Item #: SCP-2747
Object Class: Keter
Laconic Containment Procedures: Foundation algorithms are to monitor online and print media (e.g. the Internet and books) for SCP-2747-positive keywords. The Department of Analytics looks over all the matches to confirm the SCP-2747 manifestations.
There's also a thing called Observational Procedure LUCID CHALICE, which works like this:
- A computer program randomly generates tons of stories. Most or all of these stories contain metafiction (stories-within-stories), some of which contains more metafiction, and so on to various levels of complexity and nestedness.
- If any of these stories have certain types of data irregularities, the algorithm will flag them as showing signs of SCP-2747.
- By summarizing the shared characteristics of the stories that turn out to be 2747-related, the Foundation can work out what 2747's trigger conditions actually are.
- The Foundation will also use the work of artists who write metafiction as another source of stories for LUCID CHALICE.
Laconic Description: SCP-2747 is a phenomenon where people start talking about nonexistent works of fiction. They might be casually mentioning these stories, writing about them on Wikipedia, creating fanfiction, publishing academic essays, or whatever — it's just that the stories they're describing were never written.
The stories that the anomalous articles talk about all tend to share a certain set of narrative tropes. These include a mysterious, antagonistic figure or object that may be black, thorny, and/or destructive; sets of seven characters, scenes, or other objects; a core idea alluded to or partially described, but never actually seen; and incomplete narratives, where a story or quest ends before it can be completed. Other shared features will be listed in the article's Addendum B.
…Actually, the Department of Analytics thinks these nonexistent stories aren't imaginary. They were written — it's just that they've since been destroyed, literally erased from existence. The erasure isn't quite perfect, though: it leaves residue like Wikipedia articles and blog posts, so we can see the hole in the world where the story used to be. It's even easier to see that hole when a piece of metafiction (a story within a story) that is erased, since it leaves a hole in a parent story that still exists. Over time, the erased story's parent story will also be erased, and that one's parent story, and so on.
The Foundation believes this is because the destroyed stories contained an anafabula, or anti-narrative: a set of tropes and symbols which, when put together, make a story that erases itself. Observational Procedure LUCID CHALICE is trying to figure out exactly which tropes are in that set, by generating stories at random until enough of them disappear.
Laconic Addenda: Addendum A describes seven of the vanished stories, ranging from a Gabriel García Márquez novel to an anime to a thinly veiled parody of the SCP Wiki itself.
Addendum B, which is supposed to contain the results of LUCID CHALICE — that is, the exact contents of the anafabula — is empty. The data has been lost.
The notes above the addenda imply that the Foundation realizes both that its world is fictional (and even realizes that it was created in 2008!) and that its entire multiverse consists of nested layers of stories. That's why this SCP is Keter: because if it can destroy a meta-story in the Foundation universe, and then destroy the story that meta-story is part of, the next story it destroys will be the Foundation universe itself.
Additional Context: Note that the actual SCP-2747 article, on the real-world SCP Wiki, includes the elements of the anafabula. The seven items in Addendum A are the set of seven scenes; the anafabula itself is the mysterious, destructive antagonist; and the article circles its ultimate punchline without ever stating it outright. It even ends before it can be completed, since Addendum B is lost. Thus, "SCP-2747" itself is an instance of the anafabula, and we can expect it to destroy itself soon. After that, it will destroy its parent story-world: the SCP Wiki itself. After that, it'll destroy the world containing the Wiki — which is the real world. Our world.