SCP-7723
Byㅤ Lt Flops
Published on 06 Jan 2023 04:59
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9
SCP-7723
SCP Series 8 » SCP-7723
VISUAL MEMETIHAZARD DEPLOYED
splay: no
SECURITY INTERLOCKS DISENGAGED
You may continue.
In light of recent events, the materials that make up this file's historical account have been converted to digital form.
These materials should help position VEILBURST Protocol. MISSING DEFINITIONS — Contact your RAISA liaison. and its unique challenges in a broader context.
— Alexis Rose, Digitization Department Lead, RAISA
SCP Database Entry
ITEM: SCP-7723
LEVEL 5/7723
CLASS: SAFE
TOP-SECRET
When not in use, SCP-7723 is kept within High-Value Anomalous Item Containment Module #7723 at Overwatch Command. Foundation clairvoyants assigned to SCP-7723 have sole discretion over its containment and handling, and access to the relevant facilities at Overwatch Command.
Foundation clairvoyant Conduit Λ-3 is allotted a comprehensive set of lifelong provisions, which includes:
- hazard pay,
- health benefits,
- living accommodations,
- a personal security detail,
- three weeks annual vacation, and
- expedited passage into an afterlife of their choosing, post-death..After extensive coordination with the relevant Macrocosmic parties, traversal along a secure transcosmic trajectory has been assured.
Conduit Λ-3 must fulfill their designated responsibilities until their natural death. This role must be conferred to a new clairvoyant in advance of their death. Accepting the role of Conduit remains a voluntary action; prospects must undergo the process with clarity of mind.
The search for auxiliary clairvoyants in fulfilling Project HOMEBOUND continues. Selection of clairvoyants must occur outside Foundation operational hierarchy.
SCP-7723 is a primeval energy source encased in a crystalline membrane.
Materials analysis has determined the membrane is fractally complex and supports the continued operation of SCP-7723. Breaching the membrane in any fashion renders SCP-7723 inert. Short of neutralizing it, however, the continued operation of SCP-7723 will persist only after the source of the breach is removed. SCP-7723 autonomously predicts breaches; researchers conclude through spectral analysis that the source becomes inert before any disruption takes place, but this always precedes a planned physical incursion. If the membrane takes superficial damage, it undergoes a brief period of self-repair before returning to its full protective capacity.
Through the coordination of a team of Foundation clairvoyants, the energy source provides direct observation of a pivotal future event, designated Prime-Terminus. Sensory data produced by the event is conferred to a single clairvoyant (currently Conduit Λ-3) via psionic connection.
ADDENDA MATERIALS
DEEPWELL SERVER FILES ACCESSED
UTILIZATION RECORD
By the prolonged use of SCP-7723 across several decades, each Conduit has not only gleaned credible visions of the future, but has also developed an extrasensory perception of a pivotal past event to a sufficient resolution. The use of SCP-7723 in this manner proves painful. The assigned Foundation clairvoyants are currently developing this past-sight technique in Project HOMEBOUND.
Prime-Terminus presently denotes the impending and forcible dissolution of The Foundation, and remains fixed. The Foundation has no known means of averting Prime-Terminus. The gap closes, day by day, and the possibility for aversion may one day shut.
SECURE
HISTORY
Foundation of Thirteen
Unification Congress
Held in 1893, the Unification Congress was a series of meetings that marked a watershed moment in the history of The SCP Foundation.
In these meetings, the Unification of The SCP Foundation was officially declared. The Unification involved thirteen of the most prominent normalcy preservation organizations in the world combining their resources and aligning their operations according to a unified shared interest.
The Unification also established the following.
- The inauguration of the first Overseer Council.
- The binding pact of Security, Containment, and Protection.
- The preliminary development and implementation of the Veil of Normality.
The Foundation has been in the possession of SCP-7723 since the Foundation of Thirteen Unification Congress in 1893. During these meetings, a hitherto unknown party presented SCP-7723 to Foundation Administrator Willhelm Fredericks as a gift of confidence.
A full account of the item's history before Foundation containment does exist. It cannot, however, be stringently verified in line with prevailing Foundation consensus: Accounts exist according to a robust genealogy of oral history.
In 1973, amidst a period of declining health, then-121-year-old Administrator Fredericks. BORN Willhelm Fredericks, 19 July 1852, South African Republic. had devised specialized Class-V Mnestic drugs to protect against the loss of memories about the object's history. Only by “committing the history to memory,” he stated, could he assure the information “would not stain the Veil.”
In the summer of 1976, shortly before his death, Administrator Fredericks relayed the object's history to his chosen successor. This summons involved the transference of other top-secret materials, including the bequeathal of SCP-0262, and access to Class-V Mnestics.
Recognizing the primacy of the knowledge Administrator Fredericks relayed, his successor would later relax the associated informational security protocols. A living record of SCP-7723's known history now exists within the Archival Office database, encrypted within its DEEPWELL servers. His successor would also begin formal research into SCP-7723 and enlist Foundation clairvoyants to the task.
Considering the task singularly burdensome, these clairvoyants would soon appoint one of their own to the role of Conduit — a role only three have held to-date.
CONTAIN
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
On 21 June 1976, a fatigued and bedridden Administrator Fredericks made his final recorded appearance. A select group of Foundation officials met at an impromptu gathering at his estate.
An excerpt from several hundred hours of miscellaneous recording, for posterity, is as follows.
ANNOTATED AUDIO LOG
[ BEGIN LOG ]
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
I demand privacy on my deathbed. Go on, you lot — gorge yourselves.
Shuffling noises and voices speaking lowly as a group moves down the hall, away from the Administrator's suite.
AIDE
Aside. Let's find the others in the courtyard—
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
You. Stay with me a bit, girl.
AIDE
Of course, sir.
The aide closes the doors.
Having closed, the door locks automatically engage.
AIDE
I can begin preparing the lodgings before you retire, sir.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
You're off the hook. We're putting the pleasantries and pantomiming behind.
He coughs hoarsely.
I know how it seems. Here, alone, and with me, a crass old buzzard? But you haven't to fuss. Suite's bugged, at any rate. You're on tape.
AIDE
Understood, sir. You have my undivided attention.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
Drop the honorific. Indulge me a heart-to-heart.
Pause.
What are you — Director's assistant?
AIDE
Yes. Personal aide to the co-directorship, Site-17.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
Terrific. One of Benjamin's girls, then. Give him a kick in the shins, would you? He'll know from who.
AIDE
If you would like, I can buzz in your attendant. Out of the greatest measure of respect, of course.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
I absolutely would not, and in fact, it would be most distasteful. In 12 hours' time, it won't have mattered.
AIDE
Come again?
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
He speaks slowly and enunciates carefully. There's nary many a man alive who can speak full-throatedly of his death. I've seen mine. A touch past oh-six hundred in the morning, I die in my sleep. Misdiagnosed pancreatic cancer. Exacerbated by mnestic poisoning, no doubt.
What greets me with solace, then, is the luxury of knowing all the other awful ways it could have come down. I have seen thousands of my false deaths. Felt them. Intimately. Every bone in my body, crushed through sheer force. My skin, eaten by chemical wash. The grit of my own moldered lungs, being choked upon.
AIDE
If you'd like me to make preparations…?
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
No, you won't.
We could map every last discrete interaction that makes up the future and encode it on optical disc. On microfiche, even; the 'how' matters not. Row after row, the data banks would line this estate. They would fill the entire campus of Site-19, above-ground and under it, and we would possess trifle more than our own, unabridged eulogy.
What of all the futures we won't see? If we could somehow imprint our every last potential future, on every last grain of sand upon every last beach on Earth. Would satisfaction come then?
Silence on tape.
AIDE
I will admit this is all a bit sobering. The way that I see it, the future is a bit like the past. Everything follows everything else, and we're able to trace it. But whereas one progresses always to an inevitable state, the other? Well.
The other's just hindsight.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
I knew I would appreciate where this conversation goes.
AIDE
She whispers. Where does it go?
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
He croaks.
Patience! Let an old man yarn.
The year of Unification — when The Foundation came to be — I had just turned 41 years old.
AIDE
Quietly. Wow. Is this when you spill your secrets to longevity?
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
He scoffs.
I have lived as overlong a life as they come. I tell you this in confidence: The fad of eternal life amongst the Overseers is an exercise in futility. We lord over an empire in decay. We are afraid. What we fear, more than anything else, even more than our own mortality, is the disposition of our subjects.
AIDE
The anomalies?
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
We are, all of us, its subjects. The ones in containment, and the ones charged with protection.
And what is your name, girl?
AIDE
Irvine. Aisling Irvine.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
Hushed. You, miz Irvine, are one of its subjects.
As was I.
AISLING IRVINE
AIDE
I don't follow. Surely, you aren't suggesting —
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
He raises his voice. We Veiled the world! All of it! How foolish we would be, leaving one eye blind? Blind!
AISLING IRVINE
AIDE
We took an oath. Those words matter, and the fruits of what we — all of us — have built, they bear out every single day. And if they didn't, we wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. You dedicated your entire life to this, and I believe it to be a just cause, sir.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
Laughing. Old Willie — oh, he's gone senile! Has he not?
Well? What is it!
AISLING IRVINE
AIDE
You know better than anyone, better than any one man or woman, how many countless lives The Foundation has saved.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
Precisely. No man knows better than I. Yet you continue to be so obstinate in the face of this man, who tells you that we risked it all, and for a tyrant's ideal! For this square peg — this planet, this pathetic human desire to be saved — jammed in a round hole?
Administrator Fredericks begins coughing.
AISLING IRVINE
AIDE
It doesn't need to be all or nothing. It needs to be enough.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
“All or nothing?”
Coughing. My dear girl — the Veil of Normality rests on exactly such a principle! It rests upon the memetic regime. Upon a populace pumped fat on amnesiacs. Upon ancient pacts to moon gods, and the ichor which flows from bastard realities. And then, at the very top? One, who rests upon thirteen, who rest upon all else!
Wheezing. If all the abominations and vermin scurry in the dark, and upon the dirt and shit, we cannot but keep the tablecloth clean. How can we not see the work to its completion?
Some time during his coughing fit, Site-17 Directorship Aide Aisling Irvine rushes from the room to summon Administrator Frederick's caregiving entourage.
ADMINISTRATOR FREDERICKS
Muffled. Poke and prod and plod over the future. Nudge it onto whichever course we like.
I can never unwish the past.
[ END LOG ]
Administrator Fredericks was placed under the watch of an attending nurse and given a prescribed sleep aid.
At 0631 UTC on 22 June 1976, at the natural age of 123 years, 11 months, and 4 days, he passed peacefully in his sleep.
PROTECT
[ END OF FILE ]
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