2/4

Played: September 11, 2020.

Thursday, March 29, 1973. 3:30 pm. The field team pulls into Livermore in separate vehicles. Jocasta arrives first, with Mitch and Roger in Roger’s car a few minutes behind her. The lights are out in Archie’s office; Sophie is in the glassed-off library. Marshall glides out of the conference room and saddles up to Jocasta, Archie a step behind him. He inquires in a friendly tone, “Hey! So, did you talk to Mitch?” Jocasta confirms she did and that he’ll be here any minute. 

Marshall: Oh great, great. And that all went … smoothly?

Jocasta: I think so. We talked about some good possibilities of getting the tapestry. We’re eager to see what you all are up to here.

Marshall: (eyes dart over to one of the fire extinguishers mounted on a nearby wall) OK! Great, great. Well, excited to have this, uh, this meeting. 

Archie: So – you talked to Mitch?

Jocasta: Mitch is fine, guys. He’s fine.

Marshall: (shoots a knowing look at Archie)

Sophie: (poking her head out of the library) Jo? Everything fine?

Jocasta: Yes. Everything is OK. Everything is great. Everybody – everything’s just fine, OK? I understand that you’re concerned but I think we needn’t be … I think Mitch is fine. Roger’s fine. We’re all ready to move on this. We can talk about this if you need to talk about, but if you’re asking for my professional as an agent, the unit is intact, no one's been compromised, and we're ready to move.

Marshall: (chipperly) OK! OK.

Archie: (shoots an angry glare at Sophie) I thought I said no one was supposed to talk to Mitchell. No one was supposed to talk to Mitchell before he came in.

Marshall: (putting an arm half-way around Archie’s shoulder) It’s fine. It’s fine. These things happen – you know, how are they not going to communicate? It’s fine. We’ll see – we’ll play it out, it’ll be fine.

Archie simmers. Mitch and Roger walk in, and all eyes turn their way. 

Marshall: Guys! Welcome back.

Mitch: Yeah, hi.

Archie: Roger. Mitchell. How are you doing?

Mitch: (robotically) I am fine. How are you?

Roger: We’re cool, man. We’re cool.

Marshall: We’re also good. Did our … uh, concerns get to you via Jocasta? Did she have a chance to talk to you about our thinking over here?

Mitch: Uh … maybe?

Archie: (sternly) So tell us what you learned. All three of you.

Charley: (emerging from a back room) Hi. Everyone’s back!

Jocasta: Yeah. We had a very exciting day. 

Charley: Oh yeah?

Jocasta: Yeah. Would you like to hear about it? Archie, is that alright with you, if Charley hears about our exciting day?

Charley: Mitch! We were worried about you.

Mitch: Oh?

Archie: Jo and Roger – why don’t you tell us what you learned today.

Roger: I’ll go first. Jo, just let me do the debrief thing. Ahem. We all broke up. We went our separate ways. I went to approach Mansa and Moore. They’re pretty beloved, y’know? That neighborhood loves Moore. Like, E.L. is the king of that neighborhood. And he made basically open appeals right in front of everybody to come down to the concert, have a good time. I really got the sense from him that we could connect. So I went in for a direct connection.

Marshall: Like a uh … who you are direct connection?

Roger: Oh no. No. I mean, just like direct conversation. Not picking up or observing. You know: direct contact. 

Marshall: OK.

Roger: Sorry, my spycraft words are not so good right now. 

Marshall: It’s fine.

Roger: We connected, we grooved. I think it gets … we both get where each other’s coming from. So we, uh, sat down and, actually, I had a real good talk out. So, given that I wanted to get a really good connection with him and I was trying to pick up a vibe about how clued in he might be, whether he was really a dupe, how much he might know … I pushed it a little bit further, and I brought out a loa, so that I could basically do a better job of sussing him out. With that, I sort of engaged him on sort of a, uh, fortune telling kind of thing, where we brought up ancient traditions, things like that. I was a little more open about my particular philosophy. He seemed … receptive, so we went and had a little bit more of a jam session about that. So, um, there are many loas and, uh, I don’t know if I’ve introduced you guys to all of them. But this particular one happens to have a little bit of ability to … to tell fortunes. And that’s what we were doing. I don’t think this has happened to us that often for me as an agent but I was granted a vision by the loa – well, actually, it was the loa seeing the vision, I just came along for the ride – and it was of Saturday’s concert. I was trying to look forward into Moore’s future, see how he would do, and it went bad. Like, it was a horror. Nightmarish. Saturday’s concert does not go well. Moore dies. The neighborhood goes wild. Frenzied. The kusarikku comes through and everyone dies. That’s what I saw. And I’m telling you – I can give you details if you really want every last bit of them – but it was really not pleasant. We are facing a full-on irruption and I got to see some of the triggers. So we need to sort of rethink a little bit about our plans, because Saturday isn’t going well and there’s – I think Jo helped me realize when we did a little bit of talking about this, that there’s like a couple of elements of this thing. Not just Moore. Not just the tapestry. It’s the neighborhood, too. And Saturday is really now a major, major deadline. We’re talking like, a full-on like … just, the crowd going wild and tearing people apart, a bloody mess everywhere, and Moore impaled on the horns of this thing. I just … it’s almost too much to talk about. 

Archie glances over in Charley’s direction to evaluate how she’s taking all this. Charley seems unperturbed. Archie offers his office to Charley, if this seems like too much for her, but she politely declines. Archie then turns to Roger.

Archie: Roger, I hope this question isn’t offensive to you, but can you be sure … are you confident that the vision you had was – that you were the source, and not Moore or History B in its genesis?

Roger: Um, alright. Fair question. It wasn’t Moore. It wasn’t History B. It’s wasn’t me. It was the loa.

Mitch: Can I interject?

Roger: Sure.

Mitch: I had a very brief interaction with Moore, and I am pretty certain that he does not himself carry any kind of History B taint. For what that’s worth, which is not a whole lot in the grander scheme of things. But I think it does suggest that if Roger was getting something off of him, it wasn’t coming off – might of been of History B, on him. 

Roger: Sorry. Let me be more precise. This is just what is going to happen. It was being seen. It’s not a story that was being told or anything like that. From this agent’s perspective, sorry, to put it that way.

Marshall: What were the triggers?

Roger: Alright. This was like watching the concert, so the small kids came off the stage … there were some earlier acts, and then Moore comes up. He primes the crowd, talks about how, you know, the new album, that they’re going to hit it – but they’re gonna rock them, that this is … this is gonna blast them. It’s gonna blow their minds. Then, oddly, instead of them picking up their instruments, he – sorry, the DJ – no, sorry, actually you'd say sound engineer – put on their record. Like, he literally drops the needle on their golden copy of their record and that’s what comes with the sound system. As that plays, Moore sort of moves along and plays it, the crowd starts to groove. They get into it. Then they just … they just form this pattern. It’s like starlings, if you’ve ever seen like the flocks of them just moving? And they’re all in locked-step in this crazy madness. They start … there was a couple of police officers there, you know? And they just tear those police officers apart. Together. Like, tear them apart. Just complete and utter madness, but like with this horrifying … order to it? As that happened, the tapestry – because he had unfurled it, from my perspective, it started to shimmer. And then the giant bull-god thing was there. It just picked Moore up and killed him. Impaled him. From that point on, that entity was in control. Then the crowd just started tearing everything else apart. And then it just … spread and, you know, I thought at the time that he had walked through the tapestry. That it felt like the tapestry was a doorway. It still feels like that. But it was more like the bull-man just sort of was … there. And that was Moore’s death. That was the vision granted. His doom. But it was pretty clear that it was all the rest of ours, as well.

Archie: And you shared this vision with Moore?

Roger: Let me put it this way, I tried my best to warn him the path he was on because I was doing fortune telling. I – to tell you the truth – me personally, I was a little bit rocked by this thing and I've been kind of messed up since. But the loa is my guide. He attempted to try and steer Moore a little bit of the path. Moore embraced it once he found that was his doom. He was for it. He was like, this my destiny, this is my martyrdom. He wanted to do it. But I don’t think Moore gets it. I don’t think Moore gets anything about History B. I think he just sees it as a riot that he wants to start, you know. He sees himself as the King. Putting himself in front of a bullet for his people. Mitch sort of – his opinion on Moore being clean, I have the same on. I really think he’s the dupe here. But the dupe that … he’s kind of like a messianiac cult leader guy that, at least in the neighborhood’s eyes, is kind of a problem. 

Archie: But in your vision, it sounds like Moore didn't really do anything. That the key vectors were the record album and the tapestry.

Roger: He was the focal point of the crowd. When I say he got the crowd’s energy going, like that was what he did when he came on the stage, before he started and hit that record? He was their focus. He basically got all of them sort of in that jam … that they never escaped from. But he didn’t make any commands. He didn’t say – like you guys were trying to command me when I was under that record – he didn’t do any of that in the vision. I mean, it’s definitely a possible future. It’s very real and I don’t don’t know how to tell you other than this, and that all of my being and all of my knowledge of what I do tells me this is a truth that could happen and is very urgently heading towards happening. Or has already happened. I don’t know.

Archie: That sounds very difficult, Roger. Our fates are not fixed, though. Through good works we can change them.

Roger: To kick an ass, we could change them. Sorry.

Marshall: What about Mitch and Jocasta? What do you have to report?

Archie: What about you, Jocasta?

Jocasta: (taking out all her sketchbooks and notes, and spreading them out on the conference room table). I went to the venue first. It's an open-air area. It's in a fairly heavily populated part of the city. It's got multiple angles of escape and attack. It's going to be hard to close off, if not impossible. We can talk about this once we're developing an overall strategy.

My personal opinion is that, tactically speaking, this place is a nightmare. It's going to be extremely difficult to do anything once events have been set in motion. So I think our approach should be one of making sure the concert does not happen in the first place. If it has to, or if we can't think of a better way, then we better have backup because – it's just, there's too many, there's too many areas of passage. It's too densely populated. It's too spread out for us to really do anything with a small unit. And I, thankfully, have had no experience in dealing with one of these, uh, bull men myself, but I imagine that they're not gonna respond very well to small arms fire. So if we can at all prevent this thing from happening in the first place, that's the tactic we should pursue.

Marshall: Do you have a proposal as to how we should do that?

Jocasta: Um … I have a few ideas, but if you don’t mind, let’s put a pin in that for now.

Marshall: OK.

Jocasta: I think we can incorporate them into an overall approach but let me get the rest of this out. I also went to Dominoe, the record company. I think Roger and Mitch and I are in agreement that we need to get ahold of that tapestry before it ever has a chance to get on stage, regardless of how the concert goes down or doesn’t go down. That tapestry has got to be removed from anywhere where anybody can get to it or use it. It’s one of the main triggers. Dominoe is a large one-story facility. There are a few main entry and exit points near the front and rear. They – it's pretty secure. There's steel shutters on the loading dock, steel gates on the windows, there's an electric gate in the interior office that people are let in and out with throughout the day. There’s also a closed circuit television and someone is operating it 24/7, so that means we're going to need to think of an approach that allows us to take that person out of the equation. Or persons – I wasn't able to get in and get a very close look because I didn't want them to spot me. But there's at least one person on duty there 24 hours a day. I think that it's very likely that the master for his album is kept there as well. My overall point being that this is a target rich environment. There's a lot of stuff, probably in their secure area, if we can get into it, that is going to be valuable to us. Other than the tapestry. But that should be our number one target. I think it's possible for us to do a break in tonight and get hold of the thing but we also might want to – and this will return to your point, Marshall – we might want to consider pulling some strings and just having the place shut down. Getting a city inspector, an electrical inspector or a fire marshal or something that we can push to shut the place down and just buy us enough time to get in there and raid the vault. There will be fallout over that of course but that will be minuscule compared to letting that tapestry get into circulation.

Sophie: I think Jocasta is very wise to worry about the political fallout.

Jocasta: Yeah, that is something we should think about. I mean, I've brought this up before, but we need to be very careful about how we handle the downfall of this whole situation, because if it looks like Moore – whether he lives or dies, whether his reputation is ruined or not – if this makes it look like he was the subject of a campaign of targeted harassment, that's only going to increase his credibility what we need to do is arrange whatever, we're doing in a way that doesn't look like he's the target of … well, we need to do it in a way that it doesn't look like what it is, which is us. A government agency trying to discredit him. So, you know, we've already taken a step in that direction by shutting down Beth-El. If the masters to the record disappear, if the album is not released, if something happens to Moore and the concert doesn’t go down, people are going to read a lot into that unless we’re very careful. And I know that’s your department, Marshall and Archie, but, you know, it’s like Roger said: the man is like a god to that neighborhood. They love him there. He’s very influential and if our goal is to discredit him, we’re not going to do it by making it clear that somebody has it out for him.

Roger: Even if you think Moore is the lynchpin, it’s the crowd. It’s the bloody crowd that is the thing to be afraid of. 

Jocasta: Absolutely.

Roger: I don’t remember who said it, but this is another Altamont. Possibly literally. 

Jocasta: The vibes there are still quite thick, and I felt a lot of the same kind of vibes when I was drawn to West Oakland in the first place. 

Archie: But it sounds like the scale … I mean, in an ideal world, yes, what would be more effective than making a martyr of Moore would be an unsuccessful concert, an unimpressive album. A record without the obvious esmological effects of the record he has apparently pressed. But given what Roger’s just described, do we have – is this a time –  might this be a time for blunt measures?

Jocasta: I don’t dispute that this is an extremely dangerous situation. There’s no question about it. I mean, that’s why I’m saying whatever we do, that tapestry has to go. I think of the whole thing as a table, right? One leg is that tapestry. Another is Moore. Another is the album. Another is the type of the whole situation, maybe. It’s – you take one leg aaway, the table still stands. We have to take away two or three to make sure it collapses. I’m not saying we have to be subtle because obviously the end game for them, for their side, is a bloodbath. But if we can at all take three of those legs away without it being apparent that that’s what we’re doing, if we can exercise caution, we should. Because the man has a great reputation and, I mean, I didn’t meet him, and I could feel it, you know? So, that’s my report. I concur with everything that Roger said in terms of the urgency of all this. But I think priority number one right now is we get that tapestry in our hands.

Archie: Get it in our hands, or what if we simply destroyed it?

Jocasta: That’s fine too.

Archie: How would Moore and his people react if there’s a fire, uh, there’s a break-in at Dominoe Records and the tapestry is destroyed? Will they go ahead with the concert without it?

Jocasta: Maybe they’ll cancel it themselves, sure.

Mitch: That doesn’t really seem consistent with what we know of Moore – that he would be, like, no tapestry equals no concert. I think he would want to do the concert. I think he would want to do the concert anyway, just based on what we’ve heard from him.

Roger: The thing I want to get across – I don’t know if I’m doing it right – like, the crowd itself is one of the legs of the table thing. Like that neighborhood is primed. It’s not just triggers. So the problem is that, like, anything that can sway the crowd, right, to go and say, Moore got a bad rap, they’d go and have the concert themselves. If you shoot Moore they’re going to be mourning – he’ll still be a focus point. It just – discrediting him – making it worse – whatever, we still have to do something. I’m just really worried, like … you didn’t see it and like them tearing things apart. That was, it was focused but it was them. It was all one thing. And I just –

Marshall: Well, without the tapestry –

Roger: I am very protective of my neighborhoods, I get that, and maybe you’re taking that part of me adding on here, I’m not trying to add on anything. I’m trying to tell you that, like, that the mood of the crowd –

Archie: But you don’t think that it’s the record and the tapestry that made the crowd that way? You think that they are already that way? Is this retro-creation in action?

Jocasta: Absolutely.

Roger: That stuff is hard to tell.

Mitch: Yeah.

Roger: I mean, I think the neighborhood’s been primed somehow. Like, the kids seem to know some of the music already and –

Marshall: So are you saying that if we – that even if we obtain the master of the record and somehow, in the next 36 hours, fix it or infuse it with our own message or take the potency of History B out of it, so that the record is not a trigger, and we abduct Moore and bring him to my facility and brainwash him, and we steal the tapestry and bring it back here, that the crowd will still go insane on Saturday and this thing will happen?

Mitch: Well, what I think it is it’s like if there’s – if there’s a yard, with a mad dog in it, and the yard is fenced in, and there’s a gate and outside the gate there’s a guy who really hates gates and also he has a sledgehammer, and the fear is: is the dog going to get out? You can take away the sledgehammer and the guy is going to pound ineffectually at this gate that he hates. You can take away the guy and there’ll still be a sledgehammer sitting there right next to a gate ready for the next person to come along. But if you take away the guy and the sledgehammer, there’s still a wild dog inside the yard that’s only being held off by this, well, by this gate. The wild dog is what the problem is, not the sledgehammer and not the guy and not the gate itself.

Marshall: So in this metaphor, you’re saying that eliminating three but not the crowd will just buy us time but it will not neutralize …

Roger: But that might be enough. Sometimes neighborhoods come together and then they disperse, right? I mean, the Saturday concert is a focus for the neighborhood, right? Even if they’ve been primed –

Archie: Right, it sounds like the things we can tackle between now and Saturday is the tapestry, the record – hopefully Charley can help us with that – and then the question of what to do with Moore. Once that’s done, we can, you know … there’s a lot we can do to a crowd. There’s a lot we can do to a neighborhood. We can lay down memetics. We can disperse the neighborhood. Ten years from now, this neighborhood could be gone, if that’s what it takes. Urban renewal.  

Jocasta: If I may offer a word here. If – and I’m certainly no expert on this, certainly not that you are Archie – but my sense of how retrocreation works is that it’s worked. The kusarikku is there. It’s already there. We can’t stop it from arriving. It’s already manifested and it’s already conditioning that neighborhood to receive its message. What it needs –

Mitch: I talked to the Oldtimer. He did it. It’s done.

Jocasta: – so what we’re looking at now is just –

Archie: You can’t believe anything he’s said to you.

Jocasta: – what we need to focus on now, though, is making sure the triggers it needs to manifest itself, do not take place. And those are – 

Archie: Yes, of course, right – so – it works both ways, it works both ways! If we stop –

Jocasta: – one of those triggers –

Archie: – those triggers, then the retro-creation will not have happened. I agree with you, we have to go after the triggers, it’s true –

Marshall: We’re not hearing solutions to this, Jocasta.

Jocasta: I’m getting to that!

Archie: Concrete things we can do: tapestry, record, Moore. We can take care of the community afterwards.

Jocasta: What I’m saying is if the tapestry is not there, that's one less thing drawing it to the venue. If there's something wrong with the record he plays, that's one less thing drawing it to the venue. If there's – if he's not there or if his personality is different or if something happens with him, that's one less thing drawing it to the venue. So if it's just a crowd of people hanging out and either seeing nothing or seeing something they're not expecting to see, or something that doesn't trigger them in that way, I don't think it's going to manifest. It doesn’t happen automatically. It happens because the triggers are all there. They all work in conjunction. Now, what we can do is, like I said, we can get the tapestry and I think that’s a big achievement. We get that tapestry, maybe we interfere with the concert happening. Maybe if we can interfere with the sound of the record, that’s another thing. But – and I’ll let it go at this point – but I’m going to reiterate, if we're correct – if Roger and Mitch and I are correct in our belief that Moore is not necessarily tainted by History B, that he is more or less a receptacle for messages being pushed through him by agents of History B – that, I mean, Roger, would agree that the guy is very, very – he’s a visionary! He's a very, he's very self important. He thinks he's a key to making his revolution happen. But I don't think he's doing it from a malevolent point of view I think he's susceptible to particular messages and why this is happening and if that's the case: can we turn him?

Roger: Man, that’s just what I want. I mean, it – I wasn’t trying to harp on about the crowd because I want to make you guys think it’s impossible. I’m harping about the crowd because I’m like, they can be triggered even if – even if particular triggers aren’t good enough, replacement triggers get in there and the thing is that like, Moore could be a good thing in History A. Don’t we want a good History A too out of this? Not just not-History B?

Jocasta: What if we're able to convince him to give a message that that's the exact opposite of what History B is trying to push through?

Marshall: He’s never going to do that willingly. What I want to hear from – I would say three of you but I guess two of you – is what are you going to do in the next 12 hours to obtain the tapestry and if you are the team to take Moore forcibly off the streets and bring him here. Because he’s not going to come here willingly. 

Archie: Tapestry and records, right? Because we think they’re all in the same place, right?

Marshall: Yes. At Dominoe Records. I mean, that’s – so what I want to hear is how you are going to get the tapestry tonight, the record tonight, and how are you going to get Moore here. I do not think he’s coming voluntarily.

Roger: Sure thing, boss man. 

Marshall: So let’s hear it.

Mitch: I’m genuinely confused about the point about the master of the album. Because, is it or is it not already distributed?

Sophie: It’s already distributed.

Mitch: OK, so intercepting the masters – getting that at Dominoe is not going to accomplish anything for us. 

Sophie: If they don’t have a copy of the record – I mean, they’re going to have backup copies.

Mitch: Right. If there’s been a production run, it strains credulity to imagine that they don’t have more records available.

Archie: So there’s nothing special about the gold record, the master tapes? 

Roger clarifies that, in his vision, the version of the record they played was not literally gold, but it was golden – it seemed special, it had a different label than the early commercial copy obtained by Archie. But whether that means the record Moore intends to play at the concert is meaningfully different than any ol’ version of the Ikenga album someone can buy at a record store? He doesn’t know.

Archie: Well, what if we made a version that was different? A swap, basically?

Sophie: A counterfeit record with no kind of hypnosis or anything else in it. They play it, but the thing is, it would have to look exactly like whatever copy they’ve got there, which means we still have to get whichever copy they’re going to use that day.

Archie: Right, so we steal the masters and then … what if there’s like a fire? What if there’s a break-in and a fire? Of course they will be suspicious, but there’s a break-in and a fire at Dominoe Records. Their copies are destroyed. The tapestry is damaged or destroyed. Then they have to go get some other copies elsewhere. That’s where we have to do some sort of ol’ switcheroo. 

There is more talking. Mitch says the commercial record is bad enough, because they know that it puts the listener into a receptive, suggestible state. In that case, Marshall muses, it seems like the team’s priorities are the tapestry and Moore, less so the record, because Mitch is probably right, stealing the masters of the record, with the record already in production, is useless. He also notes that URIEL now “has the child” with an infrasonic weapon to disrupt the music, so maybe it is pointless to steal the record. Roger says they will certainly need the infrasonic weapon as a backup because without the record, it is likely Mansa will just play their instruments, and that might be enough. The record might have extra sound-mixing or whatever, but the instruments and the music itself could be, alone, the problem. 

Roger: Anyway, so, yeah, I get it. I’m listening. I hear you. We have to get the tapestry. If we're there, we should get the records at the same time. And we have to get Moore. But the question is: do we have a black bag and kill him? Torture him? Destroy his entire like?

Marshall: No. We can just redirect him. We just need to get him to see things from our perspective.

Archie: OK, so let’s table the meeting and make the robbery happen. The tapestry and the record, if possible. Let’s make that happen today. Charley has the infrasonic device, but we’ll also get her a copy of the record and get her working on a counterfeit copy of the record. The Moore question, we’ll have to wait. I do want to say one thing, though, which is that I am hearing a lot of fatalism from the team. I’m hearing that History B cannot be stopped, that the kusarikku is already here, that this is the nature of retro-creation. I’d like all of you to think about whose interests are served by you believing that. Where do you suppose that idea came from? That kind of fatalism may not have originally been in your heads and so I’d like you to resist it. (Archie stands up) Mitchell, can Marshall and I speak with you in my office briefly?

Mitch: (sighing) Sure.

Jocasta: Now hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on –

Marshall spins around and shoots Jocasta the deadliest of looks, just complete psychopath eyes.

Marshall: (glaring) What?

Jocasta: Uh, I don’t like to be seen publicly agreeing with Marshall but we do need to come up with a functional plan before we do anything else today.

Archie: Well, we did come up with a plan. We tabled the meeting. You guys are the black-baggers, you need to come up with – your job now is to come up with a plan to get into Dominoe. 

Jocasta: Well, we could use your help with that, Archie.

Marshall: (still glaring) Does Archie look like the type of person who knows how to break into a place to steal a tapestry, Jocasta?

Archie: Anything you need from the city, certainly, if you want to shut down the building, if you want to stage a fire inspection, that can be arranged. You tell me what you need.

Roger: A power loss would be nice.

Charley: You want the power off?

Jocasta: Charley, can I ask you a question?

Charley: Yeah.

Jocasta: If you went to a concert, could you make the power stop working?

Charley: Yeah.

Marshall: (laughing) Well that’s good to know.

Jocasta: But you know what that means? No record playing. No amplifier. No electric instruments.

Archie: It does mean an angry crowd, but I still think that, yes –

Jocasta: But an angry crowd who is angry because the concert isn’t going to happen is a different crowd than the angry crowd who has summoned a bull-demon to destroy their neighborhood.

Archie: Yes, yes. See? No fatalism! Our fates are not written in stone.

Charley: Now, if they play acoustically … will that be a problem?

Marshall bursts out laughing again. Jocasta asks Archie if it’s OK for Charley to assist her and Roger in formulating a plan for conducting the break-in and black-bag operation since he delegated that task to “us peons.” Archie says that’s fine. The trio head off to another area of the office to confab. Sophie asks Archie if she can sit in on the meeting with Mitch; Archie says no, this is a management matter. He’s sorry he was short with her earlier, but her skills are best used elsewhere, namely, pulling up schematics and area maps that may be of use to the field team in conducting the op. 

In Archie’s office, Marshall half-sits on Archie’s desk like the cool teacher. Archie takes a seat in his desk chair like a normal person would sit in a normal chair. He clears his throat.

Archie: So, Mitchell. How are you feeling about the plan?

Mitch: Like, can you be more specific in your question?

Archie: Well, the actions we’re taking against Moore, against this concert, do you have misgivings about any of them?

Mitch: No. I mean … no.

Archie: So you’re committed? You feel committed? You feel like what we’re doing is right?

Mitch: Yes. I understand that you’re concerned that I’m compromised in some way. I don’t believe I am. But I can appreciate that that’s a valid thing to be concerned about. 

Marshall: How would you, Mitch, propose we determine whether you’re compromised or not? If you were in our position, how would you determine whether you were compromised?

Mitch: I have no idea, man. 

Archie: I hope you understand that it’s no judgment on you that – it’s not, you know, to be – memetic infection is no more a judgment on your character or strength of will than catching a cold or the flu.

Mitch: Sure, sure.

Archie: I just – you took pains this morning to tell me that this individual you spoke to was harmless. Just a guy. Just a normal guy. Have you – have there been other times in the past weeks when you have found yourself thinking about our opposition in that way? That they are just harmless? That History B might not be such a bad place? That sort of thing?

Mitch: I wouldn’t say that thinking that a sick old man is harmless is the same thing as thinking that History B might not be such a bad place. 

Archie: No, but you can see the slope from one to the other. 

Mitch: I mean, kind of abstractly, sure. I can see where you’re coming from when you say that. But, um …

Archie: Well, let me tell you this, Mitchell. So I worked in advertising for going on 10 years or more. What do you think every – when I would tell people that I was an ad man, what do you think they said to me? And I don’t mean what some of the people said to me. I mean, to a man, what do you think people not in the business, what do you think civilians said to me when I told them I was in advertising?

Mitch: I’m guessing it’s like, the first thing that pops into my mind to say to you, which is that advertising has no effect on me.

Archie: Bingo. Gold star. That’s right. That’s what they all say. And what I would say to them is, I’m glad you think that, because that’s what makes it work.

Marshall: (admiringly) Whew. That was good. 

Archie: Look, Mitchell. You are a valued part of this team and things, events are in motion so quickly right now that we don’t have time for anyone to be sitting on the bench. What I’d like, if you’re amenable, is maybe when things calm down, you and Marshall can sit down and, you know, just have a conversation about some of these thoughts you’ve been thinking. 

Mitch: OK, like, you know, after the whole immediate threat to life and limb is dealt with, we can – we can talk about that, but I do want to make one thing clear, which is that my misgivings stem from … as soon as I (sighs) … like this morning? When I was, we were on the phone about the Oldtimer. And what I heard from you was this Oldtimer is somebody who should be rolled up and sent to Granite Peak. And that doesn’t sit well with me. Not like, specific to this guy, though, is the thing. There have been … I don’t feel like I need to like beat this drum too hard, but there have been situations in the past where I feel like the human detritus has been treated too lightly by all of us. I mean, I’m not trying to sit here in judgment of anybody when I say this, but I feel like there has been suffering that was not needful. And, uh, when you went to … I forget exactly how you phrased it, but it was something like, you know, we should do with him exactly like we did with Keiner. Something like that. And this is why I don’t think that my feelings are the product of some kind of programming, brainwashing, or infection. Because this is of a piece with how I have been feeling about specifically people like Armando. 

Archie: So you have been having these thoughts for some time?

Marshall: Well, it sounds like he’s expressing more that he has moral reservations about some of our techniques that are not related, necessarily, to our mission. That if we were –

Archie: I absolutely, I absolutely respect that, Mitchell. I’m glad that you said that. We all, of course, have misgivings. And I’m – you know, I feel terrible about how things played out for both Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. And I think that Marshall and I have been talking about – you know, if there are ways for us to neutralize, deprogram, decontaminate unwitting dupes of the opposition without necessarily involving Granite Peak. But if you say you’re having these thoughts for a while, this is the pernicious thing about retro-creation, isn’t it? 

Mitch: OK, fair enough. That’s not a bad – 

Archie: I mean, have you always had these thoughts before today or do you only now have the memory? 

Mitch: That’s … wow, that’s a reason, that sounds crazy, man, but I – I can hear where you’re coming from and it makes a certain amount of sense. I mean, to – look, to use the Oldtimer as an example, arguably he’s a war criminal, right? He has actively worked to subvert life and limb for – if the bull-god comes, he’s going to bear a – and kills all those people, he’s going to be responsible for that. Not solely responsible for that but he’s just … he’s –

Archie: But –

Mitch: But, but, but! There’s a difference between trying a guy for war crimes related to like, I don’t know, Auschwitz in 1946 versus finding some octogenarian in South America and trying him for war crimes last week. 

Archie: Well, they tried Eichmann in ‘60-whatever. We are still hunting down Nazis.

Mitch: I know! I know! I used that example advisedly because – because I feel like there’s a … there’s a statute of limitations! There’s a statute of limitations and what the Oldtimer did, he did 20 years ago, retroactively. 

Marshall: How much do you –

Archie: I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on war crimes, Mitchell, but I think the metaphor is, you know, he’s a soldier. And there are rules about how we behave with soldiers. And I know we don’t always live up to them, but we have these codes for a reason.

Marshall gets up from sit-leaning on the desk and gives Archie a look that suggests that he ease up on the gas a bit. Archie catches himself and nods. They agree that Mitch and Marshall will talk later, once the emergency situation with Mansa is under control. Mitch walks out. Marshall closes the door behind him like that final scene in The Godfather.

Brant

After Mitch leaves, Marshall will slowly shut the door. "Sorry, that unraveled a bit at the end there, so I thought it best to wrap that up."

"He may well be infected, but I think -- given what we know of his background -- there is reason to believe he simply has the same sort of vague moral misgivings that a lot of people in this, uh, line of work do."

"I saw it all the time in 'Nam, I'm sure you did too in Korea. The nation asks a lot of its young men and some are less equipped to make that sacrifice unflinchingly than others."

"But, he's agreed to an assessment — nice work on that — so we can sort it out after this is dealt with."

Rob

"No, thank you for stepping in. I was getting agitated, and that wasn't going anywhere productive. How on earth did we get to Eichmann?" (When Archie started to say something to Mitch about the Geneva Conventions and how we treat enemy combatants, he made the roll to avoid flashbacks, but the words still turned to ashes in his mouth.) Archie pulls himself together. "I swear, sometimes talking to Mitch is like talking to my teenager. I just wish he'd see we're exactly the same! I have the same misgivings he does. What kind of monsters would we be if we didn't? But we can't forget that those misgivings can be exploited."

Brant

"'Exactly the same,' that's interest — " Marshall cuts himself off and leans against the door. "We have a real morale problem here, Arch." He seems to be talking to himself. "Roger is getting, ah, touchy. Mystical. Jocasta, too. Lot of bad vibes overall. And the child is escalating the group's pre-existing tensions." Marshall looks at Archie, "Whatever is going on with you and her … be careful there."

Marshall opens the door. "I need to make arrangements for Moore. Try to keep things mellow here."

Jocasta, Roger, Mitch, Charley, and Sophie gather in the conversation pit. Jocasta pitches her idea based on her surveillance of the site. Step one: overnight, arrange for Dominoe to be shut down early in the morning, either by staging or arranging for an electrical inspection or fire marshall evaluation or whatever. That should buy them an hour or two to get themselves into the building, get the tapestry, the masters, and anything else worth getting. Step one: later that same day, snatch up Moore and bring him to either the Barn or the Mission. Step three: day of the concert, if they are unable to stop the concert from happening, show up with Charley to shut down the power. Step four: have the infrasonic device on hand to disrupt the subliminals in the music in the event Mansa still, somehow, puts on a show. 

Sophie asks what Jocasta proposes to do with Moore. Jocasta says she doesn’t know. If they can turn him, they turn him. Roger says that’s the best option: he’s the focal point, the best way of disrupting this potential event is to redirect him and with him, the crowd’s energy. Other than that, Roger agrees that the plan of cutting the power, breaking into Dominoe, everything else, it all makes sense. Jocasta notes that Roger made it sound like he almost sparked a note of sympathy with Moore in their initial dealings; Roger nods and agrees, “It was close, yeah.” 

“OK,” Jocasta says, “if we can get him here and can actually turn him, imagine what we could do. If he goes on stage and puts out our memetics instead of theirs.” Roger says yeah, that would be great, but given what Maître Kalfu showed him, he doesn’t think they should wait. Can they get the tapestry tonight? That would require a break-in, which is decidedly less safe than staging an inspection or whatever in daylight hours. But then a light goes off in Roger’s head: Williams, the guy who owns Dominoe, is a loan shark. He’s crooked. They can show up under law enforcement cover at 11 pm for a raid. Right? Charley notes that she could cut the phone lines and otherwise “black out” the building, which would essentially isolate everyone inside and avoid any risk of Dominoe employees calling for outside help. Jocasta expresses increasingly stressed-out concern about the dangers posed to Charley should she come with them, because there will almost certainly be dudes with guns inside Dominoe. But, Charley notes, she doesn’t need to go inside. She can “shut off” the building from the outside. 

Roger cuts through the discussion and proposes a solution: they contact their FBI buddies, tip them off to a massive amount of illegal funds and narcotics inside Dominoe, set up a raid for first thing in the morning. The field team will go with them as part of the raid team, Charley can disable the power to buy them more time inside and eliminate the risk of security cameras recording Roger, Jocasta, or Mitch. But what about Moore? Jocasta sighs that this would be easier if someone who could simply get people to do things with this voice would come along, but realizing that isn’t going to happen, formulates a plan where they abduct Moore first, bring him back to the Mission, and then hit up Dominoe. Once at the Mission, Marshall can do what needs to be done to cultivate or turn Moore.

As the field team starts prepping their bags and transport for the op, Roger spots the weird little number display box on the reception desk, with wires running to the main phone. He asks aloud what that is. Charley chimes in: oh, that tells us the number of whoever is calling us. Roger’s eyes go wide. He asks if she’s kidding with him. She says no. It took most of the afternoon, but it was really quite simple, she just had to harness one of the ARPANET terminals. Roger then asks about the infrasonic device. Charley takes it out of her bag and lays it on a desk. They go over the various knobs and buttons, Charley explaining how it works so Roger can use it in case something happens to her. Roger nods along, a little freaked out by the kid, but ultimately starting to warm to her.