SCP Foundation

They are extremely simple to operate. All you do to activate them is focus on seeking something and drop one or more stones. They will then roll via what superficially looks like coincidental or terrain-based momentum towards what is sought. This is all that was revealed by the previous owner before he either dies an unnatural death without being murdered (in some way that means he disobeyed a geas) or kills himself (likely same).

The complication is that the apparent intelligence of the pathfinding increases with the number of stones involved.

A solitary stone rolls at a walking pace directly towards what is sought, irrespective of obstacles, hazards, or the speed of movement of the user. It will roll straight into canyons, fire, etc., and if it hits an obstacle more than double its height, it just stops. If not obstructed, it will roll whether or not it is still being followed, and can be easily lost.

They get "smarter" the more you drop, avoiding obstacles and hazards, stopping or speeding up dependent on the speed of movement of the user, etc. All of this can be revealed in test logs.

I am also thinking that, while they appear to just be made of standard mid-quality quartz of a particular variety comparable to quartz found somewhere in Norway, they are very, very hard to break and/or have a self-repair ability. I want there to be every reason to believe that all 13 are still in existence, albeit possibly in very hard to reach locations.

The worrying part is, there are definitely more not in Foundation control. The marbles came in a leather bag that had slots for each stone. Twelve slots, plus a space in the middle for a larger sphere. Two of the slots are long-crumpled, their stones missing for a long while. Three more look more recently used. During tests, it is established that the stones can be used to look for their fellows, and that they seem unphased by various Foundation standard methods of obfuscation. Question is, who has the others, and how many are held in a single entity's possession?

There are also possibilities for revealing secrets even if you don't follow the stones the entire way (they are reasonably easy to stop partway, especially if you drop several). While they will only lead to something that could be walked to, they don't distinguish between items that can be reached by mundane methods and those that can only be reached through various types of anomalous portals. A secret space station has been mentioned as reachable via a terrestrial SCP. If asked to seek "space" or "low Earth orbit" or wherever that station is, they could lead straight to that skip. Putting in a few experiments where researchers try to stump the stones but get a response could be great for story hooks.

And finally, there is that larger stone in the middle. I have an idea for what that does, but I am not firm on it yet. Need to do some more boning up on my Norse mythology before I am sure.

I admit I wasn't convinced when you first proposed it on IRC, because it could be summarized as "thing that find things." Still can be, but you've expanded on the idea considerably since then. Seeing how capable you are in building on the concept, I no longer consider its originality as a "finder" scip relevant.

I think you've figured out the approach you need to sell this. You introduce this like any other anomalous object – one that rolls to the thing you want to find. With every security layer you peel back, you reveal its nature, its backstory, its connection to Norse mythology;¹ and finally, the potential for sapience and super-intelligence.

That last point is key. When mulling over these marbles, I kept thinking of 1123 and 914. The former, because this does everything that does without the interesting tradeoff; and the latter, because this tries for a mechanical intelligence that has pulled off. But the potential for super-intelligence brings 079 to mind – the serious threat posed by a technological singularity, where a computer becomes smart enough to make itself smarter and smarter until it surpasses all human intelligence. For this, the threshold for rampant superintelligence isn't measuring in gigabytes or gigahertz; it's measured in marbles.

Outlining this presents the unique challenge of defining and categorizing the mechanical intelligence of your marble collective – a challenge even 914 shies from. As you've proposed, a single marble can only seek a physical object following a straight line, rolling through danger and stopping by barriers it can't move. With another marble, maybe it doesn't stop; with another, maybe it learns to roll around obstacles; maybe it increases in speed and force. With more marbles, it becomes more and more aware of the biology and psychology of the user, granting it the insight to create paths that mitigate physical/emotional damage to the user and wait where the user can see it. Queries are no longer restricted to physical objects, issued by a verbal command, or even tied to what the user believes they want. Projections of this mechanical intelligence predict that the combined marble collective would do one of three things:

1. Develop its own agenda of increasing its search power by finding/building more marbles.
2. Calculate the utilitarian path for all conscious beings within a certain radius (if that), and do everything it can to set the universe on that course.
3. Both.

Knowing how this progresses and where this is going shapes the punchline for this piece.

And then there are the complications to containment the six unknown marbles could pose. I'm not even going to address that. Because here, you can be as bold and as imaginative as your skill allows. All I recommend is that you introduce this notion by changing the discovery to an attempt by the Norwegian man to find something that was coincidentally held by the Foundation.