Sophie in Archie’s Office
Michael
Sophie walks into Archie's home office; I'm guessing she's never been here before, but has had her share of urgent weekend phone calls over the years from Livermore with Archie sitting in this room. Nephi's snuck into the office and as soon as Sophie sits down across from Archie, Nephi hops up into her lap. (Cats love Sophie.) Sophie reaches over into her purse and produces a piece of printer paper from the Telex at Livermore. "I wanted to be the first to tell you, because, well, I value our working relationship and the kindness you've always shown me. I'm being reassigned." Archie opens up the folded printer paper and on it are an array of SANDMAN code phrases, etc. that come straight from Granite Peak.
"Agent EDELSTEIN will report to Granite Peak 05 JUL 1973 for mandatory psychological assessment and reassignment. Agent EDELSTEIN is detached from Operation URIEL as of this date (03 JUL 1973)."
"It's for the best," Sophie says. "I've already been on the phone with the shrinks at GP and they think a three-month rehabilitative stay at some out-of-the-way retreat after the events of GRAIL TABLE will do me a world of good. To be frank, much of this sort of rehab should have been done before I even joined URIEL." Archie can tell Sophie is trying to put an optimistic, if somewhat self-blaming, spin on this. But it's clear that the implication that she is too broken to be assigned even to the library at Livermore anymore, has hurt and scared her.
Rob
Archie's nonplussed at first. "Wait. What? No, there's got to be some misunderstanding here." He re-reads the paper. "Nobody talked to me about any of this."
"Mandatory psychological assessment? What are they talking about?" He looks up from the paper at Sophie, takes in her distress. "Dufton was a terrible thing, but … Sophie, are you not OK?"
Michael
"I'm honestly not sure if I've been okay since Tel Aviv." She pets Nephi absently, looking around the office. "They gave me 48 hours to get my affairs in order, and I must say, I'm so glad I managed to spend some of those hours here today in your lovely home, Archie." She's not breaking, she's not crying, but Sophie is obviously moved by Archie's concern and rare anger at having had one of his team reassigned over his head.
Rob
Archie paces. "If you need to … talk to somebody, surely we can find you somebody here! What about Marshall? He's a psychiatrist. Or psychologist. Or whatever. The point is, you are a crucial member of our team. I don't want to ship you off to Utah all on the say-so of some headshrinker you talked to over the phone."
"Unless … is this what you want?"
Michael
Sophie ignores the invocation of Marshall's services as therapist for the moment. "I don't believe I can currently perform to the standard required of me professionally by SANDMAN. Being short-handed last week led to my being in the field again. And while I did do better than either of the previous missions … being out there with Charley felt … different. As if no matter how much my old field skills were coming back after a long hibernation, I didn't trust my ability to manage my sanity long-term. You see, after DiGiuseppe, after Dufton, after going to the Rad Lab with Charley, I realized I would much rather live with the consequences of a reassignment and rehab than put … than put any of you in URIEL in danger."
"Also … I am worried about my own eagerness to engage and experiment with the enemy's … geometry. In an effort to feel more useful and less of a liability, I asked the Peak to train me in … draftsmanship," she says, not willing to say either of the words "Anunnaki" and "glyphs."
"And now I'm not sure if my desire to draw is still coming from a place of wanting to feel useful and not from some sense of addiction." Sophie levels her gaze at Archie. "With that kind of knowledge in my head, you know they'll never let me engage in a rehab out of their sight. Even a few weeks riding horses at the Mission under Marshall's care would be too far from … their eyes." She plays idly with a MARPA winged-eye-of-providence pin from the weekend, which she had in her purse, apparently. "Probably the final straw was realizing how much you've been thrown into field work since May. We're not meant for those kind of assignments. If anything, Granite Peak should be assigning more commandos, more trained elite soldiers to Livermore. We're not just an intelligence-gathering operation anymore. I told them this in my report this past weekend. Things are … accelerating, out there, don't you feel it?" Sophie listens to the crackle of the remaining fireworks, which through Archie's soundproof study sound like very weak and faint artillery fire, heard dozens of miles from the front, like distant thunder. "Three full-on temblors, in just the past two months? This is no place for me. California feels like it's becoming the front lines and we- … er, I wasn't made for the front lines."
"Anyway, I'm sure Dr. Stanton will end up calling you tomorrow morning bright and early at the office to explain why I won't be there, but I wanted to bring my papers to you because … if there's anyone I wanted to say goodbye to, it's you. And Charley, but I'll manage that on my way out tonight. I owe it to you and the care you've taken with me these past few years. Please don't tell the team until tomorrow morning. It'll be easier that way."
Rob
"It has been a hectic couple of months. I've been hoping that everything might settle down for a while. But we have been leaning on you for glyphs. I'm sorry for that." Archie regards one of the ad art blow ups on the wall. "It just gets easier and easier to take their shortcuts, doesn't it?"
"You haven't put anyone in danger at any time, and I know you never would. But if you need rest, if you need some time away from active duty, well, that's understandable." Now Archie's talking himself into being ok with this. "Well, I'm going to talk to Frank Stanton. I'll make sure they treat you well at the Peak. Roll out the red carpet, ha ha."
"We're going to miss you, Sophie."
Michael
Sophie smiles. "It's not goodbye forever, Archie. Just … just make sure someone takes very good care of the library while I'm gone. And I have a good feeling about Genevieve. I think this group really desperately needs someone like her." Sophie doesn't have much to say about Andy, Archie notes. "You know," Sophie says as she gathers up her things to get ready to leave, "when I first took the opportunity for an assignment that would bring me to California, I wasn't worried about Irruptors or cultists or any of the dangers of being so close to the epicenter of the so-called 'Aquarian revolution' in America. I wasn't even worried about the culture shock of living outside of Europe for the first time in my life." Sophie smirks. "I was mostly worried about fitting in on a team. All my work up to that point — both field undercover and rear echelon — had been solo work, really. I got used to being on my own. Maybe that led to my downfall ultimately, I'm not sure: thinking I could always just go it alone. But the last few years, you've made being part of a team easy. I know I've kept to myself up until really the past few months, that I've kept my distance, that my, er, trauma had even kept me from having you use my name for so long." Sophie rolls her eyes at her own neuroses. "But today. Well. After what I saw today here at this barbecue, well," Sophie smiles and finally wipes away a single tear, "this might end up being my biggest regret of all. Not letting myself borrow the power and fortitude that comes from being part of a team."
"Keep them safe, Mr. Ransom. I know you'll do your best but promise me … promise me you'll keep them all safe." For a minute Archie is not sure if Sophie is talking about URIEL or his own family … but given Charley's role as a member of both of them, maybe the ambiguity is both intentional and unavoidable. She puts out her hand for a handshake.
Rob
Archie is willing to take the proffered handshake, but first he holds out his arms, a little awkwardly, to offer Sophie a hug. Like he's not going to press it on her but the hug is there if she wants it. But then, if she does go for the hug, just as she does, he says, "Say!" Then looks abashed. Then, with the two of them standing awkwardly close in the approach to this abortive hug, he says "I'm so sorry. This is not the time or the place for this question, but, well, suddenly I don't know when I'll get another chance. You always seem to know just what's going on around the office. How do you think we are doing in terms of, ah, operational security? I'm talking about the seven of us, the core team. If I were to ask you about possible security leaks — and I'm not asking, but IF I were — where would your mind go?"
(If she doesn't go for the hug, he shakes her hand, and says the same thing while holding on to the handshake way too long.)
Michael
(Uh, Fast-Talk roll please)
(And Sophie goes for the handshake, none of this promiscuous American hugging for her)
Rob
>>>> SUCCESS
(Made it by 8)
Michael
Intelligence Analysis.
>>>> CRITICAL FAILURE
bahahahahahahaah
Sophie's like, man, I am officially detached from this unit
Rob
(she misreads the situation, kisses Archie passionately)
Michael
Sophie's plane to Utah:
(Made it by 8)
Sophie shivers. She stands there a little wobbly, uncertain, but grabs onto the back of the chair she was sitting in and, tight-lipped, offers up some seemingly very hesitant advice. "Well, that's the thing, isn't it. With the privileges that the Kings enjoy with being able to invade, sequester, and compartmentalize our minds … it could very well be any of us, couldn't it? One of us just babbling into the night because of a meme we happened to read and there just happens to be a Blue Star mic planted nearby. Or another of us blabbing our life story to someone we happened to meet at a bar. How can you suspect one of us over the other when we're all, by dint of human minds being the playthings of the Anunnaki, suspect?"
Sophie says, "I'll tell you why I put it this way. We had an infiltrator in my unit in Israel. Not anything as pedestrian as PLO, as I'd believed in my then-role as MI6 agent, you understand: this traitor was a real servant of the Kings. Thing is, after the mission, after a couple of the greater Shin Bet/MI6 team had gotten themselves blown up, not one of us could agree on which of us betrayed the team. We'd discovered it, in fact: confirmed it up and down the line, but before we could report it in via a secure channel … the explosion and subsequent temblor was loosed. Our memories were all uncertain after spending time in the temblor zone. Those of us who survived spent weeks in SANDMAN's European equivalent of the lower levels of Granite Peak, a disused mine in the Harz Mountains. A former Nazi base." Sophie laughs cruelly to herself.
"Weeks of intense interrogation where I wasn't sure whether I was being held by NATO forces, or the Stasi, or aliens from outer space. It slowly dawned on me that the betrayer could have even been me! I realized this as I began to piece together that the … event that had scuttled our mission was something more than mere trauma-derived amnesia from a PLO bombing." Sophie sighs.
"Ultimately, I must have been cleared by someone high up in SANDMAN, because I was offered membership after those weeks of interrogation. Nothing as sweet as being given Dom Perignon at a backyard barbecue, my recruitment to SANDMAN. But I never found out who the mole was. I guess I've never been cleared for it. Maybe the mole never even found out; maybe he just got a bullet in the back of the head and a one-way trip down a Nazi mineshaft. Or he could have been one of the agents who got killed; that'd be convenient. Or maybe it was me and the past six years have been an enormous long con and I'm going to get the bullet in the back of the head at the Peak when I get there tomorrow morning." Sophie slings her bag over her shoulder and steps towards the door to the office. "I told you to protect everyone in URIEL, Archie. But on the other hand … you also probably shouldn't trust them."
(Oh, this story should probably merit a Flashback roll for Archie given the similarity to his experiences in Korea. Sorry Sophie crit failed, Rob. ) "The GM rolls 3d for Archie. On a 6 or less, Archie has a Mild Flashback (Duration 2d seconds, -2 on all skill rolls)."
>>>> SUCCESS
Michael
(s'all good)
Rob
Archie says: "Gosh."
He lets go of the handshake. "They're going to help you, at the Peak, Sophie." With whatever conviction he can muster. "They wouldn't … It's not like … that … any more."
Michael
Sophie raises an eyebrow at that, and opens the door. "Goodbye, Archie. I'll send you all a postcard."