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Published:
2024-01-04
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2024-01-04
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1/?
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SCP 20XX and Related Documents

Summary:

All Foundation documentation related to SCP 20XX (“the Barrier”) and related SCPs. Only accessible to Foundation personnel with level four security clearance or above.

Notes:

My first introduction to the SCP Foundation was through a crossover between it and Undertale, believe it or not. Since then, I’ve seen a couple more, and all of them seem to focus on the standard SCP story - here’s a thing, here’s the box we locked it in, here’s the pile of corpses it cost us to do that.

Which is a perfectly good format you can tell a lot of interesting stories with, but I wanted to try something a little different. Specifically, what if the Foundation went for diplomacy first instead?

I want this to be understandable whether or not you’re well-versed in SCP Foundation lore, so I’ll be providing a glossary of the terms that appear in each chapter to that effect. I’m not currently planning to include any “canon” Foundation personnel (whatever that word even means for something like the SCP Foundation) unless it’s as cameos, so if you recognize any names from that side of things it’s probably a coincidence.

Due to the difficulty in picking an SCP number that doesn’t already exist when more are created every day, all the SCP numbers native to this fic will be partially or fully redacted and I’ll use proper names whenever possible.

Glossary:

SCP Foundation: A secret organization dedicated to the research and containment of SCPs. Their motto is “secure, contain, protect”. They place a lot of effort into keeping the mundane world unaware of SCPs.

SCP: An object or entity that doesn’t follow the rules of reality as we know them. The Foundation assigns all SCPs a four digit identification number.

Object Class: How easy it is for the Foundation to contain an SCP.

“Safe” refers to SCPs that don’t require any extra effort to contain. You can lock them in a box and forget about them and nothing will happen.
“Euclid” refers to SCPs that need specific protocols to contain. Anything that needs to eat and drink, for example, will be Euclid at minimum.
“Keter” refers to SCPs that are difficult or impossible to permanently contain. Can be anything from a cat that randomly teleports to a literal, actual god.

These are the standard classes. There are also special ones, for SCPs that don’t quite fit into this system. The ones mentioned in this chapter:

“Apollyon” refers to SCPs that cannot be permanently contained and will inevitably escape and probably end the world, or at least the world as we know it. All containment procedures on these are stopgap measures designed to delay that as long as possible.
“Thaumiel” refers to SCPs that are used to contain other SCPs. The Barrier is a pretty textbook example of one of these.
“Archon” refers to SCPs that the Foundation has specifically chosen not to attempt to contain for whatever reason. The existence of this object class is one of the main inspirations behind me deciding to write this story. Make of that what you will.

Clearance/Classification Level: A way of saying who’s allowed to know what. Goes from one to five, with one being things anyone in the Foundation is allowed to access and five being stuff only the leaders of the Foundation are allowed to even think about.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: SCP 20XX (“The Barrier”)

Chapter Text

Item: SCP 20XX

 

Object Class: Thaumiel

 

Special Containment Procedures:

 

A Foundation research installation is to remain active within five miles of SCP 20XX. The personnel are to remain uninformed of this installation being in any way different from the average Foundation site, and are to go about their duties as normal.

 

Only Safe class SCPs are to be allowed on this site, and only with direct authorization from someone with sufficient clearance to access this document. No SCPs are to be allowed into SCP 20XX under any circumstances.

 

On-site Foundation personnel are to provide a monthly report on local geological activity, with special notice to earthquakes. They must also immediately inform their superiors of any missing persons reports from Ebott City, and the Foundation will send personnel to aid in the locating of said missing persons. If they do not succeed in locating the missing persons within [REDACTED] weeks, please refer to document [REDACTED].

 

No humans, Foundation associated or otherwise, are to climb Mt. Ebott without authorization from Class B or higher Foundation employees. Anyone found doing so is to be removed from the mountain immediately and barred from returning using whatever means necessary.

 

If someone climbs Mt. Ebott and cannot be retrieved, refer to document [REDACTED].

 

Description:

 

SCP 20XX (“the Barrier”) is a magical containment field encapsulating the interior of Mt. Ebott near Ebott City, Oregon. It has been present since sometime after the colonization of Oregon by American settlers and was implemented by a group of mages (believed to be seven in number) in order to confine something within.

 

Matter passes into the Barrier as if there is no obstruction, but is blocked from exiting. Objects or persons partially inserted into the barrier will be unable to retreat without removing the parts that have passed the threshold. Nothing has ever been successfully retrieved from within the barrier. Light, sound, radiation, psychic emanations, electricity, and many other things (for full details, please refer to document [REDACTED]) have all proved incapable of passing back through the barrier, though we have been able to certify that things that pass through it still exist on the other side and are at least relatively unharmed.

 

Due to both fragmented historical records and the nature of the Barrier itself, the exact nature of what lies within the Barrier is difficult to determine. Those who created it was extremely invested in ensuring that both its creation and its contents were forgotten, and they mostly succeeded in this.

 

What information the Foundation has been able to recover indicates that the Barrier was created for a religious purpose; to confine “the enemies of God” and prevent them from “unseating Him from His throne and guiding mankind into Hell”. The veracity of these claims is in question, however, as the other main source of information the Foundation has been able to locate (the personal diary of one of the mages who created the Barrier) indicates that it was instead created as a last ditch maneuver in order to protect an unspecified minority group from religious persecution.

 

The latter source also indicates that the Barrier will be broken upon being entered by seven humans total, claiming that “they will then come to seek their vengeance from us, us who have jailed them and slaughtered them and used them as chattel, and the God of the Englishmen will be slain and trouble this land no more”.

 

Due to surviving historical documents almost universally implying that those within the Barrier carry both extraordinary abilities and a large grudge, as well as the difficulty of preventing humans from entering and knowing how many may have done so prior to the Foundation’s involvement, the unknown SCPs within have been assigned Keter class, with the potential to be reclassified as Apollyon, Euclid, or Archon pending more verifiable information on their motives and threat level.

 

Addendum One:

 

Personally, I’d advise we just toss a nuke or two in and set the thing off. Sources don’t say anything about whatever’s in there being all that hard to kill, and if they’re really that strong I don’t see why we should risk leaving them alive.

 

-Doctor Jackson

 

Addendum Two:

 

Doctor Jackson got himself axed by pissing off an SCP that could’ve been Archon class if he hadn’t tried to murder it, which is now causing massive problems for everyone in charge of convincing it that he wasn’t representative of Foundation interests as a whole, so he can take his advice and shove it. 

 

I say we keep supervision on the site and meet whatever comes out with diplomats like civilized people. It’s not like the historical records tell us anything remotely useful anyway, it’s all just fearmongering and religious propaganda. Since when is that what we base our decisions off of?

 

-Doctor Weaver

Notes:

I’m setting the creation of the Barrier during the USA’s westward expansion because I think it makes more sense than most of the alternatives. I’m not planning to go into a ton of detail about the circumstances behind it in this fic because I don’t like writing about real people or groups committing fictional atrocities. It always feels to me too much like making light of the real ones.

This chapter is a sort of prologue. I’m planning to set the rest after the barrier is broken. That’s probably also when I’ll be able to start adding character tags.