2/5

Played: September 30, 2020.

Thursday, March 29, 1973. Evening. At Livermore, Charley inquires of Sophie about personally questioning Zeb at the Barn, once the field team has black-bagged him.

Charley: Do you think we could fool Zeb into teaching me the songs he taught Moore? From what I've heard he seems to like children. Or at least get a recording of those songs from History B would be helpful. I want to be able to identify and dissipate dangerous sounds and messages.

Sophie: That's … that's bloody brilliant, Charley. Depending on how the operation goes and how pliable Zeb will be to a soft approach like that, recording his musical instruction and analyzing it towards a possible memetic antidote … yes. At the very least, the value of music from History B to the Project would be astronomical. Of course … there is always a danger of corruption. If these songs are hymns of praise to the Red Kings, we need to be very careful in how much we — you — are exposed to them.

If Mitch is right and Zeb might be retrocreated himself when we succeed at the concert, though … you'd have to meet Zeb before the concert, which means, tomorrow morning at the Barn, perhaps?

Charley: Well the sooner the better. I'd prefer now if that were possible. I have computer programs I'm working on that could be benefited by the data I can gather from Zeb. Maybe you could take me to the barn tonight? Can the ground team be reached?

Sophie: Well, if Jo just left, figure they'll be at the Moore house in an hour, give them a little more time to wait for the folks to go to bed... this could keep you up very late, Charley. Are you sure that's all right?

Charley: Yes, I don't expect to get much sleep tonight. I have too much work to do and too little time.

A half-hour later, the field team calls to report the operation a success. They transport Zeb to the Barn, with Jocasta keeping Zeb in a hypnotic sleep state for the drive. Marshall, Sophie, and Charley — carrying Mitch’s guitar — hop in a Livermore pool sedan and race to meet them. Upon arriving, they place Zeb in the nicest of the interrogation rooms, the one with the toilet and the one-way glass. Everyone except Jocasta assembles in the observation room; Jocasta has to stay in the room with Zeb to keep him lulled. Marshall asks what the teams thinks the best approach would be. Is it better to have Mitch and Roger in the room when he wakes up, Mitch because he’s a familiar face and Roger because there is a “socio-economic cultural connection there”? Or is it better to have him come out the hypnotic state with only Jocasta, and then send in Charley? That would presumably disorient him to some degree — a child coming in to ask him questions. Sophie says they could do a deep hypnotic interrogation, basically “rewinding” his memory to his youth and having him recount the story of his life, including everything he taught Moore. Marshall is reluctant. He is, after all, a frail old man, and at the last team meeting, there was some discussion about the sorts of tactics URIEL employs, “so I just want to make sure that everyone feels like this is being handled … appropriately.”

He again asks the group how they want to proceed. Roger says it has to be gentle. Mitch agrees. “So the the thing is, he's extremely frail, right? That's — I think that's something we can all agree needs to be born in mind. You can't take a lot of punishment. He can't take a lot of stress. Secondly, he is bound to be disoriented. I mean, I don't know how dementia and hypnosis interact. I imagine that it might not be a problem necessarily for getting him to think that he's talking to young E.L. Moore.” Mitch explains further that during their breakfast, Zeb seemed lucid, together. He had a decent memory. He was able to recount his “life” and his “mission.” But, at Moore’s residence, Zeb sounded confused … and the Moore family did not seem particularly concerned about that. Marshall scratches his chin and recounts from his psychiatric training that it sounds like Zeb is too infirm to play hypnotic mind tricks. His natural neurodegenerative state makes hypnosis too unreliable, and may ultimately prove harmful to the old man, triggering a panic episode or a fugue state.

Marshall: We don’t need to engage … like he’s a somewhat confused older man, we don’t need to engage in too much mind-fuckery. I think — Charley’s an interesting girl, I think if we send her in there, with us watching, she can do what she needs and wants to do. We won’t need to delve into the recesses of his mind.

Mitch: He has little reason to be secretive. Spreading this information is his life’s work.

Sophie: That’s true.

Mitch: But he's also somebody who could be put into a situation that might just mildly shock you or I that would give him a fatal heart attack.

Marshall thus proposes that they send in Roger and Mitch to gently — gently! — rouse him and then have the two of them introduce Charley. Charley asks if it’s wise to send in Mitch. Didn’t their last encounter end on bad terms? Won’t that upset him? Mitch says possibly, but it’s all possible that Zeb has forgotten who Mitch is, or once again thinks Mitch is the “commissioner.” Charley says that’s a good point, but her idea was to go in alone with Mitch’s guitar and try to wake Zeb by playing music. Marshall raises an eyebrow: “Can you play guitar, Charley?” Charley nods: “Yeah. Kind of. I Renshaw’d it before I came. I’m not great at it, but I can play a little.” Marshall says that’s not a bad idea. Mitch agrees — let’s try it, it’s the least invasive option at this point. Charley shoulders Mitch’s guitar and heads inside, Roger and Mitch following. They apprise Jocasta of the plan. She shrugs and brings Zeb out of the hypnotic state while Charley strums the guitar in the background.

For a few seconds, nothing seems to happen. Zeb’s eyes remain glazed, and he sits slumped over on the cot. After a minute or so, however, his eyes focus in on Charley, he sits up a little straighter. He smiles … and starts speaking in Sumerian. Sophie hits the “RECORD” button on the room’s internal mics. Charley plays the guitar for a bit longer, observing Zeb’s body language. She decides to try a different tact: she pretends to have trouble with the guitar. The discordant sound seems to register with Zeb, who kind of snaps to and looks around. He does a double-take when he sees Mitch. Then he spots his guitar, snatched by Roger during the abduction. He reaches for it with feeble hands. Roger immediately hops to, gently taking the guitar and placing it in Zeb’s arm while looping the strap around his neck. Zeb starts playing. Sophie hits the “OFF” button on the audio-relay device in the observation room so that neither she nor Marshall can hear what is happening, but she leaves the recording devices running. Inside, the field team plus Charley hear a strange and unfamiliar tune:

The team finds the tune catchy, but everyone seems able to resist whatever memetic contagion the song may carry. After Zeb finishes, he smiles, points at Mitch, and speaks in English: “You came back.”

Mitch: Did I ever really leave, man?

Zeb: I think I finally figured it out, y’know? I see you on the street — you're 40 years younger. But you're not the commissioner. At least, not my commissioner.

Mitch concludes that Zeb somehow knows Mitch from the other side. He can’t quite figure out the age thing, but that’s his working assumption now. Mitch nods and tries to reassure Zeb. The rest of the team, overhearing this exchange, wonder if Zeb may know a counterpart of Mitch’s from History B. Mitch-B.

Charley speaks up. She asks Zeb if her lesson is over. Mitch gestures at Charley and says she wants to learn. Zeb says: “You understand, young girl, if I give you these lessons, you have to carry them on? You can’t keep these songs to yourself. They’re not secret songs. They’re songs for everybody. You understand me?” Charley says she understands. Zeb nods. He spends the next 15 to 20 minutes teaching Charley various snatches and riffs from five or six songs, each flowing into the other. None of the tunes sound familiar to anyone in the room, though they are all pretty damn compelling. Once he’s done, Mitch signals to Charley and the rest of the team that Zeb probably needs his rest. Before leaving, Charley thanks Zeb for the lesson. Zeb puts down his guitar, touches his heart, and says: “Honey, it was my pleasure.” Jocasta lulls him back into a hypnotic state, and commands him to sleep. He slips off to dream land.

Once everyone is back in the observation room, Jocasta asks what the hell was that?

Marshall: What do you make of it?

Roger: It was a cool jam session. Those are nice tunes.

Mitch: There’s a man who wasn’t there.

Marshall: OK. Both of those are unhelpful answers. What was that? Was that — was that the music he taught E.L. Moore? Is it music that he is just teaching Charley? Is Charley now going to have to be the new E.L. Moore?

Roger: It wasn’t Moore’s music. There was no funk in there.

Marshall: Charley, what do you make of that music? Do you feel that — do you feel any compulsions now, having heard it? Do you feel changed in any way?

Mitch: Great with the subtle questions.

Marshall: Hey, I’ve been up for 18 hours at this point —

Charley: I enjoyed it! I feel fine. But there does seem like there was a pattern, a code, in the music, that I thought was interesting. Certainly I am going to have to take some time to analyze it further but, yes, I’m glad I came. Thank you.

Marshall: Do you think he was trying to send you a message through the music?

Mitch: Isn’t that what all music is?

Marshall: (puts his face in his hands)

Charley: Wow, well, um … he very well could be. I mean, it doesn’t really sound like Mansa does it? So, maybe it’s something specific to me. I don’t know.

Sophie: Charley, the recording seemed to have worked. You haven’t done any playback yet. If you’re going to work with that, in your lab, before tomorrow, I would just invite you to be very, very — if you’re going to analyze it, to be very, very careful.

Charley: I’ll try to listen to it in a way that’s very, um, broken up. I can also play the ISD — basically flatten all the subliminals in it.

The question turns to the rest of the group who heard the music. Marshall is puzzled and a bit fried. Obviously they are memetically infected with something but what does he do about it? As the ranking URIEL member on the site, he needs to figure out. Can he just send them home? Do they need to be quarantined? Mind-wiped?

Sophie: We need to call Mr. Ransom.

Marshall: I know what Archie’s going to say.

Sophie: I am a bit concerned that the music may have infected the four of you.

Marshall: Yeah, let’s get Archie on the phone. We’ll explain the situation to him.

Sophie and Marshall step into another room and call Archie on his secure line at home. Archie groggily answers and Marshall explains the situation as briefly as possible. He pitches three ideas: send them home and reconvene tomorrow; quarantine them overnight until the operation tomorrow; or mind wipe them of the music.

Archie: (exasperated) Didn’t we have a conversation about this individual in particular? About the danger of memetic contamination? Nobody —

Marshall: It could have been handled better, Archie. Admittedly it could have been handled better. But here’s where we are now.

Archie: Alright. I shouldn’t have let — and Charley talked to him — OK, so, you say everyone seems fine.

Marshall: Yes.

Archie: Yes, right. But the timing — the timing couldn’t be worse. But — but mind wipe sounds very drastic, Marshall. Is there any way you can, I don’t know, diagnose them? Put them under hypnosis?

Marshall: That's what I'm talking about. I can — I could hypnotize them into forgetting tune. Like not forgetting the experience but having their mind be unable to remember the tunes themselves. They would know that they heard music but they wouldn’t be able to remember how it went.

Archie: And we have — you say we have recordings of this music?

Marshall: Yes. We made recordings.

Sophie: Yes. We have the recordings. They will help produce a counter-meme, but we’ll need the music to be encoded so that we don’t get the meme as well. I mean, we’re the three memeticists here, we know what we’re talking about. It could be as easy as finding the counter-memec within the music. But we'll need — unfortunately Charley is probably the best person to come up with the mathematical and the — the, uh, cryptography beneath the tunes.

Archie: No, that’s good. It’s good that we have the recordings. We can analyze it. We can use it. But we have to clearly — it can only be listened to in controlled situations. Now, are the rest of the team, are they willing — are they OK with you putting them under hypnosis?

Marshall: I have no idea. They might say no. There’s not a lot — I can’t force them to do it.

Sophie: It seems like they all have some sort of sense of what happened to them. At least, Mitch definitely seems to have some sort of awareness.

Marshall: I could just be blunt with them.

Sophie: I think we should be. I don’t think there’s any reason not to.

Archie: Yes. So, yes, that is what I would recommend. I would recommend you — if you can do that — some kind of hypnosis just to suppress it. Don’t call it a mind-wipe. Just suppress the music centers of their brain.

Sophie: Well, I don't think we should do that. We need them to at least be a be able to understand a tune for tomorrow in case something happens. But Marshall, you've done enough of this, you know —

Marshall: Oh no, we will do this in the least invasive way we can.

Archie signs off on the plan. Marshall and Sophie return to the observation booth, where Marshall explains the situation and the plan. He says that he will not hypnotize Charley partly because she needs to recall the music to analyze it, and because he believes her INDIGO programming will inure her to the music’s memetic effects. Once he’s done, Roger volunteers to go first, followed by Jocasta and Mitch. Marshall proceeds to put the trio into a hypnotic state, where he suppresses their memories of Zeb’s music. He then tells Sophie the command word that will “re-awaken” these memories, in case they ever need to use it. The team disperses. Sophie drives Charley back to Livermore, because Charley says she wants to do some work in her lab before the morning. Everyone else goes home for some much-needed sleep. In her lab, Charley tinkers with her infrasonic device, finely tuning it to optimize its performance against Mansa’s music.

Saturday, March 31, 1973. Day of the block party. Marshall and Sophie stay at Livermore to operate as a “command” post. The rest of URIEL travels to Oakland and sets up in the unmarked van. Mitch, Roger, and Jocasta don superficial disguises to conceal their identities, along with Granite Peak-issued SANGUSH glyphs. Jocasta foregoes bringing any weapons aside from an ikoter pistol in order to mitigate the risk of someone being fatally wounded, just sparking the irruption. Roger is extremely reluctant to go unarmed into the scene; he elects to bring a combat knife with an ikoter. Mitch doesn’t need a gun. He can light people on fire with his brain. The team spreads out to mingle with the crowd and an keep an eye out for odd people — well, especially odd people — or unusual behavior. Charley and Archie remain in the van with the infrasonic device.

As the crowd assembles, the team bears witness to the effects of Archie’s meme. The first thing they notice is an utter lack of local law enforcement. The community has taken it upon itself to close off the streets, set up informal barricades, and provide security for the event. The vibe is good. Uplifting. But! The crowd includes a lot of young, hippie-ish and post-hippie-ish white kids from Berkeley and the surrounding suburbs. They seem like they are kind of slumming it, adventuring in the dangerous inner city, here to see the outrageous act that Moore and Mansa are going to put on. Their minds are open and they are genuinely excited, but they are decidedly not the target audience for Mansa’s message.

As the party gets underway, the mood gets convivial, loose. The food is good (Roger takes this opportunity to finally eat some, like, actual good food). There’s the scent of marijuana in the air. People start dancing to the opening act. The white attendees and the Black neighborhood types don’t really mingle, but they are not at odds with one another, either. It’s a good ol’ block party. Of course, not everyone is having a great time. Jocasta spots a group of Maoists in the crowd — white, mostly, though one member is Black and another is Asian. They look pissed off and ready to either (1) proselytize or (2) start shit. Jocasta keeps a ready eye on them.

Mitch wanders through the crowd, as he does. Nearing the stage, he bumps into Moore himself. Moore seems subdued, less energized than usual, but is still doing the rounds, shaking hands and clapping backs, even with some of the white attendees. Mitch reads his aura and his suspicions are confirmed: Moore is depressed, sad, tired. He’s going through the motions. He’s not feeling it. Still, he has no taint of History B on him. No frog-monsters are latched on his back. Concealed by his glyph, Mitch decides to just linger near Moore so that he can best keep track of him.

Inside the URIEL van, Archie observes Jocasta lingering near the group of Maoists. Suppressing his considerable distaste and his memories of Korea, he does some quick, back-of-the-envelope esmological calculations to determine the best way to deal with them. He figures his best bet is to simply leave them alone. The mood of the crowd — thanks, again, to Archie’s meme — is too positive for the Maoists and their message to have any effect. If they tried to start shit, they’d almost certainly just be met with ridicule, boos, and derision. Charley notices Archie’s observations and offers to turn the infrasonic device on the group. Archie chuckles and says, no. He appreciates her offer but he believe they are generally harmless. “I think most of the people are just here to have a good time. They’re not going to be buying what those folks are selling.”

The attendees start mingling more freely, dancing with each other, sharing drinks and weed. The only person not having a great time, it becomes clear to URIEL, is Moore. In fact, the more enthusiastic the audience grows, the more sullen Moore becomes. He’s not angry, just disappointed — this isn’t what he had in mind. Midway through the performance, the Maoists attempt to start a revolutionary chant but, as Archie predicted, their efforts are met with no success. The crowd ignores them and they eventually shuffle away, disaffected and irrelevant. Interracial harmony has defeated Communism today. Archie remarks to Charley: “Good, wholesome Americans still have antibodies against the virus of Communism.” Charley kind of rolls her eyes, affectionately.

Around 2 p.m., it is time for Mansa. They come on to raucous applause and shouting. E.L. Moore gets up to the mic — another ovation — and Mitch slinks out onto stage carrying a guitar, concealed, in a sense, by his SANGUSH glyph. Moore clears his throat and says:

Ladies and gentlemen, it is just such a thrill to see you all here today. I want to get the the bummer stuff out of the way first. The other night our record label was, uh, was raided by the cops and the feds. (The Black section of the audience boos). No no no no. It’s — everyone — it’s unfortunate but it just meant we had to change our plans a little bit today. We were going to play you a special quadraphonic version of our new album Ikenga, but that and our album covert artwork and a bunch of our tapes and a bunch of our band's assets were seized by those folks. It is unfortunate but we've done, uh (he looks down at the stage, a bit depressed) — we've done everything we need to do with the law enforcement folks. And we didn’t want that to interfere with having a great party here today. And we are having (he looks at the white section of the crowd) quite a party here today. I had some things prepared I wanted to say but they don't really seem to match the moment so. But there is one bit of news we got a call down from LA yesterday and, uh, next weekend, you're going to want to switch on Channel 4 because we're going to be taping a Soul Train with our man Don Cornelius.

The crowd goes ballistic.

Yeah. Yeah. We were taken by surprise, too. (He smiles and looks back at the band). This all may mean that we are going to go out on the road to support the album. But we are never going to forget where we came from, which is right here in Oakland. And all those folks who came from beyond Oakland today, I have to admit I'm touched by your presence. Since we don't have that special album to play — fellas, ladies? What do you say we groove for a little while?

Mansa kicks it off. They play a lot of their old hits, jam with some new-ish funk tunes, but do not play any of the stuff off the Ikenga album. The crowd dances, sings along, chants. From his vantage point on stage, strumming his guitar, Mitch catches a glance at a nearby bar — the “Bucket of Blood” Raiders bar that helped spark Jocasta’s revelation about the kusarikku’s imminent irruption. He sees the name is now the Silver Sash. It has always been the Silver Sash. Mitch smiles. There is no kusarikku. There never was.