... I knew you would come today. Oh no, I'm no fortune teller, my only certainty in all this is that your curiosity and determination are contagious. Let's say that predicting the future is not a very... healthy activity for those involved here, but I guess the Foundation never stopped trying. Those extra tidbits of information usually arrive through disturbing channels, or drag disastrous consequences. You know, prices that cannot be paid, tragic fates... things that escape. I can see appetite in your eyes. All right, then let me tell you about a tape...
(Editor's note: Blood, a lot.)
... a Betamax tape, to be more precise. Do you remember Betamax? "Format war" and all that? It doesn't matter. The point is that the Foundation calls this tape SCP-1981... not so surprising when we have SCPs living like apps on mobile phones.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/3pz53GX2JEEThe tape was found by an employee of the records section of the Reagan Presidential Library in 1991. All it offers as identification is the label "RONALD REAGAN DISMEMBERED WHILE SPEAKING" on its label, and when this employee saw it... he called the police. Apparently the poor devil was so disturbed that he wanted to file "obscenity charges" against the creator of the tape. A small investigation was enough to determine that the Foundation had to intervene. SCP-1981 ended up under its power, and all those related to the tape received class A amnestics. Nothing better than a clean extraction for a change.
The content of the tape begins with that famous speech given by President Ronald Reagan in March 1983. Things were very tense with the Russians back then, and double R came up with calling them the "Evil Empire". A colorful way to burn diplomatic bridges, but that's not the real problem. You see, in SCP-1981, the speech changes. From the first minute and 10 seconds onward, Reagan's dialogue doesn't resemble anything recorded of him on video. It's as if something or someone injected those words... but there's more.
Near five minutes, Reagan begins to suffer wounds. Cuts, perforations, destroyed eyes, ripped throat. Impalement, genital mutilation. In one of the replays he loses his left arm, and in another he is beheaded, with his spine exposed. And despite the severity of his wounds, he continues talking, without feeling pain. The image quality degrades until it's pure static beyond 20 minutes. Each time someone stops and rewinds the tape, the speech and the type of wounds change, but the pattern is the same. The title doesn't lie, and Ronald Reagan ends up dismembered.
I think you can imagine the rest: The Foundation repeated the tape again, and again, and again. At first, Reagan's new words make no sense, but among all that chaos small details appear about future events, things Reagan couldn't possibly know. Predictions... very accurate. The attack on the Twin Towers. Al-Qaeda. The Russian elections of 2008. The Foundation tried to duplicate the tape more than once, but without success. The only viable alternative was to film the television with camcorders during playback.
Now... that's not all. The Foundation's analysts discovered that in one of every seven replays, one of Reagan's press team members is replaced by a figure dressed in black, wearing a conical hood. No one knows who it is, or what its role is in the development of the predictions. The Foundation merely identified it as SCP-1981-1, and continued with the replays... until one of them was different.
There was no speech. Reagan wasn't even there. At three minutes, SCP-1981-1 entered from the left side of the frame, and stared at the camera for almost 20 minutes. The last frame froze for seven seconds... and showed this:
SCP-1981-1 did not appear again in the video. Foundation agents have direct orders to report its return, but I don't think it will. It already knows where to find us.
