 Item No. SCP-001 Object Class Embla Containment Procedures SCP-001 is contained on the grounds of Site-0 and upstate ██████. Offense has been constructed around the perimeter SCP-001's observed effects. In addition to Site-0's security, no fewer than five armed guards are to be present at all times to prevent unauthorized entry. The adjoining physics laboratory will be manned at all hours, studying any anomalies. A small metal plaque bearing an inscription will be maintained in good condition. Any damage is to be immediately reported to maintenance. Description SCP-001 is a circular gravel path in a wooded area. When traveled in a counterclockwise direction, the trail is continuously uphill, even after reaching the original point. When traveled in a clockwise direction, the trail shows the same amount of uphill and downhill travel as expected. Level-5 clearance is required to access SCP-001's experiment log. New members of Overseer Council are required to read Document-001-05. Document-001-05 If you're reading this then congratulations, one of us has died. One killed one of us, a monster perhaps, or a rival from the GOC, or maybe we just got a little too close to the flame, like Aaron. Not old age, of course, we took care of that, didn't we? Anyway, one of the old guards is gone. Maybe Jason, maybe Agnes, maybe me, hell I'd be surprised if I was the next one to die. I always was the most expendable. I'm going to write this to you as though you were a human being. It will be the last time anyone extends you the courtesy, so I hope you appreciate it. Whoever you are, whatever you did before, you must have been high ranking when you were pulled into this. You must have noticed the discrepancies, the inconsistencies, I don't know how much you've been told already, or how much you've pieced together. The crux of the matter is this. The retrievals and recoveries of SCP objects are staged, or made up whole cloth. We have never discovered an SCP in the entire history of the Foundation. I should start from the beginning, let me tell you a story. Aaron Siegel was a physicist studying at Cornell in 1891. He was a truly gifted individual, and had his life taken a different path. I believed that his name would be there with Edison, Einstein, and Hawking. I knew him very well. He was, and may still be, my brother. He was also an avid amateur naturalist, and enjoyed hiking through the woods. One day, while visiting our family home in Essex County, he came across a gravel path. He decided to follow it for a time, and noticed that it kept climbing uphill far longer than it should have. It should have taken him above the nearby hills. Instead he found himself back where he started, without a foot of downward travel. Another man would have assumed his senses were faulty and left. Aaron, however, was a stubborn man. He investigated further. He found a path that had not conformed to the pure geometry of Euclid. Like Zachary before him, he had found something abhorrent to the nature of straight lines. He studied it. The equations he derived are part of the file you've received. You'll learn them by heart eventually. He built a small shack near by which served as a makeshift laboratory. His first experiments produced a key capable of opening any lock. Now contained is SCP-005. He brought in others. As his brother, I was one of the first he contacted. I was a medical student at Harvard at the time. I initially thought he was mad, but when he showed me the path, the key, I had to learn more. There were others with us, other friends and colleagues. Most of them are gone now, but we were the core. We created the foundation from around ourselves. In the beginning, it was just about discovery, about finding the things we could do. We had such high hopes, such plans. We were going to change the world. We were going to save it from itself. We could feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, heal the sick and dying. Thomas Carter found his money. We were none of us poor, but we ran through our fortunes quickly. Thomas used his connections on Wall Street and in Washington to fund us. We showed them the least of what we could do, and promised heaven against the threat of hell. Agnes Peterson, my brother's fiance, was the administrator. He knew nothing of how to run an organization. We were a herd of cats running to and fro, and she turned us into a foundation, putting us dreamers and madmen to the same yoke. We soon had a facility built, but we were still so secretive. As much as we wanted to shout from the rooftops what we had found, we were frightened too, that it would be taken from us. We told ourselves it was just for the interim, until we were sure of our footing. We showed them eventually, we'd show them all. We were careful at first. We made small, inoffensive, or even helpful items. The fountain of youth, the bouncing ball, the Civil War statue. We grew more confident, and we started working on humans, the concrete man. He volunteered, or the man with the abdominal planet. Just a drifter, and we made him something special, didn't we? It was all so easy. Perhaps it seems absurd to get so many things from that one little break in reality, but it all flowed. One discovery to the next. It almost seemed like something was helping us along. But then things started going a bit wrong. While he was playing with his equations, Aaron accidentally derived a missing number. In my laboratory, I found I had made the zombie plague, and we were too invested in our projects that we pushed ahead. Then came the pipe nightmare, and the stairwell. We knew we'd need more help. Thomas showed what we'd done in the military, told them we'd found these things, discovered them, we made up names like Prometheus Labs and the Chaos Insurgency. They gave us funding, personnel, we built up, we expanded outward. We repeated the sale in other countries. Some listened, some didn't. Enough did. We became an international organization. We brought in more researchers, though very few ever suspected we were the source of these items they studied. Sometimes we would arrange for an object to be found by a field team. Sometimes we would simply write the reports. We generated the paperwork, and we were the oversight. If we said a thing was, it was. It still is. There were still problems, of course. Jeremy and Thomas took one of our experiments and ran off with it, creating a ridiculous club. One of our researchers grew mad and started worshipping machines, escaping with enough knowledge to be dangerous. We still deal with the fallout of these splinter groups. So we contained them, we handled them, we couldn't stop, surely, you can see that. Rather than more cautious, we grew bolder. I cut a little boy up and turned him into the flesh that hates. There were reasons, there were always reasons. 231, we created her, and her sisters. We took them from orphanages and arranged for what followed, and it was no accident. We knew what we were doing. There was a reason for it once, but I'll be damned if I can remember it now. None of us do, except maybe my brother, wherever, whatever he is now. We keep moving forward, even after Abel, after the blood pond, after that damnable reptile, we still move forward with our work. What else can we do? Our only hope to survive the events we set in motion is to understand better, to learn more. We're on the back of a terrible beast, and if we try to jump off now, we'll be crushed beneath. But that's not what frightens me, and it isn't what should frighten you. We've maintained our foothold for over a hundred years. The things I really worry about are the anomalies we didn't create. No, I was telling you the truth the first time. We didn't discover any of them, but some of them, they aren't our work. They just were one day, they were in containment, and they'd always been in containment. Don't you see? We're not in control anymore. We never were.