Item #: SCP-L009
Object Class: Postulatory Yesod
Special Containment Procedures: All copies of SCP-L009 are to remain distributed strictly within the bounds of Site-01 and subsidiary Facilities. Under no circumstances may SCP-L009 be shared with or distributed to civilians, anomalous entities, or other occult agencies, or with Foundation internal divisions or personnel uninitiated with Directive SUNDOWN TROUBADOUR. O5-5 is to figurehead all interpretation of SCP-L009's text, and if he ever finds that his memory of the text has changed, is to report this to the rest of the Overseer Council immediately.
Further research and interpretation of SCP-L009 is under Directive SUNDOWN TROUBADOUR (O5/L009-4/1/Ω), headed by O5-5. Overwatch order mandates the object's proprietary storage at Site-01 and outlines the object's continued use, preemptively ensuring it remains integrated in the methodology Foundation Central Command against all protest. Research of SCP-L009 and theoretical development of prophecy occurs at Site-01 directly, whereas perpetuation operations occur at Facility-01-26.
Directive SUNDOWN TROUBADOUR requires a consistent supply of Impelling Notional Entities (INEs) for harvesting and conscripted labor at Facility-01-26. This need has resulted in undesirable tension between the Foundation and the Global Occult Coalition, as well as with CANTICLE NONAGON and other Type-III INEs. As such, the Foundation is to mitigate the risk of its operations being discovered by agencies with the directive of preserving INE integrity.
Description: SCP-L009 is an anachronous prophetic adage attributed to the personal muse of O5-5. The object is an article of Victorian verse poetry composed of five stanzas made up of four lines each. The text of SCP-L009 is classified on a strict need-to-know basis.
Chronologically, SCP-L009 is a totally lost document; its origin is likely non-causal altogether, and therefore unknowable. The Foundation’s sole primary source for the existence and verbiage of SCP-L009 is the personal memory of O5-5, who attests to have known the poem for as long as he can remember. Extensive research has failed to identify a concrete historical author or original time of creation for the piece, and RCT-Δt has independently concluded that SCP-L009 possesses no clear causal point of origin in the prime timeline.
It is widely believed that the portion of SCP-L009 referring to "wooded trails a-crossed" is an allusion to the Spiral Path.
The text of SCP-L009 is one of the most accurate, versatile, and situationally fine-tuned oracular tools available to the Foundation. It is believed that the prophetic accuracy of the poem’s contents bears some connection to the atemporal fashion in which it was bestowed upon O5-5.
SCP-L009 does not merely state or allude to future events, but actually provides a structurally coherent general framework for oracular prediction contained within the poem’s text and narrative itself. This theoretical prophetic model is highly flexible, allowing for Foundation personnel trained in the interpretation of SCP-L009 to — using nothing but the text of the poem — obtain specific advice concerning an extremely broad set of possible present and future circumstances germane to Foundation operations and make consequent recommendations on a course of action for the Foundation to take regarding said circumstances. As a result, SCP-L009 is not often simply consulted at the level of face-value interpretation, as are other prophecies; rather, an extensive field containing several competing schools of thought and methods of interpretation has developed around Site-01 based on the abstract literary, narrative, thematic, linguistic, and aesthetic analysis of SCP-L009 as a vehicle through which to maximize the amount of efficacious prophecy extracted from the text.
SCP-L009 interpretation is consistently ranked among the strongest and most broadly impactful advance-warning devices employed by the Foundation, across multiple categories1. Its use remains a cornerstone of Foundation strategic divination, despite widespread condemnation and slander promulgated by parallel organizations and anomalous entities.
Continued pursuit of Directive SUNDOWN TROUBADOUR has carried the knock-on effect of a 1.3% average annual decline in spontaneous creative faculties among the general human population2. This has been deemed acceptable.
Update 2/12/2015: In response to concerns raised during review and assessment of Directive SUNDOWN TROUBADOUR, the Department of Containment has issued the following declaration:
"As a key component of primary containment operations, precognitive intelligence derived from O5/L009-4/1/Ω cannot be compromised. Except insofar as the containment and repurposing of INEs creates a disruption to the human noetic environment so severe and obvious as to directly endanger consensus normalcy, the continued fulfilment of these means to enable INE empowerment of SCP-L009 is to take priority superseding the general desideratum to maintain entity-assisted technogenesis of all other works of art and literature, in general."
Addendum L009-1: Upon further intelligence collection around SCP-L009 through the investigatory arm of SUNDOWN TROUBADOUR, the Foundation contacted the Global Occult Coalition to request a consult regarding SCP-L009 from the principal CANTICLE NONAGON entities. CANTICLE NONAGON agreed to exchange information on SCP-L009 with Foundation personnel on the condition that the rendezvous occur at Main Operating Base Thirio under strict UN protection.
The verdict of each consult at the resulting summit was as such:
| CANTICLE NONAGON Instance | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Calliope | Immediate decommission and termination of SCP-L009. |
| Clio | Immediate decommission and termination of SCP-L009. |
| Euterpe | Indefinite suspension of SCP-L009 in a mnemonic fluid medium. |
| Polyhymnia | Immediate decommission and termination of SCP-L009. |
| Terpsichore | Criminalization of SCP-L009 recitation in Foundation bylaws. |
| Erato | Mass dispersal of SCP-L009 in the event of an irreversible K-Class scenario. |
| Thalia | Limit SCP-L009 to intra-Foundation ceremonial use. |
| Urania | Disalign SCP-L009 from hominid engineering directives and limit obeisances to bare minimum. |
Discontinuation of O5/L009-4/1/Ω was also unanimously recommended.
Melpomene appeared at the bilateral summit, but refused to comment.
