User:Reversedragon/metasoc/scpNN44

3-24

SCP-NN44 crevasse

SCP-NN44 the big rift SCP-NN44 the big split SCP-NN44 Another world is possible

(historical background)

so historically there had been this letter filed in the Harvard Trotsky archive,

and if you'd read it, it had been surprisingly incriminating but mysteriously enough, or perhaps very very expectedly enough, the archive got rid of the letter in some sense, and were not letting people see it. though I know they had accidentally left enough traces of its existence that at some later date people had found out the gist of what was in the letter anyway. I need to retrieve my sources on this but I am pretty sure it happened. the only thing I am not clear on is whether the letter was destroyed or just hidden for a long time

3-24

what if the letter expunged from the Harvard Trotsky archive had happened to be.... not what people thought it was

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.