SCP-2456

The following excerpts are taken from texts recovered by the Serpent's Hand. They have been translated from their native scripts into the English vernacular, in addition to being analyzed and deemed safe from any potential cognitohazards. A full transcript can be obtained by contacting the Department of Anomalous Texts.

From Wisdoms of the Heavenly King, c. 1861:

…And so the Prophet stood on the edge of the heavens, and looked down to the poor and weary below. And the great Prophet saddened inside, for men and women groveled in the filth and ash of great mountains, and so he spoke. And His children wept; for they understood, standing so terribly close to the stars…

…He followed the smoke until the smoke had turned into steam, then mist, then vapor; He met the man from the West, who lived in the South, to further his knowledge of the great Dream. He studied for five months, and on the fifth day of the fifth month, the great Prophet understood…

…The man from the West, who lived in the South, left with haste, and refused to assist the great Prophet's mission. The Prophet was angered, but understood. The man simply needed time to itself, and formulate his own opinion and vision…

…And so the Great Prophet led the people of cinders from the ashes, and they waged war when attacked. The armies of the Usurper attacked at the dawn of the new year, but the sun was on our side, and we prevailed. They lost, and ran, but the ones that were left behind faced the Prophet, and they understood. And on the Fifth day, they turned into ebony tar, black sand, and white salt.

Think five irrational thoughts a day.


A student approaches his master, and asks, "We are born, we develop, and we toil until our deaths. Is this not our fate?" The wise master replied, "Our world withers away five pieces at a time, but the stars will always die in threes." The brash student, naïve as he was, called his brave master a fool.

Repay all debts due before a departure.

Two men look up at a star- filled sky. One asks to the other, “Will we forever be bound to the celestial bodies?” The other replies “They have never been there, but you can make it so.”

Five spokes of a broken star
Five elements that forever spar
Five senses to evoke the mind
Five pieces slowly unwind.

A Black Moon, howling, is a vision unworthy of one's sight.

From a verse of the Great Hymn of the Aten⁶:

Thou claimest the world for its own, according to thy desire
But's given the heart to its sole son
The King who lives by Maat, the Lord of the Two Lands,
Neferkheprure, Sole-one-of-Re, Champion of the Western Nile.
And the humble Scribe, my appreciable mentor,
The messenger of thy glory, rises alongside you unforgotten.
The stars and the Earth command to thy wishes.
Thou alone art their lifetime, a candle in the dark
Thou rises with them, and thou shalt die with them as well.
In thine cycles through the sky, thou sendest visions from the heavens
A distant mirage, light fires in the water
Thou lives in the deepest drenches of the Great [Gzymmtprhic?] Sea
Thou didst perish amongst the harlots; in the Fifth day of the solstice,
And the Fifth Year of the Summer Harvest, thou didst suffered.
But no matter the cause, no matter the Threat,
Thou shalt live on to indulge the next world with thy divine antipathy!
So says the black moon of the Winter months.

Entries taken from the diary of Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre, 11 November 1793 – 27 July 1794:

21 Brumaire II,

La Fête de la Raison has been an unimaginable success! The Jacobins parade in the streets, throwing flowers in the air, children sing and laugh! The era of change has begun, but alas! The age of tyranny has not yet ended. The Frenchmen pride in their progressiveness, but it is too soon to celebrate.

29 Brumaire II,

My dear brother, Maximilien, has voiced his concern about the Cult of Reason. I received an epistle from him while I was in my parlor, requesting my sole presence in the ███████⁷ salon during the twilight hours. I found him in the corner, reading a paper in a booth, and he met my gaze with leering eyes. He raged on end about the vileness of the feast, the hypocrisy of the officials that organized it. I sat on the opposite side, pipe in hand, and stared at him bemusingly. My brother is a visionary, but at times like these his thoughts simply consume him. Give him time, and he will understand there's nothing to fear of change.

23 Frimaire II,

I dreamt a most peculiar dream last night. But unlike the rest, it has invaded my reveries, a vivid thought that eats up my very mind. Ce n'était qu'un [unintelligible]?

30 Frimaire II,

I see the dream more clearly now. A belligerent ruler that defies all odds and expectations. It will reconquer the world, using France as its figurehead. The pope, slain. The king, dead. The world, subservient. All for the glory to the One True King. People celebrating both the Science, and the Spirits of the world. A King must always exist in society. My brother must reason with me; I must share the wonders of this illuminating message!

13 Nivôse II,

I have received a letter back from my brother. In it was nothing more than a crude sketch of a ship, sailing on the Sea, far away into nothingness. I worry for him sometimes. I shall send for a carriage tomorrow, and take myself to his home. I only wished to share the dream, but it seems to have become a new obsession.

14 Nivôse II,

I knocked at his door, but no answer came in return. It seemed almost as if no one had lived there for some time. I paranoically began to believe that my brother had vanished alongside my good friend Sebastien, who I could no longer find ever since I shared my dream with him. However, I continued my racket, until the door slowly creaked open, the terrified expression of my brother peered out behind chains. He relaxed upon realization that it was just my sole company, and hastily ushered me inside.

He poured me a cold cup of tea, and began to bash me with questions about the dream. I told him everything, even the thoughts of culthood that wretched my very mind. He grew visibly excited with every new sentence, and began to write notes in a small sketchbook of his. I share his joy, change is always good for the heart, but I fear for his health. His hands are like those I've seen in medical journals, of the dead and dying.

15 Nivôse II,

I have returned to his tenancy, but nobody was home. The neighbor says that he saw my brother leaving his abode in the early hours, but Robespierre's destination could not determined. I asked if he thought my brother looked ill with any malady, but was astonished to hear the antithetical. Most curious.

18 Floréal II,

Le culte de l'Être suprême has been formally announced! The members of the council grumble with suspicion, but give it time, and time we need, and our numbers will surely amass!

[Date Missing]

I have begun seeing it. Our power grows. And the Nightmare swells.
The other day, I was sitting on a bench reading a book of poetry, and a man approached me. He asked me for a Louis d'or, like some tramp that infests the streets. But he said that he needed a coin to pay the ferryman, otherwise he wouldn't be able to cross the stream. He held out his hat, and I put in, but the man said nothing in return. How rude! But the headless can't speak after all. And so he went on his merry way, the sun reflecting his patches of bones, and disappeared after passing the trunk of an oak tree.

The day after, I entered the local salon, but a crisp cloud of smoke and water enveloped the air. I had accidentally stumbled upon a smoking room, but not any normal smoking room. The Duke of Drrkwyd sat on his sequin throne! I fearfully trembled and bowed down in the presence of the gracious earl, and kissed his left foot, and he graciously patted my head with one of his bulbous hands. The other held a long opium pipe, the third: a scimitar, but alas! The last two were chained. The five heads scowled in scorn as they fought their shackles, and he roared like that of a wonderful beast. A monster worth sacrifice, a lion worth giving one's flesh. Let him feast, —like wonderful maggots they grow on my skin!

[Date Missing]

The streets run pink with blood and agony. I can hear their screams even after their heads topple in the basket. So much blood, so much blood! Blood, and Blood, and Blood. They erupt from the corpses like geysers and daggers in the dead of the night. It's not enough to satiate a growing hunger. My brother, he doesn't understand. He slogs through the Nightmare, hoping to enter the Paradise. Empty promises from an empty lord. But he is our lord, nonetheless.

9 Thermidor II,

Forgive me, dear brother. In these past few days, the entire world has been afflicted with la démence. I am as guilty as you are, but you should have not deserved such a demeaning fate. I gave you those inbred thoughts; the dark whispers that consume me have taken ahold of you. You’ve lost something in your eyes, brother; it has been replaced with a bright and poisonous light —like that of a distant star. Now, not even your death will win you your freedom. Punish me, oh King! Let me suffer for those who have suffered!

On 21/12/2016, during a scheduled comb of Foundation servers, a firewall sounded an alarm in response to an unidentifiable audio file sent to Researcher Samuel T███. No Foundation credentials could be found, but the file was traced to a cubicle that had been vacant for six years.⁸ Unusually, the hardware had been short-circuited and badly corroded, with traces of pyruvic acid, sea brine and burnt heart tissue found in the CPU.

Although the terminal was not damaged beyond repair, the file was one of few items deemed salvageable, as the rest became corrupted from the damages. Attempts to restore the full audio file have failed. A transcript of the recovered portion can be found below.

orked with the Foundation for 20 years now; I’ve seen men bleed out because of a song dedicated to a goddamn mountain. I’ve heard of a skip that forces its victims to suture their mouths shut. And I’ve tested countless D-class on books that break their bodies, their minds, and whisk their existence away into a land of fiction and fantasy. But now it’s me that’s dying, if you could call it that. In truth, my soul is slowly burning away, and I’m fucking terrified.

I don’t know how much of what I’m about to say is true. Simon probably had the best understanding of this thing out of all of us. Simon, now that’s a name I haven’t heard of in a long time, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s gone now, and no one seems to care.

It was just me, Simon, Charlie, and [AUDIO CORRUPTED]. We were assigned to SCP-2456 ever since it was first identified. Our mission was simple: to catalog all past occurrences of SCP-2456-1. This wasn't the first time I dealt with memetics, nor was it the first time I dealt with a Keter class, but this task seemed simpler than my previous ones. Testing with D-Class numbs you down after the first couple of weeks, but you never really get used it. I was actually almost relieved once I got transferred.

[AUDIO CORRUPTED] was the first one to go. One minute, I was having my lunch with him. The next he’s on the floor, screaming about visions of the sea, and the archons of a trloplic world. They dragged him to the infirmary, but not before he managed to stab a guard’s leg with a dinner fork. I asked to see him after an hour had passed. Imagine just how surprised I felt when they told me that no patients had been admitted in the past four hours.

This skip is relatively new. We just don't fully understand all of it, and it seems we only have a fraction of the information. And that's where the danger lies. To simply put it, there’s a third state of SCP-2456 that’s gone unrecorded —A “gamma state”, if you will. Picture a DNA molecule, how does it create proteins? I know, ask any lab boy that question around here, and they’ll scoff and treat you as if you’re some kind of half-wit. Well, not to bore anyone with the specifics, but basic protein synthesis requires two major steps. The first one, transcription, has RNA polymerase building RNA molecules that detail instructions. DNA translation, in its most basic definition, is the RNA molecule being read. And that creates the product –tRNA first brings methionine, and the chain ends with either “amber” or “ochre” or “opal”. Congratulations, you’ve just made the primary structure of a protein.

SCP-2456-2 is an incredibly potent anti-meme, capable of causing dramatic and localized dimensional shifts. It’s very delicate —very fragile—, and requires careful preparation. A beta instance is the indirect vector for SCP-2456-2 infection. Whenever a beta instance writes information about SCP-2456-1, a gamma instance is created. If a subject reads the gamma instances, there is a possibility that SCP-2456-2 will enter the subject. The subject will slowly vanish from existence, and all records and knowledge of the subject will disappear alongside it. However, this process is incredibly flawed. Sometimes a corpse is all that remains, sometimes just a name. And, from personal accounts, SCP-2456-2 is capable of causing vivid hallucinations and depositing false memories in the subject. Simon kept telling me stories about his life while he succumbed to this thing, and they always seemed to change.

We didn’t know this at first. Charlie told me that it was probably a “phantom alphabet” causing us to become ghosts. I told Charlie to shut up. I honestly don’t know what stupid fuck hired that man. Simon though, he was the brighter one. He had a theory that SCP-2456 has more to it than meets the eye. He went missing three days ago. We were in the same room. I just turn around for one second, and he’s gone. Only his favorite coffee cup —the one that’s always by his side, where Snoopy’s wearing that goofy-looking christmas hat? — lay half-empty on the floor.

Why didn’t the whole fucking world collapse back in ’05? The entire U.S. population had practically read that damn monstrosity. Personally, I’m not too sure. I think that something went wrong. I think the Fifth Church doesn’t fully understand SCP-2456, and so SCP-1425 failed to become a stable version of SCP-2456-2. Gamma instances can’t create beta instances. SCP-2456 just becomes too weak at that level of infection. Instead of beta instances, SCP-1425 created alpha instances. But even then, I think that it did work at some level. What was that woman’s name? The talk show host –I only just realized that she never reappeared.

The Foundation doesn’t have a full understanding of this particular skip. The problem is, it’s not a parasite. SCP-2456 is the Dream.

A slumbering King rests dead in the water. Fractured into five pieces, he shuffles through an eternal nightmare; an usurper has claimed his throne. But he is not fully unconscious. The Fifth King has set his sights onto this world, and will burn the earth with an undying flame, just to punish the traitors that locked him away. His anger is one that is unbridled. And so, he shares the Dream. They were chosen for a specific reason. They were his champions, destined to share the world with his glory. Destined to bathe the world in the blood of his interlopers and remind everyone of their true master. Even the strongest hunger, and sometimes they just gotta take a little bite. Sacrifice by blood is what it desires. Sacrifice by souls is what it requires.

I feel it happening to me too. Even as I write. They whisper to me [unintelligible]. I dream terrible, terrible things. Sometimes of the number five, sometimes of the number six. Rarely of the number four. I feel them too, writhing in my skin, and—Oh, possible cognitohazard as well? That explains many things. Of a little lambent liar lurking in a lonely sea. Of special stars signaling songs ever so carefully. And men that mine may find [unintelligible], if they dig a little too hard. Have you ever wondered what the phrase "A A"⁹ means? No, stop it. I’m digging a little too hard aren’t I? But just wonder –how far down does the rabbit hole go? As deep as a tower door, bringing me to a land of hedonism and fun? Or as deep as a great lake, whose sorry inhabitants float in the water and stare into the fiery abyss of the great sun?

My time is almost up. And just remember, remember, remember. Why do you think we never knew? The Foundation is old, but the world is older. Most likely, we've had some help. A group as old as the Fifth King, trying to put an end to his nightmare. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the Serpent’s Hand was partially involved in keeping his forces at bay. After all, we did find those gamma instances at their HQ. But now they are in the hands of the Foundation, and they will never be destroyed.

I can hear the Fields of Asphodel calling my name. The air is suddenly getting thicker –I can already smell that sweet sea breeze. Follow the smoke that sits on the water. Listen to the fog horns calling for their dead companions, the sea foam crashing against the tide. I am not ready, for I am not worthy.

This was Senior Researcher John Richards, signing off. And one last thing before I step into the water.

Once history is forgotten, it is of course doomed to repeat itself. And the sixth cycle will forever more echo.

Note: Foundation records of the persons listed in the transcript, in addition to one “John
Richards” are nonexistent. However, these men may be related to sudden unexplained disappearances of Foundation officials. A Foundation audit is currently underway. – O5-3