She got away with it, really. At the bottom of the pool, away from the world. (1k)
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Info
SCP-8729: SWIMMINGPÜL: Masturbating Fearlessly to Death
Word count: 1k
Author:whenwerewe
Here's my page!Content Warning: This work contains a brief mention of a suicide.
MELUSINE instances mid-routine
Item #: 8729
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: Each year, up to a thousand clones are to be produced from highly athletic templates and entered into SCP-8729 competitions1. These clones do not have social connections to the outside world, minimising the impact their loss has upon the Veil. Cleanup crews are to be emplaced to decontaminate pools in case of a terminal routine.
No pools of depth greater than 1.8 metres are to be allowed to form near Foundation sites. The surroundings should be landscaped to avoid depressions or pits of any kind, and to encourage clear and unobstructed drainage of rainfall. Occasional transient pools are expected to form nonetheless, and are to be disrupted by explosives or thermal weaponry as appropriate.
A full-spectrum media campaign is to disparage and discourage pursuit of SCP-8729 among civilian populations. In light of CASE LORELEI, Foundation assets are to discontinue disinformation and subversion campaigns targeted at reducing SCP-8729 uptake.
Four MELUSINE instances have been voluntarily confined at Site-19. These provide the primary line of communication with the larger population of SCP-8729 competitors.
Description: SCP-8729 is “synchronised swimming”, purportedly a sport in which players perform aquatic routines, and are judged by a panel on the quality of their artistry and coordination. In truth, SCP-8729 is an esoteric sensory process belonging to an extraspatial symbiote (henceforth LIGEIA). No other method of contact with LIGEIA is known.
Subjects (henceforth MELUSINE instances) make contact by engaging in swimming routines in groups of four or more. Further practice of synchronised swimming bestows various transmundane abilities to the MELUSINE instance in question, with the intensity and variety of abilities increasing as routines become more polished and are carried out in larger numbers. It is believed the granted abilities are intended to attract more MELUSINE instances, though it is not known what benefit LIGEIA obtains from the practice, or by what metrics these routines are judged. Human judges help in both camouflage and recruitment purposes, but have no bearing on SCP-8729’s effects.
A full classification of granted abilities does not exist, but advanced MELUSINE instances gain the ability to move between bodies of water of depth greater than 2 metres at will, and are believed to have some method to communicate with each other extranormally. Other abilities are generally concerned with coordination, synchronicity, or hydromancy: illustratively, the four instances in captivity display:
- The ability to conjure water from the surface of their skin at a rate of about 5 litres per second,
- Apparent disregard of high water pressures,
- Proprioception that extends to all individuals within ten metres,
- Perfect mimicry of one other individual’s motions at will.
Many lower-level MELUSINE instances, competing locally, are not aware of LIGEIA or even their own transmundane capacities. However, highly competitive instances often become strongly attached to their sporting activities, and withdraw from public life in order to further their mastery of SCP-8729. Instances will spend increasing portions of their day planning and rehearsing routines (having been freed of the need to eat or rest), and will organise with other instances to increase the scale of their performances.
Advanced MELUSINE instances will socialise by meeting in isolated bodies of water and carrying out repetitive practice sessions, sometimes for days or weeks on end. When interviewed,2 they describe the process as relaxing, therapeutic, or fulfilling. Within their community, more advanced MELUSINE instances are afforded greater respect and deference, to a much greater and more universal degree than in a mundane sport. Lesser instances have been known to accrue serious musculoskeletal injuries while trying to keep up with more lengthy routines, and fatalities have been recorded.
Classically, MELUSINE instances were drawn from the aquatic sports community, and although they displayed some in-group loyalty, remained mostly mundane members of society. However, the Foundation’s flash-cloning program has had one major downside: the clonal generation of MELUSINE instances has not known an existence outside of their symbiosis with LIGEIA, and has proven more dedicated to it by far than the pre-existing instances. It is among this group that the highest rate of practice fatalities has occurred, primarily due to drowning after one or more limbs were rendered nonfunctional by extreme exertion.
ADDENDUM: CASE LORELEI
On 05/10/2027, a MELUSINE instance, former Olympic synchronised swimmer Natalia Prokofyeva, escaped captivity by revealing a heretofore unknown capacity to force other individuals to mimic her movements, rather than vice-versa. As she left her cell she monologued at length to an imagined crowd around her. Her remarks were mostly not captured by onsite equipment, but what was recorded mostly focused on themes of gratitude and legacy, with frequent repetitions of the phrase “Surpass even me”.3
She ended her journey at the Site-19 humanoid leisure swimming pool, which had been drained some years prior after the first instances of clonal MELUSINE fanaticism were discovered. Here she displayed another advancement in ability: she was able to force all personnel within a five hundred metre radius to experience the same forces she did, and no others. This meant that as she ascended the ladder to the ten-metre diving board, nearly two hundred other personnel were also lifted upward, with many suffering broken ribs or crushed lungs as they were forced into the ceilings of Site-19.
At the top of the board, she made a proclamation, which was replicated through the mouths of all affected staff:
Thank you all for putting your trust in me. I won’t disappoint you ever again! You’re all so impressive, you make me feel like a newbie. Do great things, and know that you’ve already surpassed me, okay?
She then dived off the board and into the concrete of the pool, and was killed instantly. Affected personnel were similarly driven into the ground of Site-19 at around 15 metres per second. The resulting array of cranial fractures and spinal injuries caused some 171 fatalities across the site.
Prokofyeva’s death occurred in conditions of complete secrecy, and her dive was strictly outside the allowed components of an SCP-8729 routine. Nonetheless, since the incident, it has become commonplace for synchronised swimming teams to end their routines in honour of her, with a “Prokofyeva Plunge” from a height of five metres or more onto bare ground.
