“Nor will it at all do to say, that the world is getting grey and grizzled now, and has lost that fresh charm which she wore of old, and by virtue of which the great poets of past times made themselves what we esteem them to be.” - Herman Melville, 1850
Item#: SCP-8551
Level#1
Containment Class:
safe
Secondary Class:
none
Disruption Class:
vlam
Risk Class:
caution
SCP-8551 at Site-12
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-8551 is to be kept in a secure lockbox at Site-12. Limited access may be granted for pre-approved experimentation utilising selected excerpts of SCP-8551, but under no circumstances will any individual personnel be permitted to sequentially access SCP-8551’s full contents over any span of time. Should SCP-8551 be activated, affected subjects are to be administered amnestics sufficient to remove any resulting anomalous effects.
Description: SCP-8551 is a copy of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, printed by Dover Publications in 2003 as an entry in the ‘Dover Giant Thrift Editions’ series. Physically, SCP-8551 resembles any other copy of Moby-Dick produced as a part of that same print run,. Although investigations carried out by researchers at Site-12 involved buying up all available copies of the long-since out-of-print Giant Thrift edition, only SCP-8551 has displayed anomalous properties. in roughly Good condition,. As defined by the widely-accepted grading standard established by defunct periodical AB Bookman’s Weekly, the ‘Good’ condition describes “the average used and worn book that has all pages or leaves present”. with minor wear and tear, and the addition of two modifications: ink stamps on the flyleaf and title page reading “Donated by ‘What’s America Reading?’ Promoting Literacy Locally Since 2002”. Details on the presumably-grassroots organisation remain scarce. and a round orange sticker on the spine, of the type typically used by libraries or book stores for categorisation. SCP-8551’s contents match most known editions of Melville’s text without any variation noted.
When read, whether silently or aloud, SCP-8551 exhibits a memetic property whereby all individuals in its vicinity. Definitive parameters have proved elusive, and it has been suggested that the object’s effective range is based on more abstract networks of association than can be conclusively measured. come to invest a great deal of cosmic and even religious significance in their own actions, however mundane. Additionally, SCP-8551 elicits a change in the speech and behavioral patterns of those affected, such that they begin to speak and react in a manner which has been noted by Site-12 personnel as reminiscent of Melville’s text’s most heightened chapters, albeit more stilted and improvised according to the literary propensities of those affected. These effects are gradually-accumulating; they appear to start subtly and grow stronger as more of SCP-8551’s contents are read by the manifestation’s current vector.. Its initial trigger - that is, the subject reading the contents of SCP-8551 during a given manifestation. This latter property of SCP-8551 also affects text recountings of instances of its anomalous effect’s manifestations, although this does not extend to all documentation relating to SCP-8551 itself.
SCP-8551 was recovered on June 10, 2024 from the possession of a college student attending [REDACTED] University, who had purchased the item from a used book store in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Potential connections to SCP-4006 have been investigated and deemed unlikely. roughly two weeks prior to retrieval. Foundation servers were alerted by a pattern-scanning algorithm embedded in popular plagiarism-checking software [REDACTED] designed to flag potentially-anomalous text patterns,. It had previously been proposed that the algorithm in question be retired owing to its constant flagging of texts expressing political sentiments deemed unusually subversive as well as material written by students apparently suffering from stress- or psychosis-related mental conditions, leading in several cases to accidental [REDACTED]. However, in light of the successful flagging of SCP-8551, the algorithm has been reassessed and will remain online. triggered in this instance by a ten-page essay on the symbolism of a painting featured in an early chapter of Moby-Dick which the student in question had apparently submitted as part of a final project for her Nineteenth Century Literature course. On arriving on the [REDACTED] campus for a confirmatory survey of the situation, field agents Tamara Cole and Sarah Patel encountered a situation which Cole described as ‘obviously anomalous’ in the opening summary of a post-deployment write-up of the mission, the main text of which quickly descended into an example of SCP-8551’s recorded effects:
Excerpt from Field Report Regarding Recovery of SCP-8551 - filed by Agent Tamara Cole on 06/11/24
Didn’t immediately notice anything when we arrived. Campus was basically quiet due to the approaching end of semester. I remember saying to Sarah, probably nothing happening, just another sleep-deprived kid going off on one in their finals. Decided to have a look around the dorms, then head out if nothing seemed suspicious.
When we reached the dorms, immediately obvious something was off. Students loading up the trunk of a car, which wasn’t unusual - lots of kids going home for the summer - but the way they were acting looked strange even from a distance. Patel described their mannerisms as theatrical. (Aside) See! I have them now; with that alluring hook my hook is baited. Few now could fail to read the whole tale through, lest they miss its ending.
Nor indeed was my partner much mistaken in these perceptions; more than that, I would have called them canny. Fine thoughts oft trample themselves in blind eagerness to depart from the mouths of mankind, yet in those rare few of finer make, they sort themselves quietly into obliging rows, and, arranged that way, amble o’er the tongue in careful fashion. One may call them thoroughbreds, for, ha! certainly it was a thorough mind which bred them; yet no derby horses were these that cantered through yon agent’s skull - dressage would be more apt. Look! see yonder scholars’ limbs a-twist with fearful mannerism the likes of those ne’er seen outwith the stage.
Outside the dormitory; students packing up their car; Cole turns to Patel.
I think I see its end! When that travelling-trunk is full they will quit this place, and us along with it. (In jest.) A funny kind of trunk it is, do you mark it? that grapples itself to the very carriage which carries it; I suppose they think to make a fast retreat. Come! Come! now we must question them quickly, ere they can take their leave.
Cole and Patel hurry towards the students, their movements swift.
ᴅᴏʀᴍɪᴛᴏʀʏ ᴅʀɪᴠᴇᴡᴀʏ.
FIRST STUDENT:
Come on, then, boys! Up! Up with that case and down into the belly of the beast! I must hie from this place afore the sun has set.
SECOND STUDENT:
Aye, that he must! for driving in the dark has always vexed him; methinks the ‘stigmatism cruel afflicts his eyes. Yet this I mark as strange: that in drinking after dark he finds no trouble!
THIRD STUDENT:
Trouble he finds plenty; you mean he finds no equal! He talks of the belly of the beast; I think I know it, there are spirits there!
SECOND STUDENT:
It can’t be hell, I think, to which you are referring.
THIRD STUDENT:
Hell it may yet be said to mimic, if a man be a pint of ale!
(They howl; their two hands arch above them, then in brief embrace are quickly met)
FIRST STUDENT:
You think yourselves fools, do you? Fear not, for I think it as well; I have long thought it.
SECOND STUDENT:
He insults us, I suppose. Can we stand it?
THIRD STUDENT:
He knew not that it was us to whom he spake. It is the fault of those spirits; they confuse him.
(Another howl; their two hands once again, for moments, merge)
FOURTH STUDENT:
These merry tidings bode ill. They think not of the journey which now faces them. Here, boys, here, and listen! Night comes quickly; it is like death that way, and it is your death which will chase you on these roads. ‘Struth! Bethink you of the toil ahead, and then, I beg, dispense with these distracted airs - the road is long!
FIRST STUDENT:
Aye! Think how the wheels turn on gravel! The curbside rushing up to meet the sidedoors, nearly scraping them! And yet we push on, boys, we push on! To grapple with the wheel is to grapple as man did in days of old with greater foes; the jaws of the leviathan, I think, were quite as firm! And see you a tall truck approaching, trailer linked behind it; the saints must have felt the same to face the Beast of Revelation!
THIRD STUDENT:
A grand journey! And what is death but that which waits there at the end of any road, like a lighted home? Belike there is a meal on the fire! And what is life or travel without a touch of merriment? Speak not to me of death or roads, for one leads anyway to the other; and what matters it where along the way we may first stop?
SECOND STUDENT:
We will need lodgings! Methinks a motel, or anyway some inn like that would serve us!
FOURTH STUDENT:
There is no wisdom in them! No matter how I speak they will not listen. It is this way with so many of those who drive along the road of life, and seldom do they reach their destination. Is it God’s will that you should stray from careful travels? For, see! we may all drive towards death, yet what we find beyond its veil changes form according to the route we mapped and followed! That is the truth, and you may mark it!
SECOND STUDENT:
The truth is a fragile thing, like a dormitory bedsheet long unchanged; I see holes in it.
Enter Cole; to her, Patel.
After speaking with the students, who - as far as can be gleaned from the highly-stylised nature of the report - evidenced no realisation of the oddity of their behavior, Cole and Patel were able to locate the dormitory of the student whose essay had initially triggered the alert. There, they found the student and her roommate engaged in similar behavior as they packed up their own possessions, and began to question them regarding the situation:
Excerpt from Field Report Regarding Recovery of SCP-8551 - filed by Agent Tamara Cole on 06/11/24
“Our questions, friends! Our questions!” shouted Cole, rushing closer to the passioned students, “Will thou answer them, and thereby sate the curiosity which burns within our brains? We beseech thee; it was thou that raised them and only thou can satisfy them! That is what I call courtesy, and it is the measure of any being who walks this earth!”
“Questions I am fain to answer daily,” came the voice of [REDACTED], “should they come to me in the form of tests and quizzes. Questions of this kind, it is my very purpose, currently, to vie with. But the mad half-formed inquiries of a stranger, one who enters into my lodgings omitting a word of introduction - questions of this kind I will no sooner dignify than tolerate! Out, out with you both; I know you not.”
“As to that, I can enlighten thee,” said Cole, “and if thou be a scholar, thou will attend carefully, and come quickly to an understanding.”
“See, she indicates a card, heretofore concealed within her pocket,” whispered [REDACTED]. “What can it mean, I wonder? Methinks I’ve seen the like in films before.”
“Ah! I see the shine of recognition in thine eyes,” said Patel at last. “We are those burdened warriors whose task it is, unending, to enforce that which was long ago set down by the twin spirits of Law and Justice.”
“Fealty to such mistlike forms!” cried [REDACTED]. “Madness must afflict thee. Law changes almost as with the tides, and as for justice, it is a mirage. If thou trust in such unsolid things, I am lost to see what good any answer I might give could do thee; thou might just as well envision one thyselves, and put thy trust in that.”
Despite an apparently unpromising start, agents Cole and Patel were eventually able to persuade the student to show them a copy of the flagged essay, as well as SCP-8551, which she had used as a source. Under the assumption that either might be the cause of the strange behaviors which they had witnessed, the agents confiscated both and returned them to the nearby Site-[REDACTED]. The student in question was also taken into custody, where she was quickly determined to be non-anomalous and released, after which Mobile Task Force Sigma-51 (“Knights and Squires”) was dispatched to the [REDACTED] university campus for a mass amnesticisation procedure which successfully eliminated SCP-8551’s effects from the affected students. Initial testing at Site-[REDACTED] determined, through an accidental recreation of the incident, that it was the reading of SCP-8551 which had caused the event:. The essay was found to be non-anomalous, outside of its status as having been affected by SCP-8551’s properties.
Excerpt from SCP-8551 Initial Test Log - compiled by Doctor [REDACTED] on 06/12/24:
The head research assistant of the Site-[REDACTED] anomaly classification center was S[REDACTED].. Full name redacted at request of individual. He was a small, nervous man, too much afraid of his own shadow to have been of much use in any more dangerous terrain - God carry him from Site-19! His hair, short and grey, seemed shaved from granite, and in his face one saw the inept monument which must have resulted from the work, its features rough and indistinct. Still he stood proudly in those times when duty called upon him to do so, and held fast to his post when obliged to do so, if not much before. Were all the men upon whose shoulders the safety of this world depended of like make, that safety must heretofore have faltered, yet one soldier such as this among the ranks of that fine legion seemed somehow to add more than subtract from its overall character, as one fool among a kingly court aids in its deliberations where a hundred would soon sink it.
Also among that team was Doctor Fredericks, a fine, bold-hewed figure. There is a certain kind of Foundation-man who, having earned their doctorate only after joining those hallowed ranks, and having originally hailed from a rougher walk, contain within themselves a kind of earthly power, which, when joined with the grave and mighty character inherent to this organisation, create a startling kind of person; a figure almost out of myth. To see that weathered form, scarred from all manner of past encounters unspoken, howling of anomalies in his rude tongue, was to witness Enkidu crying out before the Ogre; a man of no high civilising lot grappling as a king would with cosmic powers.
There was also I, Doctor [REDACTED], who humbly led this team; but of myself, I find it superfluous to speak.
As a knight must have a squire, so too did this fine order have its D-Class; one assigned to every person in the team. I called each of them to me, ere we began; they came haltingly, unsure of my purpose. But my purpose was nothing less than the purpose which animates us to the last - would animate all the world, were they but privy to its workings. God be thanked that they are not! God, and our own legions, who like angels serve His glory.
“My soldiers!” I shouted, looking out upon their ragged faces, “Answer me! The task which we face is one of greatest honor and of greatest toil. In consigning all the monsters of this world into a Tartarus of our own half-mortal fashioning, we save the common man from the teeth of Titans; yet in so doing find ourselves like unto the gods who, in days of old, maintained that order. To be a god would burden anyone; it is a burden which, my friends, we all must carry! Will we carry it, soldiers? What say ye?”
“Aye!” cried the D-Class personnel, “Aye! We will, Doctor, we will!”
“Hurrah!” I cried, my eyes shining. “Hurrah to you, my soldiers, hurrah! for soldiers such as these are not so easily discovered. Come to me, my legion! Come and receive my blessings!”
Hearing my entreaty, so they came, and so did they kneel before me, and S[REDACTED] and Doctor Fredericks looked on with heavy eyes. And reaching into my case I produced the stopwatch which had served as my lance in many an initial test, and passing it above my own head in the manner of a thurible, I soon crossed it also over the heads of my companions. This done, the watch was taken up and passed between the D-Class personnel, who swung the watch above each other’s persons, thus sealing our compact. And a fire was started in the bunsen burner housed within the lab, and we gathered around it, and warmed our hands around the flame, and sat there contemplating our holy mission until dawn broke and the songbirds sang outside the laboratory walls and the veil of night was lifted.
[ORIGINAL FILE CONTINUES IN THIS VEIN FOR SEVERAL PAGES, BREATHLESSLY DESCRIBING THE TEAM ASSIGNED TO INVESTIGATE THE POTENTIAL ANOMALY AND THEIR UNUSUAL PREPARATIONS IN A MANNER ENTIRELY OUT OF KEEPING WITH STANDARD TEST LOG FORMAT]
Though disorderly, this testing did successfully establish the above-described parameters of SCP-8551’s effects. Following classification, SCP-8551 was transported to Site-12 for permanent containment. It has not since been activated. Although agents have been assigned to monitor the used book store which sold the object, as well as to search for any trace of ‘What’s America Reading?’, no further information has thus far been uncovered, nor has any possible origin or parascientific explanation for SCP-8551’s effects been established.
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On November 19, 2024, agents discovered another object apparently donated by ‘What’s America Reading?’ in the donation drop-box of the monitored used book store.. Security camera footage was not clear enough to determine which of the store’s many visitors might have left it, nor of high-enough quality to accurately trace the majority of them. Bearing an identical stamp to SCP-8551, the object appeared to be a weathered, hand-stapled pamphlet featuring the text of Herman Melville’s 1850 essay ‘Hawthorne and His Mosses’.. A review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1846 anthology Mosses from an Old Manse.
The pamphlet was transported to Site-12, where it was discovered to contain several markings in faded pencil - most notably, underlines applied to two passages, which are reproduced below:
‘The world is as young today, as when it was created’ is circled, as are the words ‘no new charms and mysteries’ and ‘all that has been said, but multiplies the avenues to what remains to be said’. ‘Germinous seeds’ has an exclamation mark drawn beside it.
Proposals that the object be designated SCP-8551-01 have been rejected on the basis that the pamphlet displays no anomalous properties. The object has been assigned to the purview of Doctor Leah Erickson of Site-12, a scholar of occult and mundane literature who has been overseeing further research into SCP-8551.
Excerpted transcript of conversation between Doctor Erickson and Site-12 supervisor regarding Erickson’s research into SCP-8551:
Doctor Erickson: I do actually have - sort of a theory about all of this. [Wry laugh] Though, I’ll warn you, it’s not exactly a scientific theory. I fear my background in literary studies is showing.
█████: We’re not exactly a scientific operation, are we? Much as we may try. Go on, Doctor.
Doctor Erickson: Well… SCP-8551’s effects seem to…. heighten reality, don’t they? Make those affected perceive the mundane as some sort of cosmic, mythical endeavour.
█████: The logs would seem to indicate as much, yes.
Doctor Erickson: It’s easy to draw a connection between the recorded effects and the character of Ahab in Melville’s text. I mean - a man going about the mundane job of whaling who sees the whole thing as a sort of holy battle with the leviathan - an ordinary sailing voyage which gets more and more intense until it comes to represent a grand philosophical statement about the universe, with all the crew as players on a stage - it’s pretty much what SCP-8551 does, right? That part’s obvious - I think even the team at Site-[REDACTED] had hit on that by the time they sent it over to us.
Both share a chuckle.
█████: But you think there’s more?
Doctor Erickson: Well, the pamphlet got me thinking. You know, Melville’s essay? It’s… more or less the same thing. Starts off as a review of Hawthorne’s book, and by the end, he’s basically fighting a holy war on behalf of America’s literary soul. The world’s, even. Making this grand point that the world isn’t calcified, that there’s still more to be written about through fresh eyes, that anyone could still surpass Shakespeare if we just… start believing that that’s true. Doing the same thing as Ahab, really. Investing cosmic significance into something as mundane as a book review.
█████: Interesting, but what’s your point?
Doctor Erickson: Well, like I said, it isn’t a scientific theory. But… that essay makes it pretty clear that Melville hoped Moby-Dick would be the book that would convince people it was possible to surpass Shakespeare in the modern age, make people start seeing the world as a new place again, give America its own mythical canon. All of that. Maybe SCP-8551 is just… carrying on its author’s intentions. Planting a ‘germinous seed’ in all of our souls.
█████: Hmm.
Doctor Erickson: That essay the kid wrote, the one that triggered the algorithm - it was about this painting in Moby-Dick. Until it… derailed, obviously. But that painting - well, Melville wrote that it looked like a random collection of lines, until you stared at it for a while. And then you just started seeing more and more to it, until you finally understood what it was supposed to be. In some twisted way - maybe that’s what SCP-8551 is trying to do. Revealing more and more of the world. Casting everyday ventures into the cosmic light which they could take on, if we just looked at them as if everything were still brand new.
█████: It’s an interesting thought, Doctor Erickson.
Pause
█████: But I still can’t approve your request to use it as a perception-enhancement tool. You’ll just have to come to your bold new conclusions the old-fashioned way, I’m afraid. You seem to have form in that regard.
Doctor Erickson: Damn it. It was worth a shot.
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On February 21, 2025, agents monitoring the used book shop at which SCP-8551 was purchased discovered another object bearing the ‘What’s America Reading?’ stamp in the store’s donation bin. Rather than a copy of a known text as on previous occasions, the object was a large, vaguely-bookmark-shaped card featuring a stylised depiction of a snake coiled around a sword, bearing text which purported to be a message from the organisation itself. The text is reproduced below:
“The world is as young today, as when it was created, and this Vermont morning dew is as wet to my feet, as Eden's dew to Adam's. Nor has Nature been all over ransacked by our progenitors, so that no new charms and mysteries remain for this latter generation to find. Far from it.”
There are still wonders in the world, if only one has the eyes to see them.
Consider this: once, mankind was content to believe that other lands than their own must contain mysteries and monsters beyond their wildest imaginings. Once, mankind was content to imagine krakens and Serpents lurking beneath the waves. Once, mankind was content to believe that other civilisations gazed back at them from heavenly spheres. Content - nay, most were pleased. It was this very wonder at the magic of the world that inspired art and tales and dreams which are, to this very day, remembered.
It is only lately - very lately, in the grand lay of the world - that these things have been forced to calcify - that certain arrogant forces, championing the progress of civilisation, have attempted to set things down into grey boxes. These are false classifications: looked at through fresh eyes, as though the world were young - as though these were still the days of myth - there are as many dragons and krakens and little green men as there ever were. But to some, this seems unconscionable, and efforts have been made to sweep that which is not so easily categorised beneath the proverbial rug.
My friends, in centuries not very long past, there would have been no need for containment of this kind. It would not have upset anyone very much to learn that things which they could not understand or explain existed in their world - indeed, most would have assumed that it was so. The status quo which some unthinking knights strive to defend is more modern a creation than perhaps even they realize.
If the world is viewed once again through fresh eyes - if its deprived players come to view their actions not as clumsy strides through a concrete box, grey and unchanging, but in the light of myths as cosmic and fantastical as their everyday endeavours truly seem to those who remain unjaded - then the stagnation which so afflicts us all will be toppled and the world will once again seem a new and untried place. Wouldn’t we all like to live in a world like that? And whose is it, but ours, to decide otherwise? Why should humanity at large not be allowed, once again, to look upon the impossible, and to know that it is impossible, and to be inspired by it? Why should our world not sweep off its shallow artificial bounds and grow once again as deep as it must once have seemed?
Through encouraging entry into the wonderful world of literature, we believe that germinous seeds can be dropped into the souls of all America - and, in time, the world. We believe that we can expand and deepen down this world - restore it to the glory which it once possessed, and can possess again. To what infinite heights may we yet be borne, by incorporating these things into our being?
Fresh eyes must open, and peer beyond a lifted veil. The world of myth and cosmic wonder must be made visible once again. If it is to be War, it will be a Holy War, a war for the soul of our world; and we who fight will be like unto God’s own angels, nigh-biblical in our almighty struggle to free humanity’s perspective from its ill-forged shackles.
This is our goal in encouraging literacy among our youth and our community. We hope you’ll join us!
Writing in aid of realization,
Your friends at
What’s America Reading?
Promoting National Understanding Since 2002.
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