SCP-960

Description

SCP-960 is a sizable fragment of what is speculated to be an ancient Greek vase, discovered on the island of ████, near the site of the ancient Minoan city of ███████. On its surface are depicted three Muses; the two identifiable ones are Melpomene, in the middle, and Clio, on the left. The one on the right, shown as holding a dagger to her own neck, has never been seen in any other piece of Greco-Roman art and cannot be identified as appearing in any recorded myth.

A short but variable time after a human touches SCP-960, the subject will be struck at ever-closer intervals by a series of original ideas. The natures of these inspirations always follow a strict progression:

1. A piece of music (usually classical; occasionally, a fully-formed opera)
2. An intricate choreography
3. A painting, drawing, or sculpture
4. A psychological or sociological insight
5. A work of fiction of variable length, or a detailed (and true) autobiography
6. A spiritual revelation
7. A work of drama
8. One joke (which the subject typically repeats as often as conversations allow)
9. A scientific breakthrough

Subjects exposed to SCP-960 will invariably request the materials they need to complete these works; if they do not receive them, they will become belligerent and uncooperative until their requests are satisfied or until they find suitable substitutes.

It is worth noting that the ideas are never written down in any sort of rough copy; they only ever appear as the final product, as if a full-fledged idea had entered the subject's head and left it unchanged. Subjects also display extraordinary talent in each of the fields listed above, but only for as long as they are working on completing their tasks.

After the aforementioned itinerary is exhausted, the inspirations become more sinister. All creative energy previously spent on the arts and sciences is focused on devising ingenious methods of violence. Instead of asking for materials at this stage, the subject will begin to seek them out proactively. Records pertaining to the stages of exposure are detailed in the Addenda.

Addendum 960-01

• Incident 01, est. date 20/07/████
  • SCP-960 found by amateur archaeologist ██████ ██████████, south of the city of ███████; it is unknown exactly when he first touched the artifact, but family later reported that he began to ask them for a series of artistic and scientific supplies, despite his previous lack of interest in either field. Created by Mr. ██████████ were the following:
    • A symphony, entitled "██████████ ███", written for a full orchestra and an extensive percussion section.
    • A complex ballet, set to the previously mentioned symphony, containing one of the most intricate pas de deux choreographed.
    • A triptych depicting strikingly detailed images of what would appear to be the Holy Trinity.
    • A corollary to Albert Bandura's theory of observational learning.
    • A moving account of his own life, starting from his birth and culminating with the events of the previous year.
    • A rebuttal of Nikolai Berdyaev's 1952 essay The Truth of Orthodoxy.
    • A set of three one-act plays centered around the theme of alienation in a society dedicated to individual achievement, entitled (in Greek): ██ ███████, ████, and █████ █ ██.
    • [DATA EXPUNGED] "Extremely, unnecessarily crude. I fail to see the humor in this." -Dr. █████
    • A truly four-dimensional model of an octachoron. Under study.

One week after this last accomplishment, by the family's reckoning, the ██████████' next-door neighbor died in a fire at her home. The [DATA EXPUNGED] Fire Department issued a report naming the source of the blaze to be a can of hairspray fitted internally with a complicated mechanism similar to a pilot light on a stove and left on her bathroom counter. After local authorities learned that Mr. ██████████ had disappeared without warning just prior to his neighbor's death, the archaeologist was brought in for questioning. He, however, escaped the police by impaling [DATA EXPUNGED] and fighting his way out of the station to a side street. He then fled on foot; however, Agent ████, who had heard reports of a murderer with abnormal strength on the run, captured the man and, when it became clear that no alternative solution presented itself, was required to terminate the subject.
Note: Mr. ██████████ wrote in his notes about a fourth figure on the fragment he discovered; this figure was apparently not a muse, but the depiction of a god outside the accepted Greco-Roman pantheon. Its significance is unclear, and Mr. ██████████ failed to include any photographs or sketches of the deity in his notebook.
EDIT: The fragment with the unidentified deity has been retrieved and reattached. Its function is still not known.

Addendum 960-02

• Incident 02, 03/02/████
  • The curator of the [DATA REDACTED] Museum of Art in ████, ██, United States, having recently acquired SCP-960 and placed it in storage, decided to put it on display. Security footage shows the curator, Dr. ██████ ███, moving the artifact from the basement to a display case on the second floor, without wearing anything on his hands. He spent the next several weeks in his home [which he would have even if SCP-960 had no extraordinary properties, since he had been placed on probation by the museum's board of advisors for disregarding protocol in transporting the fragment without gloves], during which time he brought about:
    • A rock opera chronicling the rise and fall of the Roman emperor Octavian, left untitled.
    • An emotive modern dance routine involving two male dancers and a trapdoor.
    • A sculpture of himself sculpting Michelangelo creating the Pietà. Described as "intriguingly ironic."
    • What would later be known as [DATA REDACTED].
    • A science-fiction novella about humankind being unknowingly forced into a hopeless battle against extraterrestrial forces by a godlike ancestral species. Overbearingly pessimistic in theme and tone.
    • An outline for the polity and doctrine of an entirely new branch of Protestant Christianity, which he named ██████. (Dr. ████ wishes it to be known that the ideology expressed within these documents, while indeed inventive, is tremendously vitriolic. It is possible that the more violent aspects of SCP-960 mingled with the earlier ones- future research should be conducted to verify whether this is possible, or whether Dr. ███ was just a particularly deranged individual.)
    • A five-act historical drama about the early stages of the American Revolutionary War; places emphasis upon onstage violence. Has been described as what would happen if Quentin Tarantino collaborated with William Shakespeare to write a play about American history.
    • A "lightbulb joke"; researchers with particular political leanings have deemed it unfunny.
    • An explanation of the precise nature of dark matter; the validity of this explanation has yet to be determined.

After an undetermined length of time had passed since this last dissertation, Dr. ███ was caught by state law enforcement as he was plotting a way to free the inmates of a nearby maximum-security prison. Targets of the jailbreak given particular emphasis in the scheme included mass murderers [DATA REDACTED], and local serial highway sniper [DATA REDACTED]. When Dr. ███ refused to surrender and attempted to attack one of the officers, he was killed at the scene.

Addendum 960-03

• Incident 03, 19/04/████
  • The home of the doctor aforementioned was the target of a burglary on ███ ██ of the same year, as the loft had been vacant for some time. One of the thieves, Russian-born ████ ████████, was charged with transportation and temporary safekeeping of the fragment, among other goods stolen from the building. ████████ decided to keep the artifact to himself and made his escape from the storehouse where it was being kept, according to a statement made under interrogation by his accomplice. Fresh-looking scratches and chips make it seem that he dropped the fragment somewhere along the way, perhaps breaking off the part with the unknown figure mentioned earlier. [The piece was later found and reattached; unknown whether this was of any real consequence.] He then made a home for himself in the sewer, creating the following over the estimated course of one week.
    • The score, written in varying shades of green, brown, and red on the sewer walls, for a somber Broadway-style musical about two doomed lovers in WWII-era Stalingrad.
    • A tragic retelling of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker from the perspective of the Rat King, written in the same substances as before. Substances used as "ink" were composed of sewage, fecal material of untested origin, and blood from various species, including rat and human.
    • What appeared to be, at one time, a self-portrait; at the time of viewing by Agent ████-███████, the sewage-based "paints" had all but evaporated, leaving only the parts of the image painted in red on the wall. This included the right eye and half of a grinning mouth. ████████ most likely used material with a higher concentration of water to create this, explaining why it disappeared when other samples of it did not.
    • The phrase "i am just fine" repeated a number of times along the walls, primarily in brown. Scrawled beneath this in red were the Russian words [DATA REDACTED]. Note: According to family and doctors' logs, the individual had no history of mental instability prior to contact with SCP-960. Dr. ████'s hypothesis about the "tenth muse" influencing the others may be correct; pending further testing.
    • What could be best described as a stream-of-consciousness poem, printed entirely in red along fifteen meters of the floor of the sewer. Themes included involved the existence or nonexistence of both the writer and of God, fear of abandonment, and presumably [REDACTED] - the reference, if it is indeed a reference, is cryptic.
    • Little is understood about the "spiritual revelation" brought forth through Mr. ████████ by SCP-960. At first glance, it appears to be a short phrase written in nearly illegible Hebrew, reading "I am the way, the truth, and the life"; however, on closer inspection, the Hebrew characters were composed of strings of English words, detailing what appears to be a [DATA EXPUNGED]. From the quantity of remains in the sewer, it can be concluded that the acts described were performed a number of times. Surviving family members of those taken have not yet been provided with a cover story.
    • A one-act play concerning the tribulations of a man who is sent to prison for a crime he did not commit, and who responds to this by breaking free and slaughtering the jury members who voted him guilty. Culminates in the protagonist's onstage suicide. Carved into the floor with something metallic.
    • "How do you get an elephant to laugh?" "a feather, a feather, two feathers" [Assumed to be a joke; found etched deeply into the skin on Mr. ████████'s back. Unknown how this occurred.]
    • A number of comprehensive diagrams of the anatomy of a rat, accompanied by the claim, written on the ceiling of the sewer and allegedly "proven" by the drawings, that a rat's brain can process and comprehend a number of languages, including English and Russian. This theory has not been submitted to testing, for obvious reasons; however, the lack of ladders or scaffolding in the sewers makes the location of these diagrams much more interesting than their actual content.

On the night of ██/██/████, the subject left the sewers and broke into a pawn shop; here, he stole a number of weapons and a massive length of wire. He then forced entry into a nearby office building and made his way to the roof, then began firing indiscriminately at the people beneath him and at those in adjacent buildings. Casualties were not given a definite figure but are estimated to be at least ██. Police soon responded, but Mr. ████████ managed to incapacitate or kill seven officers on the ground before they made any significant progress. When a police helicopter arrived, ████████ - having tied one end of the wire around his ankles and the other to a small fan attached to the roof - jumped from the building, most likely under the assumption that the wire would act as a bungee cord. It instead severed his feet; vital signs were confirmed absent upon landing. SCP-960 was recovered by the Foundation from the sewers beneath soon afterward.

More recent experiments have not had the detrimental effects of SCP-960 set in so quickly or so vehemently; research should be directed at understanding why Mr. ████████ was such an anomalous case.