SCP International

DOCUMENT ꙮ-005-19370809

To O5-7:

We have sent requests to investigate SCP-Laplace to a total of 62 world lines ahead of us that appear to be affected by the anomaly. Almost all timelines identified a large-scale containment breach caused by SCP-Laplace in 1948. Different world lines' Foundations seem to have responded differently to the incident.

Some alternate Foundation personnel appear to be interested in further discussions. I await further orders.

To the Project Aidita Team:

Request approved. If necessary, I am able to be present at the discussions in person.

The following document is an interview log with a Foundation employee in timeline MD759E-α-018. Personnel involved are Delta Command member Gawain and MD759E-α-018 Foundation member [REDACTED].

Note: It appears that the outbreak of war is closely related to the existence of a German state. The Delta Command is to pay more attention to the evolution of German politics in the near future.

As previously hypothesized, SCP-8260 may be an important trigger. We may need to intensify surveillance of scientific research so as to prevent the independent and undetected discovery of SCP-8260.

To the Project Aidita Team

I hear you have received a request to meet from the Foundation in timeline EX864F-α-033. Do they require me to personally speak to them?

Please send this message on for me; I can discuss it with them. Before that, please conduct some investigation into their objectives.

The following document is an interview log with a Foundation employee in timeline EX864F-α-033. Personnel involved are O5-7 EX864F-α-033 Foundation member [REDACTED].

The following is the contents of an encrypted audio signal received by the Project Aidita team from timeline MK264B-κ-215. Based on the contents, this signal may have been sent by an alternate universe's Insurgents; this organization may have at some point completely split off from the Foundation and changed their name to the "Chaos Insurgency".

To O5-1:

Our current observation results indicate that a leakage of anomalous technology may occur in 1948, but it appears that this leakage of anomalous technology does not necessarily lead to a global threat. Only a small part of timelines actually faced the threat of human extinction due to the leakage of anomalous technology.

As such, I now suspect that the message from the Paradox Insurance Policy may not actually be related to the extinction of human civilization.

Recall that question I asked you so long ago? Why is it that out of all the many civilizations in the universe, only a few have actively communicated with other civilizations? Why has no one noticed that there exist civilizations beyond the Earth until now?

The latest observation results indicate that SCP-Laplace's greatest effect may not be the leakage of anomalous technology itself, but the victorious countries or the Foundation gaining full control over the development of human society — certainly a far more damaging effect! Not to mention that this kind of incident occurs in every parallel universe we have observed to date. Even if we avoid the incident in 1948, there will be a another in 2019, another in 2300, another in 2667, another in 8900 — even if we survive this, we can't ensure that we survive the next one.

Such a prevalent phenomenon has compelled me to consider a different possibility: incidents like SCP-Laplace may not be limited to our world. So I did a simple statistical investigation — based on the information already available, out of all the extraterrestrial civilizations known to us, 99.8% of them did not successfully develop to the level of achieving interstellar communication and establishing contact with other civilizations before going extinct; the remaining few civilizations continued to develop, but even the most successful of them were only able to develop to the point of harnessing the power of a few star systems.

In other words, something is impeding the development of civilization, whether on Earth or on other planets. It may be an anomalous entity, or a phenomenon, or something else entirely, but regardless, it manifests itself as the stagnation of civilizations as their structure becomes fixed; their history ends at that point.

Will a large-scale anomalous outbreak really occur during the war in 1948? Technological progress is always accelerated during a war, and times when these explosive scientific developments take place are without doubt the most "uncertain". I do not dare to say whether this definitely has no relation to the war, but the war itself may not be the most frightening part of this incident; "uncertainty" — whether it is brought by the war itself or the associated development of technology — or, in other words, the disappearance of every last bit of uncertainty in the development of human civilization is the true calamity.

Think back to the wording of String 17 — it is the "possibilities" that will disappear, not the "future of humanity" itself. All timelines, all civilizations, facing this ending in which the possibilities of future development disappear? What is this thing, hidden behind all these phenomena, that serves as the ultimate cause of all "uncertainty" disappearing?

We are currently planning to evade the calamity by strictly controlling human society, but this very act may very well worsen its effects, or be the very calamity itself to begin with. If it is really so, everything we did so far to monitor the development of humanity may very likely have caused the opposite effect.

I hope you and the other Council members will discuss this problem. At the least, we feel that we should seriously consider this possibility.

To O5-7:

I don't quite agree. On the contrary, I believe deeply inserting ourselves into world politics, economics and technological development is the correct path. It is all but confirmed that a massive containment breach will occur in 1948. Thus, no matter how you look at it, taking such strong measures is very much necessary.

Seven, you know that ever since the Foundation was established, we have steadfastly adhered to the principles — Secure, Contain, Protect. The exploration of "uncertainty" certainly leads to the space needed for humanity's development, but as a child must be taught to follow the right path, so too does human development need to be restricted to ensure the world does not become overrun with anomalies.

We have always done this. In order to ensure the stability of the world order, we may need to do some necessary evil. This may very well sacrifice some space for humanity to develop, but time will surely tell that we were correct. I, and the entire Foundation, will always strive to maintain normalcy. This will never change.

And for you to discuss subsequent disasters, and even come up with such ridiculous conclusions as "all obstacles to human civilization are caused by the same anomaly" — in my mind, these are things that fiction writers would worry about, and not a seasoned physicist like you. At the least, we should focus on the task immediately before us, instead of worrying about what will happen in 2300 or 8900.

To all "Insurgents" members:

The O5 Council believes that other anomalous phenomena may be behind the incident that will occur in 1948; SCP-Laplace's nature remains unknown. The current procedures, based on maintaining normalcy, have not produced detectable effects on SCP-Laplace; as such, we speculate that this anomaly may be hidden as a part of normalcy.

Based on the current situation, String 17 specifies the disappearance of "possibilities", and the strategy of monitoring humanity's development may be exacerbating this dangerous possibility. As such, SCP-Laplace's true effects may be directed at the Foundation itself, with the property of "considering something non-anomalous as an anomaly and containing it".

This is the most dangerous possibility: nothing happens in 1948, not even a scientific research organization outside the Veil independently discovering an anomalous effect. It is likely that we have placed something entirely non-anomalous in the category of anomalies under SCP-Laplace's effects.

As an Overseer, I would like the Psychology, Sociology and Systems Science Divisions to research the true nature of SCP-Laplace. The core of this project is determining the boundary of "normal" and "anomalous".

The project led by the Psychology Department shall be codenamed Project PNEUMA, while that led by the Systems Science Department shall be codenamed Project Emergence.

The above projects are top secret, and knowledge of all work is restricted to "Insurgents" members and O5-4 and O5-7.

To O5-4:

It's true, I deceived every single one of the Insurgents… I presented my own personal thoughts as the consensus of the entire O5 Council. In the order I issued, I crassly stated that the end of civilization was anomalous, even though it is just a guess of mine with no proof to back it up. You could even say that it was an excuse to push on with the investigation.

But I had no other choice. I may be wrong, and if I do turn out to be wrong I will willingly take full responsibility for it — even if I will do many more things I must take responsibility for. But on the other hand, I cannot just watch the Foundation shut the door on the development of human civilization and force it to rely on the maintenance of "possibilities" — that is to say, the erasure of "uncertainty".

When we chose to establish the "Insurgents", our goal was for them to complete work that would be inconvenient for the Foundation to do. If this would interfere with normalcy, then it will be the Insurgents' job to do it.

DOCUMENT ꙮ-006-19381028

To all members of the Delta Command:

I will now summarize the results of our recent research.

The results of research led by O5-7 in the Extraterrestrial Civilizations Department indicates that all known civilizations encounter a certain point in time in their development, after which they suddenly lose the drive to continue development, maintaining a fixed state for a relatively long time. If they're lucky, they might break free of this state and continue developing further. If they're not, the civilization stalls and declines.

This kind of event seems to have already occurred many times on Earth. The Entropy Pool Theory is able to explain some of these phenomena. It attributes a civilization's decline in development to the loss of "uncertainty" — as it is commonly known, uncertainty is the prerequisite for a civilization's development and also one of the main reasons for humanity's development in science and technology. Uncertainty gave us a sense of opportunity, and enabled us to feel excitement and curiosity. We humans explored the realm of scientific knowledge in order to satisfy the curiosity and hopes for the future brought by that very uncertainty.

As a civilization develops, this uncertainty slowly disappears until none is left; the civilization will lack the ability to counteract "certainty" — or, as it is better known, "fate". Without this uncertainty, a civilization can only continue existing following a fixed model; its future has already been arranged. It has lost any possibility of change or development and will soon enough decline silently into extinction.

But the Entropy Pool Theory has a critical weakness: it cannot explain why the entropy pool has a maximum limit. Based on thermodynamics, a system like our universe, simply bound by gravity, theoretically at the very least can have a negative thermal capacity. By absorbing heat, the universe's energy content increases, but the temperature itself decreases. This indicates that there is no such thing as thermal equilibrium in the universe. Naturally, the resources that we are able to use — in other words, the "primordial, meaningful possibilities" — are infinite - the entropy pool itself lacks a theoretical upper bound. As long as we can find more resources we can make the entropy pool continuously grow, and the uncertainty added in this period is sufficient to support our expansion of the boundaries of the entropy pool.

Once we have reached this point, the answer is clear: there is some factor — or anomaly — that is blocking the manifestation of uncertainty. Based on our previous theory, this existence is certainly an existential threat to humanity's development.