Item #: SCP-2495

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: MTF Rho-93 ("Say It Ain't Sokal") are currently responsible for having copies of SCP-2495 circulated in academic publications removed, and the persons responsible for their publication detained and amnesticised. An archival copy of SCP-2495 has been stored on the internal Hazardous Documents Database, with Level 2 personnel and above being able to view selected excerpts of the full text.

SCP-2495-A is to be contained in a standard Type-B Humanoid Containment Chamber in Site-43. Researchers in face-to-face contact with SCP-2495-A must change into a supplied full-body garment to prevent it from using its precognitive abilities in a potentially compromising manner. In addition to this, researchers should not be exposed to predictions of events that mention or otherwise relate to them, so as to avoid undue emotional impact as a result of predicted events.

SCP-2495-A is currently undergoing treatment for anxiety and insomnia caused by its anomalous abilities, and as such is required to attend weekly appointments with its assigned psychiatrist (currently Dr. Adileh Khayyam, Humanoid Anomaly Specialist).

Description: SCP-2495 is a novel interpretation of the James Joyce novel Ulysses, first published in the Journal of Modern Literature by a University of Dublin student named Myrna Callaghan (now SCP-2495-A.) The interpretation analyses the novel from a linguistic point of view using natural language processing1 techniques and other advanced computing concepts to further a thesis about the novel as commentary on the relationship between the modern Irishman and the Irish language.

SCP-2495 causes all those who read and comprehend its full text to gain heightened pattern recognition abilities over the course of several months. Initially, this simply manifests as an increased ability to recognise patterns in simple data such as numeric sequences — over time, the extent of this increases drastically so that affected subjects are capable of identifying seed values for pseudo-random number generators and performing other, highly difficult pattern recognition-based tasks.

As SCP-2495 infection progresses, subjects report an increase in migraines, elevated blood pressure and insomnia, presumably as a result of the compulsive pareidolia that affects them. Amnestic treatments have proven generally effective at curing SCP-2495 infection at any stage, with SCP-2495-A being the sole observed exception to this.

SCP-2495-A is a 27-year-old human female of Irish descent weighing approximately 83kg and standing 155cm tall. It claims its infection predates the completion of SCP-2495, possibly as a result of the events portrayed in materials recovered from its apartment (see Addendum SCP-2495-01). Due to its abnormally advanced condition, it experiences debilitating migraines when using its sight for even minutes at a time, and has been provided with protective sunglasses to prevent these from occuring.

In addition to the abilities common to SCP-2495-infected subjects, SCP-2495-A exhibits mild precognitive abilities, which it claims is a direct result of its prolonged exposure to SCP-2495. When it has line of sight with objects of personal signficance to an individual, SCP-2495-A is capable of making accurate predictions about incidents that individual will be involved with up to three hours in the future. The specificity of these predictions appears to be proportional with the quantity of these objects it can see and their degree of significance to the individual in question.

These abilities do not allow it to make predictions about events that will happen to it, or future events that will otherwise involve it. It is unknown if these additional abilities are the result of extremely advanced SCP-2495 infection, or some external factor unique to SCP-2495-A.

Addendum SCP-2495-01: Discovery and Recovered Material

SCP-2495-A initially came to the attention of the Foundation after its disappearance in 2015 and subsequent re-appearance in its apartment. At the time, it had been found amnesiac and suffering from symptoms reminiscent of those involved in Class-A amnestic overdose, including amnesia that prevented it from remembering significant amounts of the time period from 2010 to 2015. Despite this, it was still cognizant of its anomalous abilities and those of SCP-2495; after both these pieces of information were verified, SCP-2495-A was taken into containment and civilians exposed to SCP-2495 amnesticised.

During the initial raid on SCP-2495-A's apartment, six documents were found on its laptop, believed to be previous iterations of SCP-2495. Each document had an accompanying plaintext file titled in the format "changelog<iteration number>.txt", most likely comments from SCP-2495-A related to the creation of the iteration. These documents are as followed:

Iteration #
Date of Change
Summary of Version

1
2011-06-13
An outline of a thesis on a natural language processing project, presumably for the computer science degree SCP-2495-A was undertaking prior to it being placed in containment. The thesis details a way to use pattern-finding algorithms to improve parsing of language input by a human user, and provides a pseudocode algorithm presumably written for this purpose: said pseudocode is heavily obfuscated and nonsensical, with numerous abbreviations of unknown meaning composing much of its body.

+ Changelog #1

- Hide

I've heard of serendipity before, but I don't think I've ever heard of it ever coming when you're dissociating hard enough to break your head out your skull. Figured out a really, really rough way of kludging together my final work for my thesis and some advanced math stuff that's been sloshing in my head during my talks with Nat: slapped down some pseudocode when the idea hit me, and that's just about all I've copied down so far.

Probably gonna take a lot of hammering away to get this into a workable form, might ask Nat if the idea's sound. Got to play the math major hand you're dealt.

Iteration #
Date of Change
Summary of Version

2
2012-01-13
While still generally the same as Iteration 1, several section titles have been corrupted and the section containing the pseudo-code mentioned above has been expanded significantly. The title page now claims the thesis was co-written by both SCP-2495-A and a PoI named Natalia Ianucci. Ianucci was a registered student of the University of Dublin for three years prior to her disappearance under unknown circumstances: Foundation-led investigation is ongoing.

+ Changelog #2

- Hide

Going to have to make this a lot shorter than normal: feel like utter shit. Words on the page feel sticky to the touch now: my stomach turns just having to re-read this thing for spelling errors. Have I got an intellectual hangover? What the hell was in that book Nat showed me the other day?

Whatever's behind my eyelids looks pink now. Can't get to sleep.

Iteration #
Date of Change
Summary of Version

3
2012-01-15
A chapter of the thesis outlined in Iteration #1, titled "Practical Implementation of Solomonoff Induction-based Concept". Presumably intended to showcase a piece of code that would perform Solomonoff induction2, the section that would contain this code contains only heavily corrupted data and excerpts from other critics' analyses of Ulysses.

+ Changelog #3

- Hide

Re-read Nat's book today as we listened to old jazz. The drums sounded like coins against steel drums as I read, and the pink light behind my eyes gets far more focussed now, which helped with the idea.

Pattern-matching. That's the conceit of the thing, that it can find patterns at the heart of things no matter what kind of interference it's given. When all I have is a five-hundred and thirty two word mess of hand-written notes to capture this idea, whatever light it had no longer shines through it: but refine it, tease the pure algorithm inside from the clumsy words I wrote to set it down, and that light shines harder and brighter than ever before.

And as for how I refine it: apply the light to itself, dirty and scuffed at first but brighter and more pure as time goes on. Start finding little pieces of that pattern with what I have to go on, use those same small fragments to uncover more, rinse, repeat, and it all falls into place.

It needs to be unit-tested, though. If it can decrypt the simple madness of the Modernists, then its own internal workings should be no different.

Iteration #
Date of Change
Summary of Version

4
2013-12-01
A PDF copy of James Joyce's Ulysses with identical text to the Project Gutenberg version. The only difference between the Project Gutenberg PDF and this iteration is a number of functionally meaningless edits to metadata attached to the file.

+ Changelog #4

- Hide

Had to get round to this version eventually, had to get this one over with as fast as possible — cement the idea in my mind lest the fours get in through the cracks and dislodge it. Not going to write any more in this revision, not that I have the inspiration to do that, anyway.

The light is darkest before the dawn.

Iteration #
Date of Change
Summary of Version

5
2014-05-25
This version consists of a PDF of several hundred scanned pages of hand-written notes, as well as print-outs of statistics derived from computer analysis of Ulysses. Anatomical diagrams of hands, descriptions of the Sagrada Familia copied verbatim from a travel guide owned by SCP-2495-A, and sketches of a five-sided fractal figure feature prominently within the hand-written portion of the document. Only twelve pages of these notes actually mention Ulysses: all of them make reference to it as the "Fourth Imperfect Compilation".

+ Changelog #5

- Hide

Took a trip to London with Nat, to immerse myself in the atmosphere and architecture. Helped more than I thought it would.

The underground looked beautiful from outside, and falling asleep within it was even better. The rails catch the dreams like sieves and I could focus for once, just letting the sound of them relax me as I went to work on my notebook again. The numbers get easier to manage in your head if you can see them in that light and the patterns looked far clearer this time when I read over it again.

I know this isn't a final draft, not by half. The lens I've placed over the light focusses it in all the wrong ways and a broken lens is useless no matter how much dirt you clean off its surface: still, even when all the wrong curves get highlighted the shape's still beautiful. Tried overlaying that new outline over one of Nat's scarves and a couple of her shirts, saw her burning her mouth on coffee with her phone reading 26th of May.

I'll have to see whether the shape draws out what I think it does in the morning. I need to sleep some time. Can't see the outline I'm working for as clearly when I've been up 23 hours without a rest.

Iteration #
Date of Change
Summary of Version

6
2014-09-10
SCP-2495's current state.

+ Changelog #6

- Hide

There are good ideas. There are bad ideas. And then there are ideas on both ends of the spectrum so far away from normal we can't fucking conceive of them without the aid of psychedelics and they spread even better than anything else.

This is an idea I caught while I was sleepless and depressed and now that I've pulled it back to Earth, bound it and strapped it down to the table with words and sentences and paragraphs it's gonna wreck havoc on my head and those of the people around me. It's been stretching and bending and breaking my mind to make space for it inside my skull and now there are fives singing above me and sevens below me and I have to keep digging downwards.

There is truth — there is truth at the center of all this confusion of narrative that my words only serve to worsen, there is a pattern that contains all other patterns, there is a great pink light at the bottom of this ocean floor and I'm going to find it.

My professor's going to read this and she's going to peek through the slits in the curtains and the light'll sing to her right this time. But even this is just a chain for others with nothing on its end: we'll see how heavy these words can get when they have some weight behind them.

Six layers deep. One to go.

The well awaits.

No data on SCP-2495-A's computer has been found to originate from a point in time later than the 10th of September, 2014. The reason for this is unknown.

Footnotes

1. A field of computer science that focusses on the interaction between computers and natural human languages, particularly focussing on the task of having computers process language input meaningfully.

2. A method of prediction based on logical observations (e.g. predicting the next symbol in a given series) that could theoretically predict the most likely hypothesis to explain any event, provided this event obeys some computable probability distribution.