2/3

Played: September 4, 2020.

Wednesday, March 28, 1973. Evening. After dinner with the Ransoms, Archie and Melanie escort Charley to her new bedroom: the untouched “shrine” to the Ransoms’ tragically deceased son Charlie. “Charlie’s room” is replete with cowboy décor, including photos of Charlie Ransom dressed up as Archie’s most famous cowboy puppet, the “Ransom Kid.” There’s a lot of intense emotion wrapped up in this space — the vibes are strong, and bad, but Charley manages to suppress a stress reaction using some of the techniques she learned during her INDIGO training. After Archie and Melanie tuck her into bed, Charley immediately untucks herself and explores the room a bit. She can tell something is wrong, but no one having told her about Charlie, she is left only to surmise that some tragedy has taken place and the Ransoms are not yet ready to confront it. She examines a few of the photographs and toys, and from these items gets a flash of a memory of being a young boy, riding on her dad’s shoulders during some kind of family hike. A while later, she heads back to bed.

A few hours later, Archie wakes up the sound of someone screaming. He throws on his robe and runs up to Charlie’s room. As he goes, he sees Jane and Eddie standing in their doorways. He tells them to go back to bed and approaches Charley’s door, where he pauses for a second, hesitant, before going in. Inside he finds a crying Charley, whom he immediately races to comfort. Jane and Eddie, having ignored their father’s command, peer into the room from around the corner. A second later, Melanie walks in hurriedly, asking what’s wrong. As Archie holds her, Charley mutters that there was an accident, an accident, some kind of accident. Archie continues to comfort her, somewhat awkwardly, with Melanie’s assistance. Once she’s calmed down, the family returns to bed.

Thursday, March 29, 1973. 8:00 am. URIEL assembles at Livermore at Sophie’s insistence to get everyone updated on the current mission status in light of recent intel developed by Jocasta, and to introduce the team to its new tech liaison. Archie and Charley arrive first. They find Jocasta sacked out on a couch in the common area. They leave her to get some extra shuteye; Roger and Mitch arrive, and Roger prods Jocasta awake. Marshall waltzes in last. Once Jocasta has brushed her teeth in the ladies’ room and tried to straighten her hair, everyone grabs a seat in the conference room. Marshall raises an eyebrow at the little girl at the table, but attempts to play it off nonchalantly. Roger takes a seat and eyes the infrasonic disruption device on the table in front of Charley.

Roger: Should that kid be near that device? Isn’t that the thing I’m supposed to learn about? I came in early so that you guys could, y’know, put the stuff in my brain.

Archie: Roger, Marshall — this is Charley. Charley’s here from Granite Peak. She’s the, uh, she’s the expert on the device that we requested. So, she’s going to be helping us. Roger, she’s going to give you some training in the device.

Roger: No shit?

Marshall: (bursts out laughing) Sorry, sorry. Go ahead.

Roger: Well … um, hi. I’m Roger.

Charley: Hi Roger. It’s nice to meet you.

Roger is obviously discomfited by this interaction but tamps it down. He continues:

Roger: OK. So, uh … we’re letting a … kid in here? Really?

Marshall: Well, technically she’s only ever been here. “Here” in the relative sense of the Project. So she’s as home here as anywhere.

Roger: (shoots Marshall the iciest of glares) So you’re really just going to play this straight? (sighing) OK, well, Charley: what’s up with this thing?

Charley launches into a highly detailed and esoteric description of the device, its history, its development, how it works, how to optimize its performance. She speaks in a crisp, monotone voice, but talks very rapidly. Roger tries to follow along but spaces out after a couple of minutes. Once Charley finishes, he stumbles through a few affirmations that he thinks he got it, but then stands up and excuses himself to use the restroom. After Roger departs, Marshall asks Sophie and Jocasta what the agenda is. Sophie explains that she has the agenda, item one of which was to introduce Charley to the group. Once Roger returns, Jocasta can provide an update on what she learned during her sojourn to Oakland and Berkeley the day before. With that, Sophie asks Charley if there’s anything she wants to say:

Yes. I wanted to actually speak to all of you because I am aware that my age may make some of you uncomfortable. But I wanted to assure you that I'm quite capable and I'm also a willing participant in this campaign against the Red Kings and their agents. The last thing I want is to be a distraction, although I do appreciate the concern for my well being. And I don’t know what spiritual beliefs you hold onto, but I know that I have had many lives. Death is not the end. Thank you. And I look forward to working with all of you. Oh! And, uh … someone has started a not-so-nice rumor that I have a chip in my head. And that is not true. Thank you.

Charley sits and scoots her chair closer to Archie. After a moment’s silence Marshall, somewhat stunned, says: “They really fucking did it. Those brainiacs really did it. That’s crazy. Wow. Well, this is gonna be a delight gang. You know, I remember being in the cafeteria at the Peak and Jane said to me, we have this thing with the kids, it’s going to be amazing, we have all these orphans and I was like, there’s no way. There’s no way it’s going to work. How could you make it work? Here we are. Amazing. Science.” Archie pipes up, thanking Charley for the introduction and says that everyone in URIEL is going to do their best to make her feel welcome and to keep her safe. With that prompting, Roger offers his apologies to Charley for how he acted earlier. He says they’re cool, he just needs to get his head wrapped around a few things. He looks forward to working with her on learning how to deploy the infrasonic device. Charley happily agrees.

Sophie then moves things along to Jocasta’s report. Jocasta clears her throat:

Good morning. Charlie, it's good to meet you formally. I'm sorry I had to leave so quickly yesterday and I didn't get a chance to spend any time with you but I'm very excited to work with you and I'm very glad you're here.

As you all know, I left a bit precipitously yesterday and when I was driving towards the city, I had a bit of a disassociative moment that found me drawn to West Oakland. Anyway, I had to pull over when I got there I felt very — there was something very strong pulling me there. I took a moment to try and figure it out, and started getting some real … uh, a real sense of reality breaking around me. Fragmenting. I was seeing a repeated symbolism the whole time I was there. I was only on one street corner but I could see it everywhere and (she passes around some drawings she made) what I saw, you know, the symbolism of the banduddû and Marduk, showing up in the storefronts on the billboards, with the kids that I saw … and I said, it just couldn't. I couldn't get it out of my head. It was something trying to break through to me but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Probably a few of you who are better versed in History B than I am already know this symbolism but I went to Berkeley and did some research in the library and (she hands out photo stats she made) I found out that the banduddû, the bucket, and the Marduk, the spade, are strong symbols from History B. They have a lot of metaphorical heft. They tend to symbolize royalty, protection, provision of security, justice to a certain degree. Things that are finding a very receptive audience in West Oakland at the moment.

Let's say all of this combined with the strong pull that I felt in that particular locus and the way that people were behaving — even some of the things that the kids said made me think that we have an irruptor on our hands. These symbols are highly associated with the kusarikku, the bull man, and I feel like this symbolism has pushed through to the degree that it's already a presence in Oakland somewhere. And that the people there — in fact the very people who are going to be at the Mansa show — are being conditioned to accept it. So I think this is a … I think the situation is a lot more escalated than we had been led to believe or that we had already figured out. I think Sophie might have a few more details, but that's basically where I arrived after my little jaunt into Oakland.

Roger asks how this is possible, since the album hasn’t come out yet. Has Mansa been doing free shows in the lead-up to the album? Sophie chimes in:

There is a sort of temporal aspect to this. In other words, if in two days, Mansa plays their concert, and something is triggered by the music or the visuals or even just the overall … well, reality of having a couple thousand people all in one place, believing in something, and irruptor is summoned by it, that irruptor will always have been there. That is, there will be, on the streets of West Oakland, signs like the ones Jocasta saw. There will be urban legends about a strange bull creature. There will be all kinds of things that will, essentially, demonstrate that the irruptor who has come through has started to leak History B into our history. When they meld, you get these odd instances of different histories overlapping and combining.

Jocasta nods, saying that the irruptor is retroactively creating the conditions of its own irruption. Sophie says that’s right. It’s like a snowball rolling downhill. The more symbols there are that evoke the Anunnaki, the more susceptible people will be to it, etc. etc. Roger: “Pardon my French, but that’s some fucked up shit. So you’re saying if we stop this thing from happening, the things that are happening now don’t happen now? Yeah, that’s some freaky shit.” Sophie explains that her esmological analysis confirms Roger’s understanding. If URIEL can stop the concert, everything they are seeing now will not have happened. Though, of course, depending on how things play out, they may be left with weird ontological fallout: minor subduction zones, reality shards, etc. “My feeling,” Sophie concludes, “is that we’re lucky that Keiner’s artwork at the de Young Museum didn’t do more damage than it did. Mitch, you went there — you didn’t notice an actual subduction zone? You just noticed his artwork was tainted, essentially?” Mitch confirms this to be the case and Sophie says that they definitely got lucky, then. Still, URIEL needs to confiscate Beth-El as soon as possible.

Jocasta opines that URIEL was operating on the assumption that people were being conditioned to make them susceptible to a particular message, but now, she thinks they are being prepared for a literally imminent and possibly violent threat. “I think one thing we need to consider,” she explains:

because we also have to talk about the record being released, is that, if we act on all these things — in other words, we’ve already made Keiner disappear, we’re probably going to have to do something about Mansa, or at least Moore, we’re going to shut down the concert, we’re going to intercept the record, and we’re going to get rid of the artwork — this raises our exposure significantly. People are going to notice that there’s this whirlwind of bad shit happening around this release. Before I wasn’t … I was pretty concerned about that, I thought it might elevate our profile too much. But now I believe, having seen what I saw, and believing that the irruptor is already present, or at least imminent, that we’re going to have to roll the dice. We’re going to have to do what we have to do and we’ll just have to handle the exposure the best we can.

Marshall asks if Jocasta believes Moore is a witting agent of the opposition. Jocasta is unsure. She says her gut feeling is that he’s less of an active participant than Keiner was, but she wouldn’t stake anyone’s life on it. Marshall asks if the location of the tapestry is still unknown; Jocasta and Sophie say that is correct. Marshall says, somewhat resignedly, that eliminating Moore likely would not resolve the problem. Jocasta coughs: “Well, if you mean ‘eliminating’ in the literal sense, if we take him out, then there probably won’t be a concert.” Roger interjects: “Marshall, I get what you’re saying, the neighborhood’s in danger, that — that’s pretty serious. But you take him out, like dead dead, you will never hear the end of this. That album will be everywhere. You want to talk about a problem on art? You will see his profile graffitied on every wall in Oaktown.” Marshall and Jocasta both say that they’re not seriously proposing eliminating Moore, at least not yet. Marshall says he’s just thinking out loud, weighing the options.

Marshall: It sounds like things are far enough along that even if he was a witting agent who we were able to remove, the snowball is making its way down the mountain already.

Jocasta: Eliminating him doesn’t solve the problem of the record being released.

Archie: Was one of the lines we were talking about before to, you know, first of all, try to neutralize the concert in real time? But also, what — was there a way of cooking up some kind of … either an actual, literal meme? Or just a storyline that discredits Moore? You know: he’s a sellout, he is in league with “the Man” or the Communists.

Roger: I found my bit working for Hoover and there’s much nastier techniques than that.

Marshall: Is there a way — Sophie and Archie — is there a way you could esmologically create a counter-meme, a counter trend, that would make his style of music, or this album in particular, seem irrelevant and hokey and ridiculous? Not to be taken seriously?

Roger: Well, the album was pretty bad.

Marshall: There is that … but it is riddled with all sorts of mind-bending subconscious memes, so …

Sophie: Well, esmologically analyzing what people want to hear could be something we could do. But crafting a meme, I believe that would be Mr. Ransom’s sort of thing. But I do think that we need some esmological analysis because you’re right, Marshall, you’re right in one way, which is that we need to know how much the people of Oakland love this band. If they love them a lot, all the things you’ve been talking about — assassination, discrediting — they might work against us. If they’re on the verge of something big, which is what I feel like we were finding out about their career, then you have a critical moment in more than one way. You have a critical moment in the irruptor coming through, and you have a critical moment in their careers and in their public image where things go south. If they have a terrible concert, it’s not going to, you know, do it alone. There will have to be other things that are used. But if they have a terrible concert — if the record sounds not like they intended it to, then you have the beginning of their fall. Essentially. I mean, that’s the way you want to get this done if you don’t want a lot of bloodshed.

Jocasta: If I may —

Archie: So —

Jocasta: — no no, after you, Archie.

Archie: Ah, yes, sorry. Uh, so it sounds like there’s two prongs. We do the esmological research to figure out on what level the music is working. But then I think we neutralize the music in the moment. And that’s part of where Charley comes in, and maybe Roger too can help with that. But then, yes, we can work on a memetic way of sort of undermining the credibility of the band. And if the concert goes badly, as you say, that helps.

Marshall: Sorry to preempt you, Jocasta. So, you went to Oakland and these were your observations, right?

Jocasta: Correct.

Marshall: And we have a human, a sort of human History B detector in our midst. Do you think we could send Mitch to Oakland and see what he is able to see before we make any firm commitments?

Mitch: What do you think that I would find out there that we haven’t already found out?

Marshall: I don’t know, and that’s why I would want you to go. Because you have a way of seeing things that we can’t see. I mean, Jocasta observed what she observed on our side of the wall, but what you might be able to see on the other side of the wall? Such as who the puppet master is that’s pulling Mansa’s strings.

Mitch: How would that affect our plan though? I feel like — I feel like what we're saying here is, is this house on fire? It's got a lot of smoke coming out of it and I can see flames but maybe we should send the human carbon monoxide detector in to take a look and get some readings. I just don’t think that there’s much in the way of useful, actionable intelligence that I'm going to be able to extract from … from what, if everything Jocasta is saying is true and I believe that it is.

Marshall: That’s … fine.

Roger: Don’t worry, I’ll go lay down the vibe. I can figure out where things are. I just — I don't think we should go alone and if it's that dangerous with this other stuff irrupting through … like a second pair of eyes, who knows that territory, would be helpful.

Jocasta: I'd be happy to go along. I mean, I think the only utility in this is determining to what extent Moore is aware of what he’s doing. And that’s maybe only of marginal relevance to our approach. What I was going to say, though, is — thinking strategically — if whatever plan we come up with, if whatever approach we take, is to wreck this guy’s career, we might want to craft it around the narrative that whatever happens — whether he performs poorly, the concert goes badly, he gets hurt, the records get destroyed — whatever the collapse of this whole intertwined system, is the result of his own ambition. Because what we don’t want is either, number one, this was a run of terrible luck, which is only going to generate more interest in him, or some kind of conspiracy against him, which is a narrative I'm sure he would embrace.

So I think we might want to — and this sort of cruel, especially if we don’t know how involved he is in this thing consciously — but we might want to engineer into the counter-meme that this was all his doing. Maybe we hire — we get a couple of people who are willing to fire bomb the truck full of records and if they get caught, we pay them enough or hypnotize them or do something in order to say, “Oh yeah, Moore hired us to do this because he was holding out for more money from the record company.” You know, we need to be able to create a narrative in which he's the one who's causing all this problems instead of them being random or the result of outside interference.

Marshall: I mean, that’s a lot to accomplish. The problem with this is that … these are both solutions to a problem. But our real problem, it sounds like, though I can’t be sure without more information (shoots a glance at Mitch), is that the snowball is far enough down the hill that merely disrupting the concert is not going to get us enough time to create a meme pervasive enough to make its way through Northern California or, you know, this region — to successfully stop the momentum of this irruptor making its way through. So my concern is that we need to be taking more affirmative action than merely stopping a concert and crafting a counter-meme because the time the counter-meme is unleashed, this thing may already be out and it will just be a pointless trend we’ve created for no reason.

Sophie: To get back to what Marshall was saying about Mitch and his abilities, I’m still very curious about the tapestry and what role it plays because if — if Jocasta, if your feeling was that the artwork would have taken you into History B, or shown you it, or something along those lines, then there’s no reason why Keiner couldn’t have put that on the tapestry as well in a different form. Obviously the subject of the artwork is this alternate timeline that Moore talked about in the interview of, you know, a perfect black world …

Jocasta: He certainly spoke to me as if he’s already introduced a number of people to History B via Beth-El. So that’s already out there. Whoever’s seen that, it’s at least in their heads a little bit. And that’s why we have to be very careful about how we approach disrupting the concert because …

Sophie: I feel like if we’re going to discredit anybody it should be Keiner. Well, if you do that, they have to censor the artwork for the second pressing of the album, all of a sudden he’s persona non grata, and — anyway, sorry Marshall, go ahead.

Marshall: No no, it’s OK. It’s not — we can do all these things, but it seems like the thing that we need to stop right now, because have 48 hours — the concert’s Saturday, and it’s Thursday, so we have less than 48 hours — is there is something pressing up against the glass right now. And it has cracked the glass. And the only way to get it from — to stop it from breaking through the glass right now is, I think, to go to its side of the glass and deal with it there. We can also simultaneously, and after the fact, deal with the little shards of glass that have fallen on the floor and are in the carpet and we’re going to step on them later. That we can all address when we have time. But the things we’re talking about now are not going to stop the thing from pressing against the glass. So my question is, can we get the box here and can we get through the box without Keiner?

Roger: You’re talking more crazy shit. Today is just the day of crazy shit. Sorry. The album made you all receptive, right? And Keiner wants to put this art in front. That’s the window. That’s what’s gonna open it up. We close the window. And then, you know, if you have all those people receptive, why don’t you do some kind of judo maneuver where you use the enemy’s strength against him? You take that opportunity to disseminate your meme at that point. They’re all going to listen to the album and listen to whatever you say. Say something nice.

Marshall: I mean, that has merit to it. Assuming that —

Roger: Just don’t start a cult.

Marshall: — assuming the tapestry is indeed the thing that actually will enable this other thing to get through.

Sophie: We just need more information. We do. We need this — this is what I was telling Jocasta yesterday — we need humans on the ground, in Oakland. Whether that takes the form of Mitch using his … abilities … or it takes the form of, you know, Roger just going out there and seeing what the “mood” is on the street.

Marshall: Can we get both the box and the tapestry?

Sophie: Well, I mean, again — I think the urgency now … I may need some help on this, maybe even from Granite Peak, but we, right now, we do need to get the artwork, the damaged artwork, out of the museum and take a closer look at it. To locate the tapestry, I really think that it’s not going to hurt if we can find it and, you know, assess its danger level, let’s say.

Jocasta: Well, with all due respect, Marshall, I feel like fighting History B on the History B side of the glass is not only a little bit beyond our capacity, I mean, if we could do that, right —

Sophie: We’d be sending Green Berets in there already —

Marshall: Well, we have a Green Beret here.

Roger: Don’t look at me!

Jocasta: I’ll be completely honest, I would much rather stand on a building across the street and shoot Moore through the head than go through that fucking division between worlds, having tasted a little bit of it when I was in Beth-El the first time.

Marshall: (hands raised) OK, well …

Jocasta: Now if all we need to do is buy time to figure this stuff out — although I don't really know how we can delay the release of the album unless we've got some heavy influence in the music industry — we can certainly delay the concert through any number of means we can just bribe a city electrical inspector to go in and you know say the place needs to be rewired and he won't let it open. There's a million ways to do this but, I don't know, I feel like pursuing this on our side of the glass is probably a much more realistic brief.

Marshall: Well … I guess we need to get cracking on setting up to cancel this concert and find the tapestry.

Roger: Yeah, I mean, not to bring back the ‘Nam stuff, but when you only had two days to stop something that was when you did recon in force, right? And —

Archie: So, is this one those —

Roger: — they got to be ready to do stuff once they’re there. No, “but let’s come back and report back,” I mean, we got to find that tapestry, we gotta destroy that stuff, and you guys gotta figure out what you’re going to do with this concert to stop whatever this thing is. I mean, how long do we — is this time whammy thing, is it really like, is it serious? Is it spreading? Is it bad? If that kind of stuff is showing up, are we already — there’s no way to move it?

Sophie: My feeling is that the signs of the irruptor will get more and more obvious the closer we get to the point from which it was retro-created. So I would say, you know, Jocasta saw this repeating spade and bucket meme yesterday … I would say if you were on the streets today, you might see more. Not Moore the person, you might see more evidence of History B and the, uh, kusarikku coming through.

Jocasta: I would say there’s a certain degree of urgency because I didn't go intending to go to Oakland, and I didn't go intending to look for these symbols. They pulled me in. So if they had that effect on me, I can only imagine what is happening to people close to the epicenter.

Sophie: Well, if they’re not History B aware, it’ll hit them on a much more subconscious level, obviously. But this is the danger. The danger of the Anunnaku irruption is that people want to follow them. People on some level are programmed to do so. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, you’re going to — when you see these things, you’re going to stand there in awe of it and want to serve it. Or want to give yourself to it. I mean, there is something built into our brains. We all have SANDMAN training, we can resist that. Ordinary people can’t. And there are extraordinary civilians out there who end up as cultists, as people like Keiner, who can consciously manipulate these energies. But for the vast majority of people, there’s no resistance at all.

Marshall: Alright. So. How do we break this up?

Archie: OK, we need marching orders. It’s pretty complicated but I feel there are four different things that we’ve said here. It sounds like we do want more humint, people need to go back to Oakland, spend some time there. The question is less about how much of a sympathetic character is Moore and more about where is the tapestry and other signs of what is happening, right? That’s gotta happen.

Mitch: (sighing) Alright, alright.

Archie: I don’t know if that’s Jo or Mitch or Roger, but those are the people that make sense to go. We need to work on, I mean, the actual plan of what we’re going to do at the concert. That’s Charley’s job. Also, a sort of counter-meme against Moore and Mansa. I can do that. But then, is there is also research or work to be done? Marshall was interested in the box. Even if we’re not talking about going into History B, is there research to be done? Just on, you know, the kusarikku, the Marduk and banduddû stuff, the esmological analysis of the album. Like, is there more to be found there or is it enough that we just know that this is the adversary?

Sophie: That’s a good question. My attitude is that doing further esmological research to find out what the people of West Oakland will do — in other words, game out, in different scenarios, where the concert goes. The concert goes well, and we don’t interfere with it, what happens? The concert goes poorly because we use our infrasonic on it, what happens? The concert goes poorly and Mansa is disgraced, or falls from grace, or whatever, what happens? We can find probabilities of which is the more advantageous approach.

Archie: Right. So then, can the people on the ground in Oakland also just kind of collect the vague sort of cultural indicators, much like Jocasta did yesterday. Like, “Oh, I heard this guy humming this tune on a street corner and I noticed that a lot of the doors in this neighborhood are painted red.” And put all of this into the esmological hopper and then you say, “Goodness gracious! This is what’s going to happen.”

Sophie: As I told Jocasta yesterday, we need a full spectrum approach. We need to hit it on every level.

Archie: And when you're looking for random facts, you know, that's when I think we send in Mitch. Mitch has to walk, to spend some time walking around Oakland and just noticing what he notices. Yeah. I think Marshall should get the box.

Marshall: "Hey, Charley — want to come with me to get some ice cream from the cafeteria?"

Charley: "Sure!"

Marshall: "Hell yeah! Come on. I think we can make our own Sundaes."

Charley: "I make the best sundaes!"

Marshall: "Do you get many Sundaes out at Granite Peak?"

Charley: "Every Friday."

Marshall: "Every Friday? Jeeeeeez, they're getting soft out there." He chuckles to himself. "So where are we keeping you here? I imagine you're staying with Archie?"

Charley: "So far, I stayed there last night."

Marshall: He nods to himself. "Yes, yes, that makes sense, that makes sense. Oh, by the way, when we get to the cafeteria, if anyone asks, you're my niece." After that (unless Charley has anything else to say specifically) he'll just make pleasant child psychology chit-chat with her about favorite flavors, interests, etc.

Charle: "OK, but isn't the cafeteria part of URIEL?"

Marshall: "Haha, oh no, not at all. We're just relegated to that basement in Building 451. The rest of this campus is a whole federal research facility. I think we have the Atomic Energy Commission here? Defense too, their research boys, anyway. Most people just think the five, uh, well, I guess now six now — the six of us are some Berkeley affiliates or spooks or whatever."

"Anyway, so yeah, no, they don't know about us and they will definitely think this looks weird — see you can tell that group over there is looking at us — anyway, so if anyone asks, niece. Cool?"

Charley: “Yeah, cool.”

After some more discussion, the team decides to send Roger and Jocasta over to Oakland. Roger suggests that he may try to make contact with Moore; they only have two days, and they need to get a bead on the man sooner rather than later. Mitch reluctantly agrees to catch a ride with Roger and wander around a bit, see what he sees, which he doesn’t think will be much. Jocasta proposes to do some tactical surveying of the concert site as well as the Dominoe Records HQ. Maybe also drop in with the Oakland PD, flash her Army Intel ID around, perhaps get some more info that way. Marshall heads back to the Mission to make some calls, pull some strings, see about getting Beth-El “transferred” to Livermore. Archie turns his mind to the question of memetics. How do you make a super-cool funk musician not cool? A riddle for the ages. Charley and Sophie review the blueprints and local maps for the area where the Mansa concert will take place in order to figure out the best positioning of the infrasonic disruption device.

Roger drops Mitch off at a desolate street corner in the Acorn Projects of West Oakland. He lights a cigarette and starts wandering. As he goes, he notices people watching him, giving him the side-eye. Not too surprising, given that he’s only the only white guy in a four or five block radius. As he rounds a corner, however, he happens upon an elderly Black man sitting on a stoop playing a guitar. He’s not busking, not panhandling, just sort of lightly playing a tune on a beat-up guitar. Something about this man pings with Mitch. Reading his aura, he finds that this old timer is likely in his 70s, has a number of health problems, and isn’t long for this world. Still, his aura is much brighter than that of the average person. No taint from History B, as far as he can tell. In the two seconds that it takes Mitch to evaluate the man’s aura — it takes Mitch two seconds to see and analyze auras, not three seconds, not five seconds, not one second, exactly two seconds — the man’s eyes snap to Mitch’s. He stops strumming whatever tune he was playing before and starts playing the opening riff from “Last Train to Clarksville.”

After Roger drops off Mitch, he drives around for a bit in his sweet car before making his way over to the social club where Jocasta’s FBI contacts observed Moore hanging out. He arrive at around 11 am. As he approaches the front door, he can hear live music coming from inside and notices a couple of locals standing around outside, listening to the free show. He nods to them and strikes up a conversation. Just neighborhood gossip; they tell him E.L. Moore is inside, with some of the Mansa members, rehearsing. A moment later, the music stops and, a moment after that, Moore steps outside. He’s got a real presence about him, in person. An aura of confidence and charisma — but not a leader, not a showboat. Once they wrap on the number, they take five and Moore steps off stage. He does a lot of back-slapping and “how you doing?” with the dudes standing outside. As he does, a group of people start to coalesce around him: passersby on the street, local kids on bikes, etc., all making their way over to greet and shake hands with the hometown boy done good. The crowd gets bigger and bigger. Soon, the vibe has almost a party-like quality. Roger watches this all take place and thinks to himself that Moore would make an amazing politician.

Jocasta arrives at the square where the Mansa concert is going to take place. Her aim is to get a sense of the area, what direction the stage is likely to face, what buildings are nearby, what are the vantage points and easy exits, etc. Simultaneously back at Livermore, Sophie and Charley draw lots of lines using protractors and yardsticks on a map of the concert square. Assuming the stage faces out onto the square, with speakers lined up around it and a DJ booth behind, they calculate that the best positioning for the infrasonic device is directly opposite — that is, facing the stage from the opposite end of the square. But where will they put the van? The square will be closed off, so URIEL will need to get the van into the area the night before. Charley says that makes sense. Flipping back to Oakland, Jocasta arrives at roughly the same conclusion. The square could accommodate a few thousand people, she estimates, but the sheer openness of the space, and the lack of any real knowledge of where, precisely, the relevant set pieces and players will be limits her ability to make a complete tactical assessment.

At the Mission, Marshall contacts Granite Peak and explains that he needs someone to threaten or coerce Keiner into (a) revealing the location of the tapestry and (b) contacting the de Young and requesting that they assist his good friend Dr. Marshall Redgrave in transporting the damaged Beth-El to a secure storage facility so that he (Keiner) can repair it. The interrogation boys at Granite Peak are happy to oblige. And while they have him on the phone, they tell Marshall that their initial questioning of Keiner has revealed some mission-critical information. First, the tapestry is at Dominoe Records. Second, they now believe that Keiner was part of a Warsaw Pact deep cover intel group that knows how to contact History B. This jives with Marshall and SANDMAN’s general belief that the entire military-intel community on the other side of the Iron Curtain is compromised by the Anunnaki — kulullû everywhere, basically. As one of the information extraction specialists puts it: “Keiner’s not just an East German agent, and he’s not just a cultist of History B. He’s both. And they’re both related.” Marshall thanks them and hangs up. As he does, he thinks to himself that there may be “backup” enemy agents in place here, in California.

In his office, Archie scribbles on a notepad:

To split Moore from his people? So, Moore is a sellout. He’s an Uncle Tom. He’s Keiner puppet. He’s ambitious. He cut a deal. He’s going to cut out the rest of the band. You can even hear it in the music — the music is it's not the same as the good early albums, it’s all arty and pretentious. He wants the white art school students.

There’s something to this, Archie realizes. He calls on Sophie to pull some research materials for him, make a few calls, and starts to work developing the rumor that will destroy Moore’s authenticity with the Black community.

Back in Oakland, Mitch watches and listens as the old man plays a lugubrious, blues-style version of the “Last Train to Clarksville.” As he does, he maintains constant eye contact with Mitch, just a perfect blink-less stare. Mitch shrugs and walks over to him; why be discreet? Once he’s only a few feet away, the old man calls out to him: “Hey, commissioner!” Mitch responds, “Hey old timer.”

Old Timer: I haven’t seen you in 40 years. You look younger than when I last saw you!

Mitch: That’s what they say. Wish I could say the same for you. What happened to you? How you holding up?

Once he gets within arm’s distance from the elderly man, Mitch picks up a hint of History B. He can’t discern the type, or “flavor,” and it isn’t strong. But it’s there. The Old Timer speaks again:

Old Timer: How am I holding up? This world’s a shit-hole!

Mitch: No argument here, man.

Old Timer: How do these people live like this? The music’s good though.

Mitch: Well, it’d have to be, right?

Old Timer: They have this theory here, that the worse you’ve suffered, the better the music.

Mitch: I’ve heard that.

Old Timer: And that’s for sure gotta be true, because on the other side the music’s fuckin’ boring, man.

Mitch: … yeah. You, um, getting enough to eat? You doing OK in terms of nutrient intake, man?

Old Timer: If you’re offering, we could go down the street and get some food.

Mitch: That sounds great. Yeah.