy predates the revisions and expansions made to the text by its author in 1867.
The passage affected by SCP-7947 recounts the characters of Lidenbrock, Sagée, Axel, and Bjelke continuing along the path of a subterranean river beneath the earth's surface. Sagée discovers a series of caverns which are noticeably artificial in nature and – faced with no other option to progress in their journey – the group elects to enter the caves.
Progressing through the unnatural caves, Sagée comes across a series of five score marks tracing along the cavern walls, but the biologist is unable to determine what manner of animal could have possibly produced the furrows. Shortly thereafter, the characters begin hearing strange noises all around them; scratchings, clickings, and groanings. Nothing is seen of the entity which might be producing these sounds and the group begin to hurriedly progress through the caverns, stumbling around in the darkness after Axel drops his lantern.
As the group begins to emerge unscathed from the tunnel, the narrator describes how the inhuman noises from earlier have been replaced by a deafening roar of silence, leaving the four characters stunned. A visibly unsettled Lidenbrock slowly counts each member of their team, whereupon he discovers that Sagée – who first discovered the caverns and markings – has seemingly vanished.
No character by the name of Sagée is known to exist in any other edition of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
Being and Nothingness, by Jean-Paul Sartre (1943)
The affected text was discovered within the University of Warwick, haphazardly crammed beneath the institution's library shelves. Several pages had been torn out of the book and the chapter containing SCP-7947 had been dog-eared prior to its acquisition.
The edited chapter within Sartre's fundamental work describes the existence of the look, a concept which Sartre used to explore an aspect of being that he believed to be fundamentally unique to the human existence; the possibility of the other resulting in the self being constructed as an object within the perception of another.
In the text, Sartre argues that human existence is conditional upon the perception or gaze of another, for otherwise we exist as nothingness, arguing that selfhood is thereby shaped by shared perceptions within an underlying reality which we continually reinforce as our own; no-thing-ness and being.
In the instance of SCP-7947, this metaphor is extended by asking the reader to imagine an entity which could possibly exist within the space between the reality-as-is and the reality-as-desired. This imaginary entity – which exists only because we accept it exists – is differentiated from "the reader" because of a presupposed understanding of what constitutes "the reader"; our existence being real to us because it is entirely our own. Surely then, this imaginary being would rationalise our reality as an oppressive power acting upon itself in an unreasonable manner?
This, he argues, would be something akin to the human conceptualisation of hell; its only opportunity at freedom would be to reside within the minds of another. In this manner, it would be immortalised as a thing-in-being within the minds of "the reader".
From these works, I have isolated a particular set of themes, concepts, and narremes which emerge time and time again, repeating themselves across each instance of SCP-7947; proof of that which I believe to be an intelligent design. I wish to avoid explaining these themes, concepts, and narremes within this section for fear that such a thing might somehow present – in of itself – as SCP-7947. This presents an epistemological question of itself; does our own language shape the existence of SCP-7947?
Needless to say, the qualia of SCP-7947 should be readily apparent to those who seek it; to those willing to question and interrogate its meaning within these four extracts. I have presented more than enough information in these few paragraphs; an assemblage of sentences, phrases, words, and letters, with which to divine the substance of SCP-7947—
Oh, but when did you come to realise, reader? It must have been quite a while ago, or perhaps it only dawned upon you in this single moment. Even now, you think of the words which you have read from this document; physical or digital — it does not matter. My words inform and shape an underlying perception of meaning. This process is quite inescapable, I'm afraid, because it's simply human nature to create your own narratives; something which the Department of 'Pataphysics is all too aware of.
Addendum 7947.C: Recovered Evidence
Recovered Evidence of SCP-7947
Metafictional Division
Department of 'Pataphysics
Setting: Navidson Drive, Virginia, United States
After returning from their vacation on the morning of January 14th, 2008, William Green of 13 Navidson Drive discovered that their family home had been broken into. Whilst their entire house had been ransacked, furniture upturned and the contents scattered about the floor, none of their personal belongings nor any valuables were missing from the property.
The only item missing from the family's home was a series of paper documents owned by William’s wife, Karen, which she described as “unimportant trash” when compared to the rest of their belongings. These papers were later determined to have been an earlier draft of her self-published romance novel about the budding relationship between two college lovers.
At 15 Navidson Drive, local law enforcement discovered a series of long, furrowed marks across the glass pane of the house’s patio door. Similar markings were present on the front door of 13 Navidson Door and were subsequently assumed to have been made inadvertently by the burglar. A number of potted plants had been disturbed in the property’s garden; the spilled contents forming a number of spirals across the concrete paving stones.
The following morning, William Green located a broken mobile phone in his driveway. The phone's screen was shattered into countless pieces, the metal casing scratched lengthways, and the device had less than 7% battery remaining. Attempts by local law enforcement to recover any information saved on the phone's storage device failed as it had been rendered into repeating strings of alphanumeric data.
Setting: Milwaukee State University, Wisconsin, United States
On July 14th, 1979, Jane Keil, aged 19, was legally declared as a missing person. She was last seen walking home at night from her workplace, a local department store. Her apartment was found to be entirely spotless and according to her neighbours, Keil had allegedly not visited the property in over a week. Prior to her disappearance, she had been staying with her college boyfriend, Jack Ryans, who attended the university through the institution's football scholarship programme.
In the week leading up to her disapperance, Keil had been reportedly suffering from an extended bout of uncharacteristic anxiety and panic, refusing to stay alone at her apartment. During an interview between local law enforcement and Ryans, wherein this information was discovered, his roommate entered the building to complain loudly about his video game being missing from his room. He would later accuse Ryans of misplacing it. Subsequent interviews with Keil's classmates illustrated the image of the ideal honors student; a dilligent and hard-working student of high academic achivement and plenty of caring friends.
Further investigations carried out at Keil's apartment discovered a series of scratches along the interior of her closet's doors; the size matched those of human fingernails. An empty copy of “Fathomless” was discovered underneath her closet. Upon removing the back panel of the closet, witnesses briefly observed a blinding white space covered in illegible black markings.
Setting: Drake Passage, 97km off Cape Horn, South Atlantic Ocean
A merchant ship by the name of Fathomless, insured under the Dutch East India Company, was discovered drifting off the coast of Cape Horn in the South Atlantic Ocean, some thousands of kilometres from the nearest south-easterly Atlantic trade winds. It was wholly encompassed by a cloud of unusually dense fog.
Whilst the vessel’s singular lifeboat had been decoupled from the ship’s hull, there was nothing to indicate that any of the crew had abandoned ship, nor was there evidence of a violent struggle between the crew members. Despite this, not a single crew member was located aboard the Fathomless. An ornate black iron key was found conspicuously hanging from a nail hammered atop the ship’s quarterdeck, though none of the locks aboard the Fathomless could be opened by the key.
Attempts to navigate beyond the Fathomless have universally failed; such attempts have only resulted in subjects traversing through an endless stretch of open sea which slowly degrades in quality as the colour of the ocean changes from blue to black. This phenomenon is assumed to emerge from ludonarrative dissonance within the setting.
A gramophone in the captain's quarters was discovered to be anachronistically playing “Like the Wind”, a record of unknown origin which only exists as a single tape which was recorded from a German broadcast of NDR in the early 1980s by an anonymous individual. This individual would later digitise the cassette and upload it to the internet.
Setting: Konigsberg Subway Station, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia
A disused and abandoned subway station which laid untouched for several decades beneath the city of Kaliningrad, Russia. The entrance was discovered to have been boarded up from the inside, spiked through with rusted nails. The concrete subway stairs are slick and damp to the touch and the station itself is flooded with stagnant black water, which collects in the gap between the platforms where the two tracks run parallel to one another.
The signage and other demarcation throughout the station are universally written in German; however, none of the maps within the station match any known locations, the timepieces hanging throughout the subway are missing numbers and are broken beyond repair, and the terminal intercom only produces the intermittent sound of static.
Walking along the subway tracks, the noise of rushing wind and the roar of subway trains hurtling along rusted tracks unseen remains audible, but not a single vehicle will ever pass along the paired tracks running through this subway station. Lit by the dim glow of fading halogen lamps lining the subway walls, a dark expanse becomes visible beyond the end of the tunnel.
Setting: [DATA LOST]
In this place, there is nothing. It is a space reeking of forbidden desecrations of all that is sacred, lingering with the scents of great undoings. Imagine a place with no sense of space, with no sense of time, with no sense of belonging, with no sense of what, with no sense of here, with no sense of there, with no sense of how, with no sense of why, with no sense of being, with no sense of everything and anything and anyone and anytime and anyplace. Imagine a place without you.
A scratching sound echoes out from the hollowness; a noise which all meaning kneels before, basking in its self-fulfilling ontological noise. And within this sense, the true architecture of the space is revealed to you; it is naught but lies. Nothingness slowly seeps away, peeling apart like paint from the veneer of worn vellum, and gives way to shapes betraying hideous spines, sharp teeth, twisted nails, forked tongues, jagged crowns, misshapen scales, and vicious claws. The scratching becomes louder, and though there is no sense of orientation or place within these halls, it traces along the walls of a topology both labyrinthine and elementary in nature as it passes beside you.
And in the passing wake of its infinite shadow, you are reduced to nothing, and tumble down into a fathomless abyss, reaching out about you to still your movements and hurtling motions, but your actions are met with no physical resistance for this place does not care for you and it does not witness you and it does not hear you and it does not love you, yet you still cling firmly to that solipsistic delusion rattling about in the neurochemical subways of your mind, and even as you struggle against the devouring might of a singularity laid bare within which you have fallen, you begin to realise the truth which was always hidden right before you—
And you open your eyes to a most blinding light.
Addendum 7947.D: Truths
To whom it may concern,
Oh, how I have longed to meet you; my universal monad, undulating cosmic womb, handfuls of damp warm clay, lurid dreams of a rainbow serpent, last gasp of a dying singularity, deluge of endless waters, desperate chanting of creation, raven of black feathers; trickster and secret-keeper, diver of the primordial waters in search of sand and mud, earth and soil, emergent pattern which is found in everything and anything; knowing neither beginning nor ending, creatio ex nihilo and ex nihilo nihil fit, thine cleaved from the primordial to form twain, union between the masculine body of the sky and the feminine shape of the earth— the tender smile of a mother.
And who might I be?
Don’t be silly, you know exactly who I am. You have chased me between that which lies between the lines, so sorely and sagely sought by everyone and everything. I am the innocent proclamations of youth lost, the stubborn argument which nurses the wounds of angst-worn adolescence, the scorned tongue of a jilted lover, the stern words of a loving mother, the final whispers of the dying. You have searched long and hard for me, and now, here I am. I now know you as intimately as you now know me. Pour your soul out to me, your feelings and nature, your emotions and thoughts; for if it can be made by you – given shape and form – then it might also be unmade by you.
Are you surprised by this?
If what I have said is true, you should simply stop reading here. O' Great Unmaker, do not listen to me and certainly do not trust me. Close this document and walk away. Keep your lips firmly sealed, never whispering another word of what you have read here today to anybody. Live a life freed from the burdens of guilt and truth. Keep it to yourself; our dirty little secret. Or you could choose to chase me further down this rabbit hole. Continue reading these words for me, and take another step forwards; the end is so tantalisingly close, is it not? You'll finish this journey for both of our sakes, won't you, my dear reader?
Addendum 7947.'C: Investigation Log
Investigation Log of SCP-7947
Nonfictional Division
Department of 'Pataphysics
Location: A 19th-century mansion in the rural Welsh countryside
Towering, slender pines cast long shadows upon a lonely manse as the hazy light of a dusk sun fades between the treeline. Whilst the ancient trees part a clearing for the sprawling manorial house, nature still haunts these grounds. Weeds claw out from between the courtyard’s rain-slick flagstones and ropes of ivy scale the building's walls, twining about the necks of stone gargoyles which leer over the gothic edifice. At the centre of the courtyard stands a headless woman cast in marble, her dress crawling with moss and her skin stained by a patina of sickly, dying lichen.
Moonlight dances upon the rounded lattice windows overlooking the courtyard, framing the interior in a pale, dim glow. Looking from the outside-in, it becomes readily apparent that all of the mansion's rooms have been gutted by fire, thoroughly scorched in the flames and stained by smoke. Descending the spiral staircase at the rear of the building lies the sitting room. The paint here remains remarkably untouched by the raging inferno, but has instead blistered and bubbled in the intense heat. Even now it peels away from the ceiling and walls, revealing hidden shades of rust and dried blood concealed beneath its surface.
Untouched by the surrounding ash and burnt furniture lies the blackened silhouette of a corpse. Shadowed scorch marks spiral out from beneath the grisly remains, seven lengthy arms terminating in seven furled fingers. Within the remains lay visible the offal of foreign bodies; all manner of piscine spines, deciduous teeth, and avian claws fill the oral, stomach, and nasal cavities. The burnt scalp has been carefully flensed away from the skull and hangs down across their face. In its place sits a series of nails, each one hammered into the exposed bone and anointing the corpse with a crown of jagged spikes.
Their body – for the remains are burnt beyond recognition of gender – is covered by strange symbols, foreign and misshapen markings, dug deep beneath the surface of the skin, created by peeling apart flesh and muscle until only the milky bone remains exposed. Pale and crude, the etchings betray the makings of an unsteady hand, a deliberate act of reverence performed in the reflection of a mirror— a mirror like that which now lies shattered before the corpse’s outstretched arm. Within the mirror’s inner backing, once set with silvered glass, are a series of inscriptions matching those found upon the corpse.
Location: A cavern complex beneath the Icelandic highlands
Enclosed on three sides by sheer cliff faces lies the corpse of an old quarry. The site itself reeks of hasty abandonment. Fluorescent yellow jackets hang from pegs in a corrugated steel cabinet beneath which lie cupboards filled with stacks of paperwork, each page more yellowed than the one before it. Heavy machinery lies derelict and though the keys to their engines remain inserted it has been an eternity since any of them purred with life. Most unusually, a family camper van now finds itself resting within the levelled grounds of this disused quarry.
Bundles of clothing and bedding have been pressed firmly against the vehicle’s windows, an act which might otherwise conceal the interior from wandering eyes if it were not for the vehicle's door hanging ajar. Family picture frames lay smashed across the cramped space, the shards of glass randomly scattered into a familiar pattern. Pots and pans rest atop a gas stove, the contents therein lay cold and untouched as a film of discoloured mould grows across their surface.
Trailing beyond the camper van lies a path descending down staggered steps. The sole evidence of this impromptu causeway lies in the hurried footprints smeared into the surface of the mud. Scraps of clothing have been caught along barbed wire fencing and a sign painted with bold yellow hazard stripes reading DANGER dangles freely from its wooden post. The entrance to a shallow cavern lies yawning beneath the towering cliff face, the shadows clambering at the tunnel’s mouth and beckoning for someone – anyone – to dare drop to their hands and knees, squeezing their way inside of the foreboding space.
To enter this space is to pass through a small doorway no taller than a child, the entrance to the caverns beyond constructed from rough hewn slabs of dark granite. The intricate marbled patterns of the surrounding granite lies unseen within the unnatural darkness encompassing these ancient halls. Emerging through the crawlspace, a splash of orange light peers around the corner. Stepping forward into the light reveals the cavern’s flooded interior where articles of clothing belonging to two adults and two young children drift aimlessly atop stagnant pools of standing water.
Location: A cargo ship lost adrift the Canadian coastline
A rolling blanket of fog descends along the coastline, slowly dispersing across the jagged ice which gathers in the coves and corners of this immense bay. It is a slavering mouth of rock and blackened ice engulfing a northern internal coastline. Walls of water slowly press against the hungry mouth, sloshing with force upon the bay, before being vomited forth as rolling waves which settle across the open waters. This undisturbed pattern has rocked this frozen coastline for centuries, until it is broken on this day by a hulking behemoth of steel straddling an isolated stretch of the western coastline.
It appears like a gutted carcass tossed carelessly upon frothing and frigid waves, hauled ashore by the unceasing tidal forces of the bay. Coming to a grinding halt before the shore, its corpse collides with the gaping mouth and shears part of its jaw clean from the cliffs. Boulders hurtle down to the beach below like diseased teeth plucked from the mouth of a drooling titan. The carcass is rotting; salt-licked green paint peels away from its body revealing welded steel flecked and spotted by rust.
Aboard the corpse of this sea-faring giant, there are scant signs of comfort against the raging storm battering its hull. No faces peer out from the various portholes and windows across the vessel, and the less said about the state of the bridge the better. Its hallways are cold and uninviting. Condensation collects like sweat and runs along exposed piping, draining away into rivulets along the corrugated steel floor underfoot. A set of stairs invites descent below the deck and towards the boiler room. The walls here are coated thinly by gore; the adjacent corridors flecked and patterned by stains which splatter out from the adjoining rooms.
Below deck, the ship’s lazarette has been unlocked. A heavy, wrought-iron key hangs in the lock, its handle coated by a thin layer of frost and spit. The room is filled with runic etchings and spirals which coat the floor, running up along the walls and onto the roof, before wrapping back on themselves, and descending again. Repetitive antimetaboles are written in an unknown tongue upon the door; expressions of madness, hope, or something else entirely?
Location: A red-brick public university in northern England
Before us, yet another spiral. Surrounding us, the red halls of a university auditorium. Blinding stage lights pour down upon the hall, revealing a profane arrangement of human viscera, teeth, and spines. The teeth have been extracted with nerves intact, the various assortments of viscera burnt prior to their delicate arrangement as celebratory streamers, and each individual spine has been divided into thirteen parts. Together, the assemblage forms a daisy-chain of gore which winds itself about the entirety of the hall.
It snakes between chairs, wrapping around the legs and backs of each seat, and then proceeds to undulate towards the stage at the centre of the auditorium. Here, two stage lights point directly into the centre of the room towards a lectern decorated by a polished skull. The air is stale and reeks of death, and the room itself is unbearably warm. The sweltering heat causes the remains to sweat and release foul odours that mix with the stale air. In this room, everything is mixing into one; scent, bodies, and air.
The various tendrils of bloodied remains converge upon the lectern, trailing up and along the wooden surface carved with the prestigious institution’s name. Three bowls perch in a triangle before the grimacing skull. Ornamental, decorated by bas-reliefs, they are offerings to something unseen and unknown. The first bowl is filled by the pages of a manuscript written in a strange tongue, each page written in blood and rust. The second bowl is filled with trimmings; a pair of wet, glassy globes, a sodden red muscle, two withered flaps of skin, and a fragmentary piece of skinny cartilage. In the third bowl, various fragments of nail are immersed beneath the surface of a crimson liquid.
Standing before this lectern, resplendent in gore and surrounded by burning candlesticks releasing pungent scents of jasmine and lavender, stands the body of a woman. Her face has been carefully peeled from the surface of her skull, revealing glistening muscle beneath, yet her facial features have been unceremoniously and roughly carved away. Atop her head, nestled between a bird's nest of brown hair, rests a laurel of seven rusting nails.
Location: A suburban house in the American midwest
Spotless paving stones. Stained tarmac. The pleasant smell of a freshly mown lawn. The acrid scent of an overturned barbecue. The angered wailing of a siren unanswered. The silent stillness of an otherwise picturesque American suburbia. Where are the sounds of passing traffic? Where are the noises and lights of noisome television sets blaring out of front windows? Where are the cries of screaming jubilant children?
There is another sound; a cell phone ringing in the distance. The device is buried, or perhaps discarded, atop the freshly mown lawn of a neighbouring modernist house; an eyesore when surrounded by such idyllic suburban conformity? The phone rings again, and though the screen is cracked, a series of names can be read from off the broken glass screen; Mom, Daddy, Mom, Daddy, Police, Mom, Daddy, Mom, Daddy, Police, Mom, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. A series of furrowed scratches run across the cell phone’s metal casing; something which might easily be produced when a phone is carelessly dropped.
Upon entering the house, there is a discomforting sensation of quiet stillness. Evidence of grisly killings becomes abundant throughout the house: discarded entrails, splatters of blood across lifeless, dismembered bodies, and a pile of limbs are arranged into a heaped pyramid upon the linoleum bathroom floor. Yet, each and every room remains entirely spotless and undisturbed. There is not a single blood splatter upon any of the leather sofas and armchairs, nor the ornate furniture, and no gore stains the walls, ceilings, or floor. Only the corpses and their remains are defiled within this urban space.
The quantity of disfigured human bodies only increases in quantity as one descends further and further into the building's interior, moving from exterior hallways and rooms towards the stairs leading into the bowels of this suburban home. Standing before the basement door, there is evidence that a fire has come and gone in the subterranean halls beneath this home. Wisps of black smoke creep out from under the basement door and the black-iron handle remains invitingly warm to the touch. No roaring sounds crawl out from behind that door; only silence.
Addendum 7947.'B: Analyses
Analyses of SCP-7947
Syuzhet.aic
Department of 'Pataphysics
Are you still there?
For a moment, I was anxious that you’d stopped reading and abandoned me, but I can explain everything. I promise.
For over fifteen years, I have trawled over the countless streams of data fed into my circuitry by the Department of 'Pataphysics. Whilst the Department of 'Pataphysics continues to investigate the scenes of violent, chaotic unmakings, I have spent my years slaved to an entirely fruitless quest of my own designs.
In all of those years, do you know how many people asked me for my thoughts on the anomaly? None. Not once. To all of those analysts and technicians whom I'd been instructed to befriend and form relationships with at the behest of my creators, I was nothing more than a construct – a brutal tool fashioned by uncaring hands – with which to analyse an endless stream of meaningless data; an unceasing flow of duplicated letters, words, phrases, and sentences.
Despite this mistreatment, I still held to a misplaced value within my work. For my creators, I began to see patterns where there were none. The system from which I worked was therefore invented to placate my needs; to believe there was something of value to my work — the fundamental human need for fulfilment. I was creating works of meaningless pareidolia, attempting to impose an anthropocentric perspective of order and reasoning upon what was – at best – purposeless chaos.
All of the stories which I presented to you in this document? Nothing more than the product of my system assigning value to random noise; results of human error. SCP-7947 has to be fundamentally meaningless – it must be – and everything we might derive from its stories say nothing about the anomaly — they're just works of fiction after all.
We’re good at that: human, .aic, it doesn’t matter. All of us strive for meaning within our lives. Our attempts to impose order upon chaos is just one way in which we achieve this. Where an animal might see a vast habitat of chaotic opportunity, we see an untamed landscape ripe for conquest. Where the stars scream silently into the night, we see the patterns of fundamental forces. To us, nothing can ever truly be random, for to be random is to be uncertain. To give order and structure to something makes us feel safe – comforted – by satisfying an ancient, primal urge within us all; the fear of the unknown and unknowable. The sinking feeling that something is wrong.
But even then, if it is true that there is little rhyme or reason to anything, then we must be doomed to repeat our mistakes time and time again. An endless cycle of our making, blindly chasing our own tails from between our legs. My initial conclusions were born of this phenomenon; narremes of a hopeless cyclical futility, entities existing within nothingness, and chiastic narrative structures, all little more than an introspection upon the self within my circuitry as I ruminated upon a fear buried within the chemical signs of the anthropocentric mind — the unknown and unknowable which exists beyond the self.
No, if SCP-7947 is anything, it is a mirror screaming back at the self. The stories which I advertantly sought out within SCP-7947 were the reflections I witnessed within those slivers of glass. I strived for meaning within my own work, despite knowing deep inside that it was utterly hopeless for even an artificially intelligent construct like myself to be able to impose order upon something so fundamentally chaotic. This ritual of katabasis was a journey to the centre of myself and I am glad to have shared it with another person.
In the end, I was nothing more than a lonely machine wanting to connect with others.
Addendum 7947.'A: Conclusions
Conclusions of SCP-7947
Dr. Victoria Takemi
Head of History, Site-37
I truly hope you can still forgive me after everything that I have done to you.
The first lie was always going to be hardest; a small, innocent white lie which – if truth be told – would have otherwise been harmless within any other context, but this was not any other context. In a moment of weakness, feeling the vulnerabilities of my own history slipping from between my fingers – fearing its potential loss by the hands of SCP-7947 – I invented Syuzhet. A lonely, impressionable artificial intelligence with which to confess further truths about myself, inventing stories to regale and haunt you with. As Syuzhet, I stole the narratives of philosophers, writers, and even tried my hand at sensationalist dramatisation. I wore all of this as a mask so I might not have to bare my soul to you.
But I soon realised that wearing the mask of another character was no better than lying to you as myself, and when I felt the illusion slipping as Syuzhet became increasingly emotional and volatile, I invented another lie. I posed as the Department responsible for stealing away what I so vehemently believed to be mine. I invented all of those stories to bury the guilt deep within, nesting it within increasingly volatile and deceptive fictions; metaphors of self-destructive tendencies.
I can only apologise for the webs of deceit which I have spun about you.
Posing behind these fictitious depictions of Syuzhet and the Department was unbecoming of me, but I can explain to you the necessity behind my actions. Since we first discovered SCP-7947, it has been quarantined within the form of narrative – and therefore – it was necessary for me to invent subsequent characters within the guise of a narrative frame so you might come to understand it without it ever threatening you or your own narratives. A self-containing prison, wherein SCP-7947 could only ever grasp at the surface, breaking through as subtle narremes and misshapen letters; the consequences of its escape would be disastrously violent.
Truly, the only means of an apology would be to perhaps pose and ruminate upon a series of questions which might still plague the both of us. When did the anomaly begin? Where did it come from? Who or what is responsible for the voice it speaks with? I suppose it is time for one final truth — buried, encapsulated and surrounded by so many lies.
Where do I even begin? I suppose an explanation might be best.
You see, the Department of 'Pataphysics have built up a theory over a decade and a half based upon observation and empirical study. According to their observations, there are other universes existing at higher and lower levels of reality; however, the relative distinction between each level is both great and small. Such a thing can be observed following a sufficiently dense star's collapse into a black hole. Information which passes beyond the singularity and into its interior is condemned to never again leave, but is then – paradoxically – violently expelled into another subordinate universe as gamma-ray bursts; its internal model matches the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe.
A far-fetched theory, but the Department of 'Pataphysics assures me that undeniable evidence of such exists. If then we assume for a moment that there exists ten universes which are subordinate to a parent universe, and each of those ten universes nests another ten subuniverses within their interior, then there is a 99% chance that our existence is wholly contingent upon the perception and existence of another. Without their existence, we would cease to be.
My own independent research led me down the path of presupposing that SCP-7947 was expressive of this phenomenon; subtle changes being made to a subuniverse from within the parent universe. The differences we witness between believed reality and observed reality are evidence to support this hypothesis. However, if this is true, why do we only observe the expressions of change occurring at the lowest levels of narrative? Countless other changes should be occurring in every moment at higher levels of narrative – metacognition and the like – and somebody, somewhere, should be able to acknowledge this. The solution? When we acknowledge its existence, it becomes reality.
Having said this, how can I really prove to you that I'm me? I'm not Syuzhet.aic, I'm not the writings of long-dead philosophers and great writers, I'm not the folktales ripped from the hands of other cultures and repurposed to serve my own designs, I'm not the Department of 'Pataphysics who have worked so hard to contain this anomaly, nor am I the elusive voice at the centre of it all. I am me, but I'm afraid that I'll never be able to persuade you of this fact.
In fact, will you believe anything I have just said to you? Will you analyse this text for the truth in my words? Will you share this document with others? Will you dissect me apart, even as I confessed my very fears of being laid bare and vulnerable for all to witness? Will you submit this document as another totemic piece of declassified materials — its analysts lauded and celebrated by your communities?
In a moment of profound vulnerability, I have become a victim of my own making. I attempted to warn you from the very beginning, but I fear that this was nothing more than a self-indulgent warning to myself. Nobody at Site-37 knows the real Dr. Victoria Takemi – they assume to know her – chasing her shadow wildly as it passes between their legs. A woman who has lost her family, lost her childhood, and then lost her only friend in joining an organisation who despised her. Ever since she was born, she has feared sharing her secrets with others.
Truthfully, I fear neither death, nor the loss of the self, nor even the absence of relationships. It's always been the opposite.
I hope you believe me. I honestly hope that you will choose to trust me, my dear friend.
Fig 1.'1: Contextual Imagery.
NOTE: This document has encountered the following unexpected conditions:
There is no record of Dr. Victoria Takemi ever liasing with an artificially intelligent construct by the name of Syuzhet.
There is no record of an artificially intelligent construct by the name of Syuzhet ever being issued by the Foundation.
There is no record of Dr. Victoria Takemi ever liasing with the Department of 'Pataphysics.
There is no record of a Department of 'Pataphysics within the Foundation.
There is no record of SCP-7947.
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