What little I could discern from his activities sent me teetering on the ambivalent edge of joy and horror.
Item#: 9913
Level5
Containment Class:
esoteric
Secondary Class:
thaumiel
Disruption Class:
amida
Risk Class:
notice
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-9913 is to remain in effect indefinitely, disseminated to all possible media outlets and perpetrated into the human subconscious. All Groups of Interest with influence over such matters have agreed to cooperate with the Foundation in this endeavor. Information that contradicts SCP-9913 and its function and intention is to be immediately expunged from any and all platforms, by any means necessary.
All past, present, and future personnel of the SCP Foundation, regardless of any previous, current, or future status, are to hold the following four truths above all else:
POI-███ does not exist.
POI-███ has never existed.
POI-███ will never exist in the future.
POI-███ must never come into being.
If POI-███ manifests into the current iteration of conceptual reality, or becomes known to any entity beyond Overwatch Council and the Administrator, one, more, or all of the following may occur:
An ADK-Class Complete Anomalous Destabilization Scenario;
An HK-Class Deific Subjugation Scenario;
An LK-Class Species Transmutation Scenario;
A PK-Class Existential Pandaemonium Event;
A Tashkent-Class "Cross-Pollination" Scenario;
A TK-Class Causal Restructuring Event;
A ZK-Class Reality Failure Scenario.
Description: SCP-9913 is a noosphere-permeating method of obfuscating the true inventor of baseball, Person of Interest-███, developed by the Administrator of the SCP Foundation, mining engineer Abner Graves, and lawyer William R. Wheaton following an undisclosed incident. The method is designed to introduce and perpetuate false information to the global population via all possible outlets (physical and digital records, media, oral tradition, historical societies, etc.), whether subliminally or overtly, in order to remove the entirety of POI-███ from all conception, for as long as feasibly possible.
As of the time of this writing, an estimated 1% of the global population believes that Major General Abner Doubleday created the sport in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, while 0.01% contest that Alexander Joy Cartwright, Jr. and William R. Wheaton formed the first official team and rules in 1845, including the United States Congress and Baseball Hall of Fame. Both versions are the result of SCP-9913 and its ongoing containment of POI-███. The remaining population is either apathetic to the identity of POI-███, or hold various theories unrelated to POI-███.
Abner Doubleday, the creator of baseball.
POI-███ is Transcendental Numerologist [DATA EXPUNGED]. All information regarding the identity, history, and whereabouts of POI-███ is restricted to Level-6 classification, and requires a unanimous vote from Overwatch Council and the Administrator to view or revise.
WARNING:
The following file requires Level-6 clearance to access. A BERRYMAN-LANGFORD MEMETIC KILL AGENT has been implemented to safeguard the contents inside of this file.
You have been warned. Please insert your credentials below.
ID
a410930f73288ac57287ac18062dd3cf_1779110155
PASSWORD
1c81fea5b03498d30a017cb282650950_1779110155
Logout
VERIFYING CLEARANCE…
VERIFICATION COMPLETE.
MEMETIC KILL AGENT ACTIVATED…
SECURITY CONFIRMED. VITALS CONFIRMED.
ACCESSING FILE…
From the desk of the Administrator:
Ah, yes. I was wondering when I'd have to get around to this. It's a fiendishly complicated situation. Needless to say, some explanation is in order. To cut to the quick: POI-███ (yes, that black bar is necessary) is the Founder of the SCP Foundation.
Yes. THE Founder. Him. The one to whom even I answered to.
You younger Overseers likely believe that the Founder and I are one and the same, or that he's actually several people, or he's a fabrication (that last part is SCP-9913 doing its job. How about that!) — but let me assure you that none of those are true. POI-███ is a singular individual who definitely existed, and as far as I'm aware, still exists (though I'm stretching the definition of that word in this case). Some of you may have even met him before, though you probably didn't know who he was at the time.
To properly describe the man would be an undertaking which I am ill-suited for, and a disservice besides. Suffice to say that his mind was like the clearest, smoothest, deepest river you can imagine, and without hyperbole, easily the most dangerous.
Anomalies to people like you and me are, at best, vague phenomena that we can but pretend to grasp: cryptic symbols carved on ancient stone, weathered and worn, avariciously guarding all but the most sporadic truths of our world. To the Founder, however, they were bold letters in large-print books, lit with the flame of Prometheus, proclaimed with all the clarity and urgency of a bugler. He not only understood the strange and unusual, but mastered it. I once jested to him that if he had been in Eden, not only would he have partaken the Fruit of Knowledge, but he would have advised its Gardener on the best recipes for preserves and pies.
I digress. When the so-called "Gate Guardian" advised him to "prepare" (a somewhat apocryphal tale he later regaled to me), he seemed to elicit its meaning at once. He gathered a number of colleagues he could trust, including myself, and over the most historically significant luncheon of our time, shared his experience and his vision. I wish I could say that most of us laughed at him, or brushed his words aside, but the Founder was the sort of person who did not wax fanciful — and besides, he spoke with such alacrity and conviction that we could but sit and ruminate in grim silence. I believe you all know what transpired after that — but what you do not know is what our illustrious Architect occupied himself with once the proverbial ball had been rolled.
From top-left: F. Williams, A. Cartwright, Jr. and W. R. Wheaton, the co-creators of baseball, and A. Graves (bottom left). The identities of the remaining two men have been expunged.
Simply organizing a Foundation for the Security and Containment of anomalies was not enough. To the Founder, our community was merely the response to something that had already begun, a second act that, at its core, existed as a support or tentpole for the conclusion. To put it in mathematics terms, the SCP Foundation was (to him) an equation that unraveled a problem into a solution, and on that "solution" his desire was focused. I do not pretend to understand the entirety of his undertaking — the man was a Da Vinci in a room full of scribbling children — but what little I could discern from his activities sent me teetering on the ambivalent edge of joy and horror.
Here is an excerpt from his studies. Make of it what you will:
"The navagraha is how we seize the Beginning.
It is where the masculine Heaven and the feminine Earth converge.
It is Baháʼ, completeness.
It is where the gods achieve their wisdom.
It is a Trinity of the Trinities, perfection."
And as farfetched as it sounds, Councilors, the Founder's creation of baseball is inextricably yoked to his discovery. He believed, with sufficient evidence to support his theories, that it was the organization of this sport and its "completeness" that could unite our existence (or, rather, what we perceive as Reality and what we classify as Anomalous) into a singularity or totality which was to become the accumulation of everything that our existence was, had been, and would be.
Yes, baseball was the key to all of that. It beggars belief, I know. But consider this passge he wrote:
"There are Nine players: Surya, Chandra, Mangala, Budha, Brihaspati, Shukra, Shani, Rahu, Ketu.
Who play Nine innings: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
With Ninety feet between each base: Bixi, Chiwen, Pulao, Bi'an, Taotie, Qiuniu, Yazi, Suanni, Fuxi.
The navagraha is how we greet the End.
It is where we will return. Where our cycle will end."
As to how the end can be achieved, we can only speculate. The fact that it has not happened yet, despite an incalculable number of games being held worldwide over the last two centuries, suggests some "perfect storm" conditions that only our Founder knew about, and perhaps only he could enact. Among the Founder's few possessions I was able to confiscate, I discovered a star chart and a sextant, with various notes commenting on "possible connections" that Graves, Wheaton, and I have looked into, such as:
"Albireo leads the way, I'm sure of it."
"It's not just the Hindu navagraha. The so-called 'world tree' of the Vikings has it, too. This supports my theory on a shared universal principle."
And, "Originally, stick-and-ball games were called 'safe haven' games. I do not believe in coincidences."
Comparison of the sextant and baseball diamond.
I do not claim to understand these connections; nevertheless, efforts are being made to unravel them. In the meantime, I have undergone measures to ensure against any potential disaster: primarily, the removal of the Founder from cohesive reality; secondarily, that "baseball" as humanity recognizes it does not deviate beyond what has been established; and finally, a continued adherence to regulations in regards to the shape and position of a baseball diamond (they are to face East, away from Cygnus and any potential alignment — Wheaton's idea, to give proper credit).
So, to summarize: baseball is a ritual devised and organized by the Founder to bring about perfect understanding, unity, completeness, etc, for "when everything becomes one, there is nothing left to be anything". For good or ill, it would be, quite literally, the End of Everything.
Bit of a harsh pill, I know — but if it is only the sport risking this, why obfuscate his identity? What good does that do?
I have but to refer to a certain Proposal we are all familiar with to demonstrate the good it has been doing. In short, the less we know, and the fewer people that do know, the better off we are. Merely being aware of the Founder's true identity, even from something as innocuous as a sport, can have disastrous consequences. The man learned to harness the fabric of our reality while the rest of us were scrambling to put monsters in cages. He surpassed life and death (and time, and space, etc.) as if he were walking from one room to another in a house. Currently, his location is Unknowable, Unobtainable, and (hypothetically) Inescapable. May it remain so.
Don't misunderstand: I firmly believe our Founder to be a good man, who does not wish harm to befall anyone (quite the opposite), and one who would gladly thrust the first torch into darkness — but through him, even knowing something as trivial as his name could invoke catastrophe which no linguist or zealot could grasp.
The result may, of course, ultimately be to our benefit, and containing such a thing may do more harm than good; I cannot say. Graves, Wheaton, and I — we were close friends with the Founder, us three — conceived of this plan as a contingency, on the off chance it would lead to horrors, and we were backed by nearly every companion who had dined with us that fateful afternoon, including Doubleday and Cartwright, who volunteered to use themselves as a, shall we say, substitute. We are all prepared to be proven wrong, and to accept the consequences of ones in such stark error… but poring over our Founder's remaining studies, I cannot help but feel a dread as only our lordly crimson antagonist could instill.
I can only be thankful the world at large cares little for this matter. Heaven help us should anyone outside our circle uncover the connection.
Until then: Secure, Contain, and Protect, with my thanks.
F.W.
A modern chart of Cygnus.
A drawing of Yggdrasil found among POI-███'s belongings.
A sketch found among POI-███'s belongings.
A painting discovered among POI-███'s belongings. A note attached to it read "Safe haven", followed by a single underlined word: “baseball.”