The article was written on a typewritter; not formatted, not in the 
library's database, and likely unpublished. Just some twelve dense 
pages of scientific prose on seemingly ancient paper, likely 
undecipherable to anyone who hadn't spent as much time as | had 
poring over the literature. There was no mention of the Author's 
name. It was woefully incomplete - likely an early draft, if it had ever 
been completed - but the concepts put forward were alien. Alien, 
and potentially revolutionary. 


1. Introduction [TO WRITE] 

2. Traditional Mathematical and Scientific Thought [TO 
WRITE] 

3. Modern Mathematical and Scientific Thought 

3.1. Modern Understanding of Reality [TO EDIT] 
3.2. Physically Empirical Non-Axiomatic Models of 
Mathematics 

3.3. Non-Axiomatic Models of Physics 

4. The Interdependencies of Systems [TO WRITE] 

5. Philosophical Discussion 

5.1. Bias Within Non-Axiomatic Biological Minds [TO 
EDIT] 

5.2. Repercussions on Epistemology 


5.3. Analysis of the Modern Non-Axiomatic "Naive 
Science" 

5.4. Accounting For And Removing Bias [TO WRITE] 
5.5. Effects on Engineering Disciplines 

5.6. Morals in Memetic Engineering [TO EDIT, maybe 
cut] 

6. Conclusion [TO WRITE] 


Empirical Mathematics. Non-Axiomatic Physical Systems. While the 
mathematical concepts violated fundamental assumptions, the 
tenuous structure that they still held appeared to stand on its own. 
The paper put forward what seemed to be physical impossibilities 
with casual simplicity. It made no intuitive sense, and yet, the few 
examples given seemed viable, if not trivial to construct. 


So | did. 


It took me twelve days to build my first working perpetual motion 
machine. It was a brutal, makeshift thing, constructed from gears 
and pulleys. The action of the machine acted to pull further tension 
along an already-tense piece of rubber, which drove the machine 
even more. | analysed the construction, since I'd simply been 
building based on plans that were not my own. It took me a further 
four days to modify it to extract more energy than | put in. 
Admittedly, it then ended up breaking, spinning faster and faster 
until the rubber band snapped from the stress. But it worked. 
Despite traditional physical thinking, despite long years of being told 
otherwise, it was possible to construct a perpetual motion machine. 


A few weeks later, | could make one out of two pieces of paper and 
an elastic band. 


At the end of the second semester, | finished my degree, and 
submitted two completed academic papers. One was on my original 
research topic, and it was the capstone of my educational career. It 
went to the American Journal of Physics. The other was the side 
project I'd been working on without the department's knowledge, 
knowing I'd probably be berated for the project or seen as insane. It 
was wholly possible that | was, which was a concerning prospect. It 
was my paper based on The Paper; the nameless article that | 


couldn't help but make a proper noun in my mind. This one, | sent to 
Letters in Mathematical Physics - a more frequently published 
journal, and one with the objective of rapid dissemination of breaking 
research. The worst case scenario, | thought, was that my paper get 
discarded into a trash can thousands of miles away. 


Eighteen days later, a week before my twentieth birthday, the worst 
case scenario knocked at my door. 


The knock was rapid, methodical, military. Five knocks, almost 
perfectly spaced from one another, then a break, then another five 
knocks. | got to the door and opened it a crack, the chain lock still in 
place. A man slightly taller than | stood outside the door, sporting a 
brown crew cut and a black suit. He looked at me through the crack 
in the door, smiled, then spoke. 


"Mister Stanley Burden?" 
"That's me." 


"Hi Stanley. My name's Max Green. I'm from Springer Media, I'd like 
to talk about the paper you submitted to Letters in Mathematical 
Physics. Can | come in?" 


"Uh, sure, yeah, hang on." 


| closed the door, undid the chain lock, then re-opened it. Green 
smiled again, then held a small white rectangle out in his hand. 


"Thanks, Stanley. Here's my card." 
| took it from him, looking at the plain black ink printed there. 


Agent Maxwell CT-B05 
Green-type Anomaly Agent for Anchorage, Alaska 
Global Occult Coalition 


"You're not from Springer." 


| looked back up at him. He was smirking, holding up another one of 
the same business cards, then turned it around. The reverse side 
had a fractal image on it, similar to those I'd already seen in the 


Morals in Memetic Engineering section of The Paper. | felt my eyes 
unfocus and the sun started to go dark. | fell forwards, dizzy; Green 
caught me in his arms. He looked down at me with amusement in 
his eyes. 


"Sorry, Stan. | lied." 


Then the world felt like nothing. 


| opened my eyes, my heart feeling like it was on fire. | jerked, trying 
to clutch at my chest; my arms, however, were bound to the chair | 
was seated in. | looked upwards and to the right with unfocused 
gaze, slowly resolving into view as "Max Green" as he continued to 
inject a concoction of chemicals into my arm. He looked down at me, 
his face severe. He emptied the syringe into me, then pulled it out 
roughly. My arm began to drip blood. 


Green walked to the other side of the table, staring at my face while 
the liquid circulated around my body. My heart kept trying to escape 
my chest cavity. Every icy breath | pulled into my lungs stung and 
scraped at my insides, and every exhalation left me feeling less than 
empty. My brain felt like it was bunching up in the wrong places. | 
felt my neck spasm lightly, and with each twitch of my head the 
world kept spinning. Green stared until the protests of my body 
ceased, then started to talk. 


"| have injected you with an inhibitor. Whatever unusual abilities you 
previously possessed are now under lock and key. Please 
understand that this is simply a precaution and is mandated by 
procedure." 


"What?" 


"Pay attention, Stan, because I'm only going to give this spiel once. 
You are currently two hundred feet underground in a holding cell of 
the Global Occult Coalition, an organisation dealing with threats of a 
metaphysical nature." 


| felt my neck start to twitch again. 


The only known anomalous property of SCP-566 occurs when an 
individual reading an entry taps a bolded word in the entry definition 
with his index finger. The contents of the page change, displaying 
the definition of the tapped word. The new entry retains this 
property. The means of returning the entry to its original state are 


currently not known. 


SCP-566 was declared Anomalous due to its contents. While ~80% 
of the entries consist of uncommon English words, the remainder 
can be categorized according to Table 1. 


Table 1: Anomalous contents of SCP-566 


hAvaanlAAwain 


Entry type 
Definition of ~3% 
mundane words 
or idioms coined 
post publication 
date 


Definition of ~10% 
mundane words 

or idioms not 
previously 

known 


Definition of ~4% 
words referring 

to anomalous 
subjects or 


Proportion 


Exampie 
sofalizing (n) 


to breznev (v) 


Fiffle Stinks (n) 


Definition listed 
Using the 
Internet or other 
electronic 
devices to 
socialize with 
people from 
home, rather 
than meeting 
them face to 
face.s 

To cover with a 
thick metal 
plating, after L. I. 
Breznev , 
General 
Secretary of 
CPSU known for 
wearing an 
excessively 
large amount of 
medals 

a Fifthist 
worshipper, from 
their tendency to 
turn themselves 


"Metaphysics, in this context, is not some odd and intangible realm 
of philosophy. It is a very real, very dangerous system acting to 
subvert the fundamental workings of our reality. It is, if you break 
down the term into its roots, quite literally beyond physics." 


My neck stopped twitching. 


"Physics is meant to work for a reason. The most dangerous thing 
that a human being can do, if they have to obey the laws of physics, 
is splitan atom. Human beings who subvert those systems can do 
far more dangerous things, without need for a stockpile of 
radioactive materials or a particle accelerator." 


Green pulled a cigarette case from inside his suit jacket, tapped one 
out into his hand, pulled a lighter from his other suit pocket and lit 
the cigarette's end. He took a deep draw of smoke-infused breath, 
then exhaled the putrid toxins into my face. | started to cough, and 
my lungs again felt stabbing pins. 


"These people are known as Type Green threats. In the vernacular, 
‘Reality Benders’. If you are capable of performing the experiments 
detailed in your submitted article, then it is almost certain that you 
are one of them. Of course, you were ‘exceptional’ to begin with. 
There are patterns in the childhood of a Type Green, involuntary and 
unconscious alterations to the world around them. Loss of a parent 
at a young age, to serve as a tragic backstory. Eternally lamenting 
the constant pain of being 'better' than everyone else. Talents 
precipitating into some level of either arrogance, if they are to 
become ‘mysterious loners’, or modesty, if they want to play at 
normality. Your life story is so formulaic, so cliché, and so 
statistically improbable that it's as though an untalented author has 
been curating your entire life. You raised flags." 


He paused to take another pull from his cigarette, then blew several 
rings of smoke up into the air. 


"As the Green-type Agent for Anchorage, it was therefore my job to 
monitor you. A job I've been doing since the second your father 
drove you into city borders four years ago." 


He stared at me, waiting for me to object. My lungs still felt like cold 


fire, my mind still foggy and slow. If | opened my mouth to talk, my 
stomach may well have clenched and emptied itself onto the table. 
Instead, | simply nodded, though it likely seemed like another 
spasm. Green continued. 


"There are four phases in the development of a Type Green threat. 
Firstly, denial. A refusal or rationalisation of their metaphysical 
capabilities. In your case, until recently, you were thought to be at 
most in this stage. You did not have conscious awareness of your 
abilities, | believe, until some time this year." 


"The Paper." 
| spurted out the phrase reactively. Green frowned. 
"We'll get to your paper in a moment." 


Not my paper, The Paper. | opened my mouth to speak again, then 
heaved up the remains of a half-digested sandwich onto myself and 
the table. Green looked on with disgust, shook his head, and 
continued. 


"The adverse physical effects of the inhibitor will wear off soon. You 
can give your part then. As | was saying, you were believed to be a 
Phase One. Phase One Type Green threats do not elicit a threat 
response from our organisation, simply occasional observation. We 
are quite happy to leave people alone, if they are no genuine threat. 
Phase Two is more dangerous. Phase Two typically involves 
experimentation, an exploration of your abilities. You're a Phase 
Two right now." 


Green pulled out a copy of the paper I'd sent to Letters in 
Mathematical Physics and thumbed through it. 


"What you put forward here is what we expect from Phase Two 
experimentation, just a bit more formalised. There is a very clear 
method to your metaphysical madness, where other Phase Two 
examples simply ‘do’ or ‘feel’ without any analysis of their 
metaphysical phenomena. You've put down what you perceive to be 
a new paradigm in mathematical and physical research. What you 
don't realise is that it's entirely incorrect for anyone who isn't you." 


Green stood and walked to a corner of the room behind me. | tried to 
twist my head around to follow him, but the bindings prevented it. He 
walked back with a soft rag, wiped my vomit from the table, then 
returned beyond my view. | heard a tap running for a moment, then 
Green turned it off. 


He walked back to the table and placed on it a glass of water, a 
small pile of paper, a box of elastic bands, and the copy of the paper 
that I'd sent to Springer. Green then stood next to me and untied the 
knots holding my arms to the chair. He returned to his seat on the 
other side of the table, then gestured to the pile of materials. 


"You state in your article a very simple example of a perpetual 
motion machine, one which ‘anyone’ can construct over a few 
minutes with two pieces of paper and an elastic band. I'd like you to 
try and make one for me now, based on either your memory or the 
comprehensive instructions you've written down." 


"And the water?" 
"It's water. You just threw up. Drink it and try to keep it in." 


| picked up the glass, pouring the liquid down my throat. My head 
felt a little better, and my heart had resumed its regular pace. | took 
two pieces of paper and an elastic band, looking back up at Green. 
He nodded and raised his eyebrows. 


"Have at it, Stan." 


| looked back to the pieces of paper. The first section, the stand, 
was the easier of the two to fold. | started to construct it, firstly by 
folding the paper up to a point. Then, around the base, | folded the 
sections on which the elastic band should catch, without any 
particular problem. Moving the completed base to one side, | took 
another piece of paper, and folded it to rest on top of the first piece. | 
tested placing the two together, and the rotor spun nicely on top of 
the base. 


The next part was to fold the rotor piece so that the elastic band 
would pull on it, then as the piece spun, give way to the next jutting 
section, then catch on it. Similarly, it would realign the elastic band 


on the base, which would repeatedly fling the elastic band around 
the whole mechanism opposite to the rotor's movement. 


The folds no longer worked. 


| knew how the fold was supposed to happen. It should have been 
intuitive; I'd folded hundreds of the things. | moved the half-folded 
rotor to the side, then picked up a new piece of paper. | closed my 
eyes, deciding to rely on muscle memory. Fold, fold, fold, fold, fold... 
and then there was paper in the way where there shouldn't have 
been. | opened my eyes and looked at the folded rotor. It wasn't the 
right shape. 


| picked up the copy of my article, flipping through to the relevant 
section. 


Then, taking the outermost points of the star rotor, fold 
them into the opposite sides of the paper by twisting 
them through the clockwise-adjacent points. 


| looked up at Green, looking at me sombrely from the other side of 
the table. | spoke. 


"This doesn't make any sense. | know how it's supposed to fold, but 
there's paper in the way where there shouldn't be." 


"Type Greens have an intuitive understanding of how to enact 
metaphysical effects. Whatever terminology that makes internal 
sense to you, however you're perceiving these changes to the world, 
is nonsensical to anyone who hasn't had your experiences. You 
can't communicate what you think to people because the ideas can't 
operate outside of your own head." 


Green pulled out a completed paper perpetual motion machine, then 
plucked the elastic band into motion. The mechanism started to 
spin, propelled by its own momentum. 


"We took this from your house. I'm sure, looking at it, you can tell the 
mechanism by which it operates. But nobody else can, other than 
you, or maybe another Type Green. It's built off your internal 
idealisation of reality." 


Green pushed his lit cigarette against the central point of the still- 
spinning paper. 


"Pay close attention." 


The rotor caught fire, yet continued to spin; the flames spread to the 
base, and the whole structure started to collapse and curl in odd 
ways. The elastic band stopped moving as it should have, flinging 
itself to the ceiling, then falling to the ground.