Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Von Braun, and I'm supposed to give a little orientation talk to you, future members of Office 5 of the media surveillance department of the Intelligence Agency. I usually do not do these things, but my bosses have sent me here as a kind of punishment for once again having tried to fake my own death.
Do you see that tall black guy there in the corner, who looks like Idris Elba? That's Agent Kane. He's supposed to give you this talk… By the way, girls and gay boys, if you plan to invite him out, do it without fear; his wife just left him, and he's in need of affection… That's a joke, his wife does not want to leave him. I would never make fun of him… I'm too afraid.
You will not do things as great as the rest of the members of the Intelligence Agency, things like diving into the Deep Web and intercepting transmissions of the Chaos Insurgency or the Church of the Broken God, planting disinformation, or hacking web pages to delete references to SCPs. Neither will you have to work with D-Class, which is an advantage since they will never experience the ridiculous remorse of many Foundation newbies until they finally get used to it or, even worse, they start to enjoy it… What? "What is D-Class?" Do not worry, you will find out.
Another advantage: you will never be near an SCP, of any kind, ever.
And what will be your job? In simple terms, remain seated all day in front of a television or computer, drinking coke and eating pizza or another junk food of your choice. Basically, the ideal job.
Do not think that your work will be useless. On the contrary, we have agents in every scientific, police, and military organization of importance, and even so, we need you. You will roam the internet, visiting websites of the paranormal and conspiracy, official sites of scientific organizations and blog skeptics. You will see newscasts in languages that I did not even know existed (at least for something you are all polyglots), a blog about curiosities of Romanian history, or a note of ten lines in a Philippine newspaper. We never know where a clue to a true anomaly will be found.
For example, an entire family disappears while walking through a forest park. What happened to them? Maybe they took a map to nowhere at a gas station, or maybe they entered an infinite forest… or maybe Dad just went crazy, killed Mom and his children, and committed suicide; and soon we will find their bodies next to their charred car.
That is your job. Go beyond the journalists themselves when, like parrots, they repeat strange news that has emerged from who knows where and then lost itself in the vortex of information that bombards us every day. Follow the small clues that lead us to an SCP that has not been contained, to an anomalous event, or, most of the time, to a seemingly unusual fact that someone threw into the tangle of modern communications without bothering to look for the simplest or the stupidest explanation which ends up being correct in most cases.
A video from Hong Kong where a guy appears and disappears with a glow? Maybe it's a case of teleportation, maybe a transdimensional humanoid, or maybe viral advertising about a future Chinese science fiction movie.
Is a river stained with blood in Alaska? Maybe it's a sign of the Apocalypse, maybe a manipulator of reality, maybe a new red pool, or maybe just a company that was careless in the handling of its polluting waste.
An Israeli is capable of bending spoons and accelerating or rewinding time in mechanical watches? It does not deserve a second look; it's about Uri Geller, an illusionist who passes his tricks as psychic powers, has been discredited over and over again decades ago, and still appears on television.
Mysterious pyramids in Serbia that are older and bigger than the Egyptian pyramids, and official archeology tries to hide its existence? It sounds interesting, and as they investigate they find out the archaeologist who directs the excavations and faces the rigid "official" science is not really an archaeologist, but a guy without any study linked to numerous frauds; that the pyramids are in fact perfectly natural geological formations; that a great tourist business is being carried out with guided visits; and that real archaeological remains such as tombs and gravestones are being severely damaged by the "excavations".
You are in a very special time. Never before has humanity had access to so much information and knowledge, and never before can so much of that information be reduced to pure garbage. And about that, I want to talk to you about what will undoubtedly be your worst enemy: The Creepypasta.
A Russian experiment on the dream made in the '50s with very gory results? Garbage for the most part. Yes, there was indeed an experiment on the dream, but everything else is garbage. We know it very well, our friend VanDerGauss participated in it.
A girl who walks alone on the road, in the middle of the night, and asks you to take her? The typical tale of the ghost hitchhiker… It happened in reality with SCP-1337, and all other cases of ghost road girls are influenced by the memory of SCP-1337. Many creepypastas have been created by encounters with this or that SCP, and in some cases, the Foundation itself creates some as a disinformation measure. It is quite easy.
A role-playing game that ends with all its members worshipping Satan and then committing suicide? It seems true, right? Until they discover that the source is a fundamentalist evangelical website that considers everything that is not explicitly Christian to be satanic, including Dungeons and Dungeons, Pokémon, the theory of evolution, and paleontology. So, it sounds like a sign that you do not have to take it seriously and can discard it, right?
Wrong! Not at all, in fact we once had a chess board that, when a game was played, the loser was furious, saw everything red, and was thrown into a rage that could only be calmed by the blood of the winner… We are not sure if it was really an SCP or just the normal reaction of any chess fan, but it is a good example of how nothing should be ruled out no matter how unlikely it may seem. Your work requires developing a clear criterion on what to investigate in depth and what not to.
And once you have exhausted all options, tracked each news item to its original source, and are sure that it is not an absolute falsehood or that it cannot be explained satisfactorily, then you will tell us, and we will send our people. Maybe you will make the Foundation lose time and resources, or maybe you will save the world. Who can know?
Has it already been a half hour? How time passes when one has fun.
You may all retire in peace.
