SCP-2188

Life and Times of Joaquín Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe

Agent Esquivel (far right) and Mr. Izquierdo (second from right) at an artist's gathering in Montevideo, Uruguay, 1972

Special Containment Procedures

Anomalous activity related to SCP-2188 has ceased as of 29 July 1998. In accordance with safety procedures, SCP-2188 maintains an active Euclid classification until the cautionary minimal observation period expires in 2023. In the unlikely event of a resumption of SCP-2188 activity, personnel are instructed to notify the director of Site-41, as well as the Sector G Transreality Artwork Research Collective (S-TARC), immediately.

While local assets have not been deemed necessary for containment of SCP-2188 at this time, Agent Roberto Esquivel is currently stationed in Dotson, Nebraska, United States as part of a special post-retirement assignment and is available on an as-needed basis.

Description

SCP-2188 was an anomalous relationship between an individual in Uruguay and the residents of a town in the United States. This relationship comprised the following:

Joaquín Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe, a semi-transient person residing primarily in Montevideo, Uruguay during his lifetime. Mr. Izquierdo is believed to have been born in 1943, in an unnamed village in the Department of Treinta y Tres, Uruguay. No reliable documentation exists of Mr. Izquierdo prior to 1961, when Uruguyan authorities issued him a work permit.

Mr. Izquierdo came to the attention of Foundation assets based in the Buenos Aires Regional Office in 1965, when he was arrested by Uruguay's Interior Police for attempting to smuggle live specimens of the Paraguaian hairy dwarf porcupine into Argentina. This coincided with a file report of an individual in the United States region of Nebraska conducting what was termed a "performance art" demonstration of an extended tango dance routine while his partner pierced him thirty-three times with porcupine quills.

Several attempts at containment were made once researchers understood the causal effects Mr. Izquierdo's actions had on residents of the town of Dotson, Nebraska, United States. Observation and several experiments determined that allowing Mr. Izquierdo to live a relatively normal life while being protected from severe harm (sometimes logically expected from his actions) was the most likely course of action to minimize potentially harmful actions among residents of Dotson and prevent widespread public knowledge of SCP-2188. Agent Roberto Esquivel was accordingly assigned as a clandestine overseer for Mr. Izquierdo in 1967.

Over the next several decades, Mr. Izquierdo lived itinerantly throughout the various barrios of Montevideo, becoming known to local residents as a benevolent vagrant (as well as a noted eccentric), most likely to be involved with the city's more impoverished residents, orphaned children, and street artists. Between the efforts of Agent Esquivel and Mr. Izquierdo's support in the community, containment was preserved until Mr. Izquierdo's death in 1998, with minimal negative impacts to the town of Dotson.

The town of Dotson, Nebraska, United States, a rural farming community of 5,137 residents¹. From no later than 1965 to 1998, significant events occurring in the life of Joaquín Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe would affect the mental state of the town's residents. This relationship appears to have ceased with the death of Mr. Izquierdo in 1998.

The effects of Mr. Izquierdo's actions on residents of Dotson primarily took the form of impulses towards artistic or creative endeavors, though in some cases the extreme nature of several artworks could be classed as a form of temporary mental illness². As a sum result of Mr. Izquierdo's anomalous influence, the town of Dotson was host to a sophisticated artistic subculture, one that in the findings of S-TARC "greatly exceeds baseline levels of creative development found in comparable population centers and cultural regions³". This subculture has become inculcated in the social conventions of the town, and continues to develop subsequent to the death of Mr. Izquierdo, albeit in a manner consistent with anthropological norms documented in mainstream science.

SCP-2188 appears to have affected between 15-25% of the population of Dotson. Preliminary reports indicated a much higher affected population; however, S-TARC studies in the 1970s determined that residents' higher-than-expected receptiveness to artistic works (including those of a radical nature) was a natural result of exposure to the elevated level of creative activity in the town. Despite the noteworthiness achieved by Dotson in local and national media due to Mr. Izquierdo's anomalous influence, the discovery of the true nature of SCP-2188 was deemed to be a minimal security risk. As such, no containment procedures were deemed necessary in Dotson.

In accordance with Directive 2188-03.17, Mr. Izquierdo is interred in Misty Veil Cemetery, located 2 km outside of Dotson town limits.

===SYSTEM NOTICE=== PERSONNEL PREFERENCES REFERENCED AND LOGGED. TRANSLATING PRIMARY DOCUMENTATION FROM SPANISH to ENGLISH

Field Report 2188.1 - Introductions

Date: 17 April 1967

Summary: Agent Esquivel, per the terms of containment set by the Research Director, establishes a relationship with Joaquín Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe. This is intended to facilitate future contacts, build trust with the subject, and enable efforts to protect the subject from undue harm and therefore ensure relative normalcy for the residents of Dotson.

Result: Successful action

+ Access Additional Documentation

Title	Artists	Medium	Description
S-TARC Listing of Related Artworks - FR2188.1
Tea with Strangers	Willie John Lincoln	Blues Song	Performed for the first time at Redfeather's Tavern by Mr. Lincoln, playing unaccompanied on acoustic guitar
Sunrise: Apollo	John Grauber	Mural, oil paint	6 m tall depiction of the Greek deity Apollo playing the lyre with a sunrise in the background. Painted on the side of a barn belonging to Mr. Grauber's employer
Mount Ararat	Rebecca Moorad	Short story	Unpublished narrative concerning two archaeologists looking for evidence of Noah's Ark trapped together at a dig site by a freak blizzard. The two men, Robert and Paul, initially wary of each other, learn to pool their resources in order to survive. The men share tea, which both have brought in abundance, a crucial plot point in the closing paragraphs of the story.

Field Report 2188.4 - Lalo's Elegy

Date: 23 August 1967

Summary: Mr. Izquierdo requests Agent Esquivel's assistance on an errand in the barrio of La Figurita.

Result: Minor injuries to Agent Esquivel, two civilians subdued with non-lethal weaponry.

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ACCESS GRANTED

Agent Comments: At 11 o'clock, I saw Mr. Izquierdo appear at the park bench. I have noticed that for a person of the streets, he is strangely punctual.

The subject had requested my aid to help organize a gathering of the local poets in La Figurita. I remarked to him at our last meeting that the poets of La Figurita weren't very good, and that most of their writings centered around being taken to the hospital after drinking too much. He laughed at that, but was undeterred in his mission.

He explained that all I need do was accompany him for a few hours. "I need a man with violence in him" he explained as he looked me over. He is not wrong, but I was dismayed at his reading of me.

We walked to a shabby part of the neighborhood with no streetlights. This was well, because the brightly colored paint on the splintered facades of the rowhouses were illumination enough. At a lime green doorway, we stopped. Mr. Izquierdo knocked, a strange, rata-tat-tat-rata-tat knock that must have been code of some sort. The door parted a crack, and a face with a roadmap of lines, but not a single gray hair, appeared from the darkness. What did we want, he asked.

Mr. Izquierdo answered immediately. "We need to use this house tonight. Poetry recital."

"Impossible" the man said, "this is a place of commerce."

"Get a load of this guy," Mr. Izquierdo said to me as he laughed, "a real businessman. How does fifteen guys at a ten peso cover sound for your business?"

The face disappeared momentarily. Some hushed conversation in the darkness took place before it reappeared in the doorway.

"We agree to your terms." The door opened.

We stepped inside of a predictable hovel, the floor littered with bottles and needles. A few junkies were passed out along the walls of the front room. The first poets arrived soon after, and the night must be described as a success, for it was at least twenty people crammed in there when all was accounted for. Mr. Izquierdo called for silence, and beckoned the first reader to step to the middle of the room. He proceeded to read some odious doggerel, and I envied the unconscious bum laying next to me.

On and on it dragged. I had heard of time anomalies in my work, and wondered at my fate here. Then, Mr. Izquierdo pointed to the man who had been at the door when we arrived. "Lalo! It's your turn!"

Our doorkeeper stepped into the middle of the crowd, hesitantly, which struck me as funny since he was the most fearsome-looking man in the room. He pulled a piece of folded paper out of his filthy denim jacket, and I readied myself for the resumption of the dreary onslaught.

What sticks in my mind most was his soft voice as he began his reading. He with the face that belonged in a prison yard, but I had to struggle to hear him as he read his piece. His story unfolded in short, clipped sentences as the room grew ever more quiet. He had been to America, from the nothingness of his native farmlands to the nothingness of foreign farmlands. The work was backbreaking as ever, the poverty covering everything like a layer of old dust just like back home. But now there was loneliness, like he could have never imagined. In time he met a friend, though. A Chilean, he said with a smirk that shocked me when it came. With someone to talk to, the work was not so bad, and at least he could drink and laugh and fight with someone when it was done. Then the Chilean was caught in a grain silo, drowning in the plentiful bounty of an American corn field. I don't know what I expected next, but it was not for this Lalo to begin howling like a wolf, which he did. It should have been ridiculous, but the fury and the pain in this man's voice, the mourning for his friend buried in a foreign land, it demanded acceptance. When Lalo finished, the entire room was completely silent.

Then the police came.

Our experiences with law enforcement being what they are, and the safety of Mr. Izquierdo being my charge, I elected to begin swinging the small club concealed in my coat before asking questions as the cops raided the place. In these affairs, the police always find their man, their man being whoever happened to be around in a den of narcotics. I fought my way out as the poets scattered, Mr. Izquierdo by my side. Someone landed a decent punch to my ribs and I came out with a cut to my forehead, the identities of my attackers forever lost to the churning scene of drugs, poetry and loss we had left behind.

In the safety of a nearby alley, Mr. Izquierdo was doubled over with laughter, wiping tears from his eyes at the apparent hilarity of the scene that he had caused.

"Violence in an accountant, and art in a drug pusher!" he wheezed. "The poetry of La Figurita shall improve after tonight, I tell you!"

Title	Artists	Medium	Description
S-TARC Listing of Related Artworks - FR2188.4
Bust of Papi	Calvin Medina	Sculpture (marble)	A bust sculpture depicting Mr. Medina's deceased father, an itinerant farm laborer from Mexico. Mr. Medina suffered severe head injuries in a tractor accident on the same date that Field Report 2188.4 was filed. Mr. Medina recovered as normal, but proceeded to develop an intense interest in sculpture, culminating in this piece.
Guide to the Interworld	Carolyn Walsh	Dance	Performed at the Dotson Masonic Hall for an audience of sixty. Described by Ms. Walsh as a physical representation of Virgil guiding Dante through Hell. Ms. Walsh asked audience members to ingest a small dose of LSD prior to the performance, which most did. Ms. Walsh then encouraged to the audience to "attack" her at the end of the performance. While no serious acts of violence were committed, enough of a disturbance was raised that authorities were notified. Ms. Walsh was subsequently arrested by the Dotson Police Department after the performance; however, no formal charges were filed.
In Memory of Grandmother Moon	Bess Five Wolves	Comanche medicine ritual/performance art	With the assistance of two others, Ms. Five Wolves performed rites based upon traditional Comanche funerary practices to mark "the passing of the moon" in the middle of South Grange Avenue, disrupting afternoon traffic. Consisting of a series of dances, chants, ceremonial tobacco use, and other activities, the ritual lasted two hours, during which motorists left their vehicles to participate in various portions of the performance.

Field Report 2188.15 - The Virgin's Bonfire

Date: 14 November 1976

Summary: Agent Esquivel accompanies Mr. Izquierdo on a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Florida as part of the traditional Uruguayan veneration of the Virgin of the Thirty-Three.

Result: International incident between the United States of America and Uruguay. Foundation Department of External Affairs later negotiates resolution between the two nations with no lasting repercussions.

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ACCESS GRANTED

Agent Comments: Is Pablo a religious man? I still cannot tell, though he gets into enough trouble to be classified as a saint some day.

I drove into Conciliación, where Pablo had found his most recent rooftop dwelling, and found him waiting in front of the library. He jumped into the old dented-up Site-issue pickup truck, carrying a heroically-sized jug of Medio y Medio, and we sped away. And if in the course of leaving Montevideo we banged into a few road signs as we wrestled with the jug of wine, what the hell. A few more dents.

Pablo drank more than his half of the Medio y Medio of course, and told me all about the CIA contacts he had talked up before this pilgrimage. It is my business, of course, to know who is CIA, who is KGB, who is whatever in Montevideo, so I knew Pablo was full of shit, but in the spirit of the Blessed Virgin I let him have his fun. We stopped at what felt like every village along the way out to the country, where Pablo jumped out and reinforced our wine supplies, while urging everyone to come along on the pilgrimage. He must have been spending quite some time doing this before we left even, because the road became more and more crowded the closer we came to the Cathedral.

I knew that Pablo had arranged some sort of exhibition in Florida, and I still do not know how he managed to convince the Diocese to let that go on. Perhaps that is an SCP in itself. When we arrived, the plaza in front of the Cathedral was choked with people. They had arrived in the tens of thousands, more than anyone could remember.

The vendors who sell food and drink at the pilgrimage every year were ecstatic at first at the multitudes. Then Pablo emerged from our truck with a bullhorn (where the hell did he get a bullhorn?) and started blaring at the crowd as we drove on. "Do not purchase anything from these thieves! Maintain your holy fast, and manna shall rain down from the heavens this night!" he yelled, over and over. Though I had never expected a crowd of angry food sellers to be the ones to end Pablo, this situation was looking increasingly likely. I knew better by now than to be surprised.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked him, though really I was asking myself, driving this truck along with a loudspeakered maniac who was going to get us stoned to death with hardened bread rolls. Instead of answering, he instead directed me to a large clearing behind the cathedral. We parked nearby, and were greeted with more reinforcements of wine by a group of sculptors I had met previously with Pablo when we were walking through Bañados de Carrasco one night. As we drank and talked (uninterrupted, we had apparently lost the angry food-sellers), they presented to us their handiwork: three large, vaguely human-looking sculptures they called "The Father, The Son, and The Holy Smoke," each at least ten meters tall and made entirely of dry wood and straw. Fire, of course, would be involved.

That night, the time came to light each sculpture and start the towering bonfires. Pablo had invited everyone present to come and watch. I identified very much with these people who had come; I was curious to see the spectacle, and very hungry. Woe betide these sculptors if the show was unimpressive. Thousands of empty stomachs were likely to be harsh critics.

Pablo climbed up on top of the Foundation-issue truck, and with his now ever-present bullhorn, regaled the crowd with a somewhat different version of the legend of the Virgin of the Thirty-Three than I have ever heard (I remember fewer explosions), then commanded the sculptors to light their creations ablaze. The three figures immediately caught, and a trinity of spectacular columns of fire lit the backside of the cathedral and the surrounding clearing.

It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes of this display before we all heard the helicopters. There had to have been at least ten of them, passing over the brightly-lit clearing and the thousands of onlookers. Parcels began raining down on little parachutes, hundreds of them, all over the place. It wasn't long before the crowds tore into them, and Pablo's promised feast from the heavens materialized, courtesy of the United States government, who had very thoughtfully included generous amounts of alcohol of varying kinds. No one of course mentioned that the gathering was not the group of refugees fleeing repression in Argentina that they thought we were, as I was to find out later after I finally managed to roust Pablo from his slumber in the bed of my pickup truck. "Say the right words to the right people and light some beacons" was all he was able to get out as he clutched his head and squinted against the morning light.

I can only conclude that there must be more CIA operatives in Montevideo than we thought.

Title	Artists	Medium	Description
S-TARC Listing of Related Artworks - FR2188.15
Thirty-Three Verses of Suffering and Enlightenment	Zelda Hughes	Poetry	A book of thirty-three separate poems, collecting a series of poems read every Monday evening at the Dusty Crossroads Coffee House in downtown Dotson. Themes of sacrifice in the service of larger causes and resulting personal anguish are prevalent.
The Three Burnings of Thích Quảng Đức	Steven F. Braddock	Novel	Self-published narrative concerning Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk widely known for immolating himself as a form of protest against the policies of the South Vietnamese government. The book concerns Mr. Quảng Đức being reborn after his first self-immolation, and leading the same life over again with the knowledge of his previous life. The narrative consists of Mr. Quảng Đức's various self-justifications of his act, which vary widely over the course of the story, but always result in the same course of action.
Manna from the Heart of Stone	Reverend Francis Abernathy	Religious sermon⁴	A highly idiosyncratic sermon by the leader of the town's largest church, delivered outdoors at the burial site of an unidentified vagrant to the assembled congregation. Rev. Abernathy relates the story of Saint Augustus of Topeka, a heretofore-unknown religious figure in Christian theology. Relating the story in the form of a present-day allegory about then-United States Director of Central Intelligence George H.W. Bush, Rev. Abernathy describes a hard-hearted, powerful man, constantly forced into what he considers to be necessary acts of violence and destruction, before being reborn in a secret "trial by the spirit of fire" into an entirely different soul, dedicated instead to a life of generosity and service to the downtrodden. Rev. Abernathy then eulogized the vagrant at whose gravesite the congregation was assembled, claiming to have alone known the man's identity and deeds, but sworn to secrecy about both before he died.

Field Report 2188.31 - A Quiet Day at Home

Date: 28 August 1987

Summary: Mr. Izquierdo invites Agent Esquivel to watch a football match at the home of an acquaintance.

Result: Near-breach of containment of SCP-2188.

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ACCESS GRANTED

Agent Comments: We had some time to kill before the painters arrived. I had never known Pablo to posit himself as the subject of someone's work, but this was a special occasion, he told me, which had something to do with the nice house we were presently in, I am sure. I didn't really ask why the nice digs; Pablo was always "housesitting" for someone or other, usually an artistic patron sort with a crush on a beautiful boy in Pablo's orbit. The living arrangement typically ended when they ran up against the ferocity Pablo displayed in protection of his artists.

While we waited, it so happened that Defensor was playing Rentistas that afternoon, so we donned our purple kit and watched the game on a color television almost as big as some of the monitors at Site-87. The erstwhile residents of this house had excellent taste in mate, and Pablo brewed some during the commercial breaks. Between the excitement of the match and the buzzing in my head from what had to have been seven or eight cups of mate, I grew impatient to know why we were surrounded by eight blank canvases. Pablo explained the project to me.

"I have commissioned a series of self-portraits in an attempt to understand myself more," he said. "I am consumed lately by visions of myself in vast fields of wheat, chilled to my core by prairie winds. An alien landscape, certainly. But not an entirely unpleasant one! I feel a sort of connection to this place in my mind, and I must know more."

I knew why this was. Of course I knew why this was, but I could not tell him. It may amaze the researchers reading these dispatches, but I have not had need to be duplicitous with Pablo in the many years I have been his keeper. I dreaded him asking me for my insight, when all I could offer was lies. Quickly, to change the subject. Why self-portraits?

"There exists, Roberto, a dynamic relationship between the artist and his impetus. The artist depicts the concept, and in his depiction he changes the concept. You know, Heisenberg shit," waving his arms to demonstrate the scale of his thinking. "It is in the interplay of this relationship that we learn just what something is, and so I have called eight able artists to paint my portrait. Why am I seized with this vision of a place I have never been, so late in my years? I hope that this helps me to understand."

I couldn't help but blanch at this. To hold back from Pablo something of great importance to him. He must have seen my expression, and I hope to God he misread it. He leaned in, a whisper from a conspirator to his nervous partner in crime. "And you know, all of this would be terribly self-important and vain, of course, if the portraits were hanging in my own house!" He laughed at his joke, as was his prerogative, and then cheered wildly as Manteca buried an equalizer, and I don't know that I've ever enjoyed a Defensor goal as much as that one.

The artists arrived in the course of time, and got to work immediately, solemnly setting themselves to a task given to them by the great Joaquín Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe as the man himself distributed beer from the house's fridge. Each artist feverishly labored to get their vision of Pablo up on canvas, as though the greatest honor would go to he who finished first. I have never seen, before or since, a concerted act of respect greater than that paid to Pablo by these eight young painters.

The first painter to finish, a young woman, rushed to show Pablo her handiwork. "Not yet!" he cried, averting his gaze, "it must all happen at once, a grand unveiling of a collected truth!" he pronounced to the room, laughing at the grandiose statement, but I could tell also deadly serious. He tossed the brash young painter a beer, and she reclined on the couch with us as we waited for the others.

One after another, the painters finished their work, and began their own personal assault on the contents of the house's kitchen and refrigerator. This arrangement was not unusual, as food and drink were an established part of the artistic currency in the neighborhoods of Montevideo. As the last painter finished and disappeared into the kitchen, Pablo sprang up from the couch, assumed a position in the center of the room, and closed his eyes. "Roberto, if you will do the honors of turning the portraits to face me!" he said with a flourish of his hand.

I went to the first portrait, the one painted by our speedy Young Turk, and snuck a peek before I turned it to face Pablo. What I saw was a perfect representation of Reverend Francis Abernathy, leader of the First Methodist Church in Dotson, Nebraska. His face was clear as day to me, as though I had the SCP-2188 file open in front of my eyes. My shock lasted for three seconds, as the various consequences and implications sped through my mind. He could not know, I reasoned. None of them could possibly know. But how? Another two seconds. How was unimportant right now. I turned the first portrait around. Each successive picture was another significant person in the town of Dotson. What kind of painters were these, anyhow? They looked nothing like Pablo. I faced all of the portraits, and told Pablo to open his eyes.

He slowly complied, peeking coyly at first, then slowly turning, examining the portraits surrounding him. He was confused at first, but a smile played slowly across his face, and as he kept looking, he laughed, as though he was beginning to just now get the punchline of a joke told two weeks ago, marveling at his own slow realization. "These people, they look as though they should live in this place that has taken such hold of my mind!" he said, the astonishment continuing to grow in his voice. "It's absolutely brilliant! They are the logical outgrowth of this place, brought here in the most irrational way possible! What a wonderful collection of portraits, well done my friends!"

I told him I didn't follow one bit, continuing with my habit of telling the truth to Pablo whenever possible. "Don't you see," he said to me, "they have always been here, in the realm of the unexpressed idea, waiting for their opportunity. And they got tired of waiting! So here they are, coming to us of their own accord, being themselves and being me at the same time! I am, we are, all of us are of this realm. The natural flow of something, I'm not sure what, it's returning somehow. Do you understand what I mean?"

I took a few moments to turn his words over in my mind. The professional filter told me that this was of concern, but a containment breach? So much of this anomaly was the exchange of ideas, happening in the open but impenetrable to all but we few, happening upon it by accident. No. A sublime moment, its participants content to let it be as it is.

"I understand completely," I told him.

Title	Artists	Medium	Description
S-TARC Listing of Related Artworks - FR2188.31
After all is said and done all i have is you and myself and you	Molly H.R. Yerevan	Experimental prose	A loosely structured narrative consisting of first-person recounting of the narrator's experiences with a close companion, followed by a series of free-verse poems from what appear to different points of view on a single, unclear event affecting the lives of the narrator and their companion. The narrative is interspersed with several songs. Read at the Arts and Crafts portion of the Dotson Harvest Conclave by Ms. Yerevan.
The Brothers Mann	George Hillsong	Video presentation	A pre-recorded monologue delivered by Mr. Hillsong via three television monitors. Mr. Hillsong, through the use of makeup and prosthetics, appears significantly different on each monitor. The monologue consists of a meditation on the nature of identity, interspersed seemingly at random with footage of a football match between Uruguayan clubs Defensor and Rentistas. Presented at the Dotson Union High School Monthly Art Festival.
I Have Eight Faces	The Fading Sky	Rock album	Minor-label release from Dotson-based rock and roll band The Fading Sky. Continues the band's development of what will come to be known as its trademark post-New Wave, slow tempo synthesizer-heavy sound. Consists of eight tracks, most of which feature subtle punk rock influences. Eighth track contains an additional song commencing 3 minutes and 30 seconds after the end of "Firelight", listed on the rare Japanese release of the album as a ninth song entitled "Pablo Surrounds Himself".

Field Report 2188.48 - Farewells

Date: 29 July 1998

Summary: Agent Esquivel comes to the Hospital de Clínicas in the barrio of Parque Batlle in Montevideo at the request of Mr. Izquierdo, admitted to the hospital a month prior with an advanced case of pancreatic cancer. Agent Esquivel arrives at 0315 hours local time.

Result: Cessation of SCP-2188.

+ Access Additional Documentation

Title	Artists	Medium	Description
S-TARC Listing of Related Artworks - FR2188.48
The Remembrance March	Residents of Dotson	Multimedia	An event taking place over several days in early August, 1998. At the suggestion of Roland Nygaard, scoutmaster of Dotson's local Boy Scout troop, residents are spontaneously asked by members of the troop to commemorate those they have lost over the prior year. Thousands of people respond with innumerable songs, paintings, stories, sculptures, and other artworks. At a town hall meeting, residents decide to deposit the collected artwork at an under-utilized columbarium in the nearby Misty Veil Cemetery. Led by an ad hoc marching band made up of eighteen town residents calling themselves the "Town Limits Honor Guard," the entire population of Dotson forms a parade, starting downtown and concluding at Misty Veil Cemetery, carrying the assorted artworks. The works are placed in the columbarium, and the cemetery is host to an impromptu gathering featuring music, contests of artistic skill, and at least 148 documented eulogies for deceased family members and friends.

Addendum 2188.2 - Future Containment Directives

DIRECTIVE 2188-03.17" id="">Addendum 2188.1 - Reports from Agent Roberto Esquivel

Researcher's Note: Between 1967 and 1998, Agent Roberto Esquivel served in Montevideo, Uruguay as the primary source of containment for SCP-2188. Agent Esquivel filed a series of reports during that time. A representative sample of these reports are reproduced here for the purposes of this file. Refer to Appendix A for the unabridged record of Agent Esquivel's reports.

===SYSTEM NOTICE=== PERSONNEL PREFERENCES REFERENCED AND LOGGED. TRANSLATING PRIMARY DOCUMENTATION FROM SPANISH to ENGLISH

Field Report 2188.1 - Introductions

Date: 17 April 1967

Summary: Agent Esquivel, per the terms of containment set by the Research Director, establishes a relationship with Joaquín Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe. This is intended to facilitate future contacts, build trust with the subject, and enable efforts to protect the subject from undue harm and therefore ensure relative normalcy for the residents of Dotson.

Result: Successful action

+ Access Additional Documentation

ACCESS GRANTED

Agent Comments: After poring over the dossier for weeks, I finally met Mr. Izquierdo face-to-face at Chito's, a scummy little bar in Malvín Norte where the students like to hang out and the bums drink whenever they can scrounge up a few pesos. I resolved to gain Mr. Izquierdo's favor in the traditional way.

"A beer for my friend here," I called to the barman as I sat next to the subject. Mr. Izquierdo had none of it.

"Ah, a generous accountant, you are" he said to me. My suit was a poor choice, in retrospect. "No, I shall buy you a drink, because this isn't a beer night." He motioned to the barman, who brought us a large mate with two straws. To my surprise, in a place like this, they were silver.

The subject handed me a straw. "To introductions, my new friend." We both sipped the brewed leaves and I felt the caffeine rush wonderfully to my head. I admit, I love mate, and I didn't question the odd choice for evening drinks.

"You look like a thinker! I like thinkers, they row the other side of my rowboat!" he said as we drank together. "Night is a good time for thinking!"

We made small talk for the rest of the evening. I had expected to work harder at it, given the dossier, but we had much in common, he and I. The mate, dead fathers, a distaste for Borges and a great taste for panchos (Uruguayan hot dogs -Ed.). It was enjoyable.

We resolved to meet again for mate the next week. Containment is off to a good start.

S-TARC Listing of Related Artworks - FR2188.1

Title Artists Medium Description

Tea with Strangers Willie John Lincoln Blues Song Performed for the first time at Redfeather's Tavern by Mr. Lincoln, playing unaccompanied on acoustic guitar

Sunrise: Apollo John Grauber Mural, oil paint 6 m tall depiction of the Greek deity Apollo playing the lyre with a sunrise in the background. Painted on the side of a barn belonging to Mr. Grauber's employer

Mount Ararat Rebecca Moorad Short story Unpublished narrative concerning two archaeologists looking for evidence of Noah's Ark trapped together at a dig site by a freak blizzard. The two men, Robert and Paul, initially wary of each other, learn to pool their resources in order to survive. The men share tea, which both have brought in abundance, a crucial plot point in the closing paragraphs of the story.

Field Report 2188.4 - Lalo's Elegy

Date: 23 August 1967

Summary: Mr. Izquierdo requests Agent Esquivel's assistance on an errand in the barrio of La Figurita.

Result: Minor injuries to Agent Esquivel, two civilians subdued with non-lethal weaponry.

+ Access Additional Documentation

ACCESS GRANTED

Agent Comments: At 11 o'clock, I saw Mr. Izquierdo appear at the park bench. I have noticed that for a person of the streets, he is strangely punctual.

The subject had requested my aid to help organize a gathering of the local poets in La Figurita. I remarked to him at our last meeting that the poets of La Figurita weren't very good, and that most of their writings centered around being taken to the hospital after drinking too much. He laughed at that, but was undeterred in his mission.

He explained that all I need do was accompany him for a few hours. "I need a man with violence in him" he explained as he looked me over. He is not wrong, but I was dismayed at his reading of me.

We walked to a shabby part of the neighborhood with no streetlights. This was well, because the brightly colored paint on the splintered facades of the rowhouses were illumination enough. At a lime green doorway, we stopped. Mr. Izquierdo knocked, a strange, rata-tat-tat-rata-tat knock that must have been code of some sort. The door parted a crack, and a face with a roadmap of lines, but not a single gray hair, appeared from the darkness. What did we want, he asked.

Mr. Izquierdo answered immediately. "We need to use this house tonight. Poetry recital."

"Impossible" the man said, "this is a place of commerce."

"Get a load of this guy," Mr. Izquierdo said to me as he laughed, "a real businessman. How does fifteen guys at a ten peso cover sound for your business?"

The face disappeared momentarily. Some hushed conversation in the darkness took place before it reappeared in the doorway.

"We agree to your terms." The door opened.

We stepped inside of a predictable hovel, the floor littered with bottles and needles. A few junkies were passed out along the walls of the front room. The first poets arrived soon after, and the night must be described as a success, for it was at least twenty people crammed in there when all was accounted for. Mr. Izquierdo called for silence, and beckoned the first reader to step to the middle of the room. He proceeded to read some odious doggerel, and I envied the unconscious bum laying next to me.

On and on it dragged. I had heard of time anomalies in my work, and wondered at my fate here. Then, Mr. Izquierdo pointed to the man who had been at the door when we arrived. "Lalo! It's your turn!"

Our doorkeeper stepped into the middle of the crowd, hesitantly, which struck me as funny since he was the most fearsome-looking man in the room. He pulled a piece of folded paper out of his filthy denim jacket, and I readied myself for the resumption of the dreary onslaught.

What sticks in my mind most was his soft voice as he began his reading. He with the face that belonged in a prison yard, but I had to struggle to hear him as he read his piece. His story unfolded in short, clipped sentences as the room grew ever more quiet. He had been to America, from the nothingness of his native farmlands to the nothingness of foreign farmlands. The work was backbreaking as ever, the poverty covering everything like a layer of old dust just like back home. But now there was loneliness, like he could have never imagined. In time he met a friend, though. A Chilean, he said with a smirk that shocked me when it came. With someone to talk to, the work was not so bad, and at least he could drink and laugh and fight with someone when it was done. Then the Chilean was caught in a grain silo, drowning in the plentiful bounty of an American corn field. I don't know what I expected next, but it was not for this Lalo to begin howling like a wolf, which he did. It should have been ridiculous, but the fury and the pain in this man's voice, the mourning for his friend buried in a foreign land, it demanded acceptance. When Lalo finished, the entire room was completely silent.

Then the police came.

Our experiences with law enforcement being what they are, and the safety of Mr. Izquierdo being my charge, I elected to begin swinging the small club concealed in my coat before asking questions as the cops raided the place. In these affairs, the police always find their man, their man being whoever happened to be around in a den of narcotics. I fought my way out as the poets scattered, Mr. Izquierdo by my side. Someone landed a decent punch to my ribs and I came out with a cut to my forehead, the identities of my attackers forever lost to the churning scene of drugs, poetry and loss we had left behind.

In the safety of a nearby alley, Mr. Izquierdo was doubled over with laughter, wiping tears from his eyes at the apparent hilarity of the scene that he had caused.

"Violence in an accountant, and art in a drug pusher!" he wheezed. "The poetry of La Figurita shall improve after tonight, I tell you!"

S-TARC Listing of Related Artworks - FR2188.4

Title Artists Medium Description

Bust of Papi Calvin Medina Sculpture (marble) A bust sculpture depicting Mr. Medina's deceased father, an itinerant farm laborer from Mexico. Mr. Medina suffered severe head injuries in a tractor accident on the same date that Field Report 2188.4 was filed. Mr. Medina recovered as normal, but proceeded to develop an intense interest in sculpture, culminating in this piece.

Guide to the Interworld Carolyn Walsh Dance Performed at the Dotson Masonic Hall for an audience of sixty. Described by Ms. Walsh as a physical representation of Virgil guiding Dante through Hell. Ms. Walsh asked audience members to ingest a small dose of LSD prior to the performance, which most did. Ms. Walsh then encouraged to the audience to "attack" her at the end of the performance. While no serious acts of violence were committed, enough of a disturbance was raised that authorities were notified. Ms. Walsh was subsequently arrested by the Dotson Police Department after the performance; however, no formal charges were filed.

In Memory of Grandmother Moon Bess Five Wolves Comanche medicine ritual/performance art With the assistance of two others, Ms. Five Wolves performed rites based upon traditional Comanche funerary practices to mark "the passing of the moon" in the middle of South Grange Avenue, disrupting afternoon traffic. Consisting of a series of dances, chants, ceremonial tobacco use, and other activities, the ritual lasted two hours, during which motorists left their vehicles to participate in various portions of the performance.

Field Report 2188.15 - The Virgin's Bonfire

Date: 14 November 1976

Summary: Agent Esquivel accompanies Mr. Izquierdo on a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Florida as part of the traditional Uruguayan veneration of the Virgin of the Thirty-Three.

Result: International incident between the United States of America and Uruguay. Foundation Department of External Affairs later negotiates resolution between the two nations with no lasting repercussions.

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Agent Comments: Is Pablo a religious man? I still cannot tell, though he gets into enough trouble to be classified as a saint some day.

I drove into Conciliación, where Pablo had found his most recent rooftop dwelling, and found him waiting in front of the library. He jumped into the old dented-up Site-issue pickup truck, carrying a heroically-sized jug of Medio y Medio, and we sped away. And if in the course of leaving Montevideo we banged into a few road signs as we wrestled with the jug of wine, what the hell. A few more dents.

Pablo drank more than his half of the Medio y Medio of course, and told me all about the CIA contacts he had talked up before this pilgrimage. It is my business, of course, to know who is CIA, who is KGB, who is whatever in Montevideo, so I knew Pablo was full of shit, but in the spirit of the Blessed Virgin I let him have his fun. We stopped at what felt like every village along the way out to the country, where Pablo jumped out and reinforced our wine supplies, while urging everyone to come along on the pilgrimage. He must have been spending quite some time doing this before we left even, because the road became more and more crowded the closer we came to the Cathedral.

I knew that Pablo had arranged some sort of exhibition in Florida, and I still do not know how he managed to convince the Diocese to let that go on. Perhaps that is an SCP in itself. When we arrived, the plaza in front of the Cathedral was choked with people. They had arrived in the tens of thousands, more than anyone could remember.

The vendors who sell food and drink at the pilgrimage every year were ecstatic at first at the multitudes. Then Pablo emerged from our truck with a bullhorn (where the hell did he get a bullhorn?) and started blaring at the crowd as we drove on. "Do not purchase anything from these thieves! Maintain your holy fast, and manna shall rain down from the heavens this night!" he yelled, over and over. Though I had never expected a crowd of angry food sellers to be the ones to end Pablo, this situation was looking increasingly likely. I knew better by now than to be surprised.

"What the hell are you doing?" I asked him, though really I was asking myself, driving this truck along with a loudspeakered maniac who was going to get us stoned to death with hardened bread rolls. Instead of answering, he instead directed me to a large clearing behind the cathedral. We parked nearby, and were greeted with more reinforcements of wine by a group of sculptors I had met previously with Pablo when we were walking through Bañados de Carrasco one night. As we drank and talked (uninterrupted, we had apparently lost the angry food-sellers), they presented to us their handiwork: three large, vaguely human-looking sculptures they called "The Father, The Son, and The Holy Smoke," each at least ten meters tall and made entirely of dry wood and straw. Fire, of course, would be involved.

That night, the time came to light each sculpture and start the towering bonfires. Pablo had invited everyone present to come and watch. I identified very much with these people who had come; I was curious to see the spectacle, and very hungry. Woe betide these sculptors if the show was unimpressive. Thousands of empty stomachs were likely to be harsh critics.

Pablo climbed up on top of the Foundation-issue truck, and with his now ever-present bullhorn, regaled the crowd with a somewhat different version of the legend of the Virgin of the Thirty-Three than I have ever heard (I remember fewer explosions), then commanded the sculptors to light their creations ablaze. The three figures immediately caught, and a trinity of spectacular columns of fire lit the backside of the cathedral and the surrounding clearing.

It couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes of this display before we all heard the helicopters. There had to have been at least ten of them, passing over the brightly-lit clearing and the thousands of onlookers. Parcels began raining down on little parachutes, hundreds of them, all over the place. It wasn't long before the crowds tore into them, and Pablo's promised feast from the heavens materialized, courtesy of the United States government, who had very thoughtfully included generous amounts of alcohol of varying kinds. No one of course mentioned that the gathering was not the group of refugees fleeing repression in Argentina that they thought we were, as I was to find out later after I finally managed to roust Pablo from his slumber in the bed of my pickup truck. "Say the right words to the right people and light some beacons" was all he was able to get out as he clutched his head and squinted against the morning light.

I can only conclude that there must be more CIA operatives in Montevideo than we thought.

S-TARC Listing of Related Artworks - FR2188.15

Title Artists Medium Description

Thirty-Three Verses of Suffering and Enlightenment Zelda Hughes Poetry A book of thirty-three separate poems, collecting a series of poems read every Monday evening at the Dusty Crossroads Coffee House in downtown Dotson. Themes of sacrifice in the service of larger causes and resulting personal anguish are prevalent.

The Three Burnings of Thích Quảng Đức Steven F. Braddock Novel Self-published narrative concerning Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk widely known for immolating himself as a form of protest against the policies of the South Vietnamese government. The book concerns Mr. Quảng Đức being reborn after his first self-immolation, and leading the same life over again with the knowledge of his previous life. The narrative consists of Mr. Quảng Đức's various self-justifications of his act, which vary widely over the course of the story, but always result in the same course of action.

Manna from the Heart of Stone Reverend Francis Abernathy Religious sermon⁴ A highly idiosyncratic sermon by the leader of the town's largest church, delivered outdoors at the burial site of an unidentified vagrant to the assembled congregation. Rev. Abernathy relates the story of Saint Augustus of Topeka, a heretofore-unknown religious figure in Christian theology. Relating the story in the form of a present-day allegory about then-United States Director of Central Intelligence George H.W. Bush, Rev. Abernathy describes a hard-hearted, powerful man, constantly forced into what he considers to be necessary acts of violence and destruction, before being reborn in a secret "trial by the spirit of fire" into an entirely different soul, dedicated instead to a life of generosity and service to the downtrodden. Rev. Abernathy then eulogized the vagrant at whose gravesite the congregation was assembled, claiming to have alone known the man's identity and deeds, but sworn to secrecy about both before he died.

Field Report 2188.31 - A Quiet Day at Home

Date: 28 August 1987

Summary: Mr. Izquierdo invites Agent Esquivel to watch a football match at the home of an acquaintance.

Result: Near-breach of containment of SCP-2188.

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Agent Comments: We had some time to kill before the painters arrived. I had never known Pablo to posit himself as the subject of someone's work, but this was a special occasion, he told me, which had something to do with the nice house we were presently in, I am sure. I didn't really ask why the nice digs; Pablo was always "housesitting" for someone or other, usually an artistic patron sort with a crush on a beautiful boy in Pablo's orbit. The living arrangement typically ended when they ran up against the ferocity Pablo displayed in protection of his artists.

While we waited, it so happened that Defensor was playing Rentistas that afternoon, so we donned our purple kit and watched the game on a color television almost as big as some of the monitors at Site-87. The erstwhile residents of this house had excellent taste in mate, and Pablo brewed some during the commercial breaks. Between the excitement of the match and the buzzing in my head from what had to have been seven or eight cups of mate, I grew impatient to know why we were surrounded by eight blank canvases. Pablo explained the project to me.

"I have commissioned a series of self-portraits in an attempt to understand myself more," he said. "I am consumed lately by visions of myself in vast fields of wheat, chilled to my core by prairie winds. An alien landscape, certainly. But not an entirely unpleasant one! I feel a sort of connection to this place in my mind, and I must know more."

I knew why this was. Of course I knew why this was, but I could not tell him. It may amaze the researchers reading these dispatches, but I have not had need to be duplicitous with Pablo in the many years I have been his keeper. I dreaded him asking me for my insight, when all I could offer was lies. Quickly, to change the subject. Why self-portraits?

"There exists, Roberto, a dynamic relationship between the artist and his impetus. The artist depicts the concept, and in his depiction he changes the concept. You know, Heisenberg shit," waving his arms to demonstrate the scale of his thinking. "It is in the interplay of this relationship that we learn just what something is, and so I have called eight able artists to paint my portrait. Why am I seized with this vision of a place I have never been, so late in my years? I hope that this helps me to understand."

I couldn't help but blanch at this. To hold back from Pablo something of great importance to him. He must have seen my expression, and I hope to God he misread it. He leaned in, a whisper from a conspirator to his nervous partner in crime. "And you know, all of this would be terribly self-important and vain, of course, if the portraits were hanging in my own house!" He laughed at his joke, as was his prerogative, and then cheered wildly as Manteca buried an equalizer, and I don't know that I've ever enjoyed a Defensor goal as much as that one.

The artists arrived in the course of time, and got to work immediately, solemnly setting themselves to a task given to them by the great Joaquín Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe as the man himself distributed beer from the house's fridge. Each artist feverishly labored to get their vision of Pablo up on canvas, as though the greatest honor would go to he who finished first. I have never seen, before or since, a concerted act of respect greater than that paid to Pablo by these eight young painters.

The first painter to finish, a young woman, rushed to show Pablo her handiwork. "Not yet!" he cried, averting his gaze, "it must all happen at once, a grand unveiling of a collected truth!" he pronounced to the room, laughing at the grandiose statement, but I could tell also deadly serious. He tossed the brash young painter a beer, and she reclined on the couch with us as we waited for the others.

One after another, the painters finished their work, and began their own personal assault on the contents of the house's kitchen and refrigerator. This arrangement was not unusual, as food and drink were an established part of the artistic currency in the neighborhoods of Montevideo. As the last painter finished and disappeared into the kitchen, Pablo sprang up from the couch, assumed a position in the center of the room, and closed his eyes. "Roberto, if you will do the honors of turning the portraits to face me!" he said with a flourish of his hand.

I went to the first portrait, the one painted by our speedy Young Turk, and

SCP-2187 SCP-2189