SCP Foundation

Ok so I had a dream about "The Machine That Will Come". Apparently, in my dream, once you have your dream about it you will forget anything else you ever learn about it. Information about it falls away like sand though fingers. The more information is known about it, the closer it comes to fruition.

The really freaky part? I took those notes as soon as I woke up and then went back to sleep. I have a memory of writing those notes down but not of the dream itself.

The twisted thing is that no comment was made on if The Machine That Will Come is a good thing or a bad thing and learning that would be more information about it, thus bringing it to fruition sooner. That's a real mindscrew. Maybe the concept the TMTWC is so alien to us that we can't even project our human moral system on it. Maybe The Machine will remake us and deliver us to am unknowable new phase of existence both good AND bad.

This isn't like a SCP post… that was what I woke up to this morning and I said to myself "…damn. This sounds like an SCP".

I don't know HOW it will become one but it REALLY sounds like one. I could use some help with the implementation.

Do you mind clearing up exactly what the concept is? I'm having difficult parsing what is the idea, and what's your reaction to the dream itself.

Sure, I'll try to clean it up a bit.

Key elements:

• There is an ambiguous thing known as “The Machine That Will Come” (Implying that it is both a machine and something that does not yet exist. Best described as a “fated, theoretical machine that will someday be built”).
• Some people dream about it, gaining information on what it is.
• If said dreamers are told any more information about this machine, they will not be able to retain that information (forgetting it).
• The more information that is known about this machine the less time remains before it is made.
• The exact nature of this theoretical machine is unknown but it is known to be “important”. Maybe a good thing, maybe a bad thing, or maybe something totally alien to our comprehension.

It kind of speaks to the allure of science we should't do but can't resist doing. Like if the idea was known, maybe we couldn't resist building it despite the consequences.

Hmm. I think some aspects ( the machine) are certainly interesting, but you might have a hard time getting your reader on the same page as you, unless you end up spelling it all out for them. What's the connection between dreams and the machine? Those two seem sort of losely connected. I would suggest not making the purpose of the machine too vague; you want your reader to feel as if they are learning something about the SCP.

Also, the idea of a dream representing a growing "thing" in reality is sort of done with SCP-3117. Just check that one out and see if that's what you were going for in overall concept. It's possible I misunderstood your idea a little.

This gives me insane deja-vu, it's bugging me.

The confusing part: the dreamers dream about the machine. And they get information through these dreams (the only way possible since it doesn't exist yet). But they forget all this information. So do they forget all about their dreams, except for their growing sense of 'completeness' of the machine?

I guess communicating that to the reader (the growing dread, excitement, and mania of the dreamers) as the machine becomes more complete would be the focus of the article?

The problem is there isn't much substance, really. If everything is left too vague, you might wind up just annoying the reader with vague remarks on how cool and important 'The Machine' is.