Pol-3172: There's truth, but it's never... final. 
There's no ultimate reality, doctor. No totality. 
No concrete way in which the world is run. 
There's just what we make of it. The clay 
things we bind together and crudely make in 
clay. 


Dr. Montauk: All this introspection... 


The crack in the wall grows larger. The sound 
of screaming can be heard. 


Dr. Montauk: Who is in there with him? 


Pol-3172: Who knows? His seven brides, his 
loyal nomads, ancient servants, more 
creations of the gap between realities. | don't 
know any more. It all breaks down, in the end. 
All | see any more is the fire. | don't see the 
world, or gods, or kings. | don't see anything 
but the flames. What else is there? This stuff? 
Matter and the physical, all banal, all fake. | 
only see the smile of my King, forged out of 
burning and frail matter. And it's a sight that 
hurts. It hurts, so much, behind the eyes. It is 
burning and being consumed and it's never, 
ever finished. 


Dr. Montauk: Then why not stop worshipping 
him? 


Pol-3172: | was a frail thing. | was born in the 
cold and the dark. | tried my hand at writing, 
when | was very young. | tried my hand at 
many things, bartering, starving, surviving in 
the marketplaces of Calcutta. Like so many of 


us, struggling to live while you Westerners 
grew fatter on our forgotten wealth. | grew 
mad. There was no meaning, no purpose, ina 
country born to be ripped apart. | tried the 
gods, but they were silent. | tried reason and 
atheism, but they were just as empty and 
unreal. Because they were always going to be. 
Because- 


Dr. Montauk: Don't say it. 
Pol-3172: You have to hear it. 
Dr. Montauk: |- | don't want- 


Pol-3172: No, listen, Robert, just /isten. You 
know now what the Scarlet King is. He is a 
creation of swirling anomalies, of so many 
different times, all over the world. He is the 
memory of a world that is lost, the premodern 
world, made manifest in a form of hatred for 
modernity, the new, the humanism and smiling 
coldness that marks our day to day existence. 
Forged from a perfect balance of irreconcilable 
anomalies and our breaking minds. He is an 
entity created by this overwhelming, 
unavoidable tension. Of the howl of the old 
world when faced with a cold, grey, 
purposeless new. He is the revenge of our 
fallen past. He is the idea of the ancient ina 
world which discards and fetishes it. 


Dr. Montauk: He is the tension between the 
modern and the premodern made manifest. 


Pol-3172: Yes. He is the faultline between two 
irreconcilable worlds. And he can only, in the 
end, destroy them all. And that is what is right. 


There is another pause for several seconds. 


Dr. Montauk: What do we do now? 


Pol-3172: You shoot me, let them take my 
corpse, go back to your life. It won't last long 
now. The King's coming is inevitable. You 
might try to do something to stop it, but it won't 
work. The Foundation has too much at stake, 
too much resting on the preservation of their 
ethos. They will coat the world in concrete grey 
and the King will rise from the ashes, and the 
Children won't even have to lift a finger. 


Dr. Montauk: | don't believe you. 


Pol-3172: Believe what you like. Come, 
doctor, | think it's time. 


Dr. Montauk takes out his firearm and points it 
at Pol-3172. 


Dr. Montauk: Just- look, just tell me one more 
thing. Was it you who took Jacob? 


Pol-3172: No. We had no idea who he w- 


Dr. Montauk terminates Pol-3172. The crack 
disappears. 


<End Log> 


Document 11: The following is a record of O5 Council 
Vote #4985. 


Council Vote #4985, "Vote to approve suggestions made 
by Dr. Robert Montauk on Foundation Operating 
Procedures for improved containment of SCP-001." 
Proposed by 05-13 on 30/05/2018. 


For Against Abstain 
5 ; 
5- 


Oo 
oo — 


Vote Denied. 


Statement by 05-1: Dr. Montauk's investigations have 
been most illuminating. They have certainly raised 
serious concerns about how the Foundation has been 
operating in recent years. But we feel that his 
suggestions go too far. 


The ethos of the Foundation is comprehension. 
Postmodern notions of the fallibility of objective universal 
truths are all very well in academic circles, but the 
Foundation has always been first and foremost 
concerned with practicalities, basing its analyses on the 
hard sciences and unquestionable truths. Changing our 
intentions and modus operandi is, frankly, an absurd 
proposition. Our duty is, and always has been, to die in 
the dark to protect those in the light. If we begin to 
abandon or redefine the notion of what dark and light 
are, we risk a sharp descent into tyranny, incoherence 
and the loss of our mission entirely. This must not 
happen. We cannot engage in cavalier redefinitions of 
what the Foundation's very essence is. 


We thank Dr. Montauk for his work, and we will be 
accordingly updating SCP-001's classification to Safe as 
a result of it. Containing SCP-001 is no longer as difficult 
as it once was, despite its potential danger; if Montauk's 
information is correct, then it seems clear to us that the 
Foundation should simply take a more laissez-faire 
attitude towards SCP-001's containment. We look 
forward to a more productive containment relationship 
with our oldest anomaly going forward. 


[aaaaCC62SS DEN---] 


| watched, hidden, as their bulldozers came. 
Prime land wasted on trees, they said. They 
ripped them up, sliced their roots, took them 
away to be made into tables, chairs or other 
monotonies. Then, over weeks and months, 
they flattened it. They poured concrete into the 
rest. It was scraped and shaped, cut into neat 
little squares, arranged precisely and in an 
orderly fashion. 


Walls rose up, great walls of concrete. 
Windows, their measurements precisely 
regulated. A series of standardised bricks for 
other parts. Construction crews and workmen 
and all the rest, working efficiently and 
precisely for a long time; filling in the details, 
the furnishings and precise abstract 
wallpapers and everything else that went into 
making a facility. 


Finally, it was finished. One single, new tree 
had been planted in the centre of the central 
courtyard; not through any sense of whimsy or 
delight, but to give those within a little sense of 
nature, of reality in the centre of the grey. To 
keep them sane, nothing more. A precisely 
mandated allowance for the improvement of 
human mental health, until they can find out a 
way to phase that out entirely. 


| watched, and | thought about all that they- 
that we- had done. | thought about the world 
they wanted. | thought about their 
spinelessness. | knew what good was, and 
what evil was, and | saw none of it in either of 
them. | thought about hollow men, made of 
straw, plastered together with thick paste and 
sold in a hundred, a thousand identical ways in 
a thousand identical shops. | thought about 
what we had lost. And | howled. 


At night, the day before the site's grand 
opening, | dug up the seeds of the tree, and 
replaced them. With a seed of my own 
devising. And over Site 231 will stand a thing 
of blood and bone and sinew. A tree that trips 
and leers and feeds. It will drip strange fire, 
and that fire will both burn and warm in equal 
measure. And they will look up at it and wish 
they had listened while they had the chance. 


| know this path is wrong. But at least itis a 
path. 


With thoughts and prayers, 
Robert Montauk, Child of the Scarlet King. 


Footnotes 

1. A K-class scenario wherein the imminent alteration of reality or 
eradication of all human life is caused by the interaction between 
two anomalous objects of a radically different type. 

2. With the exception of Dr. Robert Montauk, Project Lead on 
SCP-001, SCP-231 and SCP-2317. 

3. An antiquated term for "amnestics" in use in some Foundation 
sites at this time. 

4. A Bengali social gathering, involving a group of friends (usually 
but not exclusively male) meeting up for an extended discussion of 
literature, social relations or other aspects of life. These often took 
place over the course of several hours. 


djkaktus's Proposal II: Atonement 


Access Data File 


Archival Specifications: This data file, being 
designated SCP-001, will exist separately from the decoy 
SCP-001 archive on the primary Foundation database 
and will be accessible only by closed units at Area-11 or 
Site-01. No other instances of this data file may exist. 
This data file is designed to corrupt any systems on 
which it exists that do not carry the encryption markers of 
either of those two systems. 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-001 is 
currently contained within the Pietrykau-Fontaine Spatial 
Stabilization Array located on the 6th basement level of 
Armed Dimensional Containment Area-11 near Kunes, 
Norway. SCP-001's containment chamber must be kept 
at a temperature no greater than 3.2K. A full contingent 
of research staff, as well as four Applied Task Forces are 
to be stationed at ADCA-11. Currently, those assigned 
task forces are: 


¢ ATF Indianapolis-13 "Killboys" 
¢ ATF Detroit-11 "Blessed Rain" 
¢ ATF Atlanta-9 "Sherman's March" 


¢ ATF Nevada-s "Firestarters" 


In addition to the standard construction of the Pietrykau- 
Fontaine Array, several significant modifications have 
been made since the discovery of SCP-001: 


¢ The addition of three additional lvorycannon-Class 

liquid fluoride thorium reactors to balance 

additional energy loads. 

Nine Class-VI magnesium-alloy suspension rings 

to maintain structural integrity of the array, 

* Sixteen Scranton-Kempf harmonic dampeners to 

control excessive energy output. 

Three Polycott deflector dishes to control 

excessive energy output. 

Eight Weldon-Stanley fused-energy sinks to 

control excessive energy output. 

* The construction of a DEEPWELL borehole! to 
vent and control excessive energy output. 

* One Autonomously Intelligent Response Vector2 to 
manage complex temporal-spatial calculations. 


Should a destabilization event occur, the FORTY DAYS 
protocol is to be implemented: 


The acting site administrator will initiate a full evacuation 
of the facility, which will begin a forty minute countdown. 


T-MINUS 40 MINUTES: Evacuation order is given. 


T-MINUS 33 MINUTES: After a seven minute evacuation 
window, sluice gates that run into the nearby river will 
open, flooding the lower portions of the facility. 


T-MINUS 31 MINUTES: Charges situated around the 
test chamber will fire after nine minutes, collapsing the 
test chamber and basement level into the DEEPWELL 
borehole. 


T-MINUS 21 MINUTES: Additional charges set across 


enough already. Nobody's listening to that. What is the 
statue saying?" 

Subject D-481-1: "Lonely, oh God, so lonely... her 
partner's gone. She has nobody to talk to now. Nobody 
to complete her." 

[note: the particular SCP-531 the subject is interacting 
with used to be Dr. [REDACTED], who was indeed 
female. Subject was not prompted with knowledge about 
the statue's former gender. ] 

Dr. [REDACTED]: "What's her name?" 

Subject D-481-1: "I don't... uh... Oh God. | don't know. 
Please let me stop looking at her!" 

Dr. [REDACTED]: "None of us are forcing you. Talk to 
your partner about that." 


(as 


[0:45] 

[Subject is still crouched and breathing is labored but 
subject is no longer trembling. Subject's clothing has 
begun crumbling into a fine powder, with large sections 
peeling away to expose unnaturally smooth and bronze- 
tinted skin. The shape of the subject's body is also more 
noticeably feline at this point. Subject's eyes now 
resemble polished amber stones and are unable to blink, 
though tears continue to leak from their corners.] 

Dr. [REDACTED]: "Are you still resisting her?" 

Subject D-481-1: "Yes... bastard..." 

Dr. [REDACTED]: "Keep it up, we're getting great data." 
Subject D-481-1: [sobbing laugh] "Says... can't help... 
says... you're a... bastard too..." 

Dr. [REDACTED]: "Oh? Perhaps, but I'm a bastard who 
follows safety protocols better than she did." 


Rl 


[1:09] 

[Subject is now almost indistinguishable from the other 
SCP-531. Its skin has a fully metallic sheen and its 
immobile body is shaped like a large cat. Vital signs 
telemetry indicates less than one beat per minute heart 


the entire site will fire, collapsing the entire structure into 
the borehole. 


T-MINUS 6 MINUTES: Charges set in the mountainside 
will fire, causing a landslide that will fill and cap the 
DEEPWELL before being sealed by a set of locking steel 
plates designed to extend out over the full width of the 
borehole. 


T-MINUS 0 MINUTES: The on-site nuclear device 
located at the base of the borehole will fire, destroying 
SCP-001. 


In the event that the "FORTY DAYS" Protocol does not 
prove sufficient to destroy the anomaly, all designated 
Foundation Overseers, regional administrators, directors, 
and executives are to report to Overwatch Command 
(Site-01) and await implementation of the Tredecim 
Protocol. 


Activation of the Tredecim Protocol constitutes the 
beginning of a 3!va-Class "Darkbody" End-of-All-Worlds 
scenario. All Foundation staff members will be alerted to 
the beginning of this protocol, which signals the 
immediate dissolution of the SCP Foundation and 
termination of all staff contracts. Due to the nature of a 
JMa-Class scenario, no additional information will be 
provided past the initial notice. 


For more information on the Tredecim Protocol, see 
Addendum 001.6. 


Updated Containment Memorandum: This file has 
been classified LEVEL 5 - OVERSEER EYES ONLY. All 
personnel remaining at Area-11 have been reassigned 
and amnesticized. All Applied Task Forces have been 
reassigned and amnesticized. Management of 
containment will be handled solely by the NETZACH 
system, under Overseer supervision. Identification and 
implementation of the 40 DAYS Protocol will be carried 


out solely by the NETZACH system. No other personnel 
are authorized to view this file. 


Description: SCP-001 is a humanoid gravitational 
singularity currently contained within the Area-11 
Pietrykau-Fontaine Array. SCP-001 is immeasurably 
dense; only by mitigating its effect on spacetime through 
the use of Scranton-Kempf devices are Foundation 
personnel able to maintain the structural integrity of the 
Spatial Stabilization Array. SCP-001 is not visible without 
specialized equipment (usually high-contrast infrared 
cameras), as it is constantly surrounded by a dense 
cloud of radioactive gas and atomized debris. 
Additionally, being a singularity, SCP-001 does not 
reflect light, and is visible only by the obfuscation of light 
around it. 


SCP-001 is capable of manipulating the nature of reality 
through alterations in gravity that change the shape and 
structure of spacetime. As such its anomalous 
capabilities cannot be dampened by anything other than 
the Pietrykau-Fontaine array*, and alterations to 
spacetime made by SCP-001 are irreversible. 


Addendum 001.1 


Initial Manifestation 


On June 19th, 1982, a team of Foundation researchers 
headed up by Dr. Lamar Fontaine® were in the process 
of running engineering trials on the Pietrykau-Fontaine 
Spatial Stabilization Array, a device intended for use in 
containing anomalies that manipulate the nature of 
spacetime®. During these trials, a particle accelerator 
was used to create superheavy oganesson, which would 
in turn collapse on itself to create a miniaturized 
singularity. This procedure had been carried out on 
several other occasions, with each of the singularities 
destabilizing quickly after manifesting. The June 19th 
trial was intended as a scale up test of the procedure.