"What kind of a class is Archon, anyway? Call." Katherine 
Sinclair, thaumatologist, put her ante into the pot. "Shouldn't it 
just be Thaumiel?" 


"No, see, the Multi-Universal Transit Array is Thaumiel. Raise." 
Tristan Bailey, Multi-Universal Diplomat, was playing with a 
junk hand, but none of the others knew that. He considered himself 
having a good poker face, especially when the content of the 
discussion turned to containment procedures. "It's contained, but it 
can be used to save the world, if need be. An Archon-class will 
literally break the world if you contain it.” 


Cassandra Pike, parazoologist, raised her brow to Tristan. She 
could tell he was bluffing; all of the Baileys had the exact same tell. 
They'd rub their index finger over their thumbnail. Pike smirked and 
pushed her stack of chips into the center. "All in." 


Bailey groaned. "Fold. Dammit, Pike." 


Cassandra just shrugged, and watched as the others at the table 
folded, handing her cards to the dealer. Cassandra Pike was not, 
until very recently, emotionally stable. But she was a damn good 
poker player— the stack of chips she just put in would have 
bankrupted the others. 


"Gotta admit, I'm jealous." Jason Hendricks was Pike's former 
superior, recently returned from Oregon. "| get transferred, and less 
than two years later, you discover the new 001." He shuffled the 
deck and looked over his shoulder, expecting West to come in the 
door any minute. 


"It's been boring here without ya, Jay," Bailey admitted, adding, 
"There's nowhere near enough insect-related hallucinations without 
you." 


"Hilarious as ever, Bailey." Hendricks shook his head. "And how's 
your position under Dr. Hennessy? Missionary or reverse cowgirl?" 


From the other end of the room, Montgomery Reynolds coughed, 
the root beer he'd been drinking spilling everywhere. Sinclair looked 
at him with a raised eyebrow. "What?" Reynolds asked. "It was a 
good quip." 


"If you're thirteen!" Sinclair let out a single "hah". "Never thought 
you'd have such an immature sense of humor, Monty." She looked 


at her cards, straining not to raise a brow at the pair of kings she'd 
been dealt. "You sure you don't want in on this?" 


"lam a sorcerer, not a gambler. I'd have an unfair advantage over 
you all— a word of clairvoyance, and | can see all of your hands." 
Reynolds was talking out his rear— he was a horrible gambler. As 
he took another sip, his phone buzzed. He looked at it, tilted his 
head, and walked over to the table. "Katherine, | think this is meant 
for you? West sent it to me by mistake." 


"First draft of the containment procedures, then." Sinclair adjusted 
her glasses, took his phone, and swiped her thumb across its 
screen. 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-001 is 
ingrained within the narrative structure of Sloth's Pit, 
Wisconsin (Nexus-18) and Site-87, allowing it to be more 
easily observed within this area. If necessary, certain 
sections of SCP-001 can be narratively contained in 
order to isolate major continuity errors and malignant plot 
devices. 


"That's incredibly vague." Sinclair shook her head. "Send it back and 
tell him to clarify what 'narratively contained’ means. And ‘malignant 
plot device'?" 


"Just give me my feedback in person, why don't ya?" Johnathan 
West walked into the lounge, stowing his phone. "Truth be told, | 
wrote the procedures on the way up here." 


"Kind of mind-boggling, what you're containing," Hendricks said as 
he dealt West in. "The concept of narrative causality? That's pretty 
heavy." 


"We're shopping around different names for it," Pike admitted. 
"Probably gonna be called |.H.P.'s proposal. After Isaiah Pickman. 


"The archivist who died last Halloween?" Hendricks frowned. 
"What's he got to do with it?" 


"His cataloging of the archives was obsessive," Sinclair explained. 


"Thanks to him, we were able to pick up on anomaly occurrence 
patterns that nobody else noticed. That led to me, Bailey, West and 
Pike theorizing about a centralized anomaly..." 


"Which led to SCP-001. Fair 'nuff." Hendricks put his contribution 
into the pot. "Did you hear Phil Verhoten's coming to talk here?" 


"You're fucking joking," Bailey stared. "Philip Verhoten? The guy 
who /iterally wrote the book on Nexuses?" 


"Books, plural." Sinclair began listing off titles. "There's Crossroads, 
The Death of Magic: On the Dissolution of Nexuses, The Micro- 
Nexus... he's got a fourth one coming out, too. Title's not been 
announced." 


Cassandra Pike looked unimpressed. "Okay, but, who is this guy? | 
call." 


West shook his head at Pike. "You need to brush up on your history. 
Philip Verhoten was the man who discovered Sloth's Pit." 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-001 is 
ingrained within the narrative structure of Sloth's Pit, 
Wisconsin (Nexus-18) and Site-87, allowing it to be more 
easily observed within this area. If necessary, certain 
sections of SCP-001 can be narratively contained 
contained using narrative exploitation techiques in order 
to isolate major continuity errors and malignant plot 
devices. 


"Still sounds wrong," Johnathan admitted to a sigh, looking up at his 
brother. "I dunno, Harry. What do you think?" 


"| think you misspelled 'techniques'." Harold West looked at the 
proposal. "Try writing the containment procedures after the 
description. It's worked wonders for me in the past." 


"But it won't work in the file. Ugh." He looked down at the document 
on his laptop and sighed. "Narrative exploitation techniques’ is such 
a nonsense phrase." 


"Well, if we called it 'tempting fate’ or ‘hanging a lampshade’, that 
wouldn't be terribly clinical." Harold sipped his coffee. "Maybe you 
should ask Verhoten when he comes into town? God knows you 
worshiped the ground he walked on when you were getting your 
Foundation credentials." 


"He discovered Sloth's Pit, but he hasn't set foot in it since the 90's." 
Johnathan groused and tapped away at his keyboard, writing the 
first lines of the description. 


Description: SCP-001 is an anomalous universal 
constant which has been dubbed by Sinclair, West, Pike, 
Bailey et a/. as the Law of Narrative Causality. SCP-001 
provides irrefutable proof that the baseline universe is a 
fictional construct existing within one or more separate 
narratives. 


"Too early to have that in, you think?” Johnathan frowned. "I feel like 
it should have, | dunno, more impact." 


"Impact?" Harold snorted. "We're not writing a novel." 


"No, but we may very well be in one." Johnathan stirred his coffee. 
"Isn't Julie's Little League game this Saturday? Am | still un-invited 
to those?" 


"The coach still thinks that you throwing the ball back at the pitcher 
and beaning him was an overreaction," Harold affirmed. 


"That was the fifth foul he had thrown!" 


"And he was on your niece's team!" 


The more Johnathan thought about it, the more he considered his 
brother was right. He should talk to Verhoten. But 'worshiped the 
ground he walked on' was a bit much— Verhoten had just 
introduced him to the idea that anomalies could be more than just 
horrendous things which could eliminate space-time as they knew it. 
He'd done that by bringing him here. 


He looked at a picture on his desk, one which displayed a younger 


version of both himself and Verhoten, standing by Gray Lake and 
looking out at the only lake monster who wasn't anomalously blurry 
on film. A conversation creeped back into his mind. 


"Johnny," Verhoten began, "You're going through what a lot of 
newbies in the Foundation go through. You're sick of all the death 
and destruction and nihilism, and you want to know there's 
something worth saving." 


"Don't put words in my mouth," West snapped. "The world's not 
going to end in nuclear fire, big deal. Some rotted corpse is going to 
break out of its cell and eat children, or else a giant slug is going to 
crawl out of the sea, or we're going to be assimilated into a massive 
machine—" 


"Johnny. If there was only death and destruction in the universe, we 
wouldn't have this." Verhoten turned to the lake, if it could be called 
that— it paled in comparison to Lake Superior, less than an hour's 
drive away. It was more of a large pond. "Look at it. Millions of years 
of geological processes created this. Biological processes ensure 
that it's inhabited. And anomalous processes..." Verhoten cupped 
his hands and gave a loud holler. 


The reason for his actions soon became clear. From the water, a tall 
neck emerged. A small head on its end bellowed back in response. 
West gasped, backing away. "What the hell?!" 


"Elasmosaurus jacksonslothii," Verhoten explained. "Sloth's Pit's 
own lake monster. You know, the reason we don't have any clear 
pictures of these is because their skin gives off EM radiation that 
screws up film." He handed a camera to West. "We just call her 
Lady Grey." 


"You... named an anomaly? But—" 


"Johnathan. For every Keter-class anomaly, there are at least 
twenty Euclid-class anomalies like her. They just do their own thing, 
live their own life, don't bother anyone. The anomalous isn't 
inherently evil or good." 


Lady Grey swam over to them. Verhoten continued, "There are two 


sides to the anomalous: the wonderous, and the terrifying. Working 
in the Foundation, you see mostly the latter. But I'm going to show 
you the wondrous. Now, can you get the tripod out of my bag?" 


West came back to reality and sighed, rubbing his head. "Wondrous 
and terrifying, ey, Phil?" 


He cracked his knuckles, and began writing. 


Description: SCP-001 is an anomalous universal 
constant which has been dubbed by Sinclair, West, Pike, 
Bailey et a/. as the Law of Narrative Causality. SCP-001 
provides concrete proof that the baseline universe is a 
fictional construct existing within one or more separate 
narratives. 


SCP-001 is observable through use of narrative 
exploitation techniques. Examples include use of the 
phrase, "What could possibly go wrong?", "At least it's 
not raining", and pointing out an inconsistency in a given 
situation (an action which has been termed ‘lampshade 
hanging’). Doing so will invoke an alteration in SCP-001, 
dubbed SCP-001-A. 


SCP-001-A instances take several forms, and usually 
are of a nature that would typically be conducive to 
telling a compelling narrative from an outsider's 
perspective. SCP-001-A instances are not necessarily 
anomalous in nature, but do account for pockets of 
‘unreality' that have been observed within the last twenty 
years. Examples of commonly observed SCP-001-A 
instances include: 


¢ Meeting with a former romantic partner upon a 
return home and rekindling a relationship 

¢ Weather altering in such a way that it creates 
opportunities for Schadenfreude 

¢ Keter-class SCPs suddenly becoming far easier to 
contain in the aftermath of a breach 

¢ The invocation of Murphy's Law resulting in 
disastrous, but distantly comedic, events. 


"Distantly comedic..." West shook his head and deleted the last few 
words, before realizing he didn't have any better of a proposal. He 
sighed, and left it as-is. 


"Are you sure this is wise, Katherine?" Montgomery Reynolds 
frowned. The two of them were in the middle of Lover's Lane, at 
nighttime, with a Pickman-Sinclair Narrative Fluctuation Detector. 
"I'm not so sure that he's going to be amiable." 


"He was willing to work with us last year," Sinclair said, holding up 
the Detectors wand. She admitted, "Granted, we were working to 
stop a reality restructuring event and the possible collapse of the 
Nexus..." 


"Still can't believe that you wrote a script for this," Reynolds frowned. 
"That thing's probably just going to scare him off." 


"No good slasher villain can resist a pair of horny— well, 'horny' —" 
she made the air-quotes visible" —thirty-and-forty-somethings. Not 
as effective as teenagers, but none of the Baileys were available." 


"You know, they have a whiteboard here at Site-87, trying to 
document their own timelines. From 2005 to now, they have a 
gigantic space that just reads 'weird temporal bullshit." Reynolds 
looked at the script. "If | didn't love you..." 


“There's no universe where that's possible," Sinclair rolled her 
shoulders, and looked at the script. "From the top." 


Reynolds rolled his eyes. "C'mon, baby, do you wanna die a 
virgin?” 


"| ain't dyin’ anytime soon... Derrick." Sinclair suddenly regretted her 
choice of name for this experiment. "I'm gonna live long enough to 
fuck a million other guys before’ oh my god this is awful.” Sinclair 
broke down laughing, leaning against Monty. "Oh god | thought the 
shit | wrote in high school was bad!" 


Reynolds leaned down to kiss her. "Well, it appears to have done 
something right." He nodded to the Narrative Fluctuation Detector— 


Experiment-531-B10: 

Three SCP-531 statues (7, 9, and 13) were arranged in a triangle 
such that two of the statues were both within the critical angle of the 
third. A test subject was introduced and one of the two SCP-531s 
formed a connection with her (SCP-531-14). This suggests that an 
SCP-531 can maintain a connection with only one partner at a time. 


it lit up bright green. 


Out of the shadows, a large, black shape leaped, bringing its axe 
between them, splitting the ground at their feet. They jumped back, 
staring at the Goatman. 


It frowned, shaking its head and recovering the hatchet. He looked 
at them, the script, and the Detector, shaking his head, a wild tangle 
of hair covering his horns. "Aren't you a bit old for this?" 


"We're doing tests," Sinclair shrugged. "Give us a break." 


The Goatman snorted. "Last great secret of this town, the Narrative, 
and you've figured it out." He hefted his hatchet, tilting his head. 
"How'd you do it?” 


Tristan Bailey was working on his tablet when he nearly walked into 
Dr. Sinclair in the elevator. As the doors closed behind him, he 
muttered an apology, and looked at the screen at the back of the 
car. The screen behind them displayed a picture of Phillip Verhoten, 
a South African man in his sixties with skin the color of finished 
mahogany, smiling behind a pair of glasses. He was superimposed 
in front of his books with an announcement scrolling overhead: 
"Philip Verhoten, Author of The Crossroads, Atrium 2. Don't miss it!" 


Sinclair looked at Bailey, a soft frown on her face. "I've been 
reviewing your contributions to the 001 file. I... found an issue." 


"Oh?" Tristan frowned. 


Sinclair pulled out her own tablet and highlighted the problematic 
section, which she had crossed out. 


In contrast to what was theorized in S. Andrew Swann's 
SCP-001 Variant, the entity or entities responsible for 
constructing the baseline narrative, for the most part, do 
not appear to be actively malevolent, but they are 
perverts. 


"That last part is really unnecessary." Sinclair scowled at Bailey. 


"People put jokes or goofs in non-finalized drafts of reports all the 
time. | seem to remember someone getting a reprimand because 
they accidentally left a certain foxy name within a report." 


Sinclair glowered at Tristan. "You said you'd never mention the 
Sinclair/Synner incident." She muttered. 


"Not my fault you're horrible at picking character names," Bailey said 
as the elevator doors opened. "Your test in the woods reveal 
anything?" 


"The Goatman was oddly talkative," Sinclair admitted. "We told him 
how we figured out what we did to discover the Narrative, and he 
gave us, well, questionable data." 


"Like what?" Bailey stepped out of the elevator, walking alongside 
Sinclair. 


"So, the whole concept Swann's proposal put forth, the progenitor 
universe that writes all of our lives? He says that may not actually be 
the case." She rubbed her temples. "It's confusing. We may not be 
fictional, but our world operates on the rules of fiction, so it kind of 
is."