Mission Three // Colorado

“Anyone who believes in magic is a fool.”

— Harry Houdini

Played: October 15, 2020.

Marshall and Mitch are heading to Estes Park, Colorado for the Carnival of Knowledge! Marshall wants to be around famous people, promote his brand, and bond/party with Mitch. Mitch has no particular agenda. (“I could see bonding happening or not, it depends on factors perhaps best abstracted using Carousing rolls.”)

Mitch, Marshall, and Marshall’s bodyguard Dave fly to Denver in Marshall’s private jet and take a limousine from there, arriving at the Stanley Hotel late Thursday afternoon. They check in and check out the grand, if dilapidated, lobby. Nestled in the majestic Rocky Mountains, the Stanley is a stately relic of another time. It was built in 1909 by a tubercular Gilded Age steam-car magnate, and hasn’t been modernized much since then. It’s all dark wood and gaslight sconces, nooks and cubbyholes, mounted stag’s heads and topiary gardens. A perky young concierge offers to give our boys the nickel tour. Mitch is game; Marshall says thanks but no thanks and heads for the bar.

The bar is already filling up with Carnival of Knowledge attendees: a lot of young radio types, both long-haired FM programmers and squarer sales guys and engineers. Marshall orders a Mai Tai and spots a professional acquaintance: Eugene “Dr. Hipp-ocrates” Schoenfeld, medical advice columnist for Bay Area heads and a sometime CIA asset in happy spots like Cambodia and the Belgian Congo. They greet each other as warmly as two (ex?) spooks can and start catching up. Dr. Hip says he’s looking for new opportunities, which Marshall takes to mean Schoenfeld’s gravy train has run out. He says the scene has changed a lot in the past five years. He says “the kids” (who aren’t kids anymore) are looking for what to do next. He says, “We need to tell them what to do next, Marshall.” Schoenfeld also says they’re doing interesting stuff at Esalen, inviting Marshall to come down there some time. They go out into the topiary garden to smoke a joint.

Mitch and a few other guests take the hotel history tour. Rebecca the concierge shows them the grand ballroom, the library, the main performance stage... She rattles off a list of famous people who performed there, including Harry Houdini, who had a trap door installed for one of his famous escapes. Mitch observes the trap door… and detects the faintest of History B influence coming up from beneath it, like a draft from a crack in the wall. The tour continues.

After the tour, Mitch finds Marshall in the bar, still having his ear bent by Dr. Hip. Mitch judges Schoenfeld to have a cop’s aura, and mouths to Marshall, “who’s this asshole?” Marshall uses Mitch’s arrival to make a graceful exit.

Mitch asks Marshall if he’s ever heard of Harry Houdini. Marshall has, of course; in fact, he knows that Houdini was a proto-SANDMAN, working with the Duncorne Foundation and John Wilkie’s SAO. Mitch says, “Well, he put a trap door in the main stage that conceals some kind of esoteric mystery. Does that ring any bells for you?” Marshall orders two more Mai Tais to go. “Let’s go check out this Houdini hole, man!”

They get a flashlight from Dave, go back into the grand theater, get up on stage, and open the trap door. It leads them down into a dark little crawl space beneath the stage, crowded with junk from sixty years of show business. While Marshall sips his Mai Tai, Mitch detects the “pinhole” from which faint History B energies are emanating. Concentrating on the pinhole, Mitch hears a voice whispering in his ear. It seems to be speaking in German.

Played: November 30, 2020.

Marshall is throwing a little party in his suite at the Stanley Hotel. Or not so little: by midnight, the room is packed with Colorado snow bunnies and all the hipper Carnival of Knowledge attendees. Richard Perry (“producer of Carly Simon, Barbara Streisand, Harry Nillson and others”), Tom “Big Daddy” Donahue (“KSAN & father of progressive radio”), Dr. Hip (“syndicated columnist on social changes”), and Michael Nesmith (the Monkees, the First National Band) are all in attendance; there’s booze and drugs and everyone seems to be having a good time.

Maybe too good a time: Mitch makes a critical failure on his Carousing roll. So while Marshall circulates, keeping the conversation lively, Mitch manages to take twice as much of everything as he should. He’s just starting to float off into space when a huge man with a booming voice and a European accent—an Olympic skier? a bodybuilder?—enters the room. Mitch tries to read the big man’s aura; another critical fail. He sees something… indescribable. Fails a fright check too. (He keeps his pyrokinesis under control, at least.)

The very large man stares at Mitch, but finding him in no condition to communicate, approaches Marshall instead. He addresses Marshall by name and asks to speak to him in the corridor outside. Marshall resists the effects of a SANGUSH glyph, and sees the truth: the oversized man is a kusarikku.

Marshall is agog, coked up and twitchy: “Who are you? Who sent you? What are you doing here?”

The kusarikku is grave, formal, pompous: “All will be revealed, Doctor. May we speak … in the corridor? Away from these … people.”

Marshall consents but begs off to the restroom first, “to fix his hair.” As soon as the bull-monster leaves the room, Marshall tries to make a break for it. He rattles the doors to the adjacent suites: locked. So he climbs out the window. Michael Nesmith says to Mitch, “What the hell just happened to Dr. Red?”

Marshall climbs out his hotel room window and down into the topiary garden. He finds himself surrounded by hedge lions, hedge rabbits, hedge giraffes… and the kusarikku. “Here will also be fine,” says the monster. Marshall leaps back in alarm. The bull-man holds up a huge hand. “Be not afraid,” it says. “I am here to tie up loose ends.”

Marshall squints. “In my line of work, that usually means someone’s not going home.”

“That is correct,” admits the kusarikku. “But you needn’t care for him. He should have been dead for fifty years.”

Marshall is confused. “Are you talking about Zeb?”

“Who?”

“Zeb,” says Marshall. “My gardener. The old guy? Who was working with E.L. Moore?”

Now the kusarikku is confused. “What on this planet are you talking about?”

Marshall touches the man-bull-monster to see if it is real. It is.

The kusarikku says, “You have discovered something that should have been taken care of, many years ago. I ask your patience, and non-interference, as I resolve this unfortunate issue that threatens both our worlds.”

Marshall says, in Sumerian: “What the fuck are you talking about, man?”

“The escapist,” says the kusarikku scornfully. “The man who utilized our techniques to entertain you cattle.”

Marshall twigs: “Houdini???”

“He used techniques that are not permissible to one of his station. He found a way to escape death. (Your type of death.) His wave form must be collapsed.”

“Man,” says Marshall, “you are talking to the wrong guy. Listen: I got a friend upstairs, you should be having this conversation with him. Cause this is out of my— I do not know what the fuck you are talking about.”

Back at the party, Mitch, still floating, is trying to give Mike Nesmith a tarot reading. Nez is bored with his post-Monkees life. He’s thinking about his legacy, wants to do something that will outlast him. Mitch brings up his affair with Nurit Wilde. A bellboy raps on the door, tells Mitch that Dr. Redgrave would like to see him in the garden. Mitch leaves Nez mid-reading, following the bellhop out to the garden (via the hallway, not the window).

The cool night air clears Mitch’s head a little. When he finds Marshall and the giant European in the garden, he tries again to read the big man’s aura, but again is blocked. Marshall uses Rapier Wit on Mitch, a jumble of Sumerian words with a powerful memetic punch. This snaps Mitch out of his daze and the effects of the SANGUSH glyph. Now Mitch can also see the kusarikku: a giant bull-monster, nine feet tall, with a bull’s lower body and hind quarters, a horned human head and human torso. Mitch also sees the creature is old. Its body, while huge and strong, is also weathered and bent. Its shaggy mane is grey.

The kusarikku beckons Mitch to come closer. Mitch does not come closer. He dimly remembers kusarikku are fireproof, so he doesn’t try to burn it with his mind.

Marshall tries to explain: “He’s not here about Zeb. He says he knows Houdini, and that we shouldn’t interfere with … whatever is about to happen.” Mitch stiffens, his body language saying “Ix-nay on Eb-zay.” Marshall takes the hint and stops talking about Zeb. Marshall presses the kusarikku to explain exactly what it wants.

“I will attempt to explain,” says the kusarikku, “though it may be difficult for you to understand. This man, the one you call Houdini, said that he was invulnerable, that no prison could hold him, that he could defy even death. These are not boasts your kind should make.”

“Late in life, he learned to back up his boastful words. When close to death, he could trigger the ability to pass through solid matter. This brought him to our attention. It also allowed him to escape death. He left a trace of himself in every place he almost died. He is now trapped, divided between 53 locations on the planet where he once cheated death. In order for this offender’s wave form to be collapsed, he must be drawn out of the hole he is now in.”

Marshall asks why they should want to help the kusarikku.

The kusarikku: “He stole abilities no sub-creature should possess. Not only is this an offense to us, it is very dangerous to this world that we share.”

Marshall and Mitch, almost in unison: “We don’t share it!” 

Mitch: “That’s the whole point!”

Marshall: “We share it with dolphins and shit, but not you guys.”

The kusarikku plods on. “His actions offend reality. They offend matter. If he is allowed to fully awaken, this planet will be shaken apart.”

Marshall keeps trying to cut to the chase. “Okay, but what do you want from us? Are you threatening us? Are you warning us?”

The kusarikku says, “In order for the offender’s wave form to be collapsed, he must be drawn out of the ‘hole’ he is now in. He can only be drawn out with your kind’s emotional triggers. I cannot do it. He is no brethren of mine.”

Marshall: “You want us … to do a Houdini séance?”

The kusarikku nods: “Use the primitive emotional connection you forged to draw him out completely.”

Marshall: “And you’re saying that if we don’t help you, Houdini’s ghost is going to, what? Blow up the planet?”

The kusarikku: “This man used skills he should never have possessed. He seeks to live, he seeks to survive. If you know how your kind stole history, you know about the contagion of belief. All it takes to trigger an avalanche is one falling rock. If he escapes from the state of stasis he is in, it will mean... incalculable consequences.”

Mitch largely avoids talking to, even looking at, the kusarikku, but eventually snaps: “Fuck you, man. You’re not even real! You think I haven’t had plenty of imaginary fiends all up in my business? I’m not scared of you. I mean, okay, yes, I’m terrified, but come on!”

The kusarikku regards Mitch with deep pity in its brown, almost cow-like, eyes. It reaches down and tousles Mitch’s hair, like a man petting a dog. “All will be well,” it says.

The GM looks up the GURPS rules for using Psychology on an incomprehensible alien intelligence. Mitch fails his roll, Marshall succeeds. Mitch and Marshall take a sidebar to confer.

Marshall: “‘Incalculable consequences.’ When he puts it like that, it’s hard to argue with.”

Mitch: “It doesn’t matter what he says. His words are semantically empty. You remember what I said before, about trying to guess what number a pathological liar is thinking of? Only he’s not even thinking of a number, he’s thinking of a piece of fruit.”

Marshall: “Ok, but … we were already talking about doing a Houdini séance anyway.”

Mitch decides he needs to do an oracular reading. He sits down cross-legged and reaches for his tarot cards — which are back in the hotel room with Michael Nesmith.

Mitch lopes back to the room to get his cards, leaving Marshall alone with the kusarikku. (“The worst thing that could happen is that he’ll lose patience and eat Marshall,” Mitch reasons.) Marshall paces the garden, still coked up, mind racing. The kusarikku tries to make conversation: “Earlier, you used an ariktu, a word weapon, on your companion, to awake him, to alert him to my presence. How did you learn such a thing?” Marshall’s not answering that.

Mitch returns with his cards and does a reading on the weal or woe of trying to contact Houdini with a séance. It feels like no tarot reading he’s done before. The cards work differently in the kusarikku’s presence. All the energies are right at the top. There’s no obscurity, no occult patterns to be deciphered. Patterns come off the bull-monster in waves.

The cards tell Mitch:

1. If the kusarikku gets what it wants, Houdini will be dead forever. (The Hanged Man)

2. If you could save Houdini’s wave form, the knowledge he has would be a treasure beyond counting. (The Knight of Pentacles)

3. Is the kusarikku lying about the world coming apart if Houdini is not dispersed? Yes, it is. (The Seven of Swords)

The kusarikku regards Mitch’s cards with disdain. “This is what you’ve been reduced to? These parlor tricks? Once, you had power. Power far beyond this…” (gesturing to Marshall) “... this trickster. What has happened to you?”

Marshall interjects: “I don’t know what ‘power’ you’re talking about. We were slaves, man.” But he gives Mitch a suspicious look.

Mitch tells Marshall, “You’re acting like it’s a real thing, man. It’s not a real thing.”

Mitch looks up, finally, at the kusarikku. He says, “The cards tell me… you’re a big, smelly, poopy head.” He shrugs. “That’s what they say.”

The kusarikku snorts. “I do not understand how you have allowed yourself to be reduced to this state.” And stamps off into the night.

Mitch and Marshall make their way back to Marshall’s suite. Somehow, it’s 3 AM. The party’s broken up, the room is dark and empty. They confer. They note that the kusarikku didn’t show any signs of knowing about SANDMAN, or that they, or Houdini, were part of it. They note that the kusarikku didn’t seem to know about the Rhines. Mitch doesn’t want to get them involved if he can help it.

Late-night Marshall-and-Mitch logic leads them to an unexpected conclusion:

Marshall: “So… do we do this thing? I think we have to do this thing, right?”

Mitch: “I dunno, man. He wouldn’t ask us to do it if it didn’t advance the Red Kings’ agenda.”

Marshall: “Yes. But maybe our agendas aren’t opposed. Maybe, if we don’t do this, something will happen that is bad for him and bad for us. Maybe Houdini will open a gate to some kind of… History C?”

Mitch: “That’s interesting.”

Marshall: “This is such a fucked-up situation. I should call Granite Peak. What’s the protocol for this? There are no protocols for this. They don’t train you for this. If this is some kind of a ploy, it’s… it’s so obtuse that our minds can’t even comprehend it. So… we might as well just go along with it.”

Mitch: “We just thwarted an extremely elaborate plot to call one of those things into existence. And we succeeded! And now there’s one of these guys just… hanging around in the hotel, asking us to do a thing we were planning to do already? That seems suspicious.”

Marshall: “Or, or, or, maybe it’s just idiotic cosmological coincidence. Either way, why wouldn’t we just summon the ghost of Harry Houdini, if that’s what he’s asking us to do?”

Mitch: “Spite?”

Marshall: “What do you mean, spite?”

Mitch: “I mean, I don’t like that guy. I don’t want to help him. Do you like that guy?”

Marshall: “The bull-man? No, I don’t like him, but I’m not spiteful towards him. I don’t even know him! It’s like if I met… a generic Nazi. I’d hate him, but I wouldn’t be, you know, invested in him.”

Mitch: “Yeah, but what if the Nazi was insulting you to your face, saying ‘you used to be cool, man, what happened?’”

Marshall: “Good point. I forgot that the kusarikku specifically said that you used to be cool.”

Marshall thinks: That’s going in my report.

Marshall continues: “I think we should do it! It could be the coke talking, or maybe it’s just because the air is real thin up here. But I think we should do it. We’re here, right? You buy the ticket, you take the ride.”

Mitch sighs. “You’re right. We need to do it. I just wish we could do it while also spiteing that guy.”

Marshall: “Well… maybe we’ll get a chance.”

Played: December 19, 2020.

Mitch and Marshall have assembled their Houdini Seance Midnight Crew:

• Our Heroes

• Dr. J.B. Rhine, founder, Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man

• Dr. Louisa Rhine, botanist and parapsychology researcher

• Sydney Omarr, Astrologer to the Stars

• Eugene "Dr. HipPocrates" Schoenfeld, advice columnist and counterculture expert

• Tina Allen, a radio admin (and friend of Dr. Hip's)

• Anna Turner, a Bay Area radio producer

• Douglas Scott Rogo, a symphony musician from San Diego interested in the paranormal

• Richard Jay Potash, bartender, card sharp, amateur magician and historian of magic

The musical performance wraps up with an all-star jam. When the theater finally empties out, the midnight crew get up on stage and climb down through the trap door (Mitch helping the Rhines). Marshall’s bodyguard is present, but not part of the circle. He stays in the theater, standing guard. 

Ten people under the stage is an extremely tight fit. Dr. Hip and his date are snickering a little. Scott Rogo is wide-eyed, ready to believe. Ricky Jay recognizes the paraphernalia from the Chinese Water Trick Mitch and Marshall have assembled. “Was all this stuff down here all this time?” he asks.

Marshall has told each participant what they would most want to hear about the purpose of the séance. Some are cynics, some are crackpots, some are old friends of Houdini’s, but now he needs to get ten minds all focused on the same thing. He and Mitch have cooked up a mantra that includes pass phrases and code words a proto-SANDMAN agent like Houdini would have recognized in 1926. Marshall leads the group in chanting the mantra, over and over, effectively hypnotizing them. As the group unites in purpose, Mitch focuses on the History B pinhole, and hear’s Houdini’s voice: “Is that Joe … and Louisa?”

Louisa says, “Erich! Is that you?” She can hear Houdini too. “Louisa, it is me,” he says.

It’s getting noticeably warmer under the stage, not just because of the press of bodies. Ricky Jay is the first to start visibly sweating, then Dr. Hip. “That’s not me,” Mitch says. He detects a strong History B presence on the stage above their heads. Is the kusarikku up there? The trap door slams shut.

Marshall keeps the group focused, maintaining the chant. Mitch tells Houdini, “We don’t have a lot of time. Tell us how we can help you, what you need us to do.”

Houdini asks, “Louisa, how do you remember me dying?”

Louisa says, “You were in Detroit. You were challenged by a professional hockey player, to take a punch in the stomach.” But Mitch and Marshall heard that it was a college student, and that it happened in Montreal. Ricky Jay says, “No, Houdini died in Boston. He was performing his suffocation trick.” 

It seems Houdini wants the group to realize that whatever they believe about his death is false. Marshall asks everyone in turn: “How did Harry Houdini die?” Some don’t know. Others have similar, but different, stories: he was punched in the stomach, he was kicked by a horse, he was hit with a bowling ball. Even J.B. and Louisa realize their memories are different.

As the group recounts a half dozen different stories about Houdini’s death, the pinhole to History B grows in size. Mitch says, “Seriously, Houdini, this is an ‘every second counts’ situation. Fill us in.” (Jeff: “Hopefully we’re not the instrument by which Houdini destroys the world. But still, what an honor.”)

Mitch senses the pucker in reality turning inside out. The room shimmers for a moment. Then everyone hears a loud click. Scott Rogo reaches into his bag and pulls out one of those new-fangled tape recorders. He’s been recording this whole time; the tape just clicked off, full. (Brant: “Refresh my memory on who this guy is. How many people will miss him if he disappears?” Mike: “Well, the entire San Diego Symphony Orchestra.”)

But something has happened. Houdini’s voice is gone. The temperature in the crawl space drops back down to a perfect 68 degrees. Mitch feels pretty sure that they’ve been transported somewhere, that whatever is above their heads is not what was above their heads a moment ago. He tries to detect History B, but it’s like a geiger counter in a uranium mine. All there is is History B.

Marshall commands the group, already half hypnotized, to sleep. Mitch opens the trap door. It’s dark up there. The theater lights, and Dave, are gone. Mitch and Marshall’s flashlights aren’t working, but Marshall has a cigarette lighter. Mitch doesn’t normally carry a lighter, but he can steal one from the sleeping group. Marshall grabs Rogo’s tape recorder, too.

Mitch and Marshall climb up through the trap door and flick their lighters. They’re still on a stage, still seem to be in a large dark room the same shape and size as the Stanley’s theater. But the decor is different. There are stone sphinxes on either side of the stage.

They hear a slow clap. There are people in the back of the theater. One by one, they begin, weakly, to applaud. Mitch tries to read their auras, but struggles. Their auras are very dim, missing something, as if they were very sick, had suffered a ‘soul death’ or some other great loss.

Mitch waves at the people, says hello in English. An older man says, “Welcome. Are you feeling better?” Mitch says, “Can we turn on the lights?” The house lights come on, only they are weird oblong crystals where electric bulbs used to be. Mitch and Marshall are in a theater, but the decor is Babylonian, Mesopotamian, strange. At the back of the theater is a group of eleven people, wearing white gowns or shifts. They have old-fashioned hairstyles, like from the 1910s. They seem weak, dazed, like “thanatoid zombies.” Many of their gowns are spattered with blood. “If you’re not feeling better yet,” says the old man, “you will be very soon.”

Mitch says, “Is Erich here? Harry?” They don’t know anybody by that name. Marshall says, “Where are we?” They say, “This is the Sanctuary. This is where our masters help us get better.” Marshall asks, “Who are your masters?” They don’t like this question. Everyone gets confused and upset. Mitch tries to smooth things over: “This is Dr. Redgrave. He’s an, uh, auditor. He’s here to audit!” But the eleven people immediately stop talking and file out of the theater.

Mitch and Marshall try to find the pinhole: it’s gone. They try to contact Houdini: nothing.

Marshall: “All I can think of is going back in the crawl space and hiding.”

Mitch: “We can’t live in the crawl space. But all I can think of is exploring this History B leper colony, which also seems like a bad idea.”

Mitch’s plan prevails. They leave their eight sleeping companions under the stage and exit the theater. The building they’re in seems to match the Stanley Hotel. There are equivalent spaces to the theater, the lobby, the bar. But everything is pressed bronze, crystals, ornate carvings. Through strange, quartz-glass windows, they see the topiary garden, which looks unchanged, except it is lit by burning torches. And in the torchlight is the kusarikku. It too looks confused.

Mitch and Marshall venture out into the garden. The kusarikku is immediately upon them. “What did you do?” he asks. They counter: “What did you do?” 

“I pursued my quarry,” says the kusarikku. “Where is he?”

Marshall says, “Do we look like we know? Isn’t this what you wanted? We’re in your fucked up world.”

Mitch says, “Maybe Houdini gave you the slip and shoved us all over here.”

“There is no ‘over here’,” says the kusarikku. “This sanctuary has replaced your hotel. That is agreeable, but I have not fulfilled my function.” The kusarikku is a simple beast; all he cares about is finding Houdini and killing him for good. 

Mitch and Marshall confer in Danbe. Marshall says, “I think Houdini fucked us.” Mitch says, “I think Houdini fucked us.” Marshall says, “If those eight people, all remembering Houdini’s death differently, triggered a local ontological event, sending us to History B… if we could get them all to remember his death one specific way, could we reset it?” The GM says this might work, but reverberations will be left behind; the story and the place will require prolonged memetic reinforcement.

The kusarikku doesn’t like them speaking a language he can’t understand. It paws the ground, growing angrier. A large crowd of people, more gown-clad “patients”, have seen the kusarikku and are coming out of the hotel.

Marshall tells the kusarikku: “O great lord, we think we know how to get back to Houdini. We think he tricked all of us into enacting something that caused this to happen.” 

The kusarikku snorts: “I am not surprised.” 

Marshall says, “We need to reenact the rites we performed. But we need to get past all these people first.”

The kusarikku says: “Are you sure your fellow sub-creatures have the power of belief to accomplish that?”

Marshall says, “Yes. We do.” with the serene confidence of somebody who owns a million-dollar property in Northern California.

“They will make way for me,” says the kusarikku, and indeed the people are falling on their knees, making signs of obeisance to the monster. But as the bull-man gets closer, he sniffs the air, then sniffs Marshall. “My quarry is on you somewhere.”

The kusarikku commands Marshall to strip off his clothes, discard every object he is carrying.

Mitch, in Danbe: “Houdini is hiding in the tape recorder.”

The kusarikku: “Stop speaking that language!”

Marshall, in Danbe: “We need to run.”

Mitch and Marshall make a break for it, running for the theater, the stage, and the trap door. The kusarikku is incredibly fast; they need to dodge through the crowd of patients, using them as cover. The kusarikku simply tramples the patients in its way; goring one, tossing another into the air.

Mitch makes it to the stage and down the trap door. Marshall is only a second behind. As he dives through the trap door head first, the kusarikku slams into him, goring his leg with its horn. Marshall clatters down into the crawl space, badly wounded. Mitch slams the trap door shut, grabs a wooden plank to wedge it closed. The kusarikku pounds on the door, enraged.

Splinters fly. The plank won’t hold for long. Marshall is unconscious.

Jeff spends two uses of Serendipity to find “a Potion of Healing, or the History B equivalent.” The plank Mitch grabbed to bar the door is from a crate; the crate is half full of small blue bottles. On the bottles are labels that look like old-timey patent medicine. The text is in cuneiform, but every label bears the picture of an elderly Mitch’s face.

Mitch fails a fright check, and suffers a sudden certainty that his doppelgänger placed these bottles here for him to find, that most everything he perceives as “serendipity” is really the machinations of his double, pulling Mitch’s strings for years.

Still, Mitch pours the patent medicine down Marshall’s throat. The gaping wound on Marshall’s leg knits itself back together with magical speed. Marshall comes to.

The kusarikku is still pounding on the door above. The plank is splintering. Marshall does a bump of coke to focus, then wakes the sleeping crew, implanting the hypnotic suggestion in each of them that Houdini died in Montreal from a punch to the stomach. (His roll succeeds by 13. “That was the cocaine.”)

There is another shimmer in the air. The pounding on the door stops. The group has returned to the Stanley Hotel, or, the Stanley Hotel has returned to History A.

The group awakens from their trance. Everyone is disoriented, confused. Rogo can’t find his tape recorder. The hotel is dark; it’s 3 am again, though only fifteen or twenty minutes have passed on everyone’s watches. They wander back to their rooms.

Walking through the dark hotel, Mitch can sense the wan, ghostly presence of the Sanctuary’s patients. The temblor is repaired but the border between realities is thinner now; the entire hotel is suffused with History B energy. The Stanley Hotel is now haunted and, through retrocreation, it has been haunted since at least the 1920s. There are now decades of ghost stories and legends about the hotel. (“The Shining is now your fault.”)

Marshall and Mitch go back to Marshall’s suite. Marshall takes out Rogo’s tape recorder, rewinds the tape and presses play. All he hears is a loud, needly, grindy sound. He stops the tape, not wanting to damage it. Mitch says, “Maybe Charley can make some sense of it.”

Out of immediate danger, Marshall starts thinking about how to spin all this. “The way I see it, there are two options,” he says. “Either we report all this to Granite Peak and suffer the consequences, or we cover this all up completely, and never speak of it to anyone again.”

Mitch says, “I don’t like either of those two options.” He says it’s irresponsible to keep it secret. The hotel is now an ink spot on the map. It will have to be monitored, the weak spot in reality protected. Marshall says, “But it’s going to be our heads! We broke every protocol, we created an esmological event!” 

Marshall does yet another bump of cocaine to help himself think—cocaine that’s been to History B, the GM points out. “Maybe,” he says, “maybe we didn’t fuck things up. Maybe we made things better. Maybe, before we got to the hotel, it was in an even worse situation.”

Mitch says, without conviction: “That could be the truth.”

Marshall has enough conviction for both of them. “That is the truth! There was a fucking kusarikku at a party! And he’s gone now! That’s a good thing, right? I’m telling you, we did History A a favor.”

Mitch: “Well, things could have gone worse than they did. I suppose we deserve credit for whatever differential is there.”

Marshall: “No, no! We made things better. We’re heroes, really.” He’s convinced himself now. “And as long as I have buy-in from you, that is how I am going to spin it in my report.”

Mitch consults his tarot cards on the advisability of Marshall’s revised options: 1. Cover up the whole thing; 2. Report it, but put as positive a spin as possible on it. For option 1, Mitch draws the Hierophant. For option 2, he draws the Two of Cups reversed. Mitch’s clear sense is that the cards are saying it would be better not to tell anyone. But he doesn’t feel right about that. He defies the cards, telling Marshall to do another line of cocaine and make the report as positive as he can.

Marshall gives him a high five: “My man!”