💾 Archived View for gemini.locrian.zone › library › SCP › scp-6987-5.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 17:33:08. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-11-04)
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The Goldbaker-Reinz Chaotic Systems Intelligence Data Feed maximizes to fill the screen, and a video stream opens.
A vaguely East-Asian man in a blue dress shirt is seated at a desk. He calls himself Jin Larry Viridian, and he’s been the Foundation’s account manager with Goldbaker-Reinz for the past forty years. He doesn’t look a day over thirty.
Jin’s office is ornate. There’s a set of brass scales on his desk, weighed down on one side by three gold ingots, and on the other by a single black feather. The feather is heavier than the gold. There’s a keyboard built into his desk and no monitor, but a complex network of holographic lights weave through the room. On the wall behind him, there is a landscape painting of the Himalayas. And above that, the logo of Goldbaker-Reinz, cast from polished brass.
Jin isn’t unique. He’s one of hundreds, if not thousands of people that Goldbaker-Reinz employs, each one catering to a slightly different customer base, each one with a slightly different job description. Small-scale compared to the Foundation, yet their reach is difficult to estimate — worryingly so.
“Overseer,” Jin says warmly. “Here about the yearly audit?”
O5-10 nods. “You know how it is.”
“Glad to see they’re doing their due diligence,” Jin says with a slight smile. “I always thought Ezekiel Yang would go far. You and I both know it’s hard to trust protection that can’t be predicted.”
O5-10 frowns. “I’m afraid so.”
“Assurances. Of course,” Jin says. He taps a few keys on his keyboard, and holographic displays emerge from the GoReChaoS screen.
“Your account for last year is, of course, in good order,” Jin says. “All payments made. As of now, we have received your first payment for Class-G Personnel Policies, Class-E Institutional Policies, and Class-B Esoteric policies.”
With each type of policy, a display pops up, showing bar graphs colored green.
Then, he pauses. A graph, tinted red, appears.
“Will you be continuing payments for Class-K policies?”
“I’d like to review the Foundation’s benefit history,” O5-10 says as neutrally as possible.
“Certainly,” Jin says, just as neutrally back.
“The, ah... Large Ostrich Aggressor Event?”
For some reason, Goldbaker-Reinz is unbelievably specific when it comes to Large-Scale Aggressors. Disturbingly specific. O5-10 half suspects Goldbaker-Reinz sells Large-Scale Aggressor policies for paraweapons owned by the GOC and its constituent groups.
Jin puffs out his cheeks. “Unbelievably messy on all fronts. Your disclosure of the Dragonslayer contingency is why we charge you such low premiums for that policy, though I’m glad to see it wasn’t necessary this time around. I take it our performance was satisfactory?”
O5-10 recalls the emergence of a 500-foot-tall ostrich from the coast of Australia, making a beeline for Southeast Asia. He recalls Foundation forces scrambling to take the beast down, emergency calls to the GOC, the thaumaturgical effort necessary to mitigate the splash, the inevitable question of what to do with a 500-foot-tall anomalous ostrich in the Indian Sea.
Then, Jin Larry Viridian, jumping from a helicopter to land atop the ostrich’s floating corpse, his longcoat trailing behind him. Mere seconds assessing the scope of the damage, tapping at his wristwatch. Then, an immediate email in O5-10’s inbox, describing the exact amount of coverage the Foundation was entitled to.
Several billion dollars, cash. A few million more in beryllium bronze alloy. If necessary, use of storage facilities for several tons of ostrich meat for up to a year.
Ultimately, the payment received was just a few hundred dollars more than what the Foundation had paid over the years. A net loss, considering potential returns on investments. The true value was the convenience of not having to ship several tons of anomalous meat to a safe disposal facility all at once.
“Was there something unsatisfactory about your coverage that you’d like to discuss?” Jin says, frowning. He fidgets with the brass scales on his desk, causing them to bob up and down slowly. The feather remains heavier than the gold.
“Exemplary coverage overall,” O5-10 says. The ostriches, while anomalous, weren’t all that extraordinary in the grand scheme of things.
“Excellent,” says Jin, smiling fiercely. “The next matter of business?”
“The mathematical breakdowns,” says O5-10. “How is it that—”
“Treading dangerously to Clause 3 of the Master Agreement,” Jin says, wagging a finger performatively.
“I have to ask,” says O5-10.
“And I have to remind you, every time you do,” says Jin. “Our records show that for a period equivalent to one and five years, mathematics broke down to a point such that probabilities greater than one were realizable. I can’t wrap my head around what such a thing would look like, but I digress. Do your records agree?”
The Foundation’s records of this event come solely from a temporally isolated Deepwell facility, specifically designed to resist alterations to the fabric of reality. It’s as close as the Foundation has gotten to the confirmation that Goldbaker-Reinz has similar facilities, but the scope and scale remain unknown.
“They do,” says O5-10. “And how—”
“Trade secret, I’m afraid,” Jin says. “If I were to tell a representative of the Foundation exactly how Goldbaker-Reinz managed to restore probabilities to normal, that’d be one less policy I could sell. It’s just business.”
“What about your records?” O5-10 asks. “How did you keep them safe?”
Jin chuckles. “Mr. Goldbaker’s memory is *long*,” he says.
O5-10 has met Mr. Goldbaker exactly once, a century ago, and he isn’t even sure that it was the real Mr. Goldbaker. “How is the old man?”
“Still as young as he’s ever been,” Jin says. “We got dinner five years or so back. I’ll see if I can invite you along to the next one.”
“I’m far too busy for that,” O5-10 says. “Perhaps you’d be better off interfacing with the auditors directly.”
“Now *that* would be a conflict of interest,” Jin says. “Goldbaker-Reinz, buying wagyu steaks for the people who are currently arguing that they shouldn’t buy K-Class policies from us?”
O5-10 snorts. Then, he takes a breath.
“I need stronger assurances, Jin. Something I can send to my internal team. I’m getting tired of putting them off year after year.”
Jin’s smile vanishes as well. “Our past performance means nothing to them?”
“When they can’t remember the worst of it? When the world is on the line?”
Jin nods sagely. He taps the keyboard. O5-10 sees brief image clips flash across the screen. An asteroid in deep space being deflected away from Earth by Foundation satellites with a significant energy cost, and a dump truck of pitchblende depositing its load at a designated site 50 kilometers from Site-19 the next day. A delivery of exactly 30 maple trees, each no more than three feet tall, through a door from nowhere. A handshake, beside a deep fissure in the earth.
Jin dramatically presses the Enter key, and a blinking message appears in O5-10’s inbox.
“I’ve cleared these for internal release,” Jin says. “Once you’re done reviewing them, you can pass it down the line.”
O5-10 nods.
Jin smiles, and surprisingly it reaches his eyes. “Excellent. I hope we can rely on your continued patronage.”
The line blinks shut.
Ezekiel, Sheldon,
The SCP-6987 documentation for Levels 1-4 has been fully approved.
The council has voted unanimously to renew all of SCP-6987.
Please review the attached files.
—O5-10