Imaginary Library

Item #: SCP-XXX

Object Class: Safe

The mouth of SCP-XXX's tunnel. Lights have been installed for the first 100m.

Special Containment Procedures: No particular safety measures are necessary, although security must be maintained at the site in order to prevent the public from becoming aware of its existence.

Description: SCP-XXX is a circular tunnel 2.5m wide lined with volumes of books. The full extent of the tunnel is unknown, though Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IfSAR) has set a minimum depth of 299,792km or 1 light-second (expeditions have confirmed a depth of at least 4,441km). The conjecture has been advanced that the tunnel may be infinite.

The volumes lining the tunnel often resemble known works, fictional or otherwise, though with substantial alterations as to style, character, plot and subject matter. Authors are occasionally authentic ones (though in every case the volumes in question fail to have ever been written), though often they are wholly unknown. The works range from being at the very least unusual to completely non-sensical. All languages currently extant as well as extinct ones are represented (see the section Recovered Works). In no case has any volume borne any publication information. Dating techniques have established that the volumes originate from the era they would otherwise appear to, based on semantic and linguistic analysis. The arrangement of the volumes follows no discernible pattern.¹

The walls of the tunnel are made of limestone. Attempts at breaching them have shown that the tunnel is non-Euclidean: excavating through the floor of the tunnel, for instance, results in a corresponding hole appearing in the ceiling. Attempts at reaching the tunnel at an angle have proven futile as the tunnel appears not to exist unless approached from its entrance.

Discovery Log:
SCP-XXX was discovered in 1989 by a librarian in an unused basement of La Biblioteca Nacional de la República Argentina located in Beunos Aires. Foundation personnel administered class B amnesics to those who had been made aware of its existence and cordoned off the basement under the guise of performing emergency structural restoration.

Recovered Works:

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The following is a list of selected works recovered from SCP-XXX:

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Title: The Gospel of Eve
Author: (none)
Language: Aramaic, circa 1100 BCE–200 CE
Depth of recovery: 75m
Description: A section of Biblical Apocrypha purporting to be an account of Eve's life after her exile from The Garden of Eden. Eve is depicted engaging in furious arguments with herself on the nature of free will and original sin.

Title: Intangible herecies
Author: Carina Giusti
Language: Italian, modern
Depth of recovery: 2,318m or 2km
Description: A book of prose poems reminiscent of Italo Calvino's style, though influenced by Magical Realism. The foreword introduces the work as having won the Noble Prize for obstinance.

Title: The worm of midnight
Author: Edgar Allen Poe
Language: English, modern
Depth of recovery: 433m
Description: A hitherto unknown collection of short stories. An alert researcher recognized this fictitious work as being mentioned but not elaborated on in "The man who collected Poe" by Robert Bloch. All the stories concern shellfish.

Title: Je suis moi-même la question de mon livre (trans: I am myself the matter of my book)
Author: Pierre de Langitaire
Language: French, middle.
Depth of recovery: 171,888m or 171km
Description: Similar in style and subject matter to Essaies (trans: Attempts) by Montaigne: a collection of a large number of short subjective treatments of various topics inspired by studies in the classics (especially Plutarch), as well as discursions into the autobiographical and anecdotal. Makes heavy use of the future passive infinitive.

Title: The need for legalized abortion
Author: anonymous
Language: English, modern
Depth of recovery: 28,111m or 28km
Description: A polemic on the moral, medical, and societal costs of illegal abortion. Makes the case that abortion should be permitted through to the fourth trimester.

Title: Choix des poésies originales des Troubadours (trans: Selection of original poetry of the Troubadours)
Author: Rimbaud
Language: French, modern
Depth of recovery: 40,002m or 40km
Description: A fictitious collection of poetry consistent with the style of Rimbaud. Written completely without the letter 'u'.

Title: The grasshopper lies heavy
Author: Hawthorne Abendsen
Language: English, modern
Depth of recovery: 77m
Description: A novel concerning an alternate world where the United States won WWII (but not in a manner consistent with our history), appearing to be written from the point of view of an author living in a world where the Nazis prevailed. A search of 20th century fiction has uncovered this to be an imaginary work mentioned in the novel The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.

Title: I, Lucifer
Author: Antoine Pierce
Language: English, modern
Depth of recovery: 51,200m or 51km
Description: A "pulp" novel centering around the sex lives of a circle of lesbians and their children.

Title: Jane's fighting ships, 2041 annual
Author: various
Language: English, modern
Depth of recovery: 89,484m or 89km
Description: A reference on the changing capabilities of modern navies, their ships, aircraft and weapons systems in service and under construction. Many of the vessels and weapon systems are wholly unknown. Written in limerick form.

Title: Charm for the protection of a child
Author: (none)
Language: Egyptian, 8th Dynasty circa 1950 BCE-1300 BCE
Depth of recovery: 2m
Description: An account of the development of religion and thought in Ancient Egypt. Much of the material remains a matter of conjecture as much of it resists translation. Includes parables comparing the well-lived life to the Ford Motor Corporation.

Title: Hagiography and the gusto-fascial response
Author: Warren Zevon
Language: Basque, modern
Depth of recovery: 1,119m or 1.1km
Description: A libretto for an opera considering the plight of a group of Alaskan firemen snow-bound in their firehouse, driven mad with hunger, and forced to eat their Dalmatians. Dialogue consists entirely of rhetorical questions.

Title: Before the Flood, after the Fall, or, Antediluvian, Postlapsarian
Author: none
Language: Phoenician, ancient //circa 1725 BCE-1490 BCE
Depth of recovery: 444,113m or 4,441km (note: this is presently the furthest a volume has been recovered from)
Description: A series of interrogations between the mythical Minotaur and Sphinx. Answers are composed of anagrams formed from the questions.

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Footnotes

1. Before the librarian who discovered the artifact was administered an amnesic, he brought to the attention of Foundation personnel a story by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges's entitled "The Library of Babel". It is noteworthy that Borges worked at the same library. He was unavailable for interview as he died in 1987. The following is an excerpt from that story:

"…These examples made it possible for a librarian of genius to discover the fundamental law of the Library. This thinker observed that all the books, no matter how diverse they might be, are made up of the same elements: the space, the period, the comma, the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. He also alleged a fact which travelers have confirmed: In the vast Library there are no two identical books. From these two incontrovertible premises he deduced that the Library is total and that its shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-odd orthographical symbols (a number which, though extremely vast, is not infinite): Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the archangels' autobiographies, the faithful catalogues of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of those catalogues, the demonstration of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death, the translation of every book in all languages, the interpolations of every book in all books…"