!LEVEL 5: TOP SECRET!

Unapproved access to or dissemination of these files is punishable by forced amnesticization and dismissal from the SCP Foundation.

GOTTFRIED Segment [C-2h3A] tracing, produced by SCP-6699.

ITEM NUMBER:

SCP-6699.

OBJECT CLASS:

Thaumiel.

SPECIAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES:

SCP-6699 is to remain within the GOTTFRIED applied metaphysics laboratory at Site-184. Access to SCP-6699 is restricted to individuals possessing level-5 clearance. Assigned personnel are to continuously monitor the vitals of SCP-6699-1_B and SCP-6699-1_C to ensure the continued efficacy of all GOTTFRIED protocols. Should the health of SCP-6699-1_B deteriorate to the point of potentially interrupting any GOTTFRIED protocols, a suitable replacement must be acquired.

SCP-6699 must remain active at all times. In the event that all three of SCP-6699's redundant powering systems should fail, GOTTFRIED protocol: NETFISHER is to be activated until such a time that a non-anomalous power source can be employed.

DESCRIPTION:

SCP-6699 is a device initially developed by Dr. Vivian Elmwoods for the conceptual mapping of communal human consciousness through the construction of navigable, three-dimensional, virtual, rhizomatic1 constructs.

It's certainly worth noting that I didn't develop the rhizomatic framework: the interconnected web of relations. Credit for that goes to Deleuze & Guattari.2 And it was Umberto Eco’s Semiotics that discussed its labyrinthine principles.3

My meager contribution came from our existing research into human consciousness on a collective level. Every time we tried to map our shared psychosphere, we ran into the same problem: it was impossible to meaningfully synthesize and apply what we were looking at. We were trying to flatten it out, break it down into easily digestible chunks of data, trace lines of connection from point A to point B. But it was all too complex, too attached, too human for that.

So that framework, the Rhizome, was the gamechanger. That was our way into and through it; our map wasn’t just a map anymore.

We're all connected, you see?

SCP-6699 employs two or more human subjects for its operations and implementation of various GOTTFRIED protocols. These subjects are assigned one of two semiotic 'roles:' A singular 'Cartographer' and one or more 'Navigator(s),'4

The conscious mind of the 'Cartographer' is utilized by SCP-6699 to map the human psychosphere: a metaphysical manifestation of collective human consciousness, in a representative model.

Due to the rhizomatic properties of this model: its existence as a non-hierarchical amalgamation of connecting 'lines' of relation and independence from a central unity, the map SCP-6699 creates is metaphysically indistinct from the external human psychosphere. This allows the consciousness of additional human subjects, henceforth the 'Navigator(s)' to be inserted into the virtual construct and undertake instantaneous, omnidirectional travel through the web of conceptual relations. This 'movement' is - in all meaningful ways - functionally analogous to traversal along non-constructed, existing lines of connection in the communal human psychosphere.

While attempting to address the inherent disorientation caused by navigation through this construct, the suitability of SCP-6699 for a series of protocols, collectively designated GOTTFRIED, was discovered. The continued perpetuation of these protocols is essential to the Foundation's current operations and the integrity of the Veil.5

DEVELOPMENT:

Dr. Vivian Elmwoods, a post-doctoral researcher in Site-184's Applied Metaphysics department, placed an internal grant request for the development of a device to map the collective human consciousness in 1986. The first working prototype was tested in October 1990. Subsequent significant developments in the project are outlined below:

SCP-6699's Navigator docking station in development.

Arrangement
Date
Outcome of SCP-6699 Activation

Individual subject (Cartographer), comatose
04/10/1990
SCP-6699 was unable to construct a successful mapping.

Individual subject (Cartographer), conscious
16/10/1990
SCP-6699 was able to construct a successful mapping. GOTTFRIED protocol CAMERA OBSCURA activated.

8 tests omitted for brevity

Two subjects (Cartographer & Navigator), conscious
01/12/1990
SCP-6699 was able to construct a successful mapping. Navigator entered a comatose state and remained unresponsive after deactivation and removal from SCP-6699.

Two subjects (Cartographer & Navigator), conscious. GOTTFRIED protocol LIGHTHOUSE implemented.
15/12/1990
SCP-6699 was able to construct a successful mapping. Navigator was able to maneuver through the construct and regained consciousness after their removal from SCP-6699.

Two subjects (Cartographer & Navigator), conscious. GOTTFRIED protocol MORNING BELL implemented.
20/01/1991
SCP-6699 was able to construct a successful mapping. Navigator was able to maneuver through the construct. Protocol MORNING BELL implementation unsuccessful.

Following the failure of protocol MORNING BELLS' implementation, Dr. Vivian Elmwoods proposed that - due to the inherent, preexisting connection between human individuals and the psychosphere, human subjects would be incapable of effecting noticeable alterations to the constructed map-construct, and thus the psychosphere itself. Foundation efforts were diverted towards overcoming these limitations.

After a period of two months, a potential vector to enable such alterations: henceforth SCP-6699-1_C, was acquired, and further testing approved.

GOTTFRIED ACTIVATION - 25/04/1991

The body was terrifying to look at.

I grew up in Nova Scotia, with rocky beaches and rolling hills. When I was 10 my mother took me across the country, up into the Canadian Rockies. They scared me, those towering peaks. I saw a storm break against them while we were camping; the thunder and lightning of God was made insignificant against their bulk, and we were so small, so fragile in our tent. The walls were shaking in the gale. It felt like we'd be blown off the face of the earth. But those towering clifts were so indifferent, unfazed. They were sublime - just looking at them, I was filled with fear at their majesty.

She was like that. We picked her up from the GRU-P as the Soviet Union peeled apart from the inside. A gift from defectors willing to give up long-held secrets for a US passport. They had found her in a frozen Siberian lake - had hauled the frozen, cocooned corpse out of its depths.

I made them let me watch when they thawed her. I got to see the ice melt away and the dark brown bark peeled off, strip after strip. My brain didn't register what I was looking at, not fully. The body was wrong: too long and angular, sharp almost. Trying to stare at it felt like someone was pushing a thorn into my temple, too thin and sharp to really notice: just a pressure that releases as it slides in, and a warm trickle of blood along your cheekbone. A deep, animal part of me was clawing at my brain, telling me to run, to hide. But it couldn't take hold; self-preservation wasn't the only thing on my mind. I kept thinking of that mountainous view: an unmoving, uncaring presence that demanded a witness, full of danger and beauty.

They set to work getting her heart beating again.

Subjects:

SCP-6699-1_A: Dr. Phil Mackrel - Cartographer.

SCP-6699-1_B: Dr. Vivian Elmwoods - Navigator.

SCP-6699-1_C: SCP-6699-1_C was acquired in a comatose state and is continuously administered a Foundation-developed barbiturate drug for ongoing suppression of the subject's nervous system.

Testing:

Prior to testing, a series of blood samples had been taken from SCP-6699-1_C. Extensive screening confirmed the absence of any bloodborne pathogens. While the sample displayed abnormalities that prevent it from conforming to known, human blood types, the absence of antigens on examined red blood cells suggests its suitability as a universal donor.6

Following this research, in preparation for testing SCP-6699-1_B was administrated immunological suppressants and the circulatory systems of SCP-6699-1_B and SCP-6699-1_C were intravenously linked. Following successful integration, the free, continuous transfusion of blood between SCP-6699-1_B and SCP-6699-1_C was confirmed. Both subjects are henceforth referred to as the Navigator for the purpose of this test.

As per previous tests, the Cartographer was directly linked to SCP-6699 for mapping of the human psychosphere.

GOTTFRIED Protocols CAMERA OBSCURA was successfully activated to produce segment-tracings of the construct prior to, during, and following Protocol MORNING BELL.

Event Description: Individuals reported hearing a low-pitch "ringing" noise for a period of approximately a minute.

Date of Occurrence: 25/04/1991.

Location: Undetermined, most commonly reported along the Eastern Coast of Canada and the United States.

Follow-up Actions Taken: Coverstory disseminated about electrical surge affecting phone lines, resulting in brief low ringing noise.

NOTE: 12N4A has been removed from the LoEE7 due to a potential data security risk.

Activation of GOTTFRIED Protocol MORNING BELL by the Navigator was attempted. The protocol performed as intended. Its distribution through the construct was effectively recorded via a series of tracings and its effects upon the human psychosphere noted and documented. The circulatory systems of SCP-6699-1_B and SCP-6699-1_C's were uncoupled following the deactivation of SCP-6699.

SCP-6699-1_B underwent post-testing medical checks and appeared to have suffered no significant health effects from the procedure. However, the subject displayed unsteadiness while walking and recorded significant headaches, dizziness, and difficulty focusing visually on both near and far objects. SCP-6699-1_B reported these effects dissipated over the course of 32 hours.

GOTTFRIED Protocol CAMERA OBSCURA: Gg_tracing [6:087] - 25/04/91

Recent tests have confirmed that SCP-6699 can be used not only to map and navigate human consciousness but to implement semiotic, metaphysical triggers and effects. The implications of this development are extensive but hampered by the need for SCP-6699's continuous operation to maintain implemented protocols and the reliance on SCP-6699-1_C as a medium to enable such alterations.

DEBRIEFING: GOTTFRIED ACTIVATION - 25/04/1991

INTERVIEW LOG:

Date: 26/04/1991.

Interviewer: Alex von Pattensby, Site-184 Archival Interlocutor

Interviewee: Dr. Vivian Elmwoods, Research and Development Lead on SCP-6699.

Dr. Alex von Pattensby: You’ve used SCP-6699 in various tests before, Dr. Elmwoods – as both a Cartographer and Navigator. After the most recent test, you seemed - I hope it's fair of me to say - unsteady, and told your colleagues that the experience was different, correct? Would you mind explaining to me why that was?

Dr. Vivian Elmwoods: Have you ever been in a maze, Doctor?

Alex von Pattensby: Excuse me?

Dr. Vivian Elmwoods, 1991.

Dr. Vivian Elmwoods: A maze. Like a corn maze – or a hedge maze, doesn’t really matter, I suppose. They’re different from what people might think when they hear ‘maze:’ a drawing on paper, a series of pathways with dead ends. A maze like that, a 2D one, you can understand it just by looking at it. There’s no inherent risk. Getting out's as easy as looking away. But a real maze, one you’re embedded in, is different. It's disorienting: your perspective is broken, fragmented, and there's always some level of uncertainty about how to get through it. But you still know that there's an order to it: something you could understand if you had the distance, the right perspective. If you were pulled out and above it, you could just look - it would be the same as that paper maze.

Going into the construct SCP-6699 makes is nothing like that, like any of that. It’s a maze – a labyrinth – there's no doubt about that. But it's everywhere, in all directions. There's nothing outside of it. It's like looking at the night sky if instead of stars you just saw the constellations: every single time a human had drawn an imaginary line between the dots, all overlaid on top of one another. And the sky surrounds you; you could look down through the earth you stand on and see those lines wrapping around to the other side. Everywhere you look, everywhere you think, is a pathway. It's all pathways and you can move along any of them. Go anywhere, from anywhere, in an instant.

How are you supposed to move through that? You can't get outside of it, because there is nothing that is outside of it. You can't reduce it, because any attempt to flatten it, to make it two-dimensional would make it something else, something different. It's a rhizome, through and through. Being in there is the most baffling, disorienting experience.

Excerpt from a notebook belonging to Dr. Vivian Elmwoods, 1990.

Maze = Tree Logic

Branching pathways that relate

Filler: to the central unity.

Tracing of a Rhizome

No central unity.

Only lines of relation.

Tracing is 2D, flattened.

CAMERA OBSCURA makes Tracings.

Dr. Alex von Pattensby: When I conducted previous interviews, it was explained that the LIGHTHOUSE protocol was an attempt to offer a sense of orientation. Is that correct?

Dr. Vivian Elmwoods: Somewhat. LIGHTHOUSE is just a sign of where you came in from. Our Ariadne's thread. You can follow it back, but it doesn't make the navigation through the construct any clearer or easier. It doesn't help you understand.

Dr. Alex von Pattensby: So what changed in the most recent test?

Dr. Vivian Elmwoods: When I went in after they hooked me up to SCP-6699-1_C, it was - well something was different. I was just as embedded, that hadn’t changed. And it was still just as disorienting.

But, well I’m not sure how to put it. I wasn't outside of it, that would still be just as impossible, but I wasn't just it. There was some part of me, something othered from the construct. I was in it, but some part of myself wasn't? I don't know for sure. I could pull on it, those connections, I could set the lines vibrating.

Dr. Alex von Pattensby: Let's talk about the test itself. You were to implement protocol MORNING BELL, correct?

Dr. Vivian Elmwoods: Did you hear it?

At this point a message was relayed that technicians assigned to SCP-6699 had requested the assistance of Dr. Vivian Elmwoods while recalibrating the device. Dr. Elmwoods was excused from the formal interview and asked to submit a written report concerning the recent test.

PROTOCOL IMPLEMENTATION: DRAWN VEIL

INITIAL TESTING: 23/05/1991

Subjects:

The world is a mysterious place, and new technologies turn the impossible into the mundane every day. So, how do you, a Mobile Task Force Agent in the field, determine when an item is anomalous?

One reliable and widely applicable test is the "9/10ths Check." If you see what appears to be an unusual item, in either its form or function, stop and:

Think about the last 9 times you may have seen, used, or otherwise experienced similar objects;

Identify what those items have in common, and differences that may distinguish them;

Consider the object, our 10th one. Does it function in the same manner, for the same purposes, or appear similar to any of those other 9 items?

If Yes: The object may be unusual, but not anomalous. Be cautious and monitor it for any additional properties (See 4:12, "Common Anomalous Effects" for more information).

If No: There is a strong chance that the item is anomalous. Bag and tag it, and let the white-coats figure it out.

- Exerpt from Section 3: Subsection 6, Mobile Task Force Handbook, 4th edition, 1947.

SCP-6699-1_A: Dr. Phil Mackrel - Cartographer.

SCP-6699-1_B: Cameron Auks - Navigator.

SCP-6699-1_C: SCP-6699-1_C.

For the implementation of GOTTFRIED Protocol DRAWN VEIL, Cameron Auks was selected as the primary candidate for the role of Navigator. Cameron Auks had served the Foundation as a member and occasional squad-leader of Mobile Task Forces Nu-7 ("Hammer Down"), Gamma-6 ("Deep Feeders"), and Iota-10 ("Damn Feds") prior to his honourable discharge from the Foundation for medical reasons. Following his recovery, Cameron Auks continued to serve the Foundation in an advisory role for MTF deployments in urban and naval environments.

Testing:

Cameron Auks, henceforth SCP-6699-1_B, is intravenously linked to SCP-6699-1_C in the same manner as the previous test prior to integration into SCP-6699.

Approximately 5 minutes after the confirmation of free circulatory blood flow between SCP-6699-1_B and SCP-6699-1_C, SCP-6699-1_B's immune system began aggressively targeting red blood cells throughout the subject's body.8 SCP-6699-1_B and SCP-6699-1_C were immediately uncoupled. The former subject's body continued to reject the integrated blood.

Within a period of an additional five minutes, one of the subject's kidneys failed as the attacked blood cells degraded into an unknown, presumably toxic substance. At this point, SCP-6699-1_B lost consciousness. Medical personnel began an emergency transfusion with onhand O- human blood, but were unable to stabilize the subject before failure of the second kidney. SCP-6699-1_B was moved to an on-site operating room for a double, radical nephrectomy,9 and placed on dialysis. After completion of a 6-hour surgery, SCP-6699-1_B awoke 35 hours later. Due to the continued presence of potentially anomalous toxins within various organs and tissues of SCP-6699-1_B, a dual kidney transplant has been deemed insufficient, and SCP-6699-1_B is to remain on dialysis treatment.

REVISED TESTING: 25/05/1991

Subjects:

SCP-6699-1_A: Dr. Phil Mackrel - Cartographer.

SCP-6699-1_B: Dr. Vivian Elmswood - Navigator.

SCP-6699-1_C: SCP-6699-1_C.

While testing was initially suspended following the previous events, Dr. Vivian Elmswood requests approval to act in the role of Navigator in a repeated attempt to implement Protocol DRAWN VEIL. This request was subsequently approved.

I knew Cameron, not very well, but I had talked with him a few times on-site.

I remember running into him just days after his diagnosis: early, stage-3A lung cancer. I offered my sympathies; he smiled and told me there was no need. He knew he'd beat it. Outwardly, he was like that, certain and confident. He was like a redwood: towering above you gently and calmly, hundreds of feet of straight, unwavering resilience. If he fell it would be momentous, but that sort of thing just doesn't happen.

So, it was no surprise that he was right, and it was no surprise that when they approached him with DRAWN VEIL that he would accept. He was to grow steadily and surely from what we had established. But it didn't work, and it was up to me, the lateral bud, to sprout.

I'm not a redwood. I don't know what tree I am. Maybe I'm not a tree at all - just the roots. I'm entangled. I have been my whole time here, my whole life. I promised them I could do it, but some part of me doubted that; I convinced myself I should, and maybe that's what should have actually given me pause.

My research was in Applied Metaphysics, for Christ's sake: an oxymoron in the world we were to create.

Testing:

SCP-6699-1_B was administered additional immunosuppressants before circulatory coupling with SCP-6699-1_C. Furthermore, an on-site surgical team was prepped for quick response, and a dialysis machine moved into the testing site. After a period of 30 minutes, SCP-6699-1_B showed no adverse health effects from being intravenously linked to SCP-6699-1_C. Integration into SCP-6699 was approved.

GOTTFRIED Protocol CAMERA OBSCURA was activated, and successfully segment-tracing of the map-construct confirmed. The Navigator was subsequently successfully integrated into the construct.

After a period of approximately two hours, data from Protocol CAMERA OBSCURA confirmed that Protocol DRAWN VEIL had been successfully implemented. Information gathered from Foundation operatives globally confirmed its efficacy and a series of public surveys were administered via Foundation front companies to ascertain the extent of the Protocol's effectiveness.

Due to the need for the Navigator to actively maintain Protocol DRAWN VEIL, SCP-6699-1_A, SCP-6699-1_B, and SCP-6699-1_C are to remain integrated into SCP-6699 for the foreseeable future, or until a replacement subject is needed.

To maintain secrecy concerning SCP-6699, Dr. Phil Mackrel and Dr. Vivan Elmswood were declared deceased due to an automotive accident while transporting material from Site-184. A burial ceremony was held, and both awarded medals of honour for their service to the Foundation.

GOTTFRIED is currently:

ACTIVE

GOTTFRIED PROTOCOLS

ACTIVE PROTOCOLS:

CAMERA OBSCURA: Conversion of sub-segmentations of the rhizomatic model produced by SCP-6699 into two-dimensional tracings to further develop our understanding of, and assist in navigation through, the human psychosphere.

LIGHTHOUSE: Introduction of a conceptual 'beacon' to offer a reference point for navigation through the constructed map.

MORNING BELL: Introduction of an auditory signifier into the psychosphere to determine the efficacy of direct manipulation methods.

NETFISHER: Conversion of latent energy within the human psychosphere into electrical energy for the operation of SCP-6699.

DRAWN VEIL: Introduction of a uniform notion of 'normality' into the collective human consciousness to establish a conceptual distinction between anomalous and non-anomalous phenomena.

That's what they had really been after.

They were throwing money at whoever could help them solve a problem back then. For the latter half of the 20th century, the Foundation had been gradually expanding in size and influence. We were a North American initiative that started making headway through the blasted ruins of post-war Europe. Sifting through the rubble and grabbing at pieces of forgotten folklore, traditional knowledge, ritualistic beliefs, and monsters that had been forced or lured from their dens - whether due to the fighting or the corpses. What had been superstition was labeled, studied, and hidden from the world.

But the world is big, bigger than America, bigger than Europe. I touched the minds of billions; no one agreed on anything. What's 'abnormal' in one epistemology is natural in another: gods, spirits, blood-pacts, and old lore. Marie Curie looked at death-spewing rocks and we forced them into our dark science, our incessant rationalization of phenomena that for millennium had been inexplicable. There were things truer than math and ways of seeing the world that made more sense than ours.

And the Foundation starts butting heads against it, them. And it pushes back. 'I am' it begs, shouts, cries, screams; 'you shouldn't be,' we whisper as we lock the cage.

So site after site begins to pop up. We grow, rapidly - like cancer, further and further afield. Sneaking past borders in the night, blooming in the dark like concrete tumors. The USSR collapses, and we pour in, through the sledge-hammered gaps in the Berlin wall. Across Asia, Africa, endlessly grasping because there's always more. The anomalous is ever-present. Our systems of taxonomy and classification keep breaking down as we look people in the eyes and amnesticize them; their gods and idols, parts of cultures centuries older than our institution, already being moved to deeper, darker rooms.

Then we had a chance - I gave us the chance - and we took it. We drew our line in the sand, in the consciousness of humans everywhere. They guided my hand and we pulled a veil over the world. We declared "this can be, that can not." And the damndest, scariest thing, is that it worked. Not entirely, but well enough. You can't even recall what it was like before, not really. We made that choice for you. We took it from you: the world before, when legends weren't myths, when the ghosts of who came before walked alongside us, when a floating rock might just be.

And we did it with the fucking blood of a Daeva. Our 'scientific' ritual. Our grand illusion. It's insidious the way it works: the more you're exposed to it, the more it's reinforced. The lines tighten like a net, wrapping around you. The more people show you what life is, the more you lose of what it was. We forced the idea of normality into the human conscious and we, so many of us, embraced it.

I believed in it, with every fiber of my being. I convinced myself we were right.

Now, I'm not so sure. I can feel something, between the lines, in the darkness. It grows, yearning for what was lost, what we took away. The harder I push, the more I'm swallowed by it.

Our line is fake, our science biased and deluded. That line we drew, it's sand on a beach and we're standing before the rising tide.

I'm going to keep standing here; it's what I do, what I have done. But now you know. Hopefully, you all know.

Footnotes

1. A framework for data representation consisting of a non-hierarchical 'web' with multiple entry and exit points. The rhizome is introduced by Deleuze and Guattari (1980) in A Thousand Plateaus, in opposition to a tree-like framework, which relates content to a central unity.

2. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1980), A Thousand Plateaus.

3. Eco, U. (1984), Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language.

4. GOTTFRIED Protocol CAMERA OBSCURA is unique, insofar as it can function without a Navigator.

5. See DEVELOPMENT and GOTTFRIED PROTOCOLS for additional information.

6. Testing of blood plasma samples from SCP-6699-1_C has thus far been inconclusive.

7. Log of Extranormal Events.

8. Immunological suppressants had been issued to SCP-6699-1_B prior to testing but failed to prevent or mitigate this response.

9. Surgical removal of the kidney; 'radical' designated the entire removal of the organ, rather than the partial removal of diseased or injured portions.