Item #: SCP-6144

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: The current list of SCP-6144 containment procedures as dictated by SCP-6144 are as follow:

1. Every 243 minutes, a peanut butter and caviar sandwich on multigrain rye bread must be eaten in front of me by a horse with the surname "Eve."

2. Exactly 22.8 meters to the southeast of the horse, must be a stage platform. On the second Monday of every month, there will be a theater performance of the lost 15th century English play "Mankind." {added on March 17th, 1978}

3. At the third vertex of the triangle created by the horse and the stage platform, must be a 43 year old man with a bald head wearing overalls reciting Codex Sinaiticus in Latin. {added on March 17th, 1982}

4. 14 meters above the man will be 5 extinct British Copper butterflies encased in amber suspended in the air. {added on March 17th, 1986}

5. Looking up at the blocks of amber shall be a Level 2B Reality Bender juggling 15 stones located from terrestrial planets located in the Andromeda galaxy. {added on March 17th, 1990}

6. 12 centimeters diagonal to the back of the Reality Bender's head will be a 5.7 meter perfect living clone of the current American president singing the Finnish folk song "Säkkijärven Polkka." {added on March 17th, 1994}

7. At the apex of the parabola that connects the President and the performer's stage will be an albino alligator on its hindlegs, tap dancing while chewing cinnamon-scented gum. {added on March 17th, 1998}

8. 15 kilometers above the alligator will be a miniature replica of Site-28, complete with mini researchers analogous to existing Site-28 personnel. {added on March 17th, 2002}

9. 112.54 meters below the replica is to be the Sarkic Princeling Xaildrianoalth contained in a room full of apricot jelly. {added on March 17th, 2006}

10. Any individual who looks at me longer than 14.3 seconds should immediately brush his teeth with liquid jade and rinse with ambrosia pudding. {added on March 17th, 2010}

11. Living entities in a 666 meter radius around me will remove and consume their sigmoid colon if their steps are not exactly 0.26 meters apart. {added on March 17th, 2014}

12. All members of Alpha: Containment-6144 are to be sacrificed on a 15 meter by 30 meter altar of pink jasper every year on the 5th of April. {added on March 17th, 2018}

13. 19 times a month, 33.5 individuals will come to me and eat their shoes. They must then smash and eat $0.78 million USD worth of computer graphics cards. {added on March 17th, 2022}

The organization and successful adherence to the containment procedures will be managed by Alpha: Containment-6144.

Description: SCP-6144 is a cinnamon tree that causes economic collapse within the American stock market. Cinnamon sticks created from SCP-6144’s bark are not anomalous.

Paper made from the pulp of cut branches of SCP-6144 display the above-mentioned containment procedures. Every four years, an additional step appears on newly made paper from SCP-6144.

The additional step is then analyzed by Alpha: Containment-6144 and, subsequently, constructed and added to SCP-6144's containment area. Each new containment procedure has been noted to be more difficult and convoluted to follow as time progresses.

The containment procedures for SCP-6144 have been halted three times since its initial containment. Listed below are short excerpts of each incident.

Containment Breach Log

Breach 1; Date: 3/17/1974: Misunderstanding of SCP-6144 led to a lack of containment for approximately 5 months and 17 days. It is generally considered that the resulting effect of this was the stock market crash of 1974 and the subsequent stagflation1 of the 1970s.

The difference of time between the start of containment and the descent of oil prices, which is thought to be the instigator of the recession, was 10 days.

Breach 2; Date: 6/22/2000: An attack on Site-28 by the Chaos Insurgency led to a break in containment of SCP-6144 for 4 days. Later that month, the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s burst, causing the collapse of the early Internet industry.

The difference of time between the renewal of containment and the raising of interest rates by the Federal Reserve, which is thought to be the instigator of the recession, was 21 days. The main reason for the raising of interest rates is still debated.

Breach 3; Date: 9/13/2008: The late 2000’s “Type Green” Campaign by the Global Occult Coalition, which involved the extensive termination and imprisonment of reality benders, led to a sharp decline in supply of Level 2B Reality Benders required for Containment Step 5. SCP-6144 lacked containment for approximately 3 weeks, 4 days.

The ensuing phenomena was the Great Recession of 2008 and the following housing price collapse. Supply chain issue of reality benders was solved through importation from parallel realities.

The difference of time between the renewal of containment and bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers2 was 27 days.

It is still unclear whether the aforementioned situations were the result of SCP-6144’s lack of containment or were coincidental incidents that occured due to chance. The economic recessions supposedly caused by SCP-6144 can be explained by legitimate non-anomalous factors.

Bayesian statistical analysis of the null hypothesis of SCP-6144 not being anomalous results in a p=0.063. Therefore, it cannot be conclusively determined that SCP-6144 does, in fact, impact stock prices.

SCP-6144 was secured on March 17th, 1974 at the Palais des Congrès de Paris4 in Paris, France. The amphithéâtre was the location of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the AWCY? movement and the 10th "Sommes-Nous Devenus Magnifiques?5".

The following log is the first appearance and securement of SCP-6144 during the Sommes-Nous Devenus Magnifiques?.

Date: March 17th, 1974

Investigator: Undercover Agent Joseph Laurent

Background: Keynote Exhibition #2 occurred in the “Great Hall of the People” — a room seating 5,000 individuals. The session commenced at 9:43 am. A number of anomalous objects, phenomena, beings were presented by their associated creator. The final presentation was listed on the events brochure as “Sins of the Past Haunt the Future”.

Agent Laurent was assigned to monitor this session and report back all anomalous entities.

Start Log:

POI: 3542A “The Box of Teeth6”: …that was quite a marvelous sculpture. Thank you for that. And now for the last showcase for this block, we have a project from a group in Indonesia. This proposal has been endorsed by “The Dancer.”

POI: 1762F “Shaamil Sihasale”: Good afternoon fellow artists, entrepreneurs, doctors, executives, and patrons of the arts. My name is Shaamil Sihasale, third year student at the College of the Green Forest7

Today, I will be presenting on behalf of the Malacca Supernatural Artists Collective (MSAC). Before I continue, I would like to thank the Selection Committee for granting us this privilege of presenting this piece to all of you.

As well, thank you to the 15,000 damned souls that were used by MSAC and infused into the tree. Finally, the biggest thanks goes to the late creator of this project Aalok Majumder, who sadly was eaten by the amazing piece by “The Playwright” a few hours ago. I’ll be presenting on his behalf.

What you see before you is a cinnamon tree and it does something cool. (silence for 20 seconds)

POI: 3542A “The Box of Teeth: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

POI: 1762F “Shaamil Sihasale”: Hmm…well…let's see…(silence for 15 seconds) Okay, okay, I’ll be honest. Aalok wanted the tree to be one thing but I see it a different way.

This is how he saw it. So there was this company, yeah? Called the Dutch East India Company, they along with a lot of other companies took over Southeast Asia, real imperialist style and grew a lot of spices. Funny thing too, all those hundreds of islands were named the “Spice Isles.” That wasn’t our name, though. (laughs)

So Aalok thought one day, it would be quite serendipitous if the spices said “fuck you” right back. Like c'mon, their economy was jump started by the exploitation of our lands and people. So wouldn’t the most acute irony be that if a cinnamon tree, the exact same spice that started this whole thing, caused them to lose that same money?

Okay, okay. So now you have his version.

But! I view it in a different way. Instead of viewing it as a tool in reference to the past, why not look to our future? So taking advice from my good friend, and founder of MSAC, “The Dancer,” we decided to gift this item to the SCP Foundation. (murmurs in the audience)

Hah! Don’t worry. The astute among us have already noticed. Can the fellow artist in Row 27 seat 14 come to the stage? That’s right, I’m talking to you Foundation agent Laurent.

(There is an uproar in the audience. Some individuals jump out of their seats and run, most are yelling loudly, a few have no reaction. Sihasale whispers into the microphone)

He’s spying on us, by the way, so don’t take out anything too unique.

(Agent Joseph Laurent is instructed to, tentatively, follow POI: 1762F’s instructions. As such he quickly walks to the stage.)

So I know the Foundation doesn’t like art too much. But our founder thought instead of punishing the empires that are long gone, why not punish the ones oppressing us now?

So Laurent, my friend, you will take this tree. And you will contain it, just as you have done with many of MSAC’s other projects.

But here’s a secret, making sure it doesn’t activate will get more difficult overtime. I’m sure you can figure out the details, but it’s a built-in measure to make sure Aalok’s revenge eventually comes.

One day you will fail, let's just see how long you can keep the system going.

So there we go. A construct that will ruin both the sins of the fallen kingdoms and the kingdom ruling over us in the present. I have some more philosophical babble about capitalism, symbolism, inspiration and other shit like that but I’ll save that for the discussion block afterwards.

Laurent, before you go, I’ll give you a small hint. The souls that Aalok infused get kinda chippy if you don’t regularly feed them. Up to you if you want to do something about it.

(Before any response could be made, Agent Laurent and SCP-6144 are transported to the street adjacent from the Palais des Congrès de Paris.)

End Log

Note: A subsequent raid of the hall 30 minutes later led to no persons or evidence of the Sommes-Nous Devenus Magnifiques? The other assigned undercover agents Marie-Françoise De Villepin, Fabien Chastain, Jean-Luc Clérisseau lost contact and have since been MIA.

Footnotes

1. A period of time in which there is both high unemployment and high inflation.

2. At the time, the fourth largest investment bank whose collapse triggered many after-effects of the recession.

3. Standard protocol for the rejection of the null hypothesis would require a p-value of less than 0.05.

4. One of the largest convention venues in France.

5. This exhibition of anomalous art pieces and projects has been held every 10 years since 1874. Members of the AWCY? movement send their proposals to the Selection Committee.

6. The announcer and main moderator for the Sommes-Nous Devenus Magnifiques?, POI: 3542A is composed of three mouths attached to a femur bone.

7. A colloquial idiom meaning that an individual grew up as a bandit, thief, or outlaw.