Alfred Jarry

Exploits and Opinions

of

Doctor Faustroll

Pataphysician

Neo-Scientific Novel

followed by

Speculations

Charpentier Library

Eugène Fasquelle, Editor

11th, Grenelle Street, 11th

1911

Original cover of SCP-410-FR, printed copy from the Site-Kybian archives.

Item#: SCP-410-FR

Threat Level: White ○

Object Class: Neutralized

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-410-FR, in its original version, is currently kept in the Enfer of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, on the Tolbiac site, under the responsibility of the Estate noir. A copy of SCP-410-FR, as well as the entire bibliography of PoI-410, is however available to Level 3 and above personnel in the context of research for purposes of containment; please contact the Site-Kybian Documentary Archives for more information.

Any outside mention of the places and people mentioned in the first part of SCP-410-FR in the Foundation's documentation should be reported to Prof. Camille Fournier. For this purpose, a Foundation webcrawler (I/O-MANDELA) is in charge of monitoring the database, especially the documentation concerning the research of the Department of Extra-Universal Affairs (Multi-U). Similarly, a copy of SCP-410-FR is available exclusively to its members for comparison with extra-dimensional findings.

The events potentially described in the second part of SCP-410-FR are to be identified and catalogued by the Department of History. Their cover-up is unnecessary, since the French government has taken care to cover up the remaining traces of the various cases during the application of the Veil Protocol. SCP-410-FR allows, if necessary, to discredit them by making them appear to be fictions written by Person of Interest #410.

Because of its current state and non-anomalous nature, PoI-410 does not require containment. He is currently buried in the Parisian cemetery of Bagneux.

Description: SCP-410-FR is the collective designation of a collection of texts published posthumously in 1911 under the title Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, neo-scientific novel, followed by Speculations. SCP-410-FR is the work of PoI-410, a French writer and poet of the 19th century named Alfred Henri Jarry.

The first part of SCP-410-FR is a novelistic work, notably foundational to the 'Pataphysics [sic] movement1, absurdist philosophical current2 mixing poetry, wordplay and pseudo-scientific demonstrations.

The particularity of at least ██ of the 70 texts in the second part of SCP-410-FR, Speculations, is that they seem to refer to various anomalous events that occurred between 1886 and 1907. PoI-410 is therefore suspected of having been involved in a large amount of anomalous activity during its lifetime.

SCP-410-FR was considered non-anomalous until ██/██/1987, when the Foundation's Department of History initiated the assimilation of a significant portion of the French Gendastrerie archives. During the operation, it became apparent that a relatively large number of anomalous events had taken place over a period of about twenty years in northwestern France.

Initially thought to be solely the result of a breakdown in local normality3, it became apparent that these events were remarkably similar to those found in SCP-410-FR. Subsequent analysis led to the theory that PoI-410 was partly responsible for these phenomena and had mastered anomalous writing methods.

However, on ██/██/2002, extensive research led by Prof. Fournier following the discovery of a document written by PoI-410 determined that Alfred Jarry had in fact participated in the destruction of the anomalies mentioned in SCP-410-FR, by the written transcription of them. The anomalous nature of SCP-410-FR thus lies in the fact that the anomalous phenomena to which the work may have referred have lost their anomalous aspects.

Despite these discoveries, the abilities of SCP-410-FR are still poorly understood today, and it is likely that only the author had the ability to make the anomalies he described disappear. Analysis of the writing style of SCP-410-FR and more generally that of PoI-410 to improve the containment of certain anomalous phenomena is under evaluation. In addition, research is still in progress concerning potential anomalies described in PoI-410's other works.

Depiction of the Gidouille on the cover of the issue zero of Subsidia Pataphysica.

The first part of SCP-410-FR, Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, neo-scientific novel, deals in particular in its Books III and VI with various places identified as [DATA EXPUNGED], of which, according to the Multi-U, no trace remains today. It is likely that, like the anomalous events described in Speculations, these have ceased to exist. In the same way, it is suspected that the entities initially present in these places were at the origin of the breakdown of normality mentioned before, and thus of the anomalous phenomenon which PoI-410 partially witnessed.

According to the analysis of the parapsychologist Elias Lockwood, the symbol of the Gidouille4 and its meaning would be an unconscious and deformed manifestation of the influence of these entities which will be found many times in the PoI-410's works, including in SCP-410-FR.

Addendum 410FR1: Notable events described in SCP-410-FR

The following is a partial list of correlations established by the Department of History between the recovered data and the texts of Speculations (currently numbered 1 through 70). Please refer to Document 410-FR-ζ for the complete list of identified matches.

► Access a partial list of events related to SCP-410-FR

▽ Close the partial list of events related to SCP-410-FR

Text:
SCP-410-FR-6
Title:
Cygenetics of the Omnibus

Excerpt:

Other systems of traps have been tried, a kind of hut placed at regular intervals along the track and quite similar to those used for hunting in the marsh. Bands of resolute men lie in wait for the animal to pass by: most of the time, the animal fans them and runs away, but not without giving signs of fury by rubbing its back skin, which is blue like that of some monkeys and phosphorescent at night; this grimace is a good illustration of the French word "complet" in white lines.

Event:

Between March 1 and 15, 1893, nearly ███ disappearances occurred in the Paris region. It soon became apparent that the victims had all taken the B line of the Overall Omnibus Company, which connected the Trocadero Square to the East Station.

After questioning the OOC administration and the line's drivers, various investigators disappeared in turn, prompting the Central Gendastrerie of Paris to take up the case. Inspector Aurélien Juve then had all the cars of the line requisitioned for examination. A mixture of [DATA EXPUNGED] was found in the engine, most likely belonging to the various missing persons. In addition, the different vehicles, although built on the same model, were not quite the same size.

On March 12, the cars escaped from the shed where they had been stored and returned to the B line after causing panic in the streets of the capital. The Gendastrerie closed the line and blocked the vehicles. After this unsuccessful attempt due to the weight and power of the machines, it was decided to bait the omnibuses by placing gendastres disguised as civilians at various stops, then to quickly immobilize the vehicle by sabotaging the wheels thanks to the gendastres who were ambushed while the baits were entering the vehicle, before quickly forcing them out of the vehicle.

It was later determined that the B line omnibuses had acquired the consciousness and capabilities of a predatory animal species, and that they digested their victims once they had boarded the bus to retrieve the metal parts. The drivers, unaware of the maneuver, played a role of decoy and allowed according to the predatory logic of the omnibuses to reassure the victims.

As a result of these events, all OOC vehicles were requisitioned and examined one after the other. However, the day after the requisition order (March 15, 1893), the predatory omnibuses all broke down due to the contents of their engines. After examination by the thaumaturgical forces of the Gendastrerie, it appeared that the vehicles had lost their anomalous capacities. The complete requisition was abandoned, but a certified thaumaturgist was assigned to examine the OOC vehicles weekly for one year. No additional anomalous activities were noted.

Text:
SCP-410-FR-9
Title:
Some Habits of the Drowned

Excerpt:

We had the opportunity to establish some quite intimate relations with these interesting dead-drunk aquatists. According to our observations, a drowned person is not a man who died by submersion, despite the common opinion that tends to accredit it: he is a being apart, with special habits and who would, we believe, adapt wonderfully to his environment if one wanted to let him stay there a suitable time. It is remarkable that they keep better in water than in the open air.

Event:

Between 1901 and 1903, various testimonies concerning bodies carried by the Loire river were collected in several communes located near the river. Due to the frequency of these reports and the fact that no mass disappearances had been reported for a long time, the decision was made to leave the matter to the Gendastrerie. The drowned persons who had given the testimony were indeed found several times along the river, but it was impossible to remove them. They sank at the slightest approach, and it was impossible to find them once under the surface. Moreover, the few people who dived into the river to retrieve the bodies could not be pulled out, and drowned in turn, whether they knew how to swim or not.

Because of the seriousness of the threat — with estimates ranging from 200 to 1,500 drowned — and the inability of the Gendastrerie forces to respond, a delegation from the American Secure Containment Initiative took up the case. They had dealt with similar problems in the past with a similar invasion of drowning people in Louisiana on the Mississippi River. The creatures looked exactly like drowning people to better attract their victims. They would then absorb their energy and heat by using the water as a conductive medium, like a lightning rod and a web that would prevent them from escaping.

Although collaboration between French and US forces proved difficult, the invasion could still be contained. Several barges equipped with tin nets with a high-voltage thaumic current flowing through them raked the Loire for a month to attract and capture the creatures. Nearly ███ bodies were recovered. However, once the operation was over, it turned out that they had become perfectly normal corpses. The ACSI delegation was allowed to leave with some of the corpses for their own research.

Text:
SCP-410-FR-31
Title:
About the "Damage"

Excerpt:

Mr. Couyba, if we have heard correctly, claimed the abolition of censorship and even, carried away by his ardor, that, by a law, of syphilis. It seems to us that this eminent man has missed a fruitful idea: the cure of syphilis by censorship: for why should this institution, which has the power to extirpate the word from the rooms, be impotent to deliver the people from the thing?

Event:

This excerpt refers to the activity of an anomalous sectarian organization, the Mediators of the Silence and the Word, which was particularly active during the second half of the 19th century. Although they did not say much about their motives, it is known that they manipulated anomalous information and advocated a so-called "healthy" distribution of knowledge for a humanitarian purpose, which included the concealment of certain information.

The Mediators of Le Havre originated in 1892 a curative device capable of curing any infection by synthesizing a memetic agent from its germs. The infectious agent was immersed in a special solution, which was then processed in an alchemical synthesis circuit, before its information was converted by the machine into a memetic agent — usually a sequence of characters drawn in ink by a complex mechanism - which came out of the machine, ready to be used. A person exposed to these sequences of characters would automatically forget all information about the disease in question, so that they were unable to hear the name of the disease. At the same time, their body would heal and become immune to the disease almost immediately.

The anomalous memes produced in Le Havre were traded for almost 10 years, the machine having been produced in several copies and then sold to several humanitarian associations. The regulatory authorities of the time were not particularly concerned about the phenomenon, as it was safe and widely considered to be a form of alternative medicine, attracting a niche audience as a result. However, around 1906, the curative memes of the Mediators of the Silence and the Word were abandoned, having suddenly lost all effectiveness.

The machines were sent back to Le Havre, before being requisitioned by the Gendastrerie. These, all broken down, were clogged with a mixture of black ink and an extremely infectious organic pathogen slurry, which cost the lives of several men of the Departmental Gendastrerie of the Seine-Inférieure. The machines were consequently burned and destroyed, and the activity of the Mediators of the Silence and the Word in Le Havre ceased.

Text:
SCP-410-FR-38
Title:
Mr. Timbre's Ambush

Excerpt:

Nevertheless, we5 were deeply touched that Mr. Timbre6, in his momentary discomfort, had confided in us in preference to any other person. We were indulgent to the lie that disgraced his white hair… Mr. Timbre probably has white hair; in any case it is indisputable that he is a character with a rectangular figure, ungainly, and jagged at the edges.

Évènement :

From January 1905 to January 1907, the forces of the French National Gendastrerie were confronted with an anomalous individual who addressed letters to various industrialists and broke into many companies connected with manufacturing to steal various means of production. Identified as Urban Młynarczyk, a Polish citizen reported missing in 1897, he called himself "Mr. Timbre".

The particularity of Mr. Timbre is that he used to store a very large quantity of blank postage stamps on his tongue. He was able to introduce himself as well as to hide the documents and objects he stole on the said stamps. The individual was arrested and imprisoned several times by the Gendastrerie, but he always managed to escape by using his anomalous abilities — his stamps could never be completely removed from his mouth, even by hindering it with a muzzle, which he made disappear by slipping a stamp between it and his lips — and he could never be arrested in his lifetime.

On January 3, 1907, the deceased body of Urban Młynarczyk from multiple fractures and internal bleeding was found embedded in the mailbox of a laundry in the town of Cholet. Due to lack of evidence and information, and noting the absence of recidivism, the Gendastrerie ceased the search for Mr. Timbre's known employer, whom he had mentioned during an interrogation.

Text:
SCP-410-FR-56
Title:
Pleasure Permitted

Excerpt:

A measure that good gunsmiths are beginning to take is to sell lead-free cartridges.

Since no one makes their own cartridges anymore, the substitution goes unnoticed.

It provides, moreover, two considerable advantages: lightness for the bearer of weapons and safety for the neighbors.

Lead in venison served at the table is a condiment that can be added after cooking.

The suppression of lead, after that of smoke, is under study in weapons of war.

Event:

During the month of February 1904 in the city of Rennes, the League of the Servants of the Nation (founded by Inspector Juve in 1899) was dispatched to respond to the threat of trafficking in paranormal weapons designed as part of an artistic gathering of "Sommes-Nous Devenus Magnifiques ?".

Designed by the sculptor Jacques Villon, these weapons had the particularity of being cast in a single block before being painted and chiseled. Despite this, they were capable of wounding and killing like a weapon of the same caliber, although no ammunition or explosion was visible or audible. Initially conceived as a critique of the object and its function, the 22 sculptures were stolen and used by an organized gang of delinquent hemovores to create panic within the city and the demonstration.

After a long battle that mobilized several regiments of the Departmental Gendastrerie of Ille-et-Vilaine to secure the city and the area of the SNDM demonstration, the group was apprehended and the weapons confiscated, notably thanks to the muscular intervention of Messrs Longuet and Sainte-Claire. However, three days after the incident, the sculptures lost their capacity. An interrogation of Mr. Villon did not allow any further clarification, as he claimed that the effect of his works — inseparable from the rest and part of his intentions — was not intended to be ephemeral.

Addendum 410FR2: Project Phobetor and Program VIRIDIS CANDELA

Project Phobetor is an attempt to replicate the effects of SCP-410-FR to counter containment breaches of some sensitive anomalies. The project involved a team from the Department of Fundamental Theories of Abnormality and several experts in anomalous literature. Officially, Project Phobetor has not led to the neutralization of any anomaly, and the research has not produced anything new since 2004. A small team is now in charge of the project.

However, Project Phobetor advances may have provided a theory that several events described in SCP-410-FR may have been erased from our plane of reality, and therefore would not be identifiable. The research Program VIRIDIS CANDELA has therefore been set up with the support of the Department of History and Temporal Anomalies Department. The current goal of this program is to try to recover as much of the lost information as possible by studying SCP-410-FR. On a larger scale, Program VIRIDIS CANDELA would aim to protect the course of history from anomalous changes using DEEPWELL servers, whose data will be protected from changes in reality, and even to recover information about temporal changes potentially already made.

Addendum 410FR3: Update of ██/██/2002 - Document PoI-410-71

The following text is the transcription of a document recovered by the Foundation at 51 A Volga Street, in Paris, during an operation of excavation of the locations of interest potentially sheltering documents concerning SCP-410-FR (in the present case, the head office of the Collège de 'Pataphysique). This was the starting point for the research conducted in 2002 on SCP-410-FR, which led to the current update of its description. It should be noted that although the handwriting matched that of PoI-410, the Foundation's linguists identified some inconsistencies in style, the most notable being the document's signature. According to Dr. Lockwood, it is likely that these are due to some psychic instability, the result of the interaction of PoI-410 with the anomalous entities described in the first part of SCP-410-FR.

After expertise, it was determined that PoI-410 suffered from Filbuson Syndrome. Any membership in GoI-0051 was refuted given the period of its activity, despite the existence of certain texts such as Pantaphysics and Catachimy and On the Surface of God, taken from Book VIII of SCP-410-FR, or even from SCP-410-FR-51, The Existence of the Pope. Information concerning SCP-410-FR (and specifically this document) should therefore be kept out of the reach of the above-mentioned Group of Interest.

► Access Document PoI-410-71

▽ Close Document PoI-410-71

FRONTIER OF PHANTASM

From the questioning verve of Messrs. Clancier and Alister, assiduous readers of the innumerable frasques which are spread out frail and lively in my cabinet, I am informed of incidents similar to the facts read.

To that we will answer everyone of what I did not bother to make, to know that those are well what they seem to be, facts. It is of common way practiced the representation by the man of his immediate environment. Also a city sergeant gets tired of his arrests and of a world of crime, his privileged environment, while a President of the Republic strives to oscillate from one capital to another, taking care to avoid his own, for fear of not being able to leave, and that he will then have to be replaced.

As for the writer, he is faced with the challenge of describing his own reality, no matter how boring it may be, with a raw egotism. As the guarantor of the language, he cannot omit the most insignificant details — which he does in spite of everything, because otherwise everything leads one to believe that one would also believe it; and God does not show himself any more when one reads his Bible — and therefore renders them with his words, when they are not those of others. I subtract pleasure from reality for my part, because as long as I define it, I want it to be favorable to me in every way.

Mr. Clancier and Mr. Alister were astonished to have heard of facts similar to those I had to describe. We, in turn, are surprised at their amazement, because we were there, so it was only natural to report on them. I lived these events as clearly as the rest of my life. And much more with this.

Each sensation was felt vividly, the Baron's barren island of Brand and its lighthouse of subterranean darkness rotting on the Habundes Sea, the Great Staircase of Black Marble, the gnawed and protoplasmic island without name or form, the island of Ptyx, a single, glassy, warm block of stone, and its cousin of Her ruled by its eye-mirroring cyclops, the mechanical and mobile island of Cyril, sheltering the fury of the livid volcano in its depths, the parish of Muffle and its warlike preacher, the Ringing island on which it would be quite useless to extend, the Hermetic Darkness and its king who waits for the fatal and resting salvation, all that, I experimented it to the limit of my language.

Yet we must not misunderstand the nature of these things. However real they may seem, they cannot definitely be real. Their nature is better suited to fantasies than to the civil world, and this for several reasons. I have described them, as everyone knows, as one describes reality: raw and beautiful, and I might as well shorten it — cruel — since language has taken care of giving us the adequate expression. This is what reality is, and everyone has gone away with their resentment, whether they are Mr. Clancier and Mr. Alister, or any other reader and spectator of my words.

The same goes for those phantasm and strange coincidences that our good friends were worried about. They are not real, because the description that I have tried to make has aroused the purest emotions, transportation, terror, mystery, envy, and many others, but precisely the widest sample of feeling, just like the chaotic palette of the light spectrum, which if we believe the men of science is accessible to us only in part.

But these things, if they had deigned to be real, would have inspired only the most unimaginable confusion by definition. It is because they are described that they cannot be, and that the most fantastic story would be the most terrifying off the page. Of the forbidden rapes, there is that of the border between the imaginary and the real, the grandiose and the cruel.

Of course, our reality contains the greatest mysteries, and it never ceases to amaze the most knowledgeable hearts as well as the most complete novices. But everyone imagines, without exception, and it is remarkable that it is a capacity that develops as our experience of reality becomes more and more exhausted. This is the proof that the noblest phantasm belongs to the mind, and not to the things of the real; for as soon as the real ceases, thought takes over again, in all circumstances.

But if the frontier were to be crossed, the impossible would no longer leave room for our thoughts. The world has its limits as we can bear it, and we cannot simply live with it; so we create tirelessly, but first of all in thought. There is no problem to be solved here, but a mystery to be examined, and that is something else.

Also, if what Messrs. Clancier and Alister saw existed otherwise than in their minds - and we will agree that these events are exceptions which, having been experienced frequently and by several people, do not even have the attraction of singularity and are therefore banal — this would leave no room for their imagination, which is probably not the case since they are doing as well as they come to talk to me with fervor about such phantasms.

In sum, if the greatness that I have experienced had manifested itself beneath the words, in other words in the raw experience, there would be no real interest in dreaming, and these experiences would lose their substance. So we will agree, they are only stories.

FAUSTROLL

Footnotes

1. Note for personnel affiliated with narrative anomaly research: 'Pataphysics here has a different meaning than pataphysics as defined within the Foundation.

2. Defined in SCP-410-FR as "the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments".

3. Refer to Dr. Jacob Sertannet's work regarding SCP-236-FR for more information about reality rates.

4. Spiral present on the belly of Father Ubu, central character within the bibliography of the PoI-410.

5. Here a "we of modesty" designating the author.

6. "Timbre" means "Stamp" in English.