akahomie

SCP-XYXY: “THE EXISTENCE OF CERTAIN HISTORICAL FIGURES”

So, I organized this idea a bit to clearly state the details and extent of the anomaly, as well as to make it more easily digestible and for the idea to be more easily evaluated. This is one of my first skip ideas, and I sincerely hope someone finds this skip-worthy or—at least—something that can be turned into a skip-worthy concept.

PART 1: CIRCUMSTANCE

The anomaly refers to the event in which the existence of a certain historical figure is remembered in numerous detailed, sometimes contradictory but similar-enough-to-be-recognizable-as-unified ways. However, the existence of this person cannot at all be verified other than subjective accounts. In other words, some people will absolutely, honestly remember them, but no real record of their life can be found. The person never existed and the memories are fake.

To distinguish from the regular badly documented parts of history, more signs must be observed in addition to the previous description for an SCP-XYXY event to be identified to have taken place. These are:

  1. Something like this: historical figure X (SCP-XYXY-1 instance) is widely known by historians and the public consciousness to have attended university Y when they were still alive. Numerous accounts from persons (SCP-XYXY-2 instances) who claim to have known figure X agree with this. These people make up all the historians’ sources regarding figure X. But no record whatsoever of figure X can be found in university Y, some personnel expressing surprise with this as they, too, clearly remember figure X as having attended university Y.
  2. Always conflicting accounts about the appearances of figure X. Always descriptions, drawings, paintings, or similar. Never photographs. SCP-XYXY-2 instances either offer conflicting descriptions from one another, or are not sure of figure X’s appearance entirely. The number of people who remember figure X can be any large figure, and the supposed details about figure X’s life can be a thousand times more consistent and detailed than real historical figures, but you will never, ever find out what figure X looks like regardless of how recent the SCP-XYXY event took place.
  3. SCP-XYXY-2 accounts originating after figure X's supposed death. As soon as the SCP-XYXY event has taken place and SCP-XYXY-2 instances have their memories, they will always remember figure X to be deceased or at least missing for quite some time. For this reason, pinpointing when an event took place can be tricky, as SCP-XYXY-2 instances could, for example, claim they are transcribing an orally passed down hometown tale, and that the person they are writing about has been dead for at least a century. Focusing on times cited by SCP-XYXY-2 instances, however, has proven to be a red herring. The time an SCP-XYXY event took place is when SCP-XYXY-2 acquired memories and started talking/writing/etc. about figure X.
  4. Impossibly hardy data, whether it be encoding, inscription, recordings, etc. as long as it is an accurate portrayal of something from SCP-XYXY-2 instances. Anything authored by figure X (designated SCP-XYXY-3) will have survived unscathed after the Library of Alexandria had burned down. Paintings, letters, diary entries will be recovered, say, washing ashore any amount of time after the fact. These will prove to be physically indestructible. This is how the Foundation identifies anomalies and pinpoints when SCP-XYXY events take place. Memories of SCP-XYXY-2 instances also cannot be wiped with amnestics, even if the identity of the subject is. These memories about figure X will persist even through reality-restructuring events.

A disclaimer: SCP-XYXY events don’t only happen for well known historical figures. These are just the most easily identified. There can be non-existent ancestors, bosses, adoptive parents, lovers, siblings, neighbors, classmates, rivals, you name it. And these events happen so very often in our specific timeline that the understanding and subsequent containment of SCP-XYXY has been an issue for the Foundation for a long time due to 1) the threats for information security breaches and 2) the obvious implications if a figure of importance within the Foundation is proven to be an SCP-XYXY-1 instance.

For clarity, here are the numerical designations for the second time:

  • SCP-XYXY refers to the phenomenon.
  • SCP-XYXY-1 refers to the non-existent persons.
  • SCP-XYXY-2 refers to the real persons who possess memories of SCP-XYXY-1 instances.
  • SCP-XYXY-3 refers to any so called “proofs of existence” of SCP-XYXY-1 instances, such as supposedly authored writing, art, music, etc. or generally anything that can be attributed to SCP-XYXY-1 instances. Any indestructible data about figure X is also included here. Attributed events don’t fall into this category, since those events… definitely couldn’t have happened, and so they’re just like any other SCP-XYXY-2 memory.

PART 2: CAUSE

Short answer:

It’s a timeline fuckup.

Long answer:

My personal interpretation of different timelines is that, instead of being fully separate, they function much like webs. They’re (ideally) mostly independent and have their own trajectories based on things that happen within the timeline. But, in this regard, similar timelines tend to be more prone to intersect trajectories—very briefly, and only with a few small aspects. The general rule I see are that once you’ve intersected with a really similar timeline (what I call “branch-offs,” meaning they were initially parallel timelines), you’re more likely to intersect again. There are very unique timelines with weirder configurations of the universe, and then there are very similar timelines which seem to share a lot of starting conditions, played their probability dice the same way, and only differ in small aspects.

Every timeline has its quirks. The relevant quirk of our timeline is that it’s really, really prone to causing people in this timeline to acquire memories of people from other timelines whenever our timeline intersects with another. OOC: I know this is a really plain cause to the skip, but this part of the skip is still fluid to me and can be changed so that this cause has a more climactic, deeper underlying cause. Until then, I prefer to think of the cause as This Thing Is A Thing That Happens Sometimes, Please Carry On so that the focus is more on the implications, and how the Foundation deals with them.

PART 3: COUNTERMEASURE

The Foundation's main goal regarding SCP-XYXY is to preserve normalcy at all costs. This means that they actively work on keeping the status quo, and making sure as little people as possible find out about how much of our significant history turns out to be… non-existent people. This is pretty much the only thing the Foundation can do as long as the mechanism of the anomaly is poorly understood, and the apparent cause ("A Thing That Happens Sometimes") gives them absolutely nothing to work with.

Also, mentioned earlier, a much bigger concern for the Foundation is trying to find out any and all Foundation personnel who are actually SCP-XYXY-1 instances. Over the years, quite a few personnel have been revealed to be as such, with their work/research being SCP-XYXY-3 instances and them sometimes even having declared family members who turn out to be real people.

If SCP-XYXY doesn't seem that problematic by itself, that's because it isn't. SCP-XYXY is only problematic for the Foundation due to the nature of SCP-XYXY-3 instances. The people may not have existed, but if an SCP-XYXY-1 instance was Foundation personnel who researched a number of SCP objects/entities, then their research is still 100% real and the data indestructible. So, if the SCP-XYXY-1 instance was high-ranking personnel with highly classified work and research, then anyone who knows they are an SCP-XYXY-1 instance and wanted those highly classified research data would have the ultimate immunity against any disinformation because they know the nature of SCP-XYXY-3 instances.

And, since the memories of SCP-XYXY-2 instances are similarly untouchable, highly ranked Foundation personnel who are SCP-XYXY-1 instances becomes an even bigger problem.

PART 4: FLUFF

OOC: okay so this idea, if it were to be made into a skip, still needs a lot of things. The most important, I think, is deciding who to be made into SCP-XYXY-1 instances. This is because I think exploring SCP-XYXY-1, 2, and 3 instances would be the meat of the article and could be the frame in which the more specific details/extent/implications of the anomaly are explored. One of my earliest ideas to have this skip stir a shitstorm in the Foundation is to have an O5 member be an SCP-XYXY-1 instance, and explore the subsequent inevitable breaches of information security. I also have a fully fleshed out character who is an SCP-XYXY-3 instance, both parents being SCP-XYXY-1 instances. As it is, I'm trying to get as much feedback as possible so this idea can be more skip-worthy. To anyone reading this: please tell me what you think.

PS: As for the document, if this article were to be made, I also have a few ideas about presentation. First, I think (due to the consequences and implications presented in part 3) this skip would be Lv. 5 classified. So the article would first present a facade SCP document that describes SCP-XYXY as SCP-XYXY-3. In other words, non-Lv. 5 personnel would think that SCP-XYXY instances are just indestructible data, and the document emphasizes in particular that the things stated by the instances are false, and should be reported to prevent disinformation. Then, at the end of the document, a prompt for verifying identity in order to get Lv. 5 access appears. This exposes the real document which details the full extent of the skip.