SCP-5000: Bluegrass Elysium

Included page "component:scp-offices-theme" does not exist (create it now)

THIS FILE IS LEVEL 3/5000 CLASSIFIED

---

The following file is Level 3/5000 classified and may contain cognitohazardous information.

Unauthorized access is at personal risk.

Item#: 5000

Level3

Containment Class:

safe

Secondary Class:

none

Disruption Class:

keneq

Risk Class:

warning

link to memo

---

Special Containment Procedures: A copy of SCP-5000 is stored at Site-15 in a standard anomalous item locker. Access may be granted to persons with Level 3 clearance, authorization from the current Site-15 containment manager, and due cause. Digitized versions may also be acquired. All other copies are to be immediately destroyed. In the event that SCP-5000 is subject to further publication, units Alfa through India of Task Force Achilles-12 are to contain all instances through enactment of previously devised protocol. Persons suffering from SCP-5000-1 are to be treated with Class-C amnestics and provided sufficient financial restitution.

Under no pretext is Bluegrass Elysium to be the subject of public reading, performance, or other exhibition.

Description: SCP-5000 is a hardcover play script published in November 1993 by Warburton & Company, Ltd. The front cover bears the title "Bluegrass Elysium - A New Drama by Anonymous" and the silhouette of a man in a trenchcoat. The back cover reads:

Three men are floating in the lake. Their faces are disfigured with cuts and bruises. There is one man in Chicago who can solve their slaying, and his name is Cole Haywood.

Bluegrass Elysium is a noir drama for eleven men, seven women, and an evening audience.

For licensing information, please contact Warburton & Co. Licensing Dept. at 308 Winchester St., Seattle, WA.

Upon completion of a reading of the full text of SCP-5000, subjects will become affected by various memes present within the script, causing altered behavioural and mental states within the subject. Performances of SCP-5000 have an equal potential to transmit these memes through their recital of all or a vast majority of the text of SCP-5000 to an audience.

The document is a 3-act play of the noir mystery genre, depicting a private detective attempting to solve a triple homicide before the police can in order to win a reward. Throughout the text, SCP-5000 shows signs of deliberate and precise engineering to promote specific behavioural responses in subjects, including greater feelings of euphoria and self-actualization, creative inspiration, and trust in corporate entities, specifically film production companies and talent agencies. In ~65% of documented cases of persons affected by SCP-5000, subjects have developed a mental illness referred to herein as SCP-5000-1.

It is currently hypothesized that an organization whose identity is unknown to the Foundation oversaw the writing and publishing of SCP-5000, as the script is attributed anonymously and there is no Winchester Street in Seattle, nor a Warburton and Company active in publishing. SCP-5000 was removed from public circulation over a four-month period by the Foundation in 1994, alongside all newsprint mentioning its existence, through a covert operation by divisions Alpha through India of Task Force Achilles-12 (“Manufacturing Consent”) in tandem with Mobile Task Force Gamma-5 (“Red Herrings”).

Discovery: sapph if you're reading this please insert something i can't think of a good discovery story -kyotogrand

A Memetics Department investigation, overseen by department director Dr. Kyorosuke Yabuki, revealed that the script contained signs of anomalous memetic engineering and insertion of memetic triggers. Following these discoveries, Bluegrass Elysium was redesignated SCP-5000, and containment efforts began.

+ SCP-5000 Preliminary Meeting

The following meeting occurred on 11.2.1994 between research and administrative personnel, as well as representatives from Task Force Achilles-12 and Mobile Task Force Gamma-5 to discuss the currently breached containment of SCP-5000.

---

Attending Personnel:

• Dr. Ignacio Galvis, Site-15 Containment Director
• Dr. Kyorosuke Yabuki, Site-15 Memetics Director/Acting Project Lead
• Hugh Campbell, Junior Memetics Researcher
• John Hook, Site-15 Acquisitions Director
• Sophie Moriarty, Task Force Achilles-12, Alpha Division
• Edward Stuyvesant, Task Force Achilles-12, Hotel Division
• Cpt. Oliver Salgueiro, Mobile Task Force Gamma-5

---

{BEGIN LOG}

Yabuki: Good morning everyone. Erm, Oliver - can I call you Oliver? - it's great to meet you. Take your seats, there's refreshments provided, et cetera, et cetera… Let's see, we are recording… Um, as you know, this is a coordination meeting on the newly christened SCP-5000. Hugh?

Campbell: Of course. Let me grab this slide… (click)

Yabuki: That is SCP-5000. You may notice that the whole cover is redacted - that's because every scrap of it's a cognitohazard, even the typeface. It's a play called Bluegrass Elysium, by an anonymous author. It's been in public hands since October, and we've only known about it since December nineteeth. The book's transmitting memes visually, linguistically, typographically… it's got a whole host of effects, too. Trust in corporations, creative inspiration, and a bunch of other stuff. I'd, uh, show you an actual copy but I'd have to hand out amnestics afterwards.

(Stuyvesant chuckles.)

Yabuki: According to current models of publication and spread, we're looking at a medium-to-large containment breach of about two thousand copies out of the printing house and into stores and civilian hands. That's what we're all here about. Now, I've been assured that I can get several divisions of Manufacturing Consent on this project. Including… most of the manpower of Alpha Division. Ms. Moriarty?

Moriarty: That's right. (shuffling through papers) Alpha sent some data to the mainframe at Site-01 for logistics simulations. I've got a hundred fifty page report on the results in front of me. Most of the report is dedicated to max and min spread calculations. Assuming that each of two thousand copies is purchased and read by one civilian each, and seventy percent retain the memes, that's fourteen hundred infected persons.

(Yabuki whistles.)

Moriarty: Our educated guess is Warburton and Co was printing for supply, not demand. Realistically eight hundred might be purchased and we can destroy the rest before they're out of stores. Assuming eighty percent of eight hundred separate copies are read - and that's a lot of people for a play script with no marketing - and you've got a little under five hundred fifty infectees. I'd say that's very manageable for Achilles-12 and Gamma-5 working in tandem, Dr. Yabuki.

Yabuki: Mr. Stuyvesant, your thoughts?

Stuyvesant: (clearing throat) Ahem. Hotel Division is currently preparing for mobilization around the Pacific Northwest. One of our teams is attempting to make contact with the company. We can get a significant order if we come up with convincing papers. Pick out a space, set up a convincing soulless town bookstore in a day or two, get the delivery and take out a twentieth of stock. After that it's just a quick dismantle. As for civvies, I'd leave that to Oliver and his crew. He's dealt with worse before, I know.

Salgueiro: Sure have. Five hundred fifty people, all with paper trails and receipts, is very doable. We can use memetically-targeted Class-A amnestics if we've got the time - the boys have a lot of experience with those.

Yabuki "Memetically-targeted Class-A amnestics"? Is that a new technology?

Salgueiro: Not at all, no. We've been using them since '87. You seed your subject with memetic triggers tuned to the memories you're trying to deconsolidate. Activate them, and they'll remember all of them vividly at once, like their life's flashing before their eyes. That's when we make them inhale the Class-As. Works like a dream. We stick the memes in broadcast and print media, plus ads. It needs a few weeks for the insertions to set, but then we're on Easy Street.

Yabuki: Will we have the time?

Salgueiro: It doesn't look like SCP-5000's super virulent. I absolutely think so.

Yabuki: We should begin preparing that. Right now, we need to get copies of SCP-5000 out of civilian hands. John, what's the status of your agents?

Hook: Most of the Acquisitions agents are on standby. We haven't handled a containment breach here in a couple years.

Yabuki: Mobilize them. I dug up some papers from UPS detailing a delivery run. Bunch of small orders for ten or twenty books from specialty stores across the Pacific Northwest. Picked em up from a warehouse in Portland. That's enough of a paper trail that you can start operations posthaste.

Hook: What's the cover story?

Yabuki: Safety recall. Who would leave a book infested with black mould on a shelf?

Hook: I like how you think. Fax me those papers and I can have boots on the ground by the twentieth. Where do you want them?

Yabuki: I want to keep them here. Right now, continuing research dictates we have a few on hand in case we have to destroy a couple in experiments. We can start getting rid of them when we're at a better point in our research.

Hook: I'll start working on the mobilization order.

Yabuki: Then it looks like we're good to go.

{END LOG}

hey sapph! if you're reading this, please insert whatever you see fit. maybe do some lines from the play. or some administrative logs showing yabuki indirectly losing his shit. if you think you've got a good grasp on yabuki's characterization, please feel free to write some logs! - kyotogrand

+ Recovered from Dr. Yabuki's Office

The following audio diary, stored on several cassettes, was discovered in Dr. Yabuki's office on 6.6.1994.
I've been using the following code for the begin/end log titles

= [[size 120%]]**{(BEGIN/END) LOG}**[[/size]]

---

Critique credits for author post:
Conceptual:
Cyvstvi13
AlanDaris does not match any existing user name
Doctor Fullham