Editing User:Reversedragon/metasoc/scpNN44

{{BopCSS}}<h1>SCP-NN44<span style="display: none;">: </span><span style="display: block; font-size: 85%;">Another world is possible</span></h1>

<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0.9em; padding-top: 0; margin-top: 1em;"><time datetime="2025-03-24T23:05:00Z" data-revision="2">(historical background)</time></h3>

So historically there had been this letter filed in the Harvard Trotsky archive, which was just a place at the college storing historical documents. It had various letters between Trotsky and his son, and possibly some other people, dating to some unclear time period between 1925 and 1937.<br />
But if you'd actually read any of these letters, they had been [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1jTXZwq_mg&t=943 surprisingly incriminating]. They talked all about how Trotsky was setting up various secret groups of random arbitrary anticommunists to take down the Soviet government with no real regard for the Marxist principles [https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/xx/democent.htm he claimed to believe in].

Mysteriously enough, or perhaps <em>very very expectedly</em> enough, the university library had locked away these several incriminating letters and weren't letting people see them, until the day they were eventually unearthed and published by none other than an [https://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1980/01/bloc.html accursed "Stalinist" periodical]. It appears somebody at the university attempted to redact some of them, although they ultimately did not do a very good job at it, such that the letters appear to have been reproduced very nearly in full.

As with other things like the [https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1938/trial/index.htm Moscow Trials], there is way too much consistency between all of these forbidden Trotskyist primary sources coming from different places, which would have had to have been made up by multiple people not necessarily coordinated with each other, for any of these to be fake. Trotskyists really really tried to hide these letters to contain what would happen if the public saw them, making their surface description <em>hilariously</em> similar in concept to an SCP, but they ultimately didn't succeed.

<div class="bop" style="border-top: 1px solid var(--border-color-base,#a2a9b1); padding-top: 0.9em; margin-top: 1em;">
<h3 style="margin: 0 0 0.9em 0; padding-top: 0;"><time datetime="2025-03-24T23:05:00Z">3-24</time></h3>
<div style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-family: inherit; background: inherit; border: none;">what if the letter expunged from the Harvard Trotsky archive had happened to be.... <i>not what people thought it was</i>

when the letter arrived to the archive, people thought it was just a normal letter
they thought it was just a normal letter serving as a primary source for a historical event
but then the people at Harvard realized something terrible.
each time somebody read the letter, their summaries of it started to very slowly diverge.
the first few times, people were coming up with different perspectives on the letter. it seemed some people had the opinion Trotsky was justified in doing what he did and some people didn't like what he did.
the next few times, people's summaries of the letter were beginning to become different enough there was a serious question of whether they had read the same letter with the same contents.
the next few times after that, it started to become very apparent that people were outright summarizing different letters even though before anybody received the letter at that point it had at least at that point been the same letter.
the letter was anomalous. there was something very strange going on with this letter.

the SCP foundation investigates the letter
they try to check whether the letter is merely generating different perceptions in different people, but it turns out that with the right methods the different versions of the letter can be confirmed from outside. every version of the letter is in fact real. anybody can see other versions just by repeating a particular series of statements and tentatively assuming they are true.
this, funny enough, leads to the labeling of various philosophical perspectives as sub-entities of this particular SCP. they label Stalin's perspective, Trotsky's perspective, Ronald Reagan's perspective, Mao's perspective, and a few others including some "control" perspectives that seem entirely unrelated as SCP-NN44-1 and so forth.
each of these statement lists is classified as safe since they generally do not affect any other SCPs, only this one, but they did need to keep them in numbered files.

the next thing they test is if these different versions of the letter are different physical timelines, by trying to see if doing something causal before putting the letter through a perspective actually has an effect only in some of the timelines. the results are that every person with a different version of the letter is affected, so they are all happening in the same timeline, yet they still aren't physically true at the same time.
the foundation realizes that this is a very serious problem. this kind of thing is absolutely not supposed to be happening. in other situations this kind of event would be labeled a paradox and the foundation would be trying to prevent it from happening under the threat of it potentially collapsing reality. so levels of the foundation above where the initial tests happened are getting very concerned.

the next thing they test is if these different versions of the letter are different physical timelines, by trying to see if doing something causal before putting the letter through a perspective actually has an effect only in some of the timelines. the results are that every person with a different version of the letter is affected, so they are all happening in the same timeline, yet they still aren't physically true at the same time.
the foundation realizes that this is a very serious problem. this kind of thing is absolutely not supposed to be happening. in other situations this kind of event would be labeled a paradox and the foundation would be trying to prevent it from happening under the threat of it potentially collapsing reality. so levels of the foundation above where the initial tests happened are getting very concerned.

the pataphysics division investigates the letter and determines that what's going on is this:
while the classic example of pataphysics is a narrative nested inside a narrative that then appears as its own universe, the letter has created a process where every possible observer, or to be more precise every possible logical vantage point made of propositions that an observer could have, rewrites the narrative on its own level and turns it into a new narrative. this leads to a single consistent narrative splintering into multiple overlapping narratives which each have their own content. as a result, sometimes the narratives will overlap with the same shared objects and events, but sometimes parts of their physical worlds will proceed in parallel without interacting with each other.
in one sense, this situation of overlapping narratives could be considered safe, because by definition each narrative that diverges does not interact with or cause trouble for other diverging narratives; in one sense all the diverging narratives are already contained. but in another sense, this situation could become very unsafe if any of the diverging narratives starts to /include/ unsafe things and then to simultaneously start believing it is consistent with other narratives such that it is able to unleash said new anomalies into them.

in theory, one could contain all the dangerous narratives by making sure they never ever believe themselves to be consistent with narratives they could potentially harm. if there was any way to do this reliably, this stupid letter would have ended up creating a Thaumiel class object — one of the most secret kinds, which might be consistently used to contain a lot of other SCPs.
unfortunately, controlling dangerous narratives is not that simple. the properties of any particular localized narrative are generated from /within/ the set of statements of that narrative, and the results of that can sometimes be unpredictable. attempts to influence any particular localized narrative from outside it can fail to predict the narrative's local results correctly, and upon such a failure, whatever one is trying to do to that narrative will not successfully contain its anomalies. should you try to rewrite the narrative by changing its claims, the anomalies might still be produced. should you try to intentionally invoke the letter inside a potentially dangerous narrative to fracture the narrative away from other things, it could be that part of the narrative becomes contained but the part that is contained is not the actual dangerous part. or, the anomalies could be contained, yet it happens so unreliably that nobody would consider this a proper method to do it.

to step out of the SCP universe and use an analogy, if you have a created narrative that's a Dark World containing Darkners, you could attempt to rewrite the claims that make up the Dark World but it wouldn't always contain the behavior of whatever entity is in there like Spamton trying to get out. equally you could try to make all the Darkners believe they're not consistent with the Light World but once again it's not guaranteed to work and it could still end up with our Spamton anomaly trying to get out. so, parallel narratives are really hard to contain due to the way a narrative can be basically anything and you can't necessarily stop narratives from including something dangerous.
</div></div>

<div class="bop" style="border-top: 1px solid var(--border-color-base,#a2a9b1); padding-top: 0.9em;">
<h3 style="margin: 0 0 0.9em 0; padding-top: 0;"><time datetime="cr. 2025-03-26T03:46:34Z">object report</time></h3>
<div style="white-space: pre-wrap; font-family: inherit; background: inherit; border: none;"><h4 style="display: inline;">Item #:</h4> SCP-(NN44)<br /><!--
--><h4 style="display: inline;">Object Class:</h4> Safe<br /><br /><!--

--><h4 style="display: inline;">Special Containment Procedures:</h4> All texts associated with SCP-NN44 are to be kept in a locked file cabinet in a part of the facility not disclosed to low-level personnel. In the event of unauthorized access to the containment chamber where the texts remain undisturbed, the texts should be relocated to a different part of the facility. In the event of unauthorized access to the actual texts, the persons in question should be detained, given amnestics, and <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">asked to identify what object is inside SCP-NN44-4 according to the two-subject procedure in the experiment logs</del>. If the unauthorized person <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">gives a description of the box matching your own observations</del>, the person may be released. If the unauthorized person <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">reports that SCP-NN44-4 contains an object contradicting your own observations,</del> this should be considered a minor emergency and appropriate authorized personnel should refer to the information in the level 3 clearance section.<br /><br /><!--

--><h4 style="display: inline;">Description:</h4> SCP-NN44 is a collection of written correspondences printed on apparently normal paper with apparently normal inks. As long as they are not read by any self-aware entities, each of these letters appears indistinguishable from any non-anomalous writing.

SCP-NN44-1 is a letter addressed from Lev Sedov to former Communist leader Leon Trotsky. It was collected from the archive of historical materials related to Leon Trotsky at <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">Harvard University (the "Harvard Trotsky archive") on October 21 of 1940</del>, and has been securely stored at the foundation for <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">a total of 53</del> years until it was recently revisited <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">for testing beginning on the 2nd of November, 1993</del>.

SCP-NN44-2 is a letter addressed from a British labor movement organizer to <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">fabricated Communist</del> leader Pete S<del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">cheider.</del> This letter <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">was created in order to try to replicate the anomalous properties</del> of SCP-NN44-1, <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">which turned out to be a success</del>. <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">unfortunately, the downside of this is that it appears any and all attempts to produce an altered version of either SCP-NN44-1 or SCP-NN44-2 create a new anomalous letter.</del> Any further research on either SCP-NN44-1 or SCP-NN44-2 is advised to avoid altering any part of either letter <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">during any processes which reproduce its contents</del> through speech or writing, <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">particularly in written form.</del>

SCP-NN44-3 is a letter <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">addressed to fabricated Communist leader Pete Scheider, containing almost the same sequence of words as SCP-NN44-2 and produced by imperfectly copying its contents.</del> This letter has the same properties as SCP-NN44-2 and SCP-NN44-1.

SCP-NN44-4 is a steel lockbox <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">which was used for the purposes of testing SCP-NN44-1, SCP-NN44-2, and SCP-NN44-3.</del> This box is not anomalous <del style="background-color: #020202; color: transparent;">by itself, but in combination with SCP-NN44-1, SCP-NN44-2, or SCP-NN44-3 seems to be capable of relocating various books contained within foundation premises into itself, or causing various objects put inside it to behave as if they were books, but only within the bounds of particular localized narratives inhabited by particular people who have been exposed to one of the three anomalous letters.</del> SCP-NN44-4 can be considered low-priority given that it is poses a very low risk to anyone as long as SCP-NN44-1, SCP-NN44-2, and SCP-NN44-3 have already been properly contained.
</div></div>

<div class="bop-foot">

<dl class="bop-meta"><!--
{{BopFwd2|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}j0zrlL9JX68| some link }}
; {{BopComment}} -->
{{BopFwd|User:Reversedragon/metasoc/scpNN44 tale|metatransitional fantasy/ SCP-NN44 tale}}
{{BopCreated|2025-03-24T23:05:00Z}}
{{BopCommentTitle|metatransitional fantasy/ SCP-NN44}}
</dl></div><!--
-->[[Category:Meta-transitional fantasy ontology (RD)]]  __NOTOC__