Threat Level: Undetermined

SCP-5012-1 through -24 c. December 1923. Fiorenza Marcelli is positioned 9th from the left.

A section of SCP-5012.

Special Containment Procedures: [pending]

Legacy Containment Procedures: SCP-5012 is the legal property of Fitzwilliam Agriculture, a Foundation front company. Standard anti-trespassing measures have been implemented, as appropriate for low-risk projects.

SCP-5012 is to be maintained as standard for the Cerasus subgenus, including regular harvests of SCP-5012-A for the purposes of study and experimentation. Personnel are advised to ignore SCP-5012-#.

SCP-5012-B is effectively self-contained.

Description: SCP-5012 is an orchard of trees of the Cerasus subgenus1 located in the Italian province of South Tyrol, formerly the site of the Casadua Amphitheater. The trees that constitute SCP-5012 are in a continuous cycle of flowering and fruiting, irrespective of soil and meteorological conditions. SCP-5012 has not been observed to experience senescence.2

During their fruiting phases, the trees of SCP-5012 produce SCP-5012-A, a psychotropic variation of sweet cherry. SCP-5012-A is otherwise nutritionally and gustatorially identical to Prunus avium3 fruits that have been pitted and sweetened.

Ingestion of SCP-5012-A induces vivid hallucination in subjects, along with synaesthesia, disorientation, and mild euphoria. Following exposure, subjects experience a strong compulsion to document their experience through written medium. While the nature of such hallucinations varies between usage, most appear to be associated with SCP-5012-#.

SCP-5012-#, individually designated SCP-5012-1 through -24, are a collective of humanoids resembling the former Golgotha Memorial Orchestra4 sans lead cellist Fiorenza Marcelli. Each instance of SCP-5012-# is integrated into the trunks of one or more trees. Instances of SCP-5012-# do not age or decompose.

SCP-5012-B is an entity or collective confined to SCP-5012. No first-hand accounts of SCP-5012-B's appearance or behavior have been documented; however, SCP-5012-B appears to be a frequent consumer of SCP-5012-A, with enough personal knowledge of SCP-5012-# to dedicate its writings to specific instances.5

HISTORY

According to archival records, SCP-5012 has always been known to the Foundation, having been documented immediately following its inception on January 1st, 1924. The author of its documentation is unknown, but is presumed to have been Dr. Kain Crow, given his background in botany and ecology.

Similarly, containment measures were enacted immediately following the documentation of SCP-5012, leading to an unacceptable expenditure of resources. No incidents, breaches, or experiments were reported on-site until 26/05/1956, when all personnel present within SCP-5012 suffered an acute nauseous reaction, then fainted.

Following Incident-5012-A, RAISA auditors immediately flagged the SCP-5012 project as both inactive and over budget. SCP-5012's containment procedures were scaled back to their current iteration after an emergency HLCL Supervisor meeting.

Due to the presently unknown circumstances of the Golgotha Memorial Orchestra's disappearance, as well as the nature of artefacts recovered from the residences of its members, further investigation into the events of January 1st, 1924 has been authorized by Foundation Overwatch.

The ultimate fate of Fiorenza Marcelli is presently unknown.

ADDENDUM 5012-008

On 18/06/1959, Foundation Overwatch cleared SCP-5012 for experimentation following an extensive budgeting audit. Experimentation was overseen by Dr. Cecil Goss, assisted by Researchers Rebecca Ciavarella and Piero Bertoldi. The SCP-5012 project was subsequently allocated lab equipment and two D-Class personnel.

Unpicked instances of SCP-5012-A.

Initial experiments conformed to SCP-5012's initial documentation; however, due to the research personnels' unfamiliarity with members of the Golgotha Memorial Orchestra, identifying the foci of SCP-5012-A induced hallucinations proved difficult. Experimentation subsequently shifted from the study of SCP-5012-A to that of SCP-5012-#.

Skin and hair samples from SCP-5012-# confirmed that such instances were biologically human in composition. Furthermore, instances of SCP-5012-# possessed functional circulatory systems filled with a substance chemically similar to cherry jam. Approximately 450 ml of SCP-5012-# "blood" was extracted and stored in a vacuum flask, then refrigerated in the communal kitchen.6

On 04/07/1959, Researcher Bertoldi reported hearing a loud noise from the kitchen. Though reportedly empty upon arrival, Researcher Bertoldi noted that the flask of "blood" had been removed from the refrigerator and spilled across the floor. Although Dr. Goss's fingerprints were found on the flask, Dr. Goss himself was nowhere to be found.

Dr. Goss was officially declared missing on 05/07/1959.

To: Director Ciavarella

From: Dr. Bertoldi

Date: 19/11/1959

5012-B has been fairly active as of recent, as you probably heard, but if you haven't been briefed yet: we think something's changed.

Normally, 5012-A produces some form of "art", be that poetry, symphonies, etc. We're still getting some of that, sure, but recently we've been seeing an uptick in shorter messages, one or two sentences at most; moreover, most simply denote either a specific 5012-# or an instrument they played. Sure, it could be experimentation, but most of the other produce had some kind of narrative theme to tie them down.

Realistically, this shouldn't affect the containment project, but keep an eye on buyers. The Cardiff Accord funds a quarter of 77's projects.

INCIDENT 5012-E

On 01/10/1961, Officer Craxi reported a malnourished humanoid wandering through SCP-5012 in a state of apparent delirium. Capture was authorized, under the assumption that Officer Craxi had spotted SCP-5012-B; the entity wept upon detainment, but did not resist.

A preliminary physical of SCP-5012-B revealed the following:

SCP-5012-B is a biologically human male of European descent, most probably in its late 40s. No inherently anomalous properties have been recorded.

SCP-5012-B's third and fifth toes on its left foot, as well as the entirety of its right leg below the shin, had been mangled in a past incident, replaced with finely-crafted wooden prostheses.

SCP-5012-B's vocal cords are heavily damaged, rendering it essentially mute.

SCP-5012-B's fingerprints are identical to those of Dr. Cecil Goss.

Upon capture, SCP-5012-B wore a tattered set of black scrubs7, as well as a backpack containing a 37-page notebook, several broken pencils, and a hastily-drawn diagram of unclear purpose. SCP-5012-B further produced an ID Card for Dr. Goss upon interrogation; as Dr. Goss's card was set to expire on 01/01/1960, SCP-5012-B's identity has not been presently verified.

During interrogation, SCP-5012-B requested a typewriter with which to document its experiences.

DOCUMENT 5012-JE

ACCESS GRANTED

I'm sorry. Give me a moment to think.

My first memory is of being crushed into a point of nothing, plunged into a deep silence. My body felt no pain; whatever vestige of myself was left to experience implosion was not strictly physical. But, I was still me. In some form or fashion, I existed; just not physically.

It's hard to explain if you haven't felt it yourself. Give me a minute.

Think of how a well-decorated but windowless room feels, and imagine that feeling is tangible. Now, imagine that the lights have been switched off. The room still exists, is just as fancily decorated as before, and you saw the room, so you had that feeling. But you can't see it anymore. The capacity for that feeling to exist, in its purest state, that's gone.

For less than a moment, I both existed and didn't in complete stillness. Then I started, and forgive me for anthropomorphizing my half-self, I started moving. Something was sucking me through a rough tube, something skinny enough to scrape and long enough for me to feel it on some level, and long enough for me to, well, "hear" something.

I'm going to try to put this into as close to accurate as I can get in Italian: there was a singular sense of "symphony". Not a "sum of its parts", but the "singular" "symphony" as a unit. It didn't start or stop; it felt like it was always there, like I'd walked into an empty room in the middle of a record player's performance. There was no direction other than forward, not even backward, so I have to assume it wasn't strictly sound. But it…

… these are supposed to be clinical, but there's no way around it: it was beautiful. If I could have stayed there forever, I would have.

And then, all of a sudden, I exist again. Except… give me another moment.

Before I could process anything, I felt myself internally collapse. Doing anything felt wrong, "painful". I didn't fit, none of me or anything about me did, like I was a round peg attempting to hammer myself into a square hole, twisted and mangled into a foreign shape I wasn't built to occupy. Simultaneously, I was constricted and exposed, as if… sorry, as if the "expression" of "me" was a crushed and punctured can I was trying to fit.

I wasn't doing anything, literally I think. "Being", thinking, existing, some invisible force was scraping and pushing against any attempt to be.

I opened my mouth to scream, and only then did I find myself harmonizing with… I think it was a fiddle.

Emanating from the whole of what, at that moment, "was", was a fiddle. Not necessarily the sound of it, no, but… it's hard to explain with words. The fiddle was there, everywhere, suffused into everything, as natural as gravity but to me as conspicuous as a blister. Whatever it was, it was loud, like a wooden dresser dragged across a wooden floor. I could cover my ears, scream, run anywhere I wanted, and I'd still know the fiddle.

I'm unsure of how long I "laid" there, helpless. For a time, I'm sure death ceased to be a horrifying prospect, but I couldn't even die "correctly", as if the cessation of my life was contingent upon some unwritten rule. Finally, after what had to have been an eternity unable to do anything, I surrendered myself to the fiddle.

And then, I felt the pain lighten, and I could "be" again.

Please give me another moment.

There aren't many precise words to describe where I found myself. The closest analogue would be a flat, featureless nothing, broken only by a thin veneer of… something. Something deliberate, as if trying to convey a message that, at least to me, highlighted what wasn't. I knew I was back in the containment area, but it was little more than a setpiece.

Around me were twisted, imprecise, but unmistakably human "props", as it were. All were mangled, by exposure or animal or otherwise, but none of them were dead. No matter the extent of their wounds, none of them were dead. I'm not entirely sure if they could die; none seemed too concerned with their grievous wounds to do more than lie comfortably still.

My first instinct was to call out to one of them, but to even speak was… well, "performative". I couldn't speak without singing, or walk without dancing, or write without falling back to poetry or symphonics. All the universe was in tune with the fiddle screaming from the back of my mind, like a stage play. To do anything else was to break the thin veneer of performance, to knock against a curtain or fall into the darkness at the edge of the stage.

And aside from that empty performance of immortality(?), there was little else of note. I danced around for what must have been days, trying desperately to make sense of my surroundings. Where there wasn't misery or pain or mold-caked animals, there was a profound sense of "absence". Something was missing, something the fiddle never needed account for, like a field you know exists but aren't looking at. As if it wasn't important to what was.

But I couldn't stop. Between a deeper understanding of my situation and that of the dying men around me, the immortality of rot was hardly the ideal choice. And so I probed further, throughout the site, trying to find some semblance of explanation.

And, then I ate a cherry.

All of a sudden, I felt an immense weight dissolve from my being. The fiddle was gone; in its place was a familiar symphony. I was sitting in a booth, inside of a diner painted a brilliant array of new and exciting colors, as a quartet of women sang a song of… my mind struggles, to put it into words. But I know it was beautiful; that it was real.

And then I woke up.

The pain of readjusting to the fiddle was amplified by a sudden shock of dullness. The world around me didn't just feel dismal; it felt incomplete. The absence of some "something" left my being exposed; worst of all, the memory of what I lost was fading.

The second pen touched paper, it was lost.

I tried again, to recapture the bliss; I ate the cherries, cooked them, boiled the bark and leaves and flowers into tea, anything to recapture that reality, and every time I was pulled back into the half-dead nothing. So I broke the ultimate taboo: I ate flesh from one of the musicians.

For a brief, beautiful second, I'm back in the symphonic void.

When my existence reasserts itself, I'm back in a chamber of noise, trapped again by alien constraints. From everywhere thunders a trumpet, a sustained scream at the dull wrongness with which I tried to express myself.

It never gets easier, trying to readjust. Quicker, perhaps, but it's not something one can prepare for. The rules of each… musician, shall we say, they're as unique as they are ubiquitous. To even prepare for the next is to violate the rules set by the present.

I can't even remember what the next one was. The worlds, I mean. There was a similar sense of incompleteness, holes where something should have been. Most of them, the Foundation exists, but there's always something wrong with them. The buildings, the people, everything is equally as twisted as its surroundings. Like grotesque caricatures, playing whatever part the instruments decree.

You asked me about the notebook, everything in there. That's a map. Dozens of them. Even they weren't enough; until you memorize the names and faces of each one, where you'll end up is pure guesswork. I thought if I traced where I was with where I ended up, and how, perhaps I could find my way home.

… what I'm going to say next may be infohazardous.

Every world I went to was twisted to the tune of a specific instrument. Some were minor: I distinctly recall a universe where the Foundation gave guided tours through the grove. Less so others: another world had me stuck, immobile, unable to taste, smell, or feel anything but hot metal and burning plastic, in a wall of numbers as a burning shock coursed repeatedly through my being. Throughout, however, I kept faith that, eventually, I'd get home.

That ideal was the only thing that kept me dancing. Home was complete, it was colorful and vibrant and "whole". Existence wasn't forced to express anything aside from the completeness of being. And it was silent. And I suppose that's why, even as Fiorenza appeared everywhere but here, I disregarded this world.

Something must have changed, because I never noticed the cello before then.

Updated documentation pending investigation by the Metaphysics Department.

Footnotes

1. Commonly known as cherry trees.

2. The process by which organisms age and die.

3. Wild cherry.

4. A troupe of performers that played across Southern Europe from 1896 until their disappearance in early 1924.

5. Due to an archival issue, no such writings exist within Foundation record prior to 30/05/1956.

6. The SCP-5012 project lacked a dedicated freezer space.

7. Appropriate for a humanoid anomaly as designated by the Foundation.