Item #: SCP-1255
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-1255 is to be kept in a standard containment locker at a constant temperature and humidity. Only ten photocopied pages at a time are to be produced from SCP-1255, for the purposes of lexical analysis, and are to be destroyed following analysis. Testing has been discontinued; no access is to be permitted to the object.
Description: SCP-1255 is a hardcover book showing wear consistent with its age entitled Your Life And Living It, recovered by the Foundation in 19██ . The copyright page lists Autodidact Publishing as the publisher, but all other information has been rendered illegible by several large stains on the opening pages. The foreword names the author as John Willard, identified as a professor of philosophy at the University of ██████ for several years before the book’s publication. Unfortunately, Prof. Willard was deceased by the time of recovery and investigation of his acquaintances and personal effects have yielded no insight into SCP-1255’s properties. He has been consistently described as a humble and unobtrusive man with no enemies, close friends, or strong opinions of any sort. Lexical analysis of Prof. Willard’s other writings confirm him as the author, however, the style employed in SCP-1255 is noticeably more emotional and vivacious than the clinical tone he typically employs in his lectures and scholarly writings.
Upon beginning reading SCP-1255, subjects invariably display one of two reactions: either a growing personal interest in continuing reading or a growing aversion to doing so, with roughly 75% of subjects expressing an interest in the text’s subject matter. Subjects display no anomalous behavior if ordered to act against their wishes, only normal disappointment and annoyance. If reading is interrupted, the subject will display a desire or aversion to return to the text consistent with their initial reaction and scaled according to their progress through the text.
Upon completing the text, interested subjects display gradually increasing symptoms of mania, messiah complex, obsession with the message of SCP-1255, delusions of grandeur, and an attitude of extreme self-confidence, focus, and independence, culminating in a sustained state of pronounced elation. Subjects have been observed to make significantly greater usage of simile, metaphor, and analogy in both speech and reasoning and have shown a noticeably greater willingness to subscribe to spiritual and supernatural interpretations of events in their personal lives and in the world at large. In four out of five cases, these symptoms have led subjects to question their loyalties to the Foundation and compelled them to act against its interests, necessitating termination.
Disinterested subjects will display symptoms consistent with extreme depression, rapidly increasing in severity following completion of the text. Traditional psychiatric and pharmaceutical treatments have proven largely ineffective; some success has been met following treatment with amnesiacs.
The contents of SCP-1255 are described by subjects as a philosophical argument, delivered in a relatively colloquial style, detailing the “meaning of life.” The argument proceeds through nine chapters, touching briefly upon numerous subjects and incorporating evidence and support from numerous fields of science and branches of philosophy, while remaining fixated on the individual reader’s life and well-being. The end result is described as a complete picture of reality, history, and human nature, as well as the fundamental solution to all problems individual and societal. When pressed, interested subjects are unable to reproduce the exact line of reasoning used in the text, but remain wholly convinced that their understanding of it is true to the text and maintain that the argument presented within it is without logical or factual flaws. Subjects frequently describe the text as deeply uplifting, enlightening, and encouraging and tend to ascribe to it a variety of beneficial effects, particularly uncommon mental and emotional health. Subjects commonly claim to have grasped “the truth,” from the text and tend to urge others to read it themselves, insisting this to be the only effective means of communicating its message. Disinterested subjects are similarly unable to recall the specific contents of SCP-1255, but go into far less detail describing their reaction. Where interested subjects have shown a tremendous willingness to discuss SCP-1255 in great detail and at great length, disinterested subjects dismiss it as naïve or childish and demonstrate such contempt or indifference towards the text that they consider it beneath them to discuss it.
Of particular note regarding SCP-1255 is former field agent Jared Thompson, the individual responsible for recovering the object. Agent Thompson recovered SCP-1255 from a small bookstore in the city of ██████, United States, while posing as the agent of a collector when the owner reported possession of a book published by Autodidact Publishing in response to Foundation-sponsored inquiries. It was not until several weeks later that Agent Thompson admitted that he had read through SCP-1255 prior to submitting it for containment and had experienced its effects since that time. Agent Thompson’s condition was discovered when his associates consistently reported a marked and uncharacteristic emotional reversal in Thompson during their regular psychological examinations and monthly debriefings. As Thompson presents a characteristic example of SCP-1255’s effects, and in light of his current status as a threat to the Foundation, a transcript from his case is included here.
Dr. Ramjang: Thank you for speaking with me, Agent Thompson.
Thompson: Don’t mind at all. Shoot, it’s my job. Not like I could say no, is it? No one says no to the Foundation.
Dr. Ramjang: I understand you read SCP-1255 several weeks ago, is that right?
Thompson: Yes, that’s right.
Dr. Ramjang: Why? Surely you had enough experience and training to know not to interfere with a suspected anomalous object?
Thompson: I don’t know. Years of being told to put everything from soda bottles to small children into metal boxes and forget about them makes a man curious. Sometimes a book just jumps out at you, tells you to read it. I guess… I didn’t really care much at that point. Things had gotten pretty low. I didn’t really care what happened anymore, to tell the truth. But now… Doctor- I can’t tell you how much that book has changed my life.
Dr. Ramjang: That’s what we’re here to discuss. Our other test cases have demonstrated reliably consistent results in response to 1255. You have several weeks of exposure ahead of them, however. We hope you can help us understand whether the symptoms demonstrated in victims of 1255 develop at a constant and uniform rate or are adjusted by the individual psychology of the subject.
Thompson: (laughs) That’s the way it is with all you labcoats. “Victims.” Everything has to be trying to kill you. You’ve been in the Foundation too long. I’ve been in the Foundation too long.
Dr. Ramjang: An unprofessional choice of words; I apologize. Agent Thompson, tell me, how do you feel?
Thompson: (laughs) How many times you folks going to ask me that? I’ve never felt better. I can honestly say I have never felt better. I feel like I think so much more clearly now- like all my worries have melted away. I had plenty of them before, that’s for sure. But now it’s like a dream, like I’ve been dreaming my whole life and I am only now awake.
Dr. Ramjang: Can you clarify?
Thompson: Doc, I’ve explained it again and again in a dozen other interviews. You can strip a tree down to words and numbers, analyze every last inch, learn every fact, but it isn’t till you actually go see the tree with your own eyes, feel its bark with your own hands, that you know the tree. You need to go read the book for yourself, and then you’d understand.
Dr. Ramjang: Agent Thompson, you are well aware that is not possible under current testing procedures.
Thompson: Forget procedures! This is about your life, man! Look at me. I’ve gone for weeks without a scratch. No violence. No hallucinations or visions. No “crazy to death.” What more proof do you need that this one is clean? I’ve seen for myself the good what that book has to say can do. You’ve read the other interviews; my monthly psych exams from before. You conducted one. Look at me now. You know what you have to learn from it.
Dr. Ramjang: Let’s return to that. Can you describe in greater detail just what “good” you feel you have gained from reading SCP-1255?
Thompson: (sighs) Look. It’s like this, doctor. I was recruited from the police force, forensics. Had a couple of good degrees, solid training, saw a few things that shouldn’t have been possible; I was a prime target. You’ve read my file. You people knocked on my door one night and offered me the shady side of the world or a bad hangover and fuzzy dreams. I always wanted to know what was really going on in the world; never could get rid of that feeling that things weren’t as they seemed. I was that kind of man. Looked for the angle in everything, suspected everything, read a few of those “crazy” conspiracy theory books. So I signed on and you showed me. And boy, did you show me… I’ve seen things in the past few years that left marks right down in my soul. Some men, I hear, get the fun stuff: doors that go more than one place, lampshades that sing pop songs from the fifties, lucid dream chewing gum. I got the things that burst out of people’s intestines, I got the chairs that eat people, I got the children who will always be in pain and you can never, ever help them. I used to lay in bed at night, thinking, thinking about a thousand impossible things, a thousand things worse than dying, and knowing they were all real. I used to walk through containment and wonder which cell I would end up in, one day, ripping my flesh away and watching as it grew back, because I could not die, or my innards distributed across the floor and walls, still alive, still aware… I got drunk most nights. I was doing some hard drugs too- did I ever tell any of you that? Some of the more powerful hallucinogens, a little meth. Learned the best ones from when I was cop, where to get them, too, and how to cheat a drug test. Every hallucination, every drunken dream, was about some crazy thing we hadn’t found yet, and how it was going to eat me alive, mind, body, and soul, about how the world was hanging on the end of a thread. Life was hell.
Dr. Ramjang: Agent Thompson-
Thompson: Doc… I’m alive again. I saw something when I read what that book had to say. I’m not afraid. Something died in me a long time ago, but these past few weeks it’s come alive again. I feel hope. I know things can change. I know things can be better. I know I can stand right there at the center of it. Doc, I feel like if the whole world declared war on me, I’d just raise my fists and say, “Get in line.” I’ve never felt such energy, felt so alive, so right.
(Agent Thompson can be heard rising from his chair and beginning to pace, his voice rising in intensity)
Thompson: You remember when we were kids, and the whole world was a miracle? God was in Heaven, Mom and Dad were on Earth, and the bad guys always died at the end and went to Hell? You remember what it was like when every day was an adventure and you knew that if anything ever went wrong, you’d be one of the people who put it right? You’d be Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones, fighting the good fight, saving the day. Do you remember that brief moment when you really believed it, when you knew it was true? I’ve found it again. I’m there. Every moment of every day, I feel what I always wanted to, what I thought I’d lost forever. Doc, I know you people think this book is just another brain-hazard or whatever. But just consider: what if the reason this book affects people this way- affects me this way- is simply because the argument is just that perfect? No anomalies, just a mathematical proof that life has meaning and it’s a good meaning, better than anyone could ever have thought. Reason to hope. Reason to live in a world full of things that want to kill us and worse than kill us. Reason to believe there is something out there just as good as those things are bad. Doc, I see it in your eyes. Some of you hide it better than others. Some of you are just straight-up sociopaths. You want a reason to believe you’re working for more than just another day where something hasn’t decided to kill you yet and men in suits you’ll never see pull all the strings on your life. I know it. But I could never put it into words of my own, not like that book does. Doc… I want the whole world to hear it. I want everyone to see what I've seen, experience what I have. I want to see this world change for the better. And believe me, it will.
One week after this interview, Agent Thompson went on a rampage in Facility ██, destroying SCP-███ and stealing SCP’s ███ and ███, which he used to facilitate his escape. During the altercation Thompson displayed extreme rage and moral indignation, declaring the Foundation to be corrupt and evil and calling for the release of several humanoid SCP’s in Foundation custody as well as numerous changes to containment procedure and Foundation policy. To date, he has succeeded in eluding Foundation forces, most likely through the use of the objects he removed from containment, although in addition, he has consistently displayed a level of resourcefulness, forethought, and fortitude uncommon to the average individual and inconsistent with the extent of his previous training and experience. Repeated actions against his family and friends and all attempts at reasoning with him have proven unsuccessful in prompting Thompson to turn himself in. He remains at large as a medium-level threat to the interests of the Foundation.
Addendum 1– Note from Researcher Ramjang: “Recommend we discontinue SCP-1255 testing and lock it away. I’ve done profiling on some of these people before I had them read it, and the effect is disturbing to say the least. It just can’t be healthy to undergo such a psychological one-eighty. It unhinges something in them, like energy and self-confidence are held back by a dam that's all of a sudden broken. It’s just not natural. If someone were to make copies of this book and disseminate them, we would be looking at societal collapse. A world of fearless sociopathic idealists with an axe to grind is not a world I want to see.“