Per 
working title “Almost a Chrystal Ball"/Dimensional telescope
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object class: Safe
Special containment procedures:
When not in use, SCP-XXXX shall be kept in a safe in the administrative offices of the site, to prevent unauthorised use or theft.
Staff selected for work with SCP-XXXX must be vetted for exceptional mental stability and for a strong circadian rhythm, being able to get sleep reliably.
Description: SCP-XXXX is a small humanoid bronze figurine like the bronze figurines of the Aegean bronze age.
It was stolen from a supplier of Marshall, Carter and Dark by a Global Occult Coalition operative gone rogue; following his death it ended up with a field agent of the Foundation.
Properties: People who sleep with the figurine nearby have more REM sleep.
Coincidental discoveries that are rare in the real world can be glimpsed in the dreams of the multitude of dream realities, giving useful clues for solving real-world problems. An analogy would be the different states of a quantum computer.
Examples: The discovery of the wreck of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
The discovery of the third interstellar asteroid.
Identifying the weak link in the HIV virus protein envelope.
Interpretation: As our reality constantly branches out in a multiverse of different timelines with different outcomes of events, each timeline develops its own separate history.
SCP-XXXX can use dreams to glimpse fragments of those realities. It is a dimensional telescope, linking directly to the brain of the user. The creators likely had a brain morphology that did *not* require sleep to interact with the SCP.
Sometimes, an event that has happened in the dreams may happen within two or three days in the real world. Note the time horizon is much shorter than for SCP-089 or SCP-2003.
Many accidental events and discoveries only occur in a small number of time lines but if the realities available are infinite, there will always be one where where the observer can gain a useful insight.
- We live in a reality where an accident led to the discovery of antibiotics. Now take all fortunate accidents glimpsed in the "paratime" and the opportunities are only limited by the bandwidth of SCP-XXXX.
Interviewed: Researcher I. Tichy
Interviewer: Dr Kelvin
Foreword: Excerpt of transcript from interview with field agent I. Tichy
(the full transcript is available as document XX-NNNNN-NNN)<Begin Log>
Dr Kelvin: So, please repeat what you told your supervisor.
Tichy: You have read the notes he [the late GOC operative] left, I can only use conjecture to fill in the gaps. So you have this bigwig in the Global Occult Coalition, dedicated to finding and destroying SCPs. But he gets bad news from his doctor, and rules go out the window when your days are running out.
I assume he used the resources of the GOC to intercept and decrypt messages going between Marshall, Carter and Dark and their local associates in the field. One day, an agent in the Aegean mentions he is holding a very special item for delivery, and [redacted] pounces. He skipped over the details, but not only did he steal the object from under Marshall, Carter and Dark, he gets away with it, even though they have politicians and senior police at their beck and call…
Dr Kelvin: You are forgetting any number of paranormal “tracker” entities… just knowing how he evaded them would be nearly as valuable as the artefact itself. Never mind, go on.
Tichy: And now he uses the figurine to peek into alternate time lines, he picks up snippets of medical information, but nothing useful for his particular problem. It makes sense; even if another reality has a cure, you need to learn how it works, how certain medical molecules are produced… He ran out of time, and you know the rest.
Dr Kelvin: -But why did he pack down the item and his notes and have it shipped to you?
Tichy: -You know about the expedition? One of the few joint ventures between GOC and the Foundation, trying to solve an old problem. We were both there.
Dr Kelvin: Yes, but I specifically want to know about your relation.
Tichy: The relation was, we were going after the Old World pseudochupacabra. The expedition went bad in a big way. He credited me with saving him from bleeding out, although that may have been an exaggeration on his part.
Dr Kelvin: That was not in the report.
Tichy: Report? We had multiple fatalities, the paperwork was not a top priority.
Dr Kelvin: Never mind. Have you tested the artefact on your own?
Tichy: I kept it around for two weeks, just to make sure it was for real, then I contacted you. It seems to need a week to adjust to the user, at first I only got nightmares.
Dr Kelvin: And later on?
Tichy: As [redacted] wrote, it is easy to get a warning of major disasters, just pick up a newspaper in the…dreamland? Paratime?
Dr Kelvin: You can call it whatever you prefer.
Tichy: Anyway, if a disaster has not happened already in our timeline, it will either happen soon, or not at all.
Good news, unexpected discoveries and suchlike, it takes a lot more effort to discern those among all the chaotic impressions. I suspect the artefact was never intended for human input.Dr Kelvin: So who was it intended for?
Tichy: ETs? Maybe visitors from another timeline, not necessarily related to humans. The item gets left behind in bronze age Greece, and the people eventually develop an obsession with oracles that is stronger than other cultures.
Dr Kelvin: You are leaving out China.
Tichy: China got bogged down in astrology nonsense, like the Babylonians. Whatever inspired them, it wasn’t some supercivilisation.
Dr Kelvin: Did you make any progress in discovering “positive” information as distinct from warnings?
Tichy:: I think saving lives is “positive” … never mind. I found out the location of that missing airliner in the Indian Ocean. It was an accidental discovery, of course. If it had been a systematic search of that area, it would have been found in our reality. I sent the approximate coordinates to the Site manager for action and verification. I got confirmation yesterday, that is why you weren’t briefed about it.
Dr Kelvin: Why do we not run into these hypothetical “paratime” travellers today?
Tichy: The technology is probably destabilising, you get glimpses of new knowledge at a pace your society cannot safely absorb. Imagine a full understanding of uranium fission in 1933.
Worry instead about running into our friends with the crosses,[SCP-4730] they are still around and we need a way to predict their next strike.<End Log>
Closing Statement: [Small summary and passage on what transpired afterward]
Addendum 1:
Processes that can progress in a non-linear manner often have an earlier outcome in a parallel world than in our reality, providing a short-term warning if the event is harmful or a heads-up to exploit a good opportunity if the event is positive.
Since the SCP can only be used one researcher at a time, the *current* focus is to predict disasters (of an imminent nature), but more flexible procedures are under development.
Research is ongoing to find if persons with "savant syndrome" can be able to interface with the SCP without being asleep.
Bandwidth: Having three researchers sleep in 8-hour shifts has resulted at an average of 0.9 useful predictive information events (UPIEs) per 24-hour period.
Limitations: Harmful weather events are strongly affected by the butterfly effect and can rarely be predicted this way.
Addendum 2: SCP-4730; Defence and mutual assured destruction.
Creating a paratime "beacon": After creating a bronze figurine that copied the features of SCP-XXXX as "bait", a team of researchers were trained to locate the replica in a dream reality. First, in a nearby room, then in another building and finally at site 70.
When a raid by SCP-4730 finally occurred, at (redacted) 07.30 local time Dr Hamsun killed himself with a suicide vest during an attempted abduction by the intruders. The defensive force fell back, allowing intruders access to the forged SCP replica and then hit back in full force, making the intruders withdraw without reacing further into the site.
Afterwards, researchers were able to locate the figurine used as a focal point in the dream-accessed realities as it was undergoing assessment in the home cosmos of the intruders of SCP-4730.
Although it will take the Foundation decades to catch up on the dimensional transfer technology used by the hostiles, we now have "target lock". Once ut becomes possible to transfer thermonuclear devices, our world will have achieved Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) parity with the hostile society of SCP-4730.
