SCP-3189

For The Man Who Has Everything

Connected to: SCP-1716

Special Containment Procedures

SCP-3189 is contained within the facility it was originally discovered in. The property has been purchased by the Foundation and has been designated Site-76-F, a satellite facility to Site-76. Standard security features for satellite facilities have been deemed sufficient to prevent unauthorized access to SCP-3189.

In the event that Site-76-F falls into the possession of rival factions, on-site explosives are to be remotely detonated by Site-76 Command, destroying SCP-3189. The original documentation and blueprints for SCP-3189 are to be kept on an encrypted hard drive at Site-76, along with any pertinent discoveries that may be produced by research personnel.

Description

SCP-3189 is a complex clockwork device contained within the central room of Site-76-F. The main body of the device is comprised of 13 concentric circles of beryllium-bronze, ranging in diameter from 3 to 9 meters. Each circle is capable of moving independently along all three axis, as well as rotating clockwise and counterclockwise at a rate of up to 90 rpm for the innermost circle and 60 rpm for the outermost.

Each circle is engraved with 1001 ideograms along both the outer and inner circumference. After extensive study and comparison, Foundation Thaumatologist Dr. Katherine Sinclair found that many of these ideograms are composed of base elements from various known systems of thaumaturgical glyphs.

Experiments have revealed that when properly drawn by a verified thaumaturge, these ideograms each generate wards, or fields of thaumaturgical energy.

While complex in design, each of these wards appears relatively simplistic in function. Most appear to relate to the containment and manipulation of elan vital energy (EVE), a force believed to be responsible for the Observer Effect in quantum mechanics and used to manipulate reality by various anomalous entities and objects.

At the time of recovery, SCP-3189 was connected to a beryllium-bronze aerial on the outside of the facility via a cable of electro-thaumically conductive alloy. The aerial itself was engraved with warding grids of unknown design, though they appear to serve the function of allowing the aerial to harness EVE from the surrounding environment and transmitting it into SCP-3189.

SCP-3189 was originally discovered when it was found to be the epicentre of a minor CK-class reality restructuring event. Based on experimentation overseen by Dr. Sinclair, and corroborated by documentation found within Site-76-F, SCP-3189 is believed to be an elanic resonance chamber, intended to focus EVE into a singular point where it would eventually reach high enough concentrations to cause at least low-level reality restructuring.

Attempts to replicate this function have so far been unsuccessful. The current hypothesis suggests that the thirteen circles of SCP-3189 must be continuously reoriented into new warding grids to force the EVE into the extreme concentration required to induce a reality restructuring event. Dr. Sinclair estimates that devising the vast number of necessary warding grids for all possible conditions would have taken decades, if not centuries, of dedicated effort. This position is supported by the approximately 400 000 pages of handwritten wards found within Site-76-F.

The ultimate objective for SCP-3189 research is to decipher its system of thaumic ideograms in the hopes that the device could one day be operated and used as a means of reversing reality restructuring events.

Addendum: In addition to the warding grids, multiple journals documenting the creation of SCP-3189 were also found inside of Site-76-F. Below is a collection of excerpts that have been selected to elucidate the origin and intended function of SCP-3189. The author has yet to be identified.

+ Show Selected Journal Excerpts

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Selected Excerpt #1:

What separates a mere mortal from an archmage? Nothing more than the knowledge and skill to focus their own Lifeforce into magicka.

What separates an archmage from a demigod? Nothing more than the ability to create magicka at will.

What separates a demigod from a full god? Nothing but the strength of that magicka.

Is it not a humbling thought that so little truly separates the least of men from the greatest of gods?

Is it not also an encouraging thought?

It as at the least encouraging enough to finally draw me out of my long and idle stupour. Too long have I been crippled by my own sense of fatalism. The belief that the past cannot be undone has kept me in despair, but the more I ponder the matter the more it seems to be merely a matter of engineering.

I did not lose them because I dared to dabble in the occult, I lost them because I dared not go further.

If all I need to become a god is more Lifeforce, then I need look no further than outside my window. Spread across all the world, within the beating heart of every man, woman and child, within every bird and beast and crawling thing, within every fish and plant and unseen animalcule, there is enough Lifeforce to challenge even the direst of the Old Gods! If only it could be harnessed and tamed.

I pray that this idea has some veracity and is not merely the delusion of my shattered mind. If there is any hope that they could live again, I must pursue it.

Selected Excerpt #2:

I've been seeking scholars in the Great Library who may aid me in my endeavour. Only my most recent trip proved productive. Alone in the dimmest corner of the Library with scarcely enough light to read, I found the Deathless Merchant of London.

Dark they call him, when any dare to speak his name at all. I do not fault him for hiding in the shadows, for the little I could see of him was ghastly. What he lacked in beauty, he more than made up for in occult knowledge, especially in the runecraft that would be so vital in designing the wards. He claims to even have knowledge of the Chaos Tongue.

We spoke for hours about my project, how it might be achieved, and why it was that I sought such power. I am by most accounts extremely privileged, wealthy and educated and privy to the secrets hidden behind the Veil.

But that privilege was not enough in the end, not for those I had loved. What good is it to be privileged among men when men are themselves such pathetic and powerless creatures? I desire what one might call 'cosmic privilege', the privilege of an existence unbound by space, by time, by the laws of nature, filled with gnosis of the highest truths, so that not even the gods themselves may deny me what is my right!

I was pleased to find that Dark was of a similar mindset.

He agreed to become an investor, to fund my project! He would grant me his coin, his skill, his expertise, in exchange for a single wish from the machine once it was ready. I agreed readily of course, for what hope have I of bringing this mad dream to fruition without him?

Though, it has occurred to me since that I perhaps should have asked what he will wish for.

Selected Excerpt #3:

Dark finally showed up in person today. For months he's been sending me cryptic letters written in archaic, spidery scrawl and some arcane tomes to study, but today he was at my door.

Only, he wasn't as he was before. He looked to be an ordinary man. A relative, perhaps? But, no, it was Dark. I'm sure of it.

Whoever this Dark was, he claimed to be an expert on the matter of Lifeforce transmission. He presented me with plans for a spire that would absorb the Lifeforce from everything within line of sight. If we can make it a hundred feet tall, which seems reasonable, then it will have a range of a little over twelve miles.

That's just far enough to reach [REDACTED], a fair sized city. It should provide us with more than enough Lifeforce to initiate the reaction.

Together, Dark and I worked out how this power could be amplified by my Triskaidekal warding grid, which could then be used to extend the spire's range in a feedback loop until it was powerful enough to harvest all the Lifeforce from every being on Earth.

I admit, I was so enamoured by the promise of unlimited magicka that I did not at first inquire if the process may be harmful. When I did, Dark merely chuckled and said 'If it is we can always wish everything back the way it was!'.

I think of the city, my city, whose streets I once walked with my beloveds and now walk alone. I wonder if perhaps those people should have some say in this. It is their lives I will be risking, after all. Would those people still smile at me, still pity me for my loss, if they knew what I was plotting?

But they could never grasp what it is I mean to do. If they could, they would thank me. When the project is complete it will not only be able to undo my heartache but everyone's. When the project is complete, they will thank me.

Dark is right. No price is too great, for any price is temporary. I must begin work at once.

Selected Excerpt #4:

After all these years, Dark came back.

In the form of a woman this time, but I scarcely noticed. Her tone, her demeanour, even the way she moved reminded me of that ghoul I had met in the Library even more than the last visitor to call itself Dark. What are these things?

No matter. He, she, whichever, wanted to review my warding grids. I've spent a lifetime writing them. More than a lifetime.

I presented her with nearly a hundred bales of paper, and she passed them through some sort of contraption one ream at a time. She said she was 'digitizing' them. I had no idea what she was talking about. I have not left this place in so long. I've wasted so

Nothing has been spent that cannot be reclaimed once the project is done. Soon I will have all eternity.

Dark claimed her program was checking the wards for flaws. She found few, for this project has been everything to me, but not none. She noted that my more recent work had more errors. Whether it was my body or my conviction that was failing, I cannot say.

In any event, corrections were made and she declared we were now ready to begin construction, saying that she would send workers over as soon as possible.

Oddly enough, I found myself hesitant. I asked her what she, or whoever Dark was, intended to do with their wish. I had refused to consider this question before, believing it to be only a distraction, but now I had to know.

She said she didn't know for certain, but knew that neither she nor her counterpart were foolish or frivolous and so could be trusted not to waste their wish. They would not wish for wealth, for they had that in abundance and could easily acquire more. They would not wish for knowledge, for they had access to the Great Library. Their wish would be for something that they could never otherwise obtain.

What could Dark not obtain? What could someone with their power, their skill, their knowledge and their wealth not obtain if they were truly intent on it?

Selected Excerpt #5:

Now that the completion of my device is imminent, I find myself finally asking if I could actually be trusted with such power, since I clearly wouldn't trust it to another.

Who would I actually be if was so preposterously empowered with nothing to rein in even my most outlandish urges?

Can I trust myself not to be misanthropic enough to not annihilate all of Man in a single rage?

Am I so selfish that I would idle in obscene luxury without ever bothering to better the world for my fellows?

Might I become so megalomaniacal that I would rule humanity as an eternal tyrant?

Worst of all, might I immediately be so intoxicated by power as to forget why I had bothered obtaining it in the first place, or for who?

Does any of that matter? After all this time, I would have wasted my life to stop now. Would it not be a waste of the machine's grand potential not to build it?

Tonight, as I fail to sleep, I hold the weight of all the horror I might do in one hand, and in the other, I hold the good that might be done. One cannot be tossed aside without the other, and no matter how hard I may try I cannot divine whether it is better to help people at the risk of great harm or refuse to help them to avoid any possibility of harm.

Somehow, I doubt that Dark is having the same quandaries.

Selected Excerpt #6:

Dark has returned.

Not as the man, not as the woman, but as that ghoul I first met him as so long ago. He looks like he has one foot in the grave and yet has not aged since I first laid eyes upon him.

He said he had come to collect on his investment, and I knew not what to do. I had eagerly agreed to the price when it was only a distant abstraction in my mind, but now that it was real I was loathed to pay it.

I tried to persuade Dark that it wasn't worth it. I babbled on about unknowable consequences, invoking the wrath of normally apathetic gods, about having no right to impose our will onto the world, but in the end, it all counted for nought.

Dark demanded his wish. I could not dissuade him with words, and I dared not try to dissuade him with force. Were I not such a coward I could have used the machine myself already and swept Dark into the howling abyss. Regret it as I may, I did promise him this, and he has fulfilled his end of the bargain. I cannot deny him.

I did, at the very least, muster the courage to ask him what it was he planned to wish for.

With a shrug and a smile he said "Only that which once was mine and lost, that I would have again."

I am writing this in the brief respite Dark has granted me before we begin, as operating the machine will be quite taxing. If only he would tell me in plain words what it is he means to wish for, it would ease my nerves.

If this is my last entry, then I want whoever finds this to know that I was fatally unsuccessful in my attempt at Apotheosis, either by my own ineptitude or by the treachery of Dark. I realize now he never meant to let me keep this thing for myself. Who would, when no matter what you wish for it could all be taken away by the wish of another?

The bastard! I wasted my life building him this abomination, and my only payment will be a knife in my back. Were I not such a fragile old man, I'd kill him myself. My only hope for justice now is that the use of the machine will swiftly bring his enemies down upon him to destroy him for me. I suppose I might finally be reunited with my dearests in death, but I could have done that myself ages ago and spare myself a lot of trouble.

Whatever happens, please know that I meant well, that I hoped that only the best would come from this.

I pray the world will still be here once Dark has had his wish.

It is not yet known whether or not SCP-3189 functioned as intended. Comparisons between current records and records from anchored or extradimensional Foundation safehouses has revealed only minor discrepancies between the present baseline reality and its preceding iteration, none of which are considered to have been likely primary goals for SCP-3189.

It should be noted, however, that in neither iteration did the Foundation possess any substantial records on the partners of Marshall, Carter & Dark. Though it is yet to be determined if this iteration's Marshall, Carter, & Dark retain any knowledge of SCP-3189 or their role in creating it, it is considered likely that the Dark(s) mentioned in the journal were the primary beneficiary of their use of SCP-3189.

It has been surmised that Mx Dark anticipated the Foundation's arrival after the activation of SCP-3189, and chose to abandon it rather than risk capture. The current whereabouts of Mx Dark, or SCP-3189's creator, remain unknown at this time.