The Book o' Babel

Link to article: The Book o' Babel.

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    --header-title: "The Library of Babylon";
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}

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[[include component:preview
text=You look into Plugging with mindless curiosity only to see yet another goddamned Author Page.
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[[module css]]
:root {
logo-image: url("https://wanderers-library.wikidot.com/local--files/component:dustjacket-theme/wl_logo.png");
    --header-title: "The Library of Babylon";
    --header-subtitle: " ";
}
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[[module Rate]]
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Opening up the old book, you find yourself faced with a hostile cloud of dust, eager to invade your sinuses and snuff out your life before you can even read a single word. Thankfully, your body's autonomous gag reflex manages to best the foul beast, and rather than death, you are left with the disconcerting taste of dead skin and dirt. You consider slamming the book shut before it can continue to accost you with paper cuts or other things of the sort, but you consider the great deal of effort that went into slaying that horrid mass of airborne pollution; surely, you've come too far to give up now. 

You flip the page.

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+ Index
#  [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-8418 SCP-8418: ALGO-MART] .................................................. 250521
# [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-parcelmens-creed The Parcelmen's Creed] ……………………………………………… 250531
# [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/from-the-desk-of-o5-10 From the Desk of O5-10] …………………………………………... 251125
# [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/a-gally-fellows-lens A Gally Fellow's Lens] ....................................................... 251211
# [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-o5-council-eats-breakfast The O5 Council Eats Breakfast] ...................................... 251228
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You feel yourself frown. Not only is this book an aspiring murderer, it’s also a //liar//. There are not two-hundred-thousand pages in this thing, not anywhere close, there couldn't be... though, what harm could it cause to double check? You flick the no-longer-covered-in-dust jacket, sending the pages within flailing towards the very end of the book.

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+ Ideas & Other Things
# **Babel Dies In Real Life:** Amusing title, but I have no idea what this would even contain.
# **The Serpent's Middle Finger:** A Serpent's Hand operative manages to hack into the Foundation Database and create a rather-detailed page for their double-jointed digitus medius.
#  **Dual Lepers, Together Forever:** A toxic couple gets fused into one immortal body. A fate worse than death.
# **The Tower of Rabblerousers:** A group of prisoners break free of their captors, taking over a mining yard and building a massive pile of clay to mark their territory. In the midst of the ensuing territorial dispute, a bolt of lightning strikes the clay mound, causing it to explode.
# **This Is Everything:** An inventor with a time-travelling food truck watches the end of the universe a thousand different times from a thousand different places.
# **Look Upon Me & Prosper:** A conman gets cursed with invisibility, and desperately tries to convince the Foundation to take a deal that would break the spell.
[[/div]]
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[[/=]]

Mildly amusing, but not much else. You return to the front of the book with a slight smile before realizing the obvious: you forgot to count the number of pages. You sigh, chastising yourself for being oh-so-easily distracted by mild amounts of comedy. Thumbing back, you feel a sense of confusion wash over you, causing you to stop directly in the middle of the novel. 

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What kind of scam is this? Half the pages are blank! Recovering from your shock, you immediately resolve to give the author of this book, whoever he is, a piece of your mind; after all, now you know that there's a lying conman murderer out-and-about. If you really think about it, it's your civic duty to rain upon him many insults, fueled by the emotional turmoil and trauma this book has caused you. Something like, "Hey, pen jockey, you stink!" or "-1, should've been a Tale." Yes, it all seems so clear now..

But before you can march forth and give that petulant scammer a piece of your mind, you catch something curious from the corner of your eye. The pages are filling with ink, shifting and changing into shapes, into letters… and you think, maybe this book isn’t too bad after all. 

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[[tabview]]
[[tab Her Name Was Sunny / Algo-Mart]]
I mainly wrote this to prove to myself that I could. I’d’ve been told by friends, family and professors that my writing was great for years, but I rarely felt that my works were actually appreciated; I’d send them out into the void of Discord chatrooms and get basically zero acknowledgement, and that combined with financial and academic struggles made it hard to find any motivation to work on anything bigger than a poem or short story. I’d’ve been inspired by SCP in my writings for years, and one day, I decided that if I was going to be writing things inspired by SCP, that I might as well just make them for the SCP Wiki.

There’s something about actually having my work seen by others that appeals to me, what can I say.

I got the idea for Algo-Mart — a supermarket with hypnotic music — due to the music being played at the retail store I worked at driving me absolutely insane. There wasn’t anything more to it. The characters of the story came later, picked and chosen from different archetypes I’d created in the past, and the Article came together a month or so later.

The result is a 22k word behemoth that has far too much effort put into it for something that can only be described as ‘mediocre.’ The actual characterization of the antagonists, Amelia and ALGOS, are paper thin, and the email structure is purely experimental and tends to disrupt the flow more than anything else. I don’t like it, but I can’t bring myself to delete it. You have to make shit work before you can make good work, I suppose.

I just wish it wasn’t as shit as it is.
[[>]]
[[size 80%]] p. 250521 [[/size]]
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[[/tab]]
[[tab The Parcelmen’s Creed]]
I actually like this one. Some people find prose far more difficult than the SCP format — and I guess it is by basically all metrics — but I find that the mere pretense of //writing an SCP// causes a large amount of stress and anxiety when I’m drafting, which is mainly due to the fact that I am not yet confident in my ability to do so. Prose, however, is where I shine. I love absurdism, messing with the reader’s perception, lying to them, twisting the world around them, up and down and left and right and upwards and sidewards.

The Parcelmen’s Creed may wear far too many hats, what with its delivery service, its strange people with holes for faces, and its non-Euclidean architecture being far too many things to establish and explore in only 350 words, but an effort was made, and that effort was rewarded. I like it. I don’t have much else to say
[[>]]
[[size 80%]] p. 250531 [[/size]]
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[[tab From the Desk of O5-10]]
I’ve written poetry for years and years now, so I thought, why not write a poem for the Wiki. 

I don’t think I know how to truly love someone. I can care deeply for them, want to live eternally alongside them, all of the sappy requirements, but I have never felt the overwhelming emotion that comes with infatuation nor the butterflies that come with a simple embrace. I rarely feel things for longer than a few moments. Sometimes it feels like all I’m doing is replicating what I’ve seen in others, and hoping they don’t find me out for the fake I am.
[[>]]
[[size 80%]] p. 251125 [[/size]]
[[/>]]
[[/tab]]
[[tab A Gally Fellow's Lens]]
Being a kid with distant parents is weird. You're like a sponge when you're younger, soaking up all of this information and holding it deep, deep inside of you, so that it can gestate into something akin to a 'soul'; your interests, your language, your dislikes, your loves, etcetera etcetera. But when your parents don't have time for you, to properly mold you and give you the information you need, you find yourself in a horrifying place: the Information Age. The internet and television made me who I am today. That is horrifying and absurd.

I wrote this in half an hour and I am very proud of it. It also has this art by [[*user Dino--Draws]]:

[[image http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/the-book-o-babel/art%20exchange%20pinch%20hit%20babel.jpg]]

In from the cold,
I want your warmth wrapped around my throat 
‘Til my face turns blue 

Autumn seems to last only a month
And winter compromises all other seasons
I can feel the snow enveloping me, six feet deep
It’s insulating me

And all this hatred
I think I’ve lost my mind
So could you prepare the arrows and crosses
Turn me into a martyr with the hollow point of a bullet
Just do it and solve it and end it 

I need to die alone with you

You could blow a hole in my head
And climb inside with my fantasies 
All my ichor and crimson
My honeyed veins and creations 
I could tell you such pretty little lies
Like I know how to be a person

I don’t like what I see when I’m blind
So how could you, in the dark?

It digs its claws in me 
And takes all that’s good in me
And leaves nothing but this endless hatred
And I try to fill it with dopamine
And expedient means
But I don’t think there’s that much left of me
But an endless journey to normalcy

I can’t even trust my smile
[[>]]
[[size 80%]] p. 251211 [[/size]]
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[[/tab]]
[[tab The O5 Council Eats Breakfast]]
I’m on the flipside
Watching life as it
Passes me by
I count the days
With the edge of a knife
Cutting notches into my skin

I’ll freeze this moment in time and
Play it back a thousand times
I want to feel the weight
Of every word
I want to feel the pain
Of every mistake

I want to feel the
Comfort of your flesh
The taste of your tongue
The sparkle in your eyes
And the smell of your lies
I want to watch you die

Speak every thought on your lips
So that I can live between
Each and every syllable 
I breathe
In your mind
Pretentious and transcendent
Utterly repugnant
I want to watch you die

You coil around my throat
And puncture me and these
Withering bones
You carve into my body
To make
A monument to my pain
A castle in the sky
An outline

I am nothing
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[[size 80%]] p. 251228 [[/size]]
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[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]]
> **Filename:** art%exchange%pinch%hit%babel.jpg
> **Author:** [[*user Dino--Draws]]
> **License:** CC-BY-SA 3.0
> **Background From:** https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lamp_at_night_at_Brastad_Arena.jpg
> **Author:** W. carter
> **License:** CC-BY-SA 4.0
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]

The Book o' Babel

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