A word in God's ear
Item #: SCP-9020
Object Class: Thaumiel
Level 5/9020
SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES:
No physical, digital or written records detailing the method of achieving SCP-9020 are to be kept under any circumstances. Precise knowledge of the procedure is to be limited, insofar as is possible, to the following named Foundation personnel who will act as points of contact for their respective departments:
• Dr. Avon Sygnet, Department of Pataphysics
• Dr. Henrik Dootz, Department of Abstraction
• Dr. Olivia Silverstone, Department of Tactical Theology
• Maria S. Jones, Recordkeeping and Information Security Administration
• Dr. Charlotte Giltcrest, Ethics Committee
In the event that one or more of the aforementioned individuals are rendered incapacitated, deceased, or non-existent, replacements will be selected by the remaining representatives. In the event that all relevant persons are simultaneously and irreparably made non-functional, research into SCP-9020 and Project FEEDBACK is to be immediately and permanently halted.
Members of STF-Qoppa-1 ("Dreaming Philosophers") will be provided with necessary instructions for completing SCP-9020 prior to their expiration. Due to the requirements of their role, their discretion and loyalty to the Foundation can be regarded as beyond question.
All members of GOI-808 ("The Church Of The Many-Eyed God") involved in the initial development of SCP-9020 have been amnesticised, provided with false memories, and dispersed. Foundation assets within GOI-808 are to monitor for and eliminate any remaining records of SCP-9020's existence. Any attempts to recreate SCP-9020 are to be halted by whatever means necessary.
The remains of SCP-9020-A-53 are to be contained in an off-site superhypothetical class abstraction chamber artificially maintained at 0.00 Dz. This is to be anchored to at least one stable element of baseline continuity at all times.1
DESCRIPTION:
A child finds a stick lying on the ground and takes it up. They wave it through the air, and it is a magic wand. They slash at phantom assailants, and it is a sword. They throw it into the sky, and it is a rocket ship. They cast it down, and it is a stick.
So too are we, both everything and nothing.
— Lesson IV of the Rites of Hoara
SCP-9020 is an apotheosis or deification ritual devised by certain practitioners of the Skopist faith.2
When properly performed, SCP-9020 expels part of a sentient being's consciousness and metaconceptual essence3 from their corporeal and literalistic form. This process is fatal on a physical level. Once fully dissociated, the remains of the individual are able to achieve meta-anagnorisis and "ascend" to a layer of existence located directly "above" conventionally observable reality. This has been designated Extrareality-α.4
The subject is then incarnated into that reality as a similar but contextually reimagined version of their previous self, retaining their prior personality, attitudes, and intentions but forgetting much or all of their original existence.5 This new being is hereafter referred to as an SCP-9020-α instance.
Extrareality-α is populated by "higher energy" entities which Skopists revere as divergent aspects of their deity. These "hyperreal" lifeforms posses enormous influence over the workings of their subordinate intrarealities6 including the theoretically unlimited capacity to create, destroy, and reshape aspects of their baseline continuities.
A hypothetical SCP-9020-α instance would also possess this capability.
The Skopists call it Hoara. The eternal dreamer. The child at play. The shadow puppeteer of Plato's cave. A creature with a mind as vast and fathomless as a universe and thoughts as colossal as stars, constantly imagining all the different parts of our world into existence. And the more of its mind that is focused on you, the more of its eyes are watching, the more real you are. The more blessed. The more you matter.
The Foundation's Department of Pataphysics calls it "a bunch of horror writers".
Both, however, call it God.
— from GOI-808 Appraisal Summary Document, by Dr. Olivia Silverstone
Enacting SCP-9020 successfully requires the expenditure of at least one SCP-9020-A instance.
SCP-9020-A instances are entities that are native to this reality but which nonetheless share an element of their metaconceptual essence with a particular Extrareality-α entity; specifically, a portion of their sense of self. Skopists interpret these individuals as physical manifestations of their deity's will, venerating them as "tulkas", "avatars" or "vessels of God".
SCP-9020-A instances possess an ongoing connection to Extrareality-α in the form of a small number of hyperreality strands. SCP-9020 breaks and then inverts this connection, enabling metaconceptual information to travel up one of these strands and back to its creative and temporal point of origin.
SCP-9020-A-53 was Dr. █████████, a senior Foundation researcher at an unknown site assigned to the study of at least one no longer extant anomaly. Dr. █████████ existed within baseline continuity for a period of time estimated to be between 24 and 72 hours at some point in July 2012. All additional information has been lost. Dr. █████████ was identified as an SCP-9020-A instance by the Department of Abstraction7 and was partially removed from causal reality prior to a predicted DVK-Class Reality Negation Scenario.8
The remaining aspects of Dr. █████████ are no longer compatible with external existence. As such, it has been deemed ethically acceptable for SCP-9020-A-53 to be utilized for Project FEEDBACK.
ADDENDUM:
Project FEEDBACK - Proposal Document
9020-AAZ-YN1-01
Lead Proponent: Dr. Avon Sygnet
Co-Proponent(s): Dr. Henrik Dootz; Dr. Olivia Silverstone
Let me begin by explaining what we cannot do, and why.
We cannot just write ourselves a happy ending.
Once upon a time, pataphysicists used to believe that our reality - our intrareality - was a single narrative structure. A vast, deeply unstable, constantly shifting, eternally metamorphosing narrative structure, but ultimately still a singular persistent canon with a single L-arc. A metaphysical and metafictional universe which could be stretched and altered and rewritten but which still remained fundamentally whole.
However, just as conventional physics has begun to grapple with multiverse mechanics and string theory, so too has our conception of our quasi-fictitious reality grown and evolved.
Today, we instead understand it as a complex strata of potentially endless narrative planes which converge and overlap one another at a variety of key conceptual points, giving shape and definition to the world that we perceive around us.9
The Uppington-Dootz model10 has further demonstrated that these planes and their component aspects are charged with differing levels of narrative persistence value by Extrareality-α, which affects both the strength of their attachment to, and their corresponding influence upon, baseline continuity.
Accepting this picture of reality as at least partially accurate, any attempt to have SCP-9020-α instances simply transform or "rewrite" our world directly would likely fail on two fronts.
In the first instance, the Department of Pataphysics has fairly reliably concluded that our "author entities", SCP-001, hold dominion over our reality as a collective force and operate via collective agreement. There is a reason why we have always described it as God, singular, and not gods, plural. The scant few SCP-9020-α instances we have the capacity to create could, perhaps, successfully engineer some idealised version of our world where some version of us could fulfil whatever fantastical dreams and desires we might come up with, but with their support alone it would exist at most as a single, isolated narrative plane. It would have no salving effect on the rest of our reality. It would not change or unmake what already exists.
You could, right now, take a book from a shelf, tear out its final pages, and replace them with ones that you have written yourself. But while you would have successfully changed a story, you would not have changed the story, the one still being told by a thousand other copies of the same book and still living in the minds of a thousand other people who have already read it.
In the second instance, even if such a utopian narrative were to be created, we would have no way of ensuring its long-term persistence. In the worst case scenario, that world would deviate so offensively from SCP-001's concurrent perception of our reality that it would just be subjected to an immediate DVK-Class event. Given our present understanding of the nature of SCP-001, I would consider that eventuality not unlikely.
Equally, attempting to fulfil the original motto of my department and wrest control of our reality via the elimination of SCP-001 instances is also not a viable strategy.
Even if we were to set aside the ethical implications of committing mass deicide and ignore the substantial risk of instigating a ZK-Class or OK-Class event,11 the restrictions on the number of SCP-9020-α instances we can send up and the severe limitations to the knowledge and information they can take with them makes such a course of action functionally impossible.
Therefore, if we truly hope to use SCP-9020 to bring about some form of genuine, meaningful, positive change for our reality as a whole, then I believe that that goal can only be realistically achieved by attempting to change the nature of SCP-001.
Specifically, we must alter their attitude towards us. To influence, with discreet and subtle manipulation, the ways they think about us and consequently the ways they write about us. To exploit their natural proclivities and desires as "author entities" by gradually bringing their creative, narrative, and qualitative goals more in line with our own objectives.
To this end, I propose the following:
That STF-Qoppa-1 "Dreaming Philosophers", having had their core mission tasks firmly implanted into their subconsciouses via both study and memetic conditioning, be dispatched to Extrareality-α with the primary aim of embedding themselves within the SCP-001 collective.
If infiltration is successful, the members of Qoppa-1 are to work to establish a sub-group within SCP-001 ostensibly focused on improving standards of literary quality. This group should aim to acquire "official" recognition as part of SCP-001's hierarchy.
Having gained this level of authority, Qoppa-1 would then be in a position where they could exert a degree of "soft" power over the additions and alterations that SCP-001 is able to make to our reality. Over time, they would feasibly be able to gently shift the parameters of what is considered acceptable and what is not, and thereby promote certain narrative elements that are beneficial to us while diminishing others that are harmful.
The scope and power of this "quality control" would of course be relatively limited. Qoppa-1 could not - and for the sake of maintaining their positions should not attempt to - simply deter all narratives that might negatively affect the Foundation or our world. Their efforts would need to be more subtle and more targeted.
In light of this, the SCP-9020 cross-department working group has identified certain key areas where we believe that Qoppa-1's potential influence could be most beneficially focused.
A summary of these areas is included below, along with a number of example statements intended to encourage and/or plausibly justify the Foundation's desired outcomes.
• The Foundation should be presented as an organisation of phenomenal and enduring power. Its budget is implicitly immense and access to necessary funding is rarely, if ever, an issue. It is a global, near omnipresent force with assets embedded in every government, authority, and institution that might prove beneficial to its mission. It is equipped with extensive technology, weaponry, and scientific instruments, enabling it to reliably contain or otherwise deal with the vast majority of anomalies. It is extremely effective at maintaining the Veil. For the sake of narrative drama and tension it may be subject to setbacks and challenges, but it is usually capable of overcoming these. The greater the threats it faces, the more capable and influential it may become in order to maintain its dominant narrative role.
"I really like the core concept here, but the way you've depicted the Foundation feels a little bit off at the moment. I think they'd be more prepared than that."
"Remember that the Foundation is an extremely powerful global organisation that successfully contains literally thousands of anomalies. It doesn't really seem realistic for them to have so many problems with something like this."
"Mass containment breaches were a really popular trope back in the early days of the Foundation but they got a bit done to death. That certainly doesn't mean you can't write about one, but you'll need to find a way to to make it unique and distinct from what's come before if you want it to be well received."
• The Foundation should be presented as a professional, competent organisation staffed by logical, reliable, and extremely intelligent people. Its leaders, researchers, and enforcement personnel are knowledgeable, well-trained, and naturally risk-averse. They generally do not partake in reckless or dangerous behaviour, especially for mundane purposes or for the sake of humour.
"There's a lot of pretty unprofessional behaviour from the Foundation staff here. Experienced researchers shouldn't need to be told not to do dumb things with anomalies and the test they perform don't really make any sense from an in-universe perspective."
"There's no way that anyone who made that many mistakes would still be employed by the Foundation, or realistically would ever have been hired. It really takes me out of the story."
"You've done an excellent job with the clinical tone and professional language here. It feels like I'm reading a genuine research document."
• The creation of anomalies that are excessively difficult or outright impossible for the Foundation to combat, contain, or reasonably conceal should be reduced. The creation of anomalies that commonly and easily inflict large amounts of death, serious bodily harm, and/or excessive suffering should be reduced. Narratives should be encouraged to treat sapient lives as significant and meaningful. Where possible, the impact of highly destructive anomalies should be limited.
"As a general rule of thumb, the more powerful an anomaly is, the harder you have to work to make it interesting. Keter and Apollyon class anomalies are a lot more difficult to pull off than pretty much anything else you might come up with."
"Anomalies where the main selling point is that they're big and bad and slaughter lots of people have become pretty clichéd and a lot of people associate it with poor writing."
"Gratuitously killing off thousands of nameless extras can actually feel a lot less impactful on the reader than a threat to one or two people who've been given some genuine characterisation within the article."
• Once these standards and expectations have been established, narratives created under that guidance should then be used to encourage further uptake, creating a positive feedback loop.
"Before you start writing, take some time to read a few recent successful pieces to get an idea of what your article could look like."
"Take a look at [EXAMPLE]. Its one of my favourites and has some really good examples of clinical tone and making a simple anomaly interesting."
"That kind of stuff used to be acceptable years ago but SCP writing has evolved a lot since then. If that article was made today it would almost certainly get removed. It's not something you want to emulate."
These measures might appear rather scant and meagre at first glance, and I certainly wouldn't blame you for thinking that. They are not, I am sure, what any of us envisioned when SCP-9020 first came to our attention. They do not provide salvation, autonomy, or even any firm guarantee of safety for our reality.
But I believe it would wrong to underestimate the potential scale of this project's impact.
Yes, the individual changes we might be able to make are tiny and the influence we would wield over SCP-001 through Qoppa-1 would be extremely narrow. Certainly nothing at all compared to the influence they wield over us. But consider what even a tiny change up there could mean for us down here.
If a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the earth can eventually give rise to a typhoon on the other, then what could just the right words in the ear of God accomplish?
An idea nurtured here, a few lines cut there, and a suddenly an entire world can become different. Perhaps sometimes it would only be different enough to avert a single death, or to make one life a little more full and meaningful, but that is still very much something. And Qoppa-1 could have the power to do that again, and again, and again.
Indeed, ideally our standards would become so well ingrained within SCP-001 instances that they would begin to enforce them upon themselves and one another without even needing the direct influence of a Qoppa-1 member any more.
What could our reality look like after a year of those tiny changes? Two years? A decade?
I for one would rather like to find out.