SCP-4833 : The Syncope Symphony

Believed to be the beginning of SCP-4833's activities. Subjects begin to be kidnapped worldwide, with a particular concentration in the vicinity of Yellowstone National Park.

First mass-experimentation, taking place in Boise, Idaho. Due to pressure from the GOC and various other organisations, SCP-4833 is believed to have relocated its primary base of operations to ████████ County, ███████.

SCP-4833 opens a musical supply shop known as "Syncope Symphony" in the town of [REDACTED]. No anomalous activity initially present.

Mass cognitohazardous event taking place at Lake ███████████. Although no conclusive evidence linking this to SCP-4833 has been found, the nature of the anomaly fits SCP-4833's modus operandi.

Series of experiments performed by SCP-4833 at Kirk Lonwood High School and ███████ High School. The schools and towns in question were swiftly evacuated and Foundation control was enforced. The "Syncope Symphony" musical supply shop was found abandoned upon a Foundation raid.

The number of subjects kidnapped by SCP-4833 sharply decreases when compared to 1976, beginning a trend which has continued to the present. Figures in the anomalous underground have speculated that this is due to SCP-4833 achieving its goals at some point in 1976, with further kidnappings simply being a way of "fine-tuning".

Last known encounter between Foundation personnel and an individual altered by SCP-4833 prior to 2019.

Incident 4833-8C (see below).

The following is a log of Agent John Hardcastle's interaction with an anomalous reality-bender.

Date: 09/11/1988

Location: Traktir na Zabytyy, a bar in Arkhangelsk, Soviet Union.

Notes: Agent Hardcastle had spent several months researching the earliest records of SCP-4833's experiments. He had come across records indicating that one Vasily Stroganov, an individual known to Agent Hardcastle, had been the subject of SCP-4833 experiments in the late 1940s. Mr. Stroganov was tracked down to Arkhangelsk and interviewed alone by Agent Hardcastle.

Agent Hardcastle activates his camera. He is in a wide, deserted alleyway; it is snowing heavily. A sign can be seen saying "трактир".1 He moves towards the doorway and enters.

The interior is dark, and dirty. The walls are undecorated brick, and a few tables are scattered around the place. The bartender is an overweight middle-aged man who is clearly inebriated. Another man - Vasily Stroganov - is slumped over a glass of vodka. There is nobody else in the establishment.

Agent Hardcastle: (in Russian) Vodka, please.

The bartender fetches a glass of vodka. As he does so, Stroganov sits upright and stares at Agent Hardcastle, who nods at him. The bartender gives the drink to Agent Hardcastle.

Agent Hardcastle: (in Russian) Much custom this time of year?

Bartender: (in Russian) A bit. You American?

Agent Hardcastle: (in Russian) English. But don't worry—I'm one of the good ones.

Bartender: (in Russian) There are no good Englishmen. But there are no good Russians either.

Agent Hardcastle hands the bartender a thick wad of ruble notes.

Agent Hardcastle: (in Russian) Here's a little tip, for some, uh, privacy.

The bartender looks through the money, nods, and shuffles into the back room. Agent Hardcastle pulls up a seat next to Stroganov.

Stroganov: Shit.

Agent Hardcastle: Hello, Vasily. It's been a while, hasn't it?

Stroganov: Please, just leave me alone. You promised to leave me alone. After Buda, after I saved—

Agent Hardcastle: I'm sorry, Vasily, I really am. I didn't want to be here, but there's something bigger than you or I going on.

Stroganov: I'm an old man, John, I can't help you. I live in a shitty apartment in a concrete building nobody cares about, watching the snow go past. I don't even have heating. The empires I used to…

Stroganov shakes his head, and does not speak for several seconds.

Stroganov: Just go away.

Agent Hardcastle: I can't. I wish I could, but I can't. I need you to tell me about Syncope, Vasily.

Stroganov visibly tenses.

Stroganov: No. No, no no. Go away, John, you don't know what you're dealing with.

Agent Hardcastle: Children, Vasily. Just like you were. I need to know what happened in 1954.

Stroganov: No. I can't. Please, I can't.

Agent Hardcastle: We can take you in. Set you up somewhere nicer, somewhere—

Stroganov: It doesn't matter where you set me up, it'll all be the same.

Stroganov takes a large swig of vodka.

Stroganov: Have you been here long? What do you think of the city?

Agent Hardcastle: That's not—it's fine, I guess. Same as any other Soviet city I've been to—big, filled with concrete. Another cold and obscure Russian town.

Stroganov: This town doesn't feel obscure to its residents. It's the biggest city for hundreds of miles. But for a man in the West, a man looking at the map of the world, it seems like the farthest outpost of civilisation. Everything you think anchors you is just a minute island washing through an endless sea. There's always another design, bigger than the last, that's what they told me, and they'll find me, John. I can't tell you anything.

Agent Hardcastle: You've already helped me, Vasily. They believe in a "design, bigger than the last". That's enough. Come on. We can keep you comfortable, safe. You can tell me all about what those powers are that you never wanted to reveal to me. It's not like the old days. We're kinder now. Gentler.

Stroganov: This place will be obscure too. This time, this place, that footage on your camera. The 1980s. What will people think of it?

Agent Hardcastle: A glorious decade.

Stroganov: For some. For others, I think it'll be remembered as a dark place. Cold and full of uncertainty, like wading through a lake at night.

Agent Hardcastle: All the more reason to improve the world, then. And we can start with Syncope.

Stroganov: But they're barely even a player any more. Didn't you know that? Hardly anyone's been taken these last few years. They've found what they were looking for. Can't you leave them alone? Can't you leave us all well enough alone? Let me die in the cold, John, let me forget what a miserable waste I've been. I don't want to go back.

Agent Hardcastle: They're taking children, Vasily.

Stroganov: I don't care.

Agent Hardcastle sighs heavily.

Agent Hardcastle: Then I'll have to take you in by force.

Stroganov stares at Agent Hardcastle for several seconds.

Stroganov: Who was Marcie, John?

Agent Hardcastle moves back sharply.

Agent Hardcastle: I—I don't know what you mean. Stop it.

Stroganov: Marcie Green. A village girl, who would dance on the moors. Practising for a life you both knew she'd never have. You'd sneak out of boarding school to watch her.

Agent Hardcastle: I—I don't don't please—

Stroganov: Your first kiss. You talked of running away together. But your parents found out and you were taken away. You were seventeen. The last summer of your life.

Agent Hardcastle: I said I'd wait…

Stroganov: But you didn't. You went off. She probably did too, but I can't see that much. The Marcie in your head is just a shadow, a shade, a frail copy that only tells a fraction of the story of the original. Why don't you go back, John? Go—God, I'm sorry.

Agent Hardcastle: Go back to the fields…

Stroganov: Y—yes. Go back. I'm sorry, John, I'm sorry…

Agent Hardcastle collapses, gibbering for several seconds before expiring. Stroganov stares into space, mutely crying, for several seconds.

Stroganov: I had to. I had to. They'll never get out of my head. They want it too badly, don't you see? Don't you know what you did?

Stroganov shakes his head, and screws his eyes closed. The feed flickers and cuts out.

You remember Hardcastle. He'd been at Site 90 when you'd just started out at the Foundation, back in the late 80s. He'd been a mentor to you, fresh from your doctorate and hungry for knowledge. A few months later he'd disappeared. Transferred, you'd been told.

Now he barely existed at all. Not many people left to remember him, and they'll be dead soon. This document immortalises him, but only as a description of a recording. An abstraction of abstraction.

You light up a cigarette, and keep watching the footage. The cameraman is at home now. His mum's clothes are old-fashioned even for the time period—she looks like a faded 50s housewife, smiling a perfect smile at the camera. Her anachronism is flawed, though, and little bits of the contemporary are sneaking in.

The father smiles. Short-sleeved shirt, old-fashioned watch, beer can, sunglasses. A man who never thinks he's out of place and always is. You know these people. They're the same as any thousands of parents who live today, but their past placement still changes them, alters them. They're not the same. They're too natural to be from back then.

You must have been, what—13? 14, back in 1976? It's become a lost time even to you. You only remember flashes. A woman smiling, a father laughing. That person you fell in love with. Teachers with strange faces. Grains on old camera footage. Black and white, colour TV.

Shadows of shadows.

You return to the file.

The following documents were recovered from the personal effects of Agent Valerie Kowalski after her suicide in 1997. They were compiled by her in the course of her investigation into SCP-4833. The text of these documents is transcribed below.

Copy of a page of an MC&D shipping manifest, detailing goods imported into the USA from 1947.

Message from Foundation Facility "Q" in 1959.

To: Director Holloway

From: Researcher Brown

Date: 16/07/1959

MESSAGE BEGIN

Regarding Subject BH12: little response observed in hippocampus despite extensive tests. Researchers also concerned about safety of their own memories—asbestos suits effective but staff increasingly reluctant to use due to health concerns. Recommend funding for Gregory's new formaldehyde-lined suits.

Symptoms of BH12 remain constant; complete absence of own memories, but consistent belief that they are a schoolchild in 1976, despite lack of ability to give accurate information on events after 1954 and ignorance of much of recent history. Infective capacities, however, seem to have increased; curious obsession with exploration of WW2-era bunkers recently noted.

Observations continue.

P.S. Deirdre and I once again want to thank you for dinner last night—when can we return the invitation? Deirdre's eager to try out her new electric skillet on something really ambitious.

MESSAGE END

Extracts from a report of unknown provenance concerning contained anomalies in Foundation Facility "Q" at the time of its closure, 1968.

Anomalous Subject 1 is a male, aged 19. Subject was incarcerated by the Foundation following demonstration of anomalous memory-altering abilities. Subject was anomalously alterered at an unknown point in 1966. Subject described experimenters as wearing "white carnival masks".

Subject is capable of temporal alteration; they can specifically change events which they percieved prior to 1966, but only to a highly limited degree and with minimal alteration to the overall flow of events. Very little has been changed except for the events of a road trip taking place in 1965, and the outcome of brief romance subject had with his classmate Valerie Smith in 1964.

Subject is incapable of retaining any long-term memories which occurred after the experimentation performed on them. They believe the year is still 1966, and often believe they are still being experimented upon.

Recommend transfer to Site 107 for experimentation by the Department of Temporal Anomalies.

Anomalous Subject 88 is a female, aged 36. Subject is believed to have undergone significant anomalous alteration in 1949, to a degree that permanently damaged their cognitive capacity.

Subject appears obsessed with the Marianas Trench, and frequently talks about it being a "sheer fall off the edge of the world." Notably, statements by subject are highly consistent with [REDACTED]. Subject has an advanced piano-playing ability not known to be present prior to the experimentation. Subject speaks in an unknown language2 during all times where the piano has been played.

O5 Command has ordered subject to be transferred to Site-01 immediately. However, due to dissent from the Ethics Committee over [REDACTED] vivisection, this order has been temporarily halted.

Anomalous Subject 212 was a female, whose age at death was 30 years. Incarcerated since 1959. Subject's memories are entirely replaced by memories of an unknown 17-year-old schoolchild, claiming to be from 1976. Subject's predictions of events in the last decade have proven to be entirely incorrect, however: claimed that events such as the assassination of a "President Kennedy" and a war between the United States of America and an unknown entity called "North Vietnam" (possibly related to 3rd century Triệu dynasty/Republic of Hanoi?) would occur in the 1960s and 70s.

Subject possessed anomalous memory-replacement abilities against all unprotected individuals to come within a 5 metre radius. Subject found hanged on 09/10/1969, shortly before Facility "Q"'s closure and implementation of Site system. No note was found; however, a series of pencil drawings of a violin, a WW2-era bunker, and a "Super 8" film camera of unknown brand were found in her quarters, having apparently been composed shortly before her suicide.

Video Log of footage recovered from a Super 8 film camera. Found in a small cave in Idaho in 1985.

00.00.00 to 00.00.43: The video opens on an unknown hillside, with a landscape reminiscent of the American midwest but with the colours differing significantly from baseline reality. A small settlement or town can be seen at the bottom of the hill; it is reminiscent of many towns in America from the mid-1970s.

A large cloud, reminiscent of a vortex, can be seen over the town. It is intermittently red and black in colouration. Several indistinct grey shapes can be seen emerging from it and heading towards the town.

The camera's movements are consistent with being held by an individual familiar with its use. The weather is, however, causing significant shaking.

00.00.43 to 00.08.54: The cameraman begins to run heavily up the hill. The image here is blurry, and details are indistinct.

00.08.54 to 00.09.02: The cameraman briefly drops the camera. While picking it up, he is briefly visible: a white male in his mid-teens, with a violin case strapped to their back. Beyond a long hairstyle typical of the 1970s, no other details are clearly visible.

00.09.02-00.11.12: The cameraman begins to run again. After a couple of minutes, he comes across a cave. A light can be seen shining from within.

00.11.12-00.14.33: The cameraman enters the cave. A thin, rose-tinted film can be seen stretched across the centre of the cave. Crude graffiti which reads "SAFE HOUS" can be seen on the far side of the cave, beyond the film. The cameraman lets the camera fall to his side, and walks forward, towards the film. He switches the camera off shortly before entry.

00.14.44-00.15.27: The video opens onto an image of the cameraman, now severely emaciated. He is talking to the camera, but due to localised image distortion, it is not clear what he is saying. His speech becomes increasingly desperate, before he turns off the camera. The colouration of the environment is now correct.

00.15.27-00.17.38: The video opens onto the hillside, as seen from the cave entrance. The jolts to the camera seem to show the cameraman limping. He is moving towards the edge of the cave, and appears to retch and throw up before continuing onwards.

00.17.38-00.18.03: The camera is pointed at the former site of the town. It is in ruins, but large scaffolding and construction materials can be seen across it. Thousands of indistinct but apparently identical humanoids can be seen engaged in construction work; nobody else is visible. All are wearing identical orange jumpsuits. The extreme weather seen in the earlier version is not present.

00.18.03-00.18.07: The camera is dropped and the image abruptly cuts out.

00.18.07-00.19.25: The camera is picked up. Its angle points towards the town, which now resembles Boise, Idaho in the mid-1940s.

00.19.25-00.19.30: The camera turns towards the cameraman—their face and hands are now indistinct, and not visible due to image distortion. From what is visible, the cameraman appears to be screaming. The camera is turned off.

00.19.30-00.19.35: The video opens on the interior of the cave. Several words can be seen scrawled on the wall in black marker: "Synapse", "Sibilance", "Signs", "Sayonara", "The Sybil". One word has been circled: "Syncope".

00.19.35-00.19.49: The camera turns towards the cameraman. They are clearly no longer emaciated: their face and hands suffer the same distortion, but markedly worse. They are wearing a white Venetian mask. The camera is turned off.

There is a place that nobody talks about. It's buried miles under Yellowstone Park, and it's a mystery even to the Foundation which created it. It's the one thing which truly terrifies them.

The primary purpose of this place, this cavernous expanse of steel and concrete, is repopulation, reconstruction, restoration. But there are things buried in it that have a broader purpose. Scranton Reality Anchors, the XACTS, other buried machines you know nothing about. Things which alter time and change causality in ways which are subtle, unknown, unheard.

Sometimes, things might fall through the cracks.

Smoke clouds your eyes as you stare into space, deep in thought. You're too absorbed to notice changes on the screen, as the reel churns and churns through its ancient pictures. A group of friends, laughing in front of their lockers, talking about some forgotten joke or gossipping about unknown persons. The content is not preserved—only the form of it.

A boy, unseen by the cameraman but in the background of the shot, is seen writing on a piece of paper. His eyes and face are serious, in concentration. He looks up occasionally, twitchy and nervous. Beside him lies a violin case.

You don't see the boy—you've already turned back to the file. He's not a part of your memory, that other image of an image of something that might have been real.

Was he ever really there?

On 26/01/2019, a hostile takeover of the abandoned auditorium at ███████ High School was initiated by SCP-4833. Foundation operatives swiftly secured the site, and quickly ascertained that only a single member of SCP-4833 was present. Agent O'Hara was sent to interview and detain the instance. The following is a log of her personal camera feed.

The member of SCP-4833 (henceforth designated SCP-4833-A) is standing in the centre of the auditorium's stage. Their appearance is heavily distorted, but their gait, posture and movements are consistent with an elderly human male. They are wearing a white carnival mask, and the outfit typical of American conductors of the mid-20th century. They are holding a golden violin.

Around them lie a large number of items of clothing. These resemble the outfits worn by orchestra members from around the world during the early-to-mid 20th century.

Agent O'Hara: Hello there. I was wondering if I could have a chat with you for a moment.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: It's OK. I'm not here to hurt you. I just want to understand who you are, and why you're doing this.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: I—I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean. I don't know of any bunker—do you mean one of our sites?

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: No, that's not—OK. Look. Maybe we started on the wrong foot here. Could you tell me about the rest of the Symphony? Your co-performers?

SCP-4833-A gestures to the clothes around it.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: …They're just—they're only clothes.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: They—died? Your kind can—

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: Oh… I see.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: So it wasn't a plan at all. You faded. You declined.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

SCP-4833-A picks up its violin, taking a couple of steps towards Agent O'Hara. The latter pulls out a pistol and trains it on SCP-4833-A.

Agent O'Hara: Why did you experiment on children?

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: What do you mean, like you?

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: And the lake?

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: I—what?

SCP-4833-A's hands are seen to visibly tremble. It seems to struggle against some unseen force centred on the violin.

Agent O'Hara: What do you mean, "interpretation"?

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: N—no. There's always a meaning. Sometimes, things aren't hidden behind themselves.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: There's no other force at play. There can't be. There's just you, and your musicians, and the children you did this to. Memory's just another method of recording. I don't know where you came from, but you're as flesh and blood as I. There's nothing mysterious about you, and nothing that made you do this.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: Then what the hell did?

SCP-4833-A plays a note on its violin. Agent O'Hara's right arm falls to her side, and drops her gun.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: Wh—what the hell did—

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: I don't care. You took children. What even are you? I can't see your face. Memory doesn't do that.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: You didn't have to make them remember. Their lives weren't worth that. And you failed.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: There is no bunker! There are no past words, or forgotten peoples! You conned your followers into joining you, and they all left and died. Nobody was forgotten! There's only you! History is singular. The truth is singular. You are explicable, what happened to the class of '76 is explicable, I—I'll find it, I'll find the truth.

SCP-4833-A begins to play the violin; a melody beginning with a slow tempo, gradually increasing in speed and pitch.

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: M—music doesn't have a consciousness. It just seems th—

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: It's not—she didn't want me—no, no not—

SCP-4833-A: [DISTORTION]

Agent O'Hara: It was the last summer. University next year. I had a walkman, and it rained. I asked her after, and she said it wasn't a fight, b—but I remembered it differently. Which is the truth?

SCP-4833-A's playing is becoming increasingly rapid. They appear to be lurching away from the violin.

Agent O'Hara: The hills were green. We were—I used to play the guitar, she played the drums. Her parents didn't like what we were, but that didn't m—matter to us, we were going to be great. Red sky over the horizon.

SCP-4833-A is now playing at a speed and complexity impossible in humans. With a great wrench, they detach themselves from the violin, collapsing to the floor. The violin hovers in the air, continuing to play.

Agent O'Hara: What are we? Who are we? Don't you remember?

SCP-4833-A is now clutching its head; it makes a distorted sound, believed to be a scream. The violin continues to play at impossible speeds.

Agent O'Hara: Don't you remember?

Several figures can be seen to appear around the edges of the concert hall. They all possess heavily disfigured faces, and are facing Agent O'Hara.

Agent O'Hara: I remember.

The camera feed cuts out.

Shortly following this, backup was able to gain entry to the auditorium. SCP-4833-A, the clothing, the violin and the disfigured humanoids had disappeared. Agent O'Hara was found, fully conscious. Upon debriefing, she claimed to have no recollection of anyone or anything being present in the auditorium.

A girl is smiling in a hallway. She laughs at some unheard joke her friend is telling her. A teacher walks past, a worried expression on her face. The sun is shining through a window. The picture quality washes the scene in grainy light.

That hallway never existed, any more. This reel was recovered from the bottom of the Marianas Trench, along with a few other tiny fragments. In the dark, buried beyond where any man could go, the only place anything has ever been found of the things that once were.

Nobody remembers her. All you see is some light on a page, an image, a shadow of a shade that happens to resemble this creature from long ago. It's not a memory, but a flicker that indicates that something, anything, once moved there.

The reel ends. Its sound echoes through the room: click, click, click. White and black lines flicker across the screen, as you sit there, cigarette smoke filling the air in front of your blank face.

One day, you will never have been either. Some disaster or trivial catastrophe will happen, and the whole rigmarole will start again. A bunker, a lever, deaths and endings. A movement will end—but the symphony will go on forever.

And even if it doesn't, even if all fails, your own life will be gone. It will be extinguished as so many others were. You will be a corpse, a skeleton, dust, a thing that never was, and nobody will remember you.

The trees will grow over your grave. Flowers will dance. Humans will linger on, then die, or spread out among the stars with no memory of their homeland. The Earth will crack and burn, and the molecules will die, and the atoms will die, and the dark will consume them all. What few scattered waves remain will dissipate, and nothing will ever have happened. An infinity with no concept of itself.

Or maybe not.

You pick up your lighter and burn the documents, watching each lick of flame consume them. You stand up, your face stark against the flickering lights, and walk out of the room.

Nothing beside remains.