Congratulations. You did it. After years of working your fingers to the
bone at the legendary SCP Foundation, putting your life, sanity, and perhaps even immortal
soul at risk every single day, you suddenly find yourself standing at the very tip of
the pyramid. You can now learn about the truth behind SCP-001. You’d be lying if you said it was an easy
journey. You started about one rung above D-Class,
a mere janitor, mopping hallways and cleaning toilets for personnel who actually got a piece
of the action. Not that it meant you didn’t have to experience
risk on the job. You remembered one of the most terrifying
moments of your life occurring during this period, back when you were just cleaning out
office space in Site-19. You heard the door rattle behind you, and
you rose back up just in time to see SCP-173 standing in the doorway, staring at you. You’d heard about this thing, about how
you had to keep your eyes on it, or it’d kill you and then everything else. You stared at it, eyes watering in panic,
hoping to keep it rooted in place. But it was starting to hurt. You could feel yourself straining. The surface of your eyes was so dry. Was this where you were going to die? Perhaps, if you hadn’t had the idea you
had next. You blinked one eye, and then the other, keeping
one open at all times. That kept the Sculpture in place long enough
for the Site Security Team to locate it, and drag it back to containment. You’d saved your own life, and many others
that day, and decided in that moment that you may really have a future here. And you weren’t the only one with this level
of confidence. Hearing about your quick thinking and heroic
bravery, the head of the site security team decided you might be an ideal candidate for
his crew, after the proper training. You jumped at the chance, of course, to experience
the grueling barrage of physical and mental courses needed to survive and thrive under
the pressure of being a dedicated Foundation guard. Before long, you became an accepted member
of the security team. And you’d go on to receive further commendations
for your cool-headedness and bravery during dangerous containment breaches from SCP-3199,
SCP-106, and SCP-939, respectively. You were quickly turning into a respected
figure among your Foundation peers. While some would be content to coast on that,
you’ve never been the kind of person who just rests on their laurels. By day, you work to keep Site-19 safe from
deadly containment breaches and infiltration from crafty Groups of Interest like the Chaos
Insurgency and the Serpent’s Hand. But by night, you were taking online college
courses, slowly beefing up your qualifications in a number of esoteric research sciences. After years of hard work, you requested a
transfer from Senior Security Officer to Junior Researcher. It’d be a step backwards, in terms of career
advancement, and you were also told you’d get a pay cut for your trouble. But you didn’t care; you’d even start
with archival work if it meant getting closer to the actual anomalies the Foundation was
all about. So that’s exactly what happened: You were
made a junior researcher, and your first job was archival duties, sorting and digitizing
years of files with the new computerized system. For some, this would be hell. For you, it’s heaven. You’re getting to see it all up close: The
deepest, darkest secrets of the SCP Foundation. Well, not quite. At your low clearance level, there’s only
a certain amount you’re able to access, even when filing things away. Stumbling into the wrong files and attempting
to access them can be actively dangerous, too, as many of them are protected with the
kind of heavy-duty memetic kill agents that’d stop your heart before you even have a chance
to click away. But funnily enough, that level of protection
only made the forbidden fruit of knowledge seem more enticing. And the very peak of curiosities, locked away
under so many layers of secrecy and encryption, was the equal parts iconic and infamous SCP-001. Some senior researchers had spread rumors
about the true nature of 001, but nobody truly had the full scope of it outside of the O5
Council. For pretty much everyone else, the true answers
would be forever out of reach, like a distant but enrapturing mirage. And it was at that moment that you decided:
You’d simply have to become a member of the O5 Council, and for the rest of your life,
that’s exactly what you try to work towards. After all, rumor has it that the Council has
access to secret, life-extending anomalies that they use to linger around for centuries. A single meager lifetime working toward a
seat at the table would be such a small price to pay when all was said and done. For the next few decades, you did everything
you could to advance your position and climb through the ranks of this prestigious organization. You published award-winning research papers
on the nature of Thaumatology, you worked multiple eighteen-hour shifts a week, getting
up close and personal with some of the most famous and dangerous anomalies on the books
- SCP-106, SCP-096, and even SCP-682. You showed bravery and heroism during containment
breaches, staying calm and keeping the people around you out of harm’s way. And as you rise through the ranks, you always
keep your goal in mind: You’ll uncover the secrets of SCP-001. You have to know. You will know. There is no other acceptable outcome. While, technically speaking, 001 is above
classified, the SCP Foundation is an organization run by humans - Well, mostly, anyway - and
when humans are involved, nothing will ever be infallible. And after all, there’s no such thing as
a perfect seal. When you’re rubbing elbows with Dr. Gears,
Dr. Clef, and Dr. Bright, it’s natural that some things start to slip out in conversation,
even if, strictly speaking, it’s in defiance of official Foundation protocol. But something strikes you as very strange:
As each one tells you about their vision of SCP-001, you notice that each is describing
a completely different thing. Dr. Clef, for example, begins covertly telling
you about something known as The Gate Guardian. Also known by the alias Uriel, this being
is said to act as the bouncer at the door to paradise. He’s impossibly huge, with wings made of
burning light, and a sword of pure fire that’s hotter than the sun. Clef tells you that the creature’s sword
is so powerful that it cleaves its victims apart on the atomic level, completely and
utterly destroying every trace of them. Though he then grumbles, with visible frustration,
that it failed in its attempt to kill SCP-682. Adding “No surprises there, right?” as he left to have a smoke. Dr. Bright tells you an incredibly different
story. To him, SCP-001 isn’t a being, it’s a
location. An expansive factory from the 19th century
that was created by pure evil occultist and industrialist James Anderson. This place initially seemed like a boon, providing
jobs to the needy travelers and transients across the early United States. But this dream come true soon revealed itself
to be a complete nightmare: Anderson was a brutal taskmaster, who not only worked thousands
of people to death but performed horrifying occult experiments on the grounds of the cursed
building. You started to worry that perhaps Dr. Bright
had had a little too much to drink when he started ranting about how the Factory helped
a burgeoning SCP Foundation commit genocide against the fae, but you were happy to receive
more information about SCP-001 in any case. And Dr. Gears told a far more lowkey story
than the other two. Which was fitting, really, for a man so incredibly
buttoned-down he probably thought of Lucky Charm marshmallows as an almost unspeakable
act of self-indulgence. He told the story of a being he referred to
as “The Prototype”, a dangerous and radioactive monster that functioned as the first truly
threatening creature that the SCP Foundation ever faced. Containing it with imperfect methods even
led to the death of Dr. Keter, which, in turn, led to the naming of the Keter Class for any
anomalies that were particularly challenging to contain. You were awash with data, and yet, it somehow
felt like you now knew less for sure. Was SCP-001 some kind of umbrella term for
a vast collection of different anomalies, each one either deeply important or somehow
formative for the SCP Foundation? Curiouser and curiouser. Naturally, this did nothing to deter your
boundless drive to know the true secrets of this mysterious designation that seemed to
exist at the very heart of the SCP Foundation. Years went on, and you went from a decorated
Senior Researcher to the Site Director for Site 19. There, through even more years of hard work,
you developed a reputation as one of the greatest Directors the site ever had. You reduced containment breaches by a truly
astonishing eighty percent during your tenure, and the breaches that did happen were significantly
less deadly under your sterling management. General personnel satisfaction skyrocketed,
with the people working under you both enjoying your leadership and respecting you enough
to take you seriously. You were firm but fair. A truly exemplary site director. The more you climbed, the more information
about SCP-001 seemed to fall into your lap. The sheer breadth of some of these concepts
were staggering. The Scarlet King, The Black Moon, The Lock,
The Broken God, a whole laundry list of terrifying existential threats hiding just under the
thin crust of normalcy. Just how much were they hiding from you? Were they all real? Was only one real, and the rest an elaborate
smokescreen? You just had to know, but even if it took
your whole life? A 40-year career with the SCP Foundation,
putting everything at hazard for a chance to gaze into the ultimate chest of secrets. And eventually, with the mysterious passing
of a previous member of the O5 Council - Which, as far as anyone else knows, you had nothing
to do with - the position of 05-10 has opened up, and who else is next in line to that throne…But
you. Congratulations, you made it to the next step:
the big boys’ table - and the truth about SCP-001 comes with the territory. You’re given an orientation document written
by a prior O5 Council member known as L.H. Sein from the Korean branch of the Foundation. It promises that after you put in your new
O5 login credentials, it’ll tell you everything you need to know about SCP-001. With quaking fingers, you type in your username
and password, and the page opens, revealing the truth about SCP-001 to your eager eyes. Your jaw drops. Your forehead is suddenly doused in a sheen
of cold sweat. No, you think. This has to be a joke. It can’t be true. Your life, your whole life, building up to
learning… SCP-001 does not exist. The document, in upsettingly plain terms,
explains to you that while some of the anomalies referred to as SCP-001 do exist in some capacity
- the closest, funnily enough, being Dr. Gears’ story about The Prototype - for the most part,
there is no such thing as 001, and the finer details are either entirely fabricated or,
at the very least, greatly exaggerated. Everything you’ve been working towards,
it was just one big fraud perpetrated by the Foundation. Why? You found yourself asking in a trembling voice. Why, why, why? And the answer was simple: To provoke the
egos of the Foundation’s personnel. You see, while the Foundation has always contained
anomalies, that was a means to an end, not the end itself. The true purpose of the Foundation is and
always has been protecting people, and every anomaly contained is more people protected. However, tricking the lower rungs of the Foundation
into believing that there’s some grand Final Boss to work towards - like a Black Moon or
a Scarlet King - has been an effective method of keeping everyone motivated to swim in the
same direction. This is hardly an unprecedented move for the
SCP Foundation. From their lies around Procedure 110 Montauk
to the controlled deception around the rituals that supposedly keep The Devourer of Worlds
on the other side of SCP-2317. The SCP Foundation has never shied away from
lying to its own employees for the greater good, but you never expected it to happen
to you, and you certainly never expected it to be about SCP-001. You feel like you’ve been laughed at for
your entire life, but now you crack a quivering smile. Maybe your mind has snapped, or maybe, you’re
just glad to finally be in on the joke. Now go check out “SCP-001 - The World's
Gone Beautiful” and “SCP-001 Ouroboros Cycle - The Full Story Compilation” for
more strange and original takes on SCP-001!
