Link to article: SCP-9108.
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[[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] **Item #**: SCP-9108 **Object Class**: Safe **Special Containment Procedures:** The area containing SCP-9108 has been purchased and fenced off to prohibit civilian access. No other containment procedures have been deemed necessary. **Description:** SCP-9108 is a graveyard in the village of Dois Rios,[[footnote]]Portuguese for "Two Rivers".[[/footnote]] Portugal. The village was decimated by a natural disaster in the year 1941 and has been abandoned ever since. Persons entering the graveyard will collapse and fall unconscious. While unconscious, affected persons will experience anomalous dreams, classified as SCP-9108-1 instances. These dreams are unusually detailed and consistently form a coherent narrative. While exact details vary, every SCP-9108-1 instance contains the following narrative elements: • A depiction of life in the village prior to its abandonment. The village is portrayed as being mostly idyllic, barring occasional petty feuds between neighbours. • Frequent references to World War II, which was still ongoing at the time. Notably, Portugal was one of the few European countries that remained neutral during WWII, meaning the village was not directly affected. However, many villagers were afraid that the conflict would come to affect them, given time. • An unexpected meteor shower, which greatly frightens the superstitious locals. • An outbreak of pneumonia, which terminates approximately 1/3rd of the village population. The remaining villagers are unsurprisingly left in a state of grief and display signs of PTSD. • Foundation operatives investigating the village, believing the meteor shower to be potentially anomalous and connected to the pneumonia outbreak. No signs of anomalous phenomena are found, and the outbreak is deemed a natural incident. • [DATA EXPUNGED] • The abandonment of the village, which is left in a state of disrepair. The words “Lembre-se de nós”[[footnote]]Portuguese for "Remember us".[[/footnote]] are spoken by a disembodied voice, audibly identical to that of a villager who perished in the outbreak. The identity of the villager is different for each instance, apparently selected at random. The tone of the voice is one of lament and regret. Notably, all persons who have experienced SCP-9108-1 instances will suddenly gain a fluent understanding of the Portuguese language if they did not have such understanding prior to exposure. Testing indicates that this effect is permanent, with English, French, & German-speaking personnel still retaining fluent Portuguese years after exposure. With the exception of [REDACTED], all elements of SCP-9108-1 instances are verifiably accurate and confirmed by Foundation historical archives. Further information requires Level 3 clearance. [[collapsible hideLocation="both" show="+ Submit Level 3 Clearance" hide="- Clearance Accepted"]] > To whom it may concern. > > First of all, if you’re reading this, congratulations on the promotion. I’m sure you’ve earned it. Secondly, in regards to SCP-9108, let’s address the elephant in the living room. I’m sure you’ve heard the rumours – things are quiet here in Site-99, so we have a lot of time to gossip. You’ve heard stories from our colleagues in America. Stories about an object that was found here in Portugal, then moved to the larger and more heavily provisioned facilities in the States. You’ve noticed the oddly specific tone of the official document, the insistence that the redacted element is the only untrue element – why redact it, then? I’m sure you’ve already connected the dots, but in the unlikely event that you haven’t, let me spell it out for you. > > Yes, there was no pneumonia outbreak. We just made that up. And yes, the meteor was [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-002 SCP-002]. > > There are two things you must understand before I continue. The first is that, back in the 40’s, maintaining the Veil was much harder than it is today. The amnestics we have now are the result of [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3000 a breakthrough in the 70’s]. Back in the old days, amnestics were notoriously unreliable. Half the time they didn’t work. Sometimes the target forgot too much and was left prematurely senile. Sometimes they were even deaths. I don’t know what they found in Bangladesh that let them make amnestics worth a damn, but I can say that, before that point, we might as well have been erasing memories by hitting people on the head with a metal club. > > Secondly, the Foundation itself was different back them. If you’ve read the SCP-002 file from America (and I’d be amazed if you hadn’t, telling people not to read a thing only makes sure word gets around), then you probably have a single question on your mind – since when does the Foundation have generals? We’re not an army. We have MTF squads, yes, but not armies. Why would a Foundation employee go around calling himself a general? And why would the O5’s allow such nonsense? > > The answer is, today they wouldn’t. But the first half of the 20th century was a different time. [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/wrong-proposal The Foundation was formed around 1900 or so, when several smaller organizations merged together to form the international powerhouse we know now.] Many of those organizations were more in line with the GOC than what the Foundation would eventually become. Things changed, of course, but not instantly. It took time. > > Of the many pre-Foundation organisations, the ones closest to Portugal would be Britain’s Foundation for the Secure Containment of the Paranormal, Germany’s KDPPA, Spain’s Knights of the Military Order of Borja y Aragón, and France’s Estate Noir. Estate Noir was founded by Napoleon and saw itself as a clandestine branch of the French military, so high-ranking members would have military-sounding titles like Colonel, Major, and General. The KDPPA and the Knights were likewise. Even after the merge, things weren’t completely unified, so it was not unusual to have European Foundation operatives using titles like “General” to refer to an MTF leader, even though it wasn’t strictly according to protocol. You have to realize, this was before modern computers. Sites weren’t connected to each other like they are now, so different branches of the Foundation tended to be fairly insular. An American agent who referred to himself as “General” would have been harshly reprimanded, but in Europe, such things were common. The two continents were almost like different worlds. > > You’ve probably already realized this part too, but Mulhausen is not a Portuguese name. It’s Franco-German – more exactly, it’s the German version of the French name “Mulhouse.” This makes sense if you know about General Charles Mulhausen’s past. > > Born as the son of a German immigrant and a French woman, I imagine Charles didn’t have a happy childhood. In those days, anti-immigrant sentiment was common, and he was born in 1902, meaning he would have been a young man during the First World War – a time when anti-German sentiment was on the rise. No doubt he would have experienced considerable prejudice growing up. Perhaps that’s why he became such a nationalist – for Charles was a true patriot, a man who loved France and wanted all others to know that he loved France, despite his German ancestry. It’s not a rare phenomenon – go to America, and you’ll see rich black men denouncing immigrants and the poor with just as much fervour as rich white men. They embrace patriotism, partly because they fear how they'll be treated if they don't. My point is that Mulhausen was filled with the fire of nationalism – to him, France was the greatest country on Earth, and anything that would threaten France was the devil. > > No doubt you’ve already realized where this is going. Recall that, at the start of the Second World War, France surrendered to the Nazis. This must have agonised Mulhausen – having been ridiculed for his German ancestry all his life, having been told that he was not a true patriot because of where his father came from, seeing Germany invade and conquer his beloved France must have made him feel like the bigots who had mocked him were right. He hated the Nazis, and he also hated any country that refused to take a stand against the Nazis. Countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal. > > I can sympathize with him to an extent. He was a man who experienced bigotry and became bitter because of it. That did not give him the right to become a bigot himself, but that is what he did. On multiple occasions, Charles made it clear that he //loathed// those countries that were neutral, seeing them as cowards – not only their governments, but also the citizens living there. To him, they were all complicit. To him, they were all scum. Today, such views would be grounds for disciplinary action, but this was a time when such prejudices were not harshly condemned like they are now. > > Anyway, World War II was a busy time for our organization. Anomalies often proliferate during periods of human strife, and this was no exception. When reports emerged of an anomalous meteor in Portugal, most nearby facilities were busy. Site-49 was dealing with a Sarkic cult taking advantage of the Franco Regime’s desire to quash Moroccan separatists. Site-54 was dealing with Hitler’s idiotic attempts to gain occult power in Hamburg and in Stuttgart. Site-77 was dealing with [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5721 Discordia], strengthened by the chaos of Fascist Italy. Site-44 was dealing with…what were they dealing with again? Some [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2852 Celtic god], I think? It’s been a while since I read the file. I really don’t remember. My point is, when SCP-002 was discovered, the only site that was anywhere near Portugal and not already dealing with some crisis was Site-57, in France. > > I’ve been to the graveyard. I’ve experienced the dream first-hand. I’ll tell the story as the villagers saw it, because that’s how I saw it. > > It was a normal day. The villagers were living their normal, everyday lives, when suddenly - boom. A huge meteor lands in the forest near the village. The locals, they were superstitious - they feared this to be some kind of deviltry at work. A group of brave farmers, though, they were men. They wanted to prove they weren't afraid. So a group of five locals - influenced by the consumption of liquor, it must be said - venture into the forest, hoping to prove how brave they are and maybe impress some of the local women in the process. > > Of those five unlucky souls, one made it back alive. > > The villagers are terrified. They quickly decide to inform the government. At first, they are laughed at - look at those country bumpkins, panicking over a meteor, how pathetic, etc. But just to be sure, they send a scientist with a Geiger counter to make sure there is no problem. When that scientist comes back with hair bleached white, the government realizes this is not something they know how to handle. > > Now, this was before we had a site in Portugal - Site-99 wasn't built until the late 50's, unfortunately. And the Portuguese government at the time was notoriously corrupt. But still, we had a few contacts with them, because it was our principle to have contacts everywhere. So they reached out to our branches in Spain, and then Germany, and then, finally, France. So it was that Charles Mulhausen and his men were sent to Dois Rios on what should have been a simple containment mission. If they had sent someone else...literally anyone else...perhaps things would have gone better. Not perfectly - there would still have been problems, given the primitive technology we were working with. But at least it wouldn't have turned into - > > I'm getting ahead of myself. I said I'd tell the story as they saw it, wouldn't I? > > At first, General Mulhausen charmed the locals. He spoke the language fluently - with a strong French accent, admittedly - and carried the air of a competent government official who simply wanted to contain this monster as quickly as possible. He found the three strongest men in the village - pious Christians who believed that wearing a crucifix on their necks would save them from evil - and told them that he too was a devout believer. He told them that he had dealt with demons like this before, that he knew how to contain them, that they would be safe so long as they followed his orders. And so, three brave men walked into the forest, their hearts filled with hope and the knowledge that following the orders of this wise, heroic general would protect them. > > None of them made it back. But Mulhausen learned how the anomaly ate people, and that was what he'd really wanted. Some of his men felt uncomfortable with this duplicity, but Mulhausen assured them that this was a necessary sacrifice. He also told his men that he did not want a tragedy to befall this town for the third time in a row - so he asked four of his men to stand guard outside the object's location. They eagerly agreed - after all, they were younger and less experienced than his other men, so they must have felt that they had more to prove. > > The next day, those four soldiers had vanished. So Mulhausen knew his suspicion, that the object could lure people inside of it, had been correct. Another necessary sacrifice. > > After that, containment was relatively simple. A temporary holding cell was built around the anomaly. To prevent memetic infection, it was built in sporadic bursts, since no-one could be around the thing for more than 30 minutes at a time. Frustrating, yes, but after a few days of hard work, it was done. The thing was contained. All they had to do was call for a transportation crew and the thing would be shipped off to Site-19. There was only one problem - the villagers had seen too much. Heard too much. What should be done about them? > > The standard procedure was to administer amnestics - but Mulhausen was against this. He argued that the amnestics were unreliable, that such horrific memories would not easily be forgotten, that there had been cases of persons remembering classified information before...he wasn't wrong, exactly, but he had an ulterior motive. You see, there was a reason why Mulhausen - a man who despised neutrality - had volunteered to go on a mission to a country committed to staying neutral. This wasn't about containing an anomaly. This was about revenge. Revenge on these pathetic cowards who had done nothing while his precious France had suffered... > > The official SCP-002 file says that he ordered one-third of the village to be put to death. That is technically true, but only technically. He did indeed order one-third put to death. And the second third. And the final third as well. > > He ordered his men to kill everyone. The entire village. An entire community, put to the sword. Most of his troops obeyed without question. Some, thankfully, did not. A small number of troops disobeyed his command and tried to protect the villagers, but...they were hopelessly outnumbered. The most they could do was buy time. Time enough to send a radio broadcast to anyone who might be listening. The Portuguese government heard the broadcast, and quickly called Mulhausen's bosses back in France, and those bosses called the O5's, and a heavily armed squad of troops was quickly on their way to arrest Mulhausen and put him on trial for his actions. They came as fast as they could... > > But not fast enough. By the time they arrived, the defectors were dead, and the village had been routed to the last man. The last woman. The last child. They had made all haste, yet they were still too late. > > Mulhausen, for his part, was unrepentant. He justified his actions as being done in the name of secrecy, but it was plain for anyone to see that this was merely an excuse. He was driven by hatred, nothing more. His soldiers claimed they had merely been following orders, but their superiors were unimpressed. Those found complicit were demoted to D-Class - and in those days, that meant certain death. Not probable death - certain. The brave men who had found the courage not to obey were posthumously given the Foundation Star. > > As for Mulhausen himself? He had tricked innocent men into heading into the maw of the beast. As punishment, he was himself executed in the same manner. I would like to say he sobbed and begged as they pushed him through the door of the Living Room, but no. He met his end without fear. He was a horrible person, but not a coward. In a sense, it was...anticlimactic. The people who witnessed his execution firsthand described it as feeling "empty". He deserved to die, yes. But no-one took pleasure in his death. How could they? It's not like it brought the dead back to life. > > But now the O5's had a problem. How should they explain this? Mulhausen, prior to this debacle, had been known as a competent and courageous operative. If the truth were known, it would be a devastating blow to morale. Some of the O5's thought that the truth should be known - we are supposed to be scientists, yes? Since when do scientists lie solely to preserve their reputation? Others feared that the story, if known, would inspire defections to organizations like the Serpent's Hand - which, even back then, was proving to be quite the thorn in our side. The Council was split down the middle, but eventually, they settled on a compromise. A stupid, stupid compromise. > > Don't get me wrong - compromise is the solution to a great many problems. It is not, however, the solution to every problem. A respected professor of astronomy does not sit down and debate with a flat-earther, because such debate would have no point. Not every situation has both sides being equally valid. Sometimes one side is clearly right and the other side is clearly wrong. > > But the O5's, despite some of the rumours you may have heard, are not gods. They are simply people, and people - fundamentally speaking - are prone to being stupid. When you've worked for the Foundation as long as I have, you realize that the O5 Council is no different than any other administrative body - there's a lot of hot air, a lot of talk, but it takes forever for anything to get done, and the choices they make are sometimes woefully out of touch. This was one such occasion. > > The idea was that people care most about atrocities when they happen in their own country or somewhere close to it. For example - when a city like France or London is rocked by terrorist attacks, all of Europe trembles. On the other hand, when a place like Syria is rocked by some horrific tragedy, Europe barely bats an eyelid. It's far away, after all, and it's only a bunch of stupid foreigners. We expect awful things to happen over there. Just not //here//. > > And so the people in America, where the object was being shipped to, would receive a containment file including a mostly accurate description of events. I say mostly accurate because it does contain some falsehoods - the implication that two-thirds of the villagers survived, the implication that Mulhausen was eaten due to an accident rather than being fed to the beast on purpose - but it still acknowledges that a disaster happened and Mulhausen was responsible. In Europe, on the other hand, the incident was hushed up - no anomaly, just a pneumonia infection, move along, nothing to see hear. After twenty years or so, the O5's had almost forgotten all about it. > > But they won't let us forget. They want to be remembered. And so, anyone who visits the village graveyard WILL remember. They make sure of it. In the 60's, the village became a morbid tourist attraction - there's a kind of appeal that ghost towns have. You'd be surprised how many people seek them out. A few tourists wandered into the graveyard, and began experiencing strange dreams, and the then-newly-founded Site-99 was called upon to contain a new anomaly. Except it isn't new. It's the echo of our old mistakes. > > The anomaly isn't dangerous. The only real threat is to morale. And despite the stoic image they like to project, the O5's care a lot about morale - suicide rates among Foundation employees are high enough already. So they've tried to keep this whole thing under wraps for decades now. > > Of course, they haven't succeeded. Nothing in the world moves faster than gossip. The phrase "open secret" is much overused these days, but I highly doubt a single person at Site-99 is naïve enough to actually buy the nonsense they're being fed, especially since technological advancement means that gossip can now spread between different sites at breakneck speed. Looking back, I'm amazed they honestly thought that people in America wouldn't care about what happened in Europe - yes, atrocities always bother you more when they are close to home, but that doesn't mean distant atrocities won't bother you at all. Perhaps the O5's were just projecting. They're a callous bunch. Maybe they forget not everyone is as callous as them. > > And so, the real irony is this - the document above is not only a lie, but also a lie that doesn't even work. I highly doubt any of this is news to you - maybe you didn't surmise this exact story, but you must have surmised something along these lines. I know for sure that I did. The O5's lie and lie, and for what? Morale isn't maintained at all. I've petitioned them several times to drop the pointless secrecy. They never listen. Like a gambler at a casino, they won't admit that what they're doing isn't working, because that would mean admitting they were wrong to try in the first place. > > If you need a silver lining to cheer you up, I'm sure it wouldn't happen today. The Foundation has changed a lot since the 40's. We used to be so callous. We didn't have an Ethics Committee. Sometimes, we even killed D-Class for no good reason at all, because we only saw them as numbers. > > But these days, the Foundation is...I can't say that our hands are clean, because they're not. They're really not. I've done terrible things...things I have nightmares about. I'm sure you have your own nightmares to haunt your sleep. But I will say that, faint praise though this is, we have a touch more humanity than we used to. At the very least, anyone who went around calling himself "General" these says would get a good slap on the forehead faster than he could blink. > > We've come a long way. I hope we'll continue to move forward in the future. Perhaps one day, the O5's will finally see sense. Perhaps one day, the story of Dois Rios will finally be told in its entirety. That's all they want, anyway. If we just stopped lying about what happened, I honestly think they'd go away and enter whatever afterlife awaits them. > > Then again, that could be wishful thinking on my part. But let's be honest - life here at the Foundation can be rough sometimes. More often than not, wishful thinking is what gets me through the day. > > And once again, congratulations on the promotion. > > Dr. José Antunes > Site-99 Director [[/collapsible]] [[footnoteblock]] [[div class="footer-wikiwalk-nav"]] [[=]] << [[[SCP-9107]]] | SCP-9108 | [[[SCP-9109]]] >> [[/=]] [[/div]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]