I’ve received a letter from an old friend of mine from university. His name is David Wolf, he’s also a Sandman, working out of the Duncorne Foundation at Cambridge. He’s been working in esmology and historical prediction since our university days, and he says he’s made a breakthrough on this front and he'd like some other Sandmen experienced in ... fringe studies to come up to a site in Cumbria to consult on and witness his work. Here, I'll just read you the relevant parts of the letter. ↠
As you know, after completing my degree I stayed on at Cambridge and found myself gravitating to the work the Foundation was working in. I looked at the madness of nuclear terror and mutually-assured destruction—let alone the ongoing destruction of the natural environment and the horrors of overpopulation—and saw that human history was headed in a very ominous direction. All our wonders, all our technological glories would be eclipsed by a society bent on consumption, exploitation, and greed. I was young and inexperienced in the precepts of esmology then, but I saw the great advances being made in computer modeling as an opportunity to bring SANDMAN’s expertise to bear on this existential problem. After all, if we cannot promise global stability, the Red Kings have an opportunity to offer their own version of history as an alternative. And if we hand them epistemological ammunition, they will use it.
Computer modeling proved inadequate, though. I requested all kinds of aid from Granite Peak—advances in software and processing power—but the models were too basic. They only gave generalities—the particular year that petroleum would run out, that famine would strike this nation, that pestilence would strike that one. There was no detail, none of the specifics needed to be able to say how we could escape a universally-apocalyptic end. But then, a couple of years ago, while doing research on seers from the period since the Ontoclysm whose prophecies were uncannily correct, I found what my method was missing. Sophie, I know your team in California has had experience and found success with theories that some in SANDMAN might find ... unorthodox. So I thought of you, and them, when it comes to my current project, which the Foundation has unimaginatively code named ‘GRAIL TABLE.’
Would you and some of your team like to travel to Cumbria and meet with me and my team of researchers and observe and consult on my work? Any of your team who might have esmological expertise, or psi abilities, or abilities that help with navigating time and probability, would be welcome observers.
↹ Contents ↹
Prelude
URIEL arrives in the UK, meets GRAIL TABLE for fish and chips at Bunhill Fields before heading to Cumbria, and learns about the world of computer-assisted predictive esmology and the grim future of the (simulated) year 2020.
URIEL privately convenes following their first encounter with GRAIL TABLE to discuss impressions of the team and how best to proceed.
Session Two
Charley
“Jocasta did you know that on a strictly mathematical level, engineers know how to design planes that will stay aloft. But equations don’t explain why aerodynamic lift occurs.”
Jocasta
“I did not know that! The hard sciences were something I never knew much about, you can teach me more than I can teach you,” is what she’ll say as her mind starts yelling THE PLANE CAN’T FLY at her.
Played: October 15, 2020.
At around 10:00 a.m. on Friday, Archie, his family, Charley, Jocasta, Roger, and Sophie arrive in the village of Dufton in Cumbria, England. This is a capital-V, “The Village” from The Prisoner-style village – a self-contained Ministry of Defense community, one of many “lost villages” abandoned during the War and used now by the government for military drills, war simulations, and other clandestine operations.
The team checks into their respective bungalows and then rendezvouses at the local pub with GRAIL TABLE’s leadership: David Wolf, Catherine Davies, and Elias Simon. (Archie sends his family on a sightseeing tour). David explains a bit about how ORACLE works and the lay of the land in the simulated, predictive future of the year 2020:
The world has kind of split up into four big power blocs. The Americas, Australia, and New Zealand is one. They're sort of under the thumb of America.
There’s the Soviet Union and Europe. They’re Communist.
There’s a sort of loose confederation of principalities and emirates in the Middle East.
And then just like England got taken over by left-wing insurgents, Japan also got taken over by their Red Army faction in the late ‘70s. But they’re under the thumb of the Chinese so there’s basically a sort of co-prosperity sphere of Asia and they definitely lean more towards sort of what in our timeline Communist China has become. Kind of an authoritarian state capitalist kind of enterprise. They are probably, among all the four blocs, the sort of economic engine that keeps the world going.
David then explains that five people will be entering ORACLE later that afternoon: Archie, Roger, Jocasta, Sophie, and himself. Charley will remain outside the simulation in the “Controller” role, providing her with a God’s eye view of what is transpiring. While in past simulations team members were assigned random personas upon entering, refinements to the program have enabled teams to be “linked” in some way, e.g., as family members, co-workers, neighbors, etc. Still, such ventures are random – there is no way of knowing where in the simulation the team will wind up. But this doesn’t matter, David says, as according to his research on medieval mysticism, there will be elements of truth to “whatever situation we are thrown into,” just as there:
will be elements of truth to the future. The prophecies that those medieval monks undertook didn’t make much sense to them at the time because they were plumbing the depths of probability and time and seeing something they couldn’t understand. Now, we’re only going ahead 47 years, so I’m hoping that everything that you see and conceive of and understand will be something that is more easily deciphered.
URIEL has questions. Most pointedly, Archie wonders how “in character” they need to act within the simulation in order to ensure it works. He expresses doubt about the utility and “reality” of ORACLE’s simulated future-history, calling it “make believe,” and asks if they will be in any real danger. David tells him that all participants have a sort of “mental panic button” that will eject them from the simulation, but urges them to abide their characters as best they can in order to have a fully formed experience. Archie finds this amusing.
Charley: “Prophetic chant sonics? How does that work, exactly?”
David: “The sonics are there to provide the ‘prophets’ with the ability to enter a more realistic, fleshed-out simulation than would be possible with a mere psychotronic interface with a computer simulation. All my research into medieval mystics – Hildegard of Bingen, the English anchorites, and so forth – revealed that these songs allowed the brain to shift into a brainwave pattern that enabled the mystics to essentially imagine the future in greater sensory detail, with a fuller, richer experience using all five senses.” Very much a parallel to the sonic influencing that Xanten was doing with electronic tones.
The team is transported to the old chapel at Brougham Castle, which has been extensively outfitted with all the equipment necessary for entering the simulation, including five sensory deprivation tanks and psychotronic helmets linked up to a gigantic bank of absolutely bleeding-edge computers. The chapel’s ceiling resembles a Gothic vaulted ceiling out of the Middle Ages, but is done entirely in ultramodern white plastic – better to accommodate the prophetic sonic chants and mantras being piped in on the huge loudspeakers. Charley is escorted to the Controller terminal, where she dons an elaborate psychotronic helmet of her own. Before immersing themselves in the warm, salty waters of the deprivation tanks, Jocasta drops a tab of acid.
Inside the simulation, the team awakens as their new identities in the simulated future of the year 2020. They are all employees of a “belief engineering” outfit called El Dorado Opinions (“Your One-Stop Shop for Belief Engineering”). In 1973 terms, El Dorado would most closely resemble an advertising agency, but in 2020, such agencies are considered beyond obsolete as memetic and information warfare has replaced traditional warfare between the four power blocs. El Dorado is itself atypical among belief engineering firms in that it is a very small, very bespoke operation – it does everything in one place, ranging from computer animation to scenario writing, from a half-minute TV spot to a full-length movie. El Dorado’s offices are located in the Transamerica Pyramid.
◓ Meet Your El Dorado Team ◑
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Victoria Chastain
Piloted by Archie Ransom.
A 42-year-old (born in 1978) member of upper-middle management at El Dorado Opinions.
Grew up in Los Angeles, with two parents who both worked in the now long-gone world of broadcast and satellite television. Always a little starstruck and after finishing her degree in Film Studies at UCLA in 1999, she set off to get into belief engineering. She’s worked as a Hollywood agent, a pollster, a political fixer (she was essential in the success of Jim Rentoul's 2016 campaign for President, putting the White House in Republican hands for five consecutive terms), and now, wealthy and comfortable, she exists in a sort of cozy semi-retirement in San Francisco.
She met “the Boss” during the 2016 campaign and he wanted her onboard at El Dorado as a general traffic and client manager, as well as a liaison with the creative and modeling teams, and she’s enjoyed a healthy sinecure to add to her fortune.
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Deirdre Wu
Piloted by Jocasta Menos.
A 34-year-old (born in 1986) political refugee from Hong Kong who now works as El Dorado's main predictive psychology modeler.
At the age of 5, her father, a computer magnate, moved away from the island enclave of the Oceanic Anglophone alliance because mainland Chinese memes from the Sphere were beginning to leak across the border via satellite transmissions. Her father did not want her raised under those circumstances, so she and the family moved to Silicon Valley, where her father re-established his business. All while growing up, she heard about the evils of both Chinese and European Commun(al)ism and the superiority of Western thought and economics. She attended Harvard and concentrated in Psychology, with a specialty in mass psychology and computer predictives.
As the house modeler for El Dorado, she works closely with both the design teams, reining in their artistic flourishes when necessary and boiling all the memetics down to bare essentials for effective delivery. She also works very closely with Strategics and upper management and is often the bridge between the creatives and the Boss.
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Joshua Telfair
Piloted by Roger Martin.
A 25-year-old (born in 1995) white male artist and designer originally from Marin County who creates computer-generated actors and scenarios for El Dorado Opinions.
While he was an undergraduate at Berkeley, he was part of a student underground who secretly accessed European television programs and films from across the Digital Divide and used them to create a "cargo cult" version of European Communism. Now three years later, he is a loyal agent of the European Communist Union in America, using techniques learned from European cinema and emotional engineering to insert damaging and demoralizing subliminals into ads, programs, and campaigns that El Dorado designs. He always manages to design the subliminals in such a way that their effects are only noticeable after repeated viewings and he’s never gotten caught by the FBI or MDA (Memetic Defense Agency). He hates American pluralism and capitalism with all his heart and await the day he can do something more than merely slip hidden messages into political ads and public service campaigns. He keeps these opinions largely to himself, although unlike many of his urbane liberal Republican co-workers, colleagues and friends, he is publicly a dyed-in-the-wool populist Democrat.
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Andrew Casco
Piloted by Sophie Edelstein.
A 27-year-old (born in 1993) biracial (Black and white) scenario and advertisement writer from Chicago, Illinois.
He went to Northwestern and majored in Mass Communications with a minor in English, and bounced around a few opinion engineering internships before ending up at the quaint bespoke shop at El Dorado. He loves his job, loves living in San Francisco despite the headaches (he hasn’t yet won a Car Lottery so he’s forced to take public transportation to work and play), and he loves the hip, urban life he’s been able to create for himself in the field of opinion engineering, and he loves his country (he votes Republican every two years loyally).
He sometimes wonder if, in another time or another lifetime, he would have written novels or poetry, both those two dead art forms, but he takes great pride in the scenarios and spots he creates and, after all, it's the only game in town for a patriotic American.
As the team acclimates to the simulation, Jocasta discovers that the acid combined with the trance-mantras being piped into the chapel has made Diedre more “real” than the personas typically generated by ORACLE. She is now more akin to a separate, complete person than a mere simulation. On top of that, she can see auras. She observes that Victoria is surrounded by an intense, heavy halo; Andrew is engulfed in wavy grays and blues, projecting a retiring sort of vibe; and Joshua is consumed by deep purple bordering on black, just rotten to the core. This revelation does not startle Diedre, however. It seems perfectly natural, in fact, that she can “understand” her colleagues for the first time in a three-dimensional way.
In their new roles, the team participates in a planning meeting about their current assignments: a “Buy American Food” campaign to convince consumers that American food is totally safe thanks to the miracle chemicals used by agribusiness; a propaganda campaign against the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere; a trailer for an upcoming World War II historical drama (films depicting World War II are quite popular); and finally, designing the logo and associated promotional campaign for the 2020 Republican National Convention, which set to take place in San Francisco.
In the simulated future predicted by ORACLE, the Republicans are the “middle of the road party” for polite, socially liberal people who have nice houses and work as part of the informational economy in the big cities. The Senate Majority leader at the time is a Republican: three-time incumbent Senator John Lennon. The Republicans have also held the presidency for the past five terms. The Democrats are everybody else in the middle of the country where people don’t have much money. Over the past 47 years, the Democrats have gone off in a weird populist direction which encapsulates both ends of the political spectrum.
It’s all fairly grim.
After the meeting and some tense back-and-forth among the El Dorado team, Joshua returns to his office and checks his electronic mail on one of the many screens that populate his desk. He finds he has a private message with an encrypted attachment from one of his comrades. The message reads, in part:
we no u r goin 2 be part of the logo team for the RNC we want u to put this hidden in the logo
Joshua opens the attachment and, as Roger, realizes it is an Anunnaki glyph. Charley, from her command post as Controller, likewise observes this happen and is hit by the memetic payload of the glyph. Fortunately, both are able to resist its command, which is ANZIL (Abomination, Taboo). Joshua throws himself into implementing this glyph and integrating it into the RNC logo. Roger is hesitant, but is uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the concept of piloting another persona, as opposed to being piloted.
Weeks pass within the simulation. Diedre explores her aura-reading and incipient esmology abilities, also the apparent product of the acid. Victoria directs the team in their various projects, but never meets “the Boss,” a reclusive figure who is rarely if ever seen in person. Joshua works fervently to weave the ANZIL glyph into the RNC campaign logo and promotional materials. After about two “real world” hours elapse, the team wakes up.
In their post-simulation debriefing, Jocasta hints to Archie that she has a better understanding of esmology now thanks to her experience, shares some sketches she made after the fact of her visions within the simulation, and then reveals to the group, and GRAIL TABLE, that she dropped acid before entering the simulation. David seems intrigued and simultaneously concerned by this revelation. Archie, meanwhile, politely opines that the experience was a “swell ride” that could “put Walt Disney World out of business,” but notes:
surely you see that that wasn’t another world. That was just solipsism. You told us a story about ourselves. I mean, I was an ad man — or an ad lady — and that’s fun, that in the year 2020 they have ad ladies. That’s great! But, you know, a bunch of ad agents and creatives with a government contract in San Francisco? It’s really interesting. I could see it being a kooky therapy. Folks in California would go crazy for this! But we’re not telling the future here.
David pushes back, explaining that they could have been assigned personas anywhere in the predictive world, but for some reason, they were assigned to El Dorado. As they discuss further, the URIEL team determines that one news story that kept popping up in the simulation, and which was beginning to leak across international borders, was that a type of genetically modified rice used in India was beginning to cause crop failure. Famine in Asia seemed imminent. David presses further: did the team not see the role that media played in their lives? How intrusive it was? How truly their lives were controlled by the media? Roger disagrees, explaining that he saw a lot of resistance to the pervasive control of the media world. He posits that the simulation showed them a future, but not the future.
David reveals that he landed in the role of “the Boss” at El Dorado and that, in that role, he had no knowledge of SANDMAN, but intimate knowledge of memetics. Archie nods like this proves his point: this is a toy, and David is playing with it. David suggests this is a good thing because it gave him a “bird’s eye” view of what the informational landscape, but argues that the sublimation of humanity’s urge to violence into information warfare, depictions of graphic violence, is a grave concern. The discussion goes on about the future, about esmology, about memetics and whether people writ large can be trusted with SANDMAN’s tools. Amid this, Roger gives Charley the “high sign” to indicate she should not reveal what she saw inside the simulation to David.
The meeting ends with David suggesting everyone meet for a pint and dinner in Dufton at around 6:00 p.m. before re-entering the simulation later that evening. URIEL then meets privately to discuss the situation. Roger reveals to the team that he was exposed to an Anunnaki glyph inside the simulation; Charley confirms this is true. A heated debate ensues among the team about whether David is responsible for this, whether ORACLE is tainted by the Red Kings, whether ORACLE auto-generated the glyph independently, whether the glyph is just a “simulation” of a glyph, and whether GRAIL TABLE can be trusted. Sophie vouches for David’s integrity. The team resolves that Roger and Jocasta will re-enter the simulation and investigate further.
☂︎ Intersession Two
Archie takes a long-distance call from Estes Park, Colorado, USA, about a kusarikku, Harry Houdini, and a possible séance.
Jocasta, Roger, and Sophie delve further into ORACLE’s predicted world of the year 2020, where they learn about the fraught political landscape of that year’s presidential election.
URIEL and GRAIL TABLE meet up for a pint at the Stag Inn, where they encounter a strange local character named Clodagh.
Session Three
Played: December 2, 2020.
At Jocasta's urging, URIEL sticks around the Stag Inn for a private discussion after GRAIL TABLE heads to their respective homes. She and Roger tell the rest of the group that the simulation continues forward in time even when they are not present, with the simulated “characters” operating on a kind of artificially intelligent autopilot. Charley sweeps the Roger’s bungalow for listening devices (it’s clean).
Jocasta explains a bit more about how the acid affected her perception of the ORACLE simulation. She says that it allowed her to see “the Boss” – the mysterious figure who owns El Dorado, and who is piloted by David Wolf. She describes him as a white man in his 70s, formal looking, sitting amid a sort of Ozymandias-from-Watchmen-esque bank of monitors in his office. Something that caught her attention, and which greatly unnerved her, was that his main computer terminal was running another program which itself was simulating a massive viral outbreak that was going to take place in early 2021. But this pandemic would not be biologically viral. Rather, it would be a memetic outbreak. Jocasta notes that she was unable to determine if the Boss’s program was merely simulating something that may happen or if it's something the Boss intended to induce.
Sophie sighs. She confides that what Jocasta described did not sound “in-character” for the Boss, but that it definitely sounded “in-character” for David. She worries aloud that David may be running a predictive simulation within ORACLE’s predictive simulation, which may be dangerous for the personalities they are piloting if it is discovered by, for instance, the Memetic Defense Agency. Roger says that this all sounds to him like the simulation is messed up beyond repair, this being like the third anomalous thing they’ve discovered since arriving. Archie agrees: the simulation is, he says, just a “sandbox.” Nevertheless, he is concerned about what David is up to. Roger suggests the whole project may be a shell game, cover for whatever unauthorized research David or GRAIL TABLE is actually doing.
The team debates what to do. Conversation turns to the glyph-in-the-machine Roger found. Roger explains that Joshua does not know who is giving him his orders, not really, and he does not seem to care because he just loves fucking with the Republicans. Charley says that she could probably attempt to back-trace the electronic mails Joshua is saving from her position as Controller. Archie confirms with Jocasta that David does not know Jocasta has marked him as the Boss. Roger notes that, during his and Jocasta’s second immersion in the simulation, Elias was the Controller. Archie then asks Sophie what “all this business” means with regards to David, and whether she thinks it would be better to confront David with all this information in the simulation or in the real world. Sophie concedes that David is acting “a little hinky” and that the team should talk to him in his Boss role in the simulation.
The team discusses further the implications of ORACLE’s “contamination” within the broader scope of SANDMAN networking. Fortunately, ORACLE is a completely isolated system; it has no means of connecting to any other SANDMAN facility or computer system. This prompts Roger to conclude that the glyph had to have either (a) autogenerated by ORACLE or (b) inserted by someone onsite. That someone would, naturally, need to possess sufficient knowledge of ORACLE’s workings in order to sabotage it in such a fashion.
After the team commits to the plan of going to David, as the Boss, inside the simulation later that day. Archie then raises the matter of Marshall and Mitch’s call from Colorado. He attempts as best he can to recount the call to the UK team and says that they apparently want to perform sort of exorcism of Harry Houdini’s ghost. Archie tells Roger that Marshall and Mitch wanted to talk to him, and encourages Roger to “talk them down.” Roger reacts:
Houdini? Wasn’t he one of ours? I mean, when I showed up everyone was like, “Oh hey Mr. Witch Doctor, you and Harry Houdini could partner up.” So, you know, that’s just weird.
Archie confirms Houdini’s status as a SANDMAN affiliate and expresses that he thinks the whole thing sounds like “nonsense,” implying that Mitch and Marshall may have been drunk. Roger agrees to talk to Mitch and Marshall before he hits the sack.
Before the team breaks up for the night, Charley asks Roger if he thinks it’s possible for them – the UK team – to contact Houdini themselves. She also asks if they have any way of knowing where the other 52 geographic points where Houdini’s consciousness is allegedly distributed, and if one of those points is nearby. Roger says the first thing may be possible, but that they need way more information, including the location, presumably in the UK, where Houdini performer. Charley vows to gather it and also states that she will help the team, in her role as Controller, get access to the Boss.
The team goes to bed. The next morning, Roger heads off to check out the Carlisle Cathedral. The Ransoms, and Charley, head off on another sightseeing tour and take in the local culture. Jocasta goes for a hike through the Eden River Valley and, nearing the crest of a steep hill, spots a shepherd tending a large flock of sheep. She takes a breather, leaning against an old gnarled tree, and as she does, a raven or crow perches in the tree above her head. Glancing off in the distance, Jocasta sees a flock of black birds coming over the horizon. Dozens, then hundreds, then more. They swirl together in a strange murmuration before diving toward the flock of sheep. The shepherd attempts to swat them away with his walking stick, his border collie barking frantically. As the onslaught continues, he draws out a shotgun and fires both barrels into the air.
As Jocasta watches, the birds peck at several of the sheep, leaving two of them bloodied and bleating with holes where their eyes were. The birds then abate their attack, swoop into the sky, and form an intricate pattern. Jocasta recognizes it to be an Anunnaki glyph: NAM.HILI (Fascinate). The utter strangeness of this scene stuns Jocasta for a moment before she hears the shepherd calling to her: “Lass, lass are you alright?” Gathering her wits, she jogs down the hill and offers to go into town to get help for the man and his animals. The shepherd scowls.
Town? Town?! It’s you lot an’ that thing up there (he points to the radome in the distance, installed by GRAIL TABLE at Brougham Castle) that’s been causin’ this ta happen, the animals been going crazy ‘round here since you built that thing up there.
Jocasta says, “So this has happened before?” And the shepherd confirms it has, a few times, not always with birds. Jocasta disavows knowing anything, explaining she’s with the American military but honestly has nothing to do with what is going at the Castle. She promises, however, that she’ll do whatever she can to help the matter. This softens the shepherd, who asks that she make inquiries about what they’re doing at the Castle and explain to the people in charge what is happening with the animals. Jocasta then inquires about Clodagh. The shepherd calls her “crackers,” “crazier than these birds,” stating that she’s lived in the Valley longer than he’s been alive. He heads off, and Jocasta heads up a nearby hill in order to meditate.
Roger, meanwhile, is assigned a driver who brings him to Carlisle. After meditating in the Cathedral for a time, he goes for a short stroll and stumbles upon an old theatre. Inside one of the theatre windows is a framed poster of Houdini performing his Water Torture Cell trick. Roger does some more snooping around to get a sense of the theatre and whether it’s still in operation before heading back to Dufton.
King Arthur’s Round Table.
Another Ministry driver takes the Ransoms, Charley, and Sophie to check out several of the stone circles that dot the Cumbrian landscape. In time, they come to King Arthur’s Round Table. Although the energies at this particular earthworks is heavy, ancient even, Archie, Charley, and Sophie know that it is all kind of fake — a scrimshaw that overwrote whatever real history existed there prior to the Ontoclysm. Archie muses to himself:
Archie’s taken trips to the Old World before. He’s seen ruins that are older than 535 CE. Tying that in with the sort of cobbled together Mormon revisionism that knowing about History B provides … this is his first time really being in the center of something that is both ancient and odd. There’s a lot of ancient stuff, like you can go to Rome and you can see ancient pillars and the Coliseum and everything else, and those are buildings we recognize; they’re part of the mental furniture of being in the West and knowing that historical and architectural tradition. But these are outside that ken. These are a little bit weirder. And what Archie is able to get a sense of here is that it feels a little bit like that time you went to Altamont.
Archie wonders, if this is the vibe he’s getting from a mere set of earthworks, what he can anticipate feeling when he gets to a still-somewhat-intact stone circle like Long Meg. The idea comes to him: perhaps this earthworks, and these circles, are originals … actual relics left over from before the Ontoclysm.
The tour continues onto Long Meg. The legend, as told to them by their guide, is that every one of the stones in the circle was a witch turned to stone in the ancient past. When Charley enters the circle, her eyes snap wide. She has a vision:
You are one of many people in a very large crowd. You are dressed in animal skins. You are a man with a bronze sword. What you are witnessing is that you appear to be part of a warband who have made it to this very, very important spot where the masters of humanity are present. And the leader of the warband raises up an iron sword – very different from the rest of yours – and he rushes toward a circle of … witches who are dedicated to the masters of mankind. They have formed a protective circle around something you cannot see.
Long Meg and Her Daughters.
Charley keeps her cool and the vision disappears as quickly as it came. Though unfazed, this is the most intense vision of a past-life she has ever had, and included olfactory and tactile sensations. Moreover, while she was unable to clearly see the thing at the center of the witches’ circle, she knows that it was some kind of Anunnaki or irruptor. Given the size of the creature, Charley deduces that the circle of stones are indeed women who were trying to protect it and that Long Meg – the largest stone, and one outside the circle – is in the same spot that she was driven to when she was driven out of the circle.
Because of their special connection, Archie shares this vision. Once he realizes what happened, he makes subtle eye contact with Charley to confirm she’s OK, and follows her lead about playing it cool and not remarking on what happened to anyone else in the group.
Later that day, the UK team reconvenes in private. Jocasta recounts her experience with the shepherd and the birds. She cautions against going back into the simulation. Sophie worries aloud that the team has now seen two glyphs in the same area in 24 hours. The team discusses what to do, what all this means, and what could be causing the animals’ strange and deadly behavior. The team resolves to confront David and then discusses a plan for doing so.
Ultimately it’s decided that the team will go up to the Castle early, before David and his colleagues, to give Charley time to poke around ORACLE unsupervised. They decide to send Roger up to the Castle that night in order to ensure that there will be no locked doors interfering with their efforts the next day. Before doing so, however, he makes a call to Colorado and talks to Mitch about best practices with respect to dealing with the dead. After that, he heads to the motor pool and unsuccessfully attempting to hotwire a car and drawing the attention of a Ministry motor pool mechanic, he channels Maître Carrefour and imperiously commandeers the keys to a vehicle, for use by the team the next morning.
☂︎ Intersession Three
Roger Teaches Mitch How to Summon Ghosts
Don’t make me tap the sign again.
Archie, Roger, and Charley sneak into Brougham Castle to investigate GRAIL TABLE’s secret doings and learn more about the source of the Anunnaki corruption within ORACLE.
Roger calls upon the Opener of Ways, and Charley gets her first glimpse at real magic.
Jocasta and Sophie attempt to delay GRAIL TABLE’s arrival at Brougham Castle.
URIEL informs GRAIL TABLE of their findings and suspicions. It goes about as well as you’d expect.
Session Four
Joshua comes to in the back of a richly appointed gasoline limo: this thing must cost a fortune in social credits. And from behind the tinted windows of the luxury car, Joshua, sitting alone in the back seat, his holographic RNC identity badge hanging on a lanyard around his neck, looks outside to what San Francisco has become in the past four months. Half the screens are smashed, an unthinkable act of social disorder just a few months ago. But ever since the food rationing, as cascading grain failures have destroyed the commodities future markets and made meat and imported grains hard to find in a global city like San Francisco, the idea of the cops and private corporate security pursuing mere vandals seems like wasted effort. Supermarkets are empty, either from shortages in the better neighborhoods and looting in the poorer ones. The real money, Joshua's heard tell from some of the security staff working the RNC this week, is in private farm militias being formed by some of the West's richest... and indeed many of the most powerful Soviet and Chinese apparatchiks. The Chinese-led co-prosperity sphere never recovered from the first wave of rice and grain blights. Spasms of famine-related violence between member nations soon broke out into all-out civil war.
Roger mentally accesses what Joshua's been up to the past few months; idly “flirting” with the terrorists who sent him the glyph, but mostly laying off, thanks to Roger's programming when he last inhabited Joshua. Joshua checks his phone; a message direct from the Boss! The Boss calls Joshua up on the limo videoscreen.
“Joshua,” the Boss says with an exaggerated nod (and with an incongruous British accent). “I’ve been on with my contacts in federal law enforcement. They’re saying that they have a credible threat of a media hijacking at the convention tonight. Even with this, all they've done is boost both physical and telecommunications security. The Republicans don’t want to cancel or rethink the broadcast. What do you think? This might be the thing we’re looking for, so to speak. Your old friends.” The Boss says that what Joshua needs to do is walk the convention floor, get into the satellite broadcast areas, and look for anyone from his radical days that he recognizes, then ... well, take them out. “We can’t depend on any of the computer elements here to be able to put up resistance to in-simulation memetics or glyphs or other Red King ploys. It's up to us. And Charley.”
With that David/the Boss has a little moment of what looks like nausea ... he's losing his connection with the sim by having mentioned stuff outside the sim, but he's holding on for now. “Contact me directly if you need anything. I'll be in my office/communications center.”
Played: December 20, 2020.
From her command seat as Controller, Charley is able to determine that the electronic mails sent to Joshua within the ORACLE simulation originated from the University of California, Berkeley, campus. Within the simulation itself, Joshua arrives at the RNC. After wandering the floor for a time, he receives a call from David-as-the-Boss on his mobile telephone device. “Joshua,” he says, “I think we have identified who they are. I think that they are old classmates of yours. Or, at least, college aged friends of yours.” The Boss explains that they traced the e-mail that Joshua received several months back and gives Joshua a description of five people with whom Joshua is familiar. The Boss sends photographs and personal information about the five suspects to Joshua’s mobile device. They call themselves the Children of Guy Debord. They are a minor media terrorist cell comprised of dissolute grad students who engage in acts of culture jamming and media hijacking.
Joshua uses his credentials to get deeper into the convention center space, arriving eventually at the control booth. Simultaneously, Charley detects that ORACLE’s narrative subroutine has shifted: it is now moving the antagonists into play. She manages to triangulate their approximate coordinates and relays that information to David-the-Boss, who in turn relays it to Roger-as-Joshua. (This intermediary system ensures that Roger is not kicked out of the simulation due to verisimilitude failure; as the “boots the ground,” it is more important that Joshua remain in the simulation than the Boss). With this information, Joshua realizes: the terrorists are going to hijack the RNC media signal at its source, using the satellite transmission tower on the roof of the convention center. Joshua races upstairs and finds his erstwhile allies attaching a module to the base of the transmission tower.
There are, indeed, five of them. The leader of the cell — a female grad student in linguistics — asks Joshua what he is doing there. Joshua responds, “Hey, am I late to the party?” The leader asks him if he wants to “do the honors.” Joshua takes them up on the offer. Outside the simulation again, Charley rapidly parses the data being generated by ORACLE and deduces that the box in question is a receiver for another glyph, one that it will automatically “run” once it receives the appropriate transmission. Charley modifies the program to neuter the box; inside the simulation, Joshua rips the transmission box off the satellite base and tosses it over the side of the roof. Outraged, two of the media terrorists tackle Joshua.
In the real world, Catherine asks Charley if they should now shut down the simulation. Charley says no, that they should hold off for now, and that everything is fine. Catherine seems dubious, but Archie interjects, insisting that Charley is reliable and that they need to let Roger and Charley see things through. Jocasta stands off to one side, observing the GRAIL TABLE team for suspicious activity. Meanwhile, the data transmission to the now-defunct box inside the simulation has apparently begun. Charley is too occupied as Controller to analyze the transmission itself, or calculate its origins, so Elias and Sophie scramble to do so.
Inside the simulation, Roger-as-Joshua grapples successfully with his attackers, aided by Charley, who uses her technical know-how to seize control of one of the attackers, whom she uses as a puppet to combat the other terrorists. With the Children of Guy Debord dealt with, Roger-as-Joshua blows up the transmission tower entirely using a packet of C4 provided to him by Charley-as-Controller. He then heads back into the convention center, shouting for everyone to hear that a group of terrorists have destroyed the transmission tower.
Back in the ORACLE command center, Elias and Sophie complete their analysis and the team rolls out a local ordinance map. Elias runs the 30 degree line from the Castle to the source of the transmission … and finds that it heads directly to Long Meg and Her Daughters. Sophie gasps that Long Meg must be a resonator of incredible power. Roger, David, and Charley emerge from the simulation. GRAIL TABLE and the UK team debate what to do with ORACLE before heading to Long Meg. Eventually, it is decided that they will disconnect ORACLE, secure its databanks, and ship it to Granite Peak. With that decided, Archie asks if they should head to Long Meg. David asks what should they do once they get there, noting that they will defer to URIEL given that URIEL is a field team and GRAIL TABLE is not.
Archie suggests that there are likely human agents — or another “human” agent like Zeb — at work here. Archie posits off-handedly that one such agent may be Clodagh. Catherine asks what leads Archie to believe that. Archie explains that, in URIEL’s experience, the type of people who tend to fall into service with the Red Kings typically believe they are furthering some “primitive, atavistic” belief structure. David asks if this means they should send out two teams: one to Dufton, and one to Long Meg. Archie asks Jocasta what she thinks, and Jocasta explains that she only believed Clodagh was eccentric and strange, but not necessarily dangerous. Still, she agrees that it is necessary to send a team to Long Meg to contain or conceal whatever is happening there and another team to Dufton get eyes on Clodagh — her instincts say to her that the old washer woman knows something.
After more discussion, the team moves into action. Charley identifies the central component without which GRAIL TABLE will not able to operate ORACLE, which Roger surreptitiously detaches and pockets. Jocasta and Archie drive to Dufton, where Archie catches sight of Clodagh leaving the bungalow where Archie’s family is staying. She carries two sacks of laundry. Jocasta and Archie approach and ask if they can speak with her for a moment, and she agrees, leading them to the central Dufton admin building where she unloads the laundry into two large tubs. Jocasta asks if Clodagh knows anything unusual about the area, in particular around Long Meg. Clodagh asks Jocasta what she means, and Jocasta elaborates: “anything beyond the human pale, anything not human.” Clodagh laughs: “so ghoulies and ghosties, then?” Archie presses further, and Clodagh tells of the beautiful man in the river:
Oh, my heart goes a flutter just thinking about how beautiful he was. I was … I was a lass of 13 and he, well, one day from out of the muck and the mire of the river, just stood up. And he looked at me with these deep, deep blue eyes and swept me off my feet, he did.
Archie and Jocasta suddenly hear the sound of canvas ripping, and from out the bag on her back emerges a small claw.
Back at Brougham Castle, Roger prepares to accompany a detachment of Ministry guards to Long Meg to investigate when Charley gets a sudden empathic flash that something terrible is happening to Archie in Dufton. She exclaims to Roger that they need to get to Dufton immediately, that something is wrong, and they need to leave now. Roger commandeers a car, Charley and Sophie hop inside, and they race off to the village.
In Clodagh’s basement, Jocasta watches in horror as a kulullû climbs out of the torn sack. She freezes, locked in panic and guilt. The thing that reveals itself is rubbery, with a bald, fish-like head. It focuses its hypnotic gaze upon Jocasta. Archie thinks fast: he grabs an empty sack and tosses it over the kulullû’s head. In so doing, Archie observes that the kulullû’s claws are bloodied, and that it seemed to have been attached, physically, to Clodagh’s back. As it struggles to escape the sack, Clodagh collapses to the ground in a heap. And it speaks, in a squeaky, heavily accented northern English voice: “BOW BEFORE ME.” Archie immediately recognizes that the creature is attempting to use neurolinguistic programming on them, but thanks to their SANDMAN training, neither Archie nor Jocasta are affected.
Recognizing Jocasta’s state, Archie snaps into his old military training and barks, “Get yourself together, soldier!” at Jocasta, who pulls to. Archie and Jocasta then launch into beating the kulullû, pummeling it with heavy objects and stomping it into the ground. Its attempts to compel Jocasta and Archie with further neurolinguistic programming fail, and after a moment, the thing lies dead on the ground, its skull cracked open, green ichor pooling around its body. Clodagh lies unconscious, breathing weakly.
On the road to Dufton, ominous dark clouds swirl and gather in the sky. The utter weirdness of the scene distracts Roger momentarily; he does not see, until the very last second, what appears to be a woman clad in ancient Roman garb walking along the hedgerow. Roger swerves, but unsuccessfully, and crashes into a nearby stone wall. Both he and Charley are injured, and the car is ruined. As they emerge from the damaged vehicle, Charley realizes that the Roman woman was one of the witches she saw in her vision at Long Meg — one of the long-dead servants of the Anunnaki, apparently walking the earth here in Cumbria. Roger and Charley drag a near-catatonic Sophie out of the car as she mutters, in Latin: “Please don’t let her get me please don’t let her get me please don’t let her get me.”
In Dufton, Archie realizes the situation is critical: they are basically in an ontological subduction zone. He also knows, on an instinctual level, that Charley is in trouble. Jocasta scrambles to assist Clodagh, quickly determining that she is now quadriplegic in the absence of her kulullû master, who had attached itself at the base of her neck. Archie and Jocasta then race upstairs to the sound of a nuclear alarm claxon blaring. They spot two soldiers racing by, who shout that they must get to the fallout shelter. Archie dashes off to find his family; Jocasta looks for the person with the lowest rank, flashes her credentials, and demands a service weapon. At the bungalow, Archie discovers his family unconscious, but is unable to figure out why.
At the site of the accident, Roger and Charley attempt to calm Sophie down when a cawing draws their eyes upward again. An absolutely massive flock of crows, or ravens, come sweeping down on the fields all around them, attacking crops, attacking animals, attacking anything they can find with a pulse. Roger looks around and spots a small cottage nearby. He tells Charley to tell Sophie, in Latin, that they need to get into the house; he slings Sophie’s arm over his shoulder and the team moves as fast as they can in that direction. They get indoors just as the birds start pummeling the walls, the roof, and the shutters. Roger piles furniture against the door.
Charley realizes what they now face: the Anunnaki had a long plan in the works with GRAIL TABLE, and with URIEL having thwarted them, they have unleashed their power onto the land and its people in bloody vengeance. Charley tells Roger that they have to get to Long Meg — a reality quake is taking place.
Archie runs out of the bungalow and find Jocasta, who now has a rifle, and explains the situation with the subduction zone, his family, and his sense that Charley is in dangerous. Jocasta offers to check the Ransoms using her limited first aid training and then proposes that they find someone with command authority to authorize bombing or otherwise using ordinance to destroy Long Meg. Archie agrees, and Jocasta checks the family. She finds that each has a tiny pinprick on their body; she tells Archie that they have been injected with something to knock them unconscious. They are not in any life-threatening danger, however. After a little more consideration, Archie and Jocasta realize that they have likely been dosed by Clodagh’s kulullû’s poison.
Archie scrambles to get ahold of a commanding SANDMAN officer. When he does, he explains the situation, and the executive officer gives him a radio and tells him that, if they are really dealing with a subduction zone, to call it in and the Royal Air Force will launch a bomber squadron to Long Meg. The officer also tells him that they believe the nuclear claxon is a false alarm, perhaps triggered through sabotage. With a good deal of guilt, Archie decides it is best to leave his family asleep in the bungalow, knowing that the team’s success will result in “none of this happening,” and his family none the wiser.
Jocasta and Archie drive up the road to Brougham, where they find the crashed vehicle and then the small cottage. The team reassembles. Roger and Charley are banged up, but OK. Sophie is in shambles: pale, terrified, babbling about how this is the work of Morgan le Fey. She questions whether there is anything they can do to stop these events, faced as they are with a subduction zone perhaps 15 miles wide in diameter and a possible sēdu irruption. Everyone piles into the working vehicle and make off for the Castle. As they enter the courtyard, they find the bloodied and disembowelled bodies of David, Catherine, and Elias. Charley freaks at the sight, but gathers herself stoically.
From there, the team is transported in a military jeep to Long Meg, which they find surrounded by an Army cordon. The officer in charge explains that there’s apparently a circle of women gathered inside the stone circle. They sent scouts to investigate, but the scouts returned speaking a language no one recognized, so they have refrained from getting any closer. The team evaluates their options. Archie and Jocasta know that the subduction zone is causing the physical manifestation of historical events inside the circle. Archie calculates that, whatever happens next, they will need to deploy powerful memetics in the region to quell the idea that some horrible pagan god sleeps restlessly beneath the earth.
Jocasta instructs the commanding lieutenant to have his men prepare to launch grenades and mortars at the stone circle, focusing as best they can on Long Meg. The artillerymen line up their shots, and four mortars bombard Long Meg, destroying it utterly. As that happens, the witches fade away, though the overall sense around the stone circle remains that of an active subduction zone. Still, the risk of active retrocreation seems to have passed. With the destruction of Long Meg, the immediate danger is over.
☂︎ Epilogue
Michael
In the immediate few hours after the reality temblor, the knocking down/apart of Long Meg with mortars seems to have stopped the progress of the ontological fault line slippage. The birds go back to normal, the skies clear, the hills around the vale stop being so redolent of Camelot and the brutal times of 6th century England.
SANDMAN swoops in: a SANDMAN-trained SAS tactical team sets up a cordon/quarantine 12 miles around Long Meg to keep ideas from passing back and forth across the border of the subduction zone. All telecommunications signals are jammed inside the zone; no amateur ham operators can report on what they've seen. A retrieval and cleanup team has been sent to Brougham Castle to remove/destroy all the GRAIL TABLE equipment and quarantine all the records (including both papers and computer tapes). Within 20 minutes of the mortar attack at the stone circle, URIEL is back at the command post in Dufton.
Dufton, luckily, was right on the edge of the presumed subduction zone; when URIEL gets back there, the nuclear alert klaxon is off and SANDMAN personnel have taken over the command post. The body of the kulullû is gone, uncreated now that the vibes are a little better in the area. Clodagh, sadly, is still comatose and paraplegic, but she’s a tough old bird (who had her life extended by her teenage merman lover; one of the British SANDMAN History B boffins calls her a “clear a case of a bean-nighe being created by an encounter with an each-uisge as I’ve ever seen.”)
Archie’s family are in the infirmary; the SANDMAN doctors are being careful with bringing them out of their drugged state. The drugged ammunition from the kulullû's gagkula is pretty familiar to SANDMAN doctors, but they want to be careful as the three of them are civilians and have never been exposed before to History B. They’ll be up and around by dinnertime, the doctor says; that gives Archie some time to think about how he’s going to explain all this missing time.
The nuclear alert was determined to have been a hijacked signal from the early warning radome on the hill; apparently, “Morgen,” if we’re calling the irruptor entity/entities who managed to penetrate GRAIL TABLE that, was able to send a desperate last chance fake nuclear war signal to create psychic chaos and turmoil among the Dufton personnel only (the Anunnaki do not want to nuke the planet they want to take over)—this is likely what caused the (weak) temblor in the vicinity. The theoryabout the value of GRAIL TABLE to the Red Kings being the eight billion imaginary human beings that Elias gave “belief” to? That seems as likely as any to Archie and the SANDMAN boffins. If the drives had gotten wiped and thus an apocalypse had “rolled up” the simulated world, it could have been much more dangerous.
The British SANDMAN contingent also wants to consult with Archie (and Sophie) about the best set of cover stories for what happened here today. (The death of GRAIL TABLE will be covered up and a series of “appropriate deaths” concocted for the GRAIL TABLE personnel in their personal and professional lives over the next few months: they had been living in isolation here in the North of England for eight months under top secrecy, with not even their families knowing the nature of their assignments.) But for the mortar explosions, the weird meteorological and naturalistic phenomena, even the chaos around the Dufton village with respect to the nuclear warning ... we’ll need some memes.
Michael
So with Clodagh very badly permanently disabled by being attached to a kulullû for seventy years or so (before it was un-created, of course), she will be one of the people with memories of what happened around the River Eden before the reality temblor here. Having that kind of … intimate contact with History B for so long will leave permanent physical and mental marks. Jo sits by the old washerwoman's bedside. Clodagh cocks an eye at her. "Aye, I had a feeling I'd be seeing you again before you went back to America."
Leonard
"How are you feeling, Clodagh? I'm sorry we couldn't … we couldn't help you sooner."
Michael
"Help me?" Clodagh's voice croaks. "How did you help me? You took my lover away. You took him away and now I can't even remember his beautiful face anymore. And now I'm lying here too weak to even move my limbs. 'Help,' she says." Tears begin to well up in her eyes, pouring freely all over her wrinkled cheeks.
Leonard
"No, you're right, we didn't help you at all," Jocasta says, swallowing hard. "It won't even do you any good to say we tried, or that I know what it's like to have someone you love disappear. There's no point in pretending any of this had a happy ending. I'm sorry."
Jo will quietly say "Anyway, we'll take care of you. As best we can." She slips off a glove and reaches over to Clodagh's hand, thinking at first to try psychometry or sensitivity. But after a moment, she changes her mind, and just walks out of the room, out of the medical ward, and off the base, far into the hills.