WARNING: THE FOLLOWING FILE IS CLASSIFIED BY UNANIMOUS O5 DECISION.

DUE TO THE NATURE OF THE CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES OF SCP-4900, DETAILED KNOWLEDGE OF ANYONE WITHOUT 4/4900 CLEARANCE ATTEMPTING TO VIEW BEYOND THIS POINT HAS BEEN MADE AVAILABLE TO O5 COMMAND.

Further access is restricted to level 4 personnel.

Username: GJade Password:••••••••••••••

Welcome, Gabriel Jade

Item #: SCP-4900

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-4900 is contained in a steel reinforced bunker located within O5 Compound Harappa. SCP-4900 rests on a steel podium1 surrounded by 20mm thick bulletproof glass anchored to the podium. SCP-4900's containment chamber is constructed with a forward podium and semicircular tiered seating in the style of an amphitheater, sized for twenty adults to sit comfortably. A rectangular bulletproof glass viewing cell is constructed adjacent to the podium, with entry to be accessible only by O5. SCP-4900's containment chamber is furnished with twenty sitting cushions.

SCP-4900's cell is monitored by 6 static cameras2, angled to view every portion of the interior of SCP-4900's containment cell. No audio recording equipment is allowed within SCP-4900's containment cell. The only records of the words spoken within SCP-4900's containment cell are to be taken with pen on paper by members of ATF Alpha-b. Such records are to be sealed in a time-locked leadlined briefcase, which is to be made available within SCP-4900's containment chamber at all times and replaced with an identical copy before being removed from SCP-4900's containment chamber. These recordings are to be delivered, sealed, to O5-1.

Only D-class personnel trained to read Indus Script, designated Applied Task Force Alpha-b "Herodotus' Chorus", along with O53 may enter SCP-4900's containment chamber. Members of ATF Alpha-b are housed in solitary living quarters within Compound Harappa. At all times, two members of ATF Alpha-b are to be focusing on the text on SCP-4900, with members cycling out as necessary. A single member of ATF Alpha-b is to verbally read the text present on the object while another transcribes the text. No fewer than 40 D-class personnel trained to read Indus Script are to be housed within Compound Harappa.

As SCP-4900 is suspected not to be the only such object in existence4, Operation Babel is to continue indefinitely to ensure that the knowledge of how to decipher Indus Script does not exist outside of Compound Harappa.

Description: SCP-4900 is an inscribed five-sided obelisk made of black diorite. A single face of SCP-4900 is inscribed with Indus Script5. Despite cursory visual inspection of SCP-4900 suggesting that no more than twenty lines of text are present on the object, no upper limit to the amount of data able to be read from SCP-4900 has been found.67

SCP-4900 is believed to contain the written record of the life of every human being born since ~3650 BCE. The text on SCP-4900 forms a narrative composed by an unknown entity. The tone of the narration is universally critical towards the subject.

SCP-4900 describes each human's life in one-day sections, with each day being contained on a single 'line'8 of text. The narrative of SCP-4900 can be fully read only in sequence from the beginning. All attempts to begin reading SCP-4900 at any point other than the beginning have failed. If a subject is aware of the currently manifested topic of the narrative, they can successfully continue reading SCP-4900 from that point.

The narrative shifts to a new human at the beginning of each new line following the description of the previous human's death9. Based on collected data, the narrative author of SCP-4900 is suspected to be omniscient.

Addendum 4900-1: Selected portions of text recovered from SCP-4900's chamber have been reviewed by O5-4, O5-7, and O5-11 and appended to this documentation.

Now this cur arose and fashioned his clay into wide bowls and fed them to the fires of the kiln before him. He opened his mouth and said to his wife, 'I will go down to see the Priests, there with my brothers to ask after our fortune.' and it was so. Then he stood in the great crowd and heard his neighbor cry out 'My daughter is sick with fever and will not rise. How shall I make her healthy again?'. Now he beheld the old priests low within the pit speak the deeds of great kings yet to be born from their mother's womb. In the evening he drank strong wine and returned to his home from the city-square.

Then the wretch lie in his bed and covered his face until the Sun was overhead; he called it his day of rest. He ate cakes of barley with his wife and was not ashamed to take her when he had finished. Now he went away to visit the Priests, his voice added to the crowd at the city-square. 'Tell me how I should make my wife with child?' he said when his brothers were not seen. He sighed bitterly and hoped none but the priests knew who had spoken. In the evening he drank watered down wine and returned to his home from the city-square.

Now when he took the bowls from the fires of his oven, he let them slip and cast them down to break on the stone of his floor. He fell to his knees and cried out, but was weak; he found no words to accuse himself. He upturned the ashes of his kiln on the smashed shards and mourned, beginning his fast. In the heat of the sun he went down to the Priests and called out in anguish 'O why, in your wisdom, did you not warn me? How simple would it have been for you!' and his voice was lost in the crowd. At length, he cut his wine with water again and drank it down as he returned to his home from the city-square.

Addendum 4900-2: Selected portions of text recovered from SCP-4900's chamber have been reviewed by O5-4, O5-7, and O5-11 and appended to this documentation.

And it was done, the assembly pronounced his sentence: exile. Pathetic, a beaten dog, he turned one more time to see Athens. No more loitering now, as he walked, he dwelled on his apology of his friend and his foolish service to Agesilaus of Sparta. He would, he decided, seek refuge with the tyrant. When Helios hid his face behind the horizon, he built a sputtering fire and ate figs with a trembling hand.

Clinging to the possessions he retained, the road rose to greet him in the morning and he made slow progress. The sad-eyed exile met many on the road that day and spoke to none; his heart desired to cry out in misery. Perhaps poison would have been preferable. When the darkness found him again, he built his fire and ate his food; ashes in his mouth.

The fool dwelled the day on his beloved democracy. He had had his liberties, and by using them he had lost them. His legs ached from the walk and the heat scorched his old head. 'And I, with shame in my heart, am forced to walk', he said his words to the empty air, thinking Hermes to spirit his punishment to the doors of Hades. In the darkness he wished he had never spoken.

The walls of Athens had been tall and comforting. The walls of Sparta were meaner and more cruel. The widows of soldiers owned everything, and he had nothing. Calm and good sense he tried to muster, 'So now I stand within the domain of the Tyrant. I'll not go back to my old estate, but make now my estate here.' But he held doubt deep in his heart. 'How much more grim are you, O Apollo, shining down on Helots?' He stayed that night within the home of his old friend, and told him all that had happened.

Addendum 4900-3: Selected portions of text recovered from SCP-4900's chamber have been reviewed by O5-1 and O5-13 and appended to this documentation.

He had his briefcase filled with his new invention, and entered his boss's office to show him the finished work. Slick with nervous sweat, he folded the stack of Super Paper into a suit of armor and donned it, and asked his boss to shoot him. When the bullets ricocheted off, he knew he was going to be a rich man. What an idiot. All he was getting paid was the last bullet in the gun after he took the armor off. What a dunce.

She screamed as the searing light touched her face for the first time. Hands pulled her from her mother's still body. It hurt when they hacked them apart. She was scared and confused and wanted the darkness back. What a baby.

Addendum 4900-4: Selected portions of text recovered from SCP-4900's chamber have been reviewed by O5-13 and appended to this documentation.

Today was the first day of her new assignment. She was assigned to Compound Harappa, a personal bodyguard for the O5. She wasn't good enough for the job and she knew it. [FURTHER DATA REDACTED]

She was bored and scared all day. She just guarded doorways and expected the worst to happen at any given moment. She hoped no one would find out when she went to vomit out her stress in the toilet. Because she is a coward. [FURTHER DATA REDACTED]

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS FOR O5 EYES ONLY

DUE TO THE NATURE OF THE CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES OF SCP-4900, ALL ATTEMPTED UNAUTHORIZED VIEWERS OF THIS MESSAGE HAVE BEEN APPREHENDED.

| BIO-METRIC AUTHORIZATION GRANTED…

| RETINAL SCAN AUTHORIZATION GRANTED…

| ANTIMEMETIC COUNTERAGENT DETECTED…

| PLEASE ENTER YOUR CREDENTIALS BELOW, O5-7.

Further access is restricted to O5 personnel.

Username:SecureContainProtect Password:••••••••••••••••••

Welcome, O5-7

O5-1: We are playing with fire. No further attempts to use information recovered from dates determined to be still in the future to affect present or future events are to be undertaken.

For clarity, the documents obtained from 4900 had been focused on a man believed to be Ruprecht Carter, of Marshall, Carter & Dark. Data recovered from the documents was utilized to carry out an assassination attempt on this man's life at the direction of O5-7. Notably, the assassination would have ended the man's life some 16 years prior to what was described in the documents.

The attempt was an unmitigated failure, and has not resulted in any events following that date occurring differently than how they were described in the documents. Moreover, O5-7 vanished right about the time the attempt was carried out. No witnesses saw him depart; he was in his office and the next time his assistant checked on him, he was nowhere to be found. He is currently missing, presumed irrecoverable.

I have included text recovered from 4900's documents. This was generated 21 months after his disappearance.

He thought he was such a clever dick. He knew Carter would be vulnerable in his car as he was driven from Chicago to St. Louis. He didn't know how bad his plan was. All of his men died and it was his fault. And then he fell out of his world and screamed and cried forever. He hoped no one would make the same mistake he had and meddle with things beyond their woefully limited comprehension.

Oh, and welcome aboard, O5-7.

Footnotes

1. Podium mount is anchored to the foundation of SCP-4900's containment chamber.

2. Closed circuit loop to be made available only to O5. No recordings are to be made of this feed.

3. O5 are only to enter bulletproof glass viewing chamber adjacent to reading podium.

4. Based on documents recovered from SCP-4900's containment chamber; Relevant documents sealed by order of O5-5

5. Symbols previously believed to have originated within the Indus Valley Civilization shortly before 3500 BCE

6. The method of this data compression is not known. Text is reported to visually remain static throughout readings regardless of the amount of information recovered from SCP-4900.

7. All attempts at machine translation of SCP-4900 to date have failed to detect any writing present on SCP-4900's surface.

8. As described by O5-4

9. Compiled from genealogical data available, O5-6 has produced a copy of the algorithm seemingly in use to select the next human based off of the degree of familial relation with the previous five humans, to be made available on a need-to-know basis.