4/1
Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation.
Played: February 8, 2021.
Monday, June 25, 1973. After briefly discussing the strange “RFK ‘72” posters discovered by Jocasta and Roger in San Francisco, URIEL splits up: Jocasta, Mitch, and Roger (the “field team”) heads back into town to see if they can find more posters; Charley snatches a poster to analyze in her lab; Sophie goes to the stacks to see if she can find any intel on whether the posters are some kind of Situationist art protest; Archie sets about finishing some paperwork; Marshall returns to the Mission.
On the way back to the Mission, Marshall asks Dave what he remembers about the news of RFK’s assassination:
Michael: Dave brings the Rolls around and opens the door for Dr. Redgrave. “Headed back to Sonoma, sir?”
Brant: “Yeah, thanks Dave.” Once inside and on the road, Marshall staring out the window contemplatively: “Dave — David, odd question, but do you remember where you were when you heard Bobby Kennedy had been shot?”
Michael: “I heard two days after it actually happened. I was in the field on Operation Robin blowing up a People’s Army of Vietnam supply line. Once I got back to base, I heard on Armed Forces Radio about the funeral at St. Patrick’s. Why do you ask, sir?”
Brant: Marshall nods. “Yeah, yeah that makes sense. No reason. Forget I asked.”
Michael: “Sure thing,” he says as he pulls out onto the freeway back to wine country.
Brant: “Oh, sorry — one more question, man. Did you see that comet a couple weeks ago? Kohoutek?”
Michael: At that, Dave takes a glance in the rear view mirror at Marshall. “Comet, sir? No, can't say that I have.” I’m sure Dave is somewhat sanguine about impromptu psych tests from his boss at this point, but this rapid fire 1-2 has kind of baffled him.
Brant: “Oh, OK. Yeah. Alright. Thanks. Hey, why don’t you pop on the radio, thanks.” With that Marshall will light a cigarette and go back to staring out the window.
In San Francisco, the field team discovers eight more posters, including a green version that says “American Magic” and a yellow version that says “Defeat Atlantis.” They call their findings into Livermore shortly after Sophie emerges from the archives to report her findings to Archie: “Nothing. Not a clue. The image on the posters looks to be taken from a standard Kennedy '68 poster, that much I've been able to determine.” She points at a news story with a photo of the poster below on it. “But nothing on any kind of sighting of these before today or anything on fantasies of Kennedy being re-elected in ‘72 in the local arts scene. I’m at a loss.” The phone rings. It is Roger. Sophie puts him on speakerphone and he reveals what the field team found. Sophie sighs and heads back to the archives to research the extremely niche topic of Atlantis.
Tuesday, June 26, 1973. Around 9:00 am, URIEL reconvenes at Livermore so that Sophie can present her findings, which are not terribly surprising as far as Atlantean myth goes — you’ve got your Plato, your Edgar Cayce — except that the concept of “Atlantis” has sort of become a symbol of the “Aquarian Age” among certain segments of the counterculture. To her thinking, Atlantis is an “emblem” for History B, so having a poster in which some alternate version of RFK asks the reader to help him “defeat Atlantis” is an invitation to help him defeat History B. Roger says he’s lost: is it History B, not History B, is it pranksters? Sophie says that brings her to her next point: the posters the field team found, once plotted out on a map of downtown San Francisco, loosely form the perimeter of a circle with its center at Union Square.
Sophie says: “If we wanted to have someone head down there to do some recon, that might not be a bad idea. But that’s just my opinion; I don’t know if anybody else has … I mean, Charley, you have a lab report to give about what you found out about the posters, yes?”
Charley clears her throat and says that everything she found from her analysis of the poster Jocasta obtained suggests History B. She ran the poster through a mass spectrometer and the results of that test showed the poster was normal — that is, it was made of regular paper, was aged appropriately, and so forth — except that the adhesive used to put the poster up was not wheat-paste, but instead a synthetic glue. Most alarming, however, was the fact that the poster she used in her analysis dematerialized inside the spectrometer. That’s not supposed to happen. Basically, Charley says, the reality of the poster was very fragile, so blasting it with high intensity energy destabilized it to the point that it could no longer exist in our History.
Marshall pipes up:
I mean, it doesn’t fit in with anything that we are familiar with, which is: if it’s from History B … the History B that we are aware of does not have Bobby Kennedy running for president of the United States in it. It doesn’t have a “United States.” It doesn’t have any of that. So if it isn’t from our history or History B, this once again points to the hypothetical existence of a History C or some other history.
Mitch interjects and says, “Not necessarily,” but quickly apologizes and tells Marshall to finish his thought. Marshall says that was his thought: if we know to a certainty that these things are of History B because they’re not from History A, but they’re from a version of History B we know not to exist, then doesn’t that mean there’s an intermediary history that is leaking into ours?
Mitch says that one of the things we know about History B is that it’s filled with assholes who are trying to fuck with History A. So maybe those assholes did some research into History A and then said, “Hey, you know what would really screw with these guys? Bobby Kennedy posters about Atlantis.” Perhaps they printed up a bunch of the things and had some of their agents plaster them around the city as part of some magic ritual centered around Union Square. Archie concurs, though he probably wouldn’t use the same language as Mitch. “We know that our opposition take advantage of the hopes and dreams of the counterculture. And so isn’t it possible that this is another one of their feints or tricks? Taking advantage of people’s affection for Kennedy, or really what he represented.”
Marshall says that all makes sense, but that the psychology of such a tactic would be confusing. Roger laughs and agrees: “It don’t work for me. I don’t get it. I don’t think many of the people in San Francisco get it either. So big miss on their part.” Sophie also nods along, noting that the posters are too memetically subtle to have any real effect on the population at large. Marshall then goes on:
What I was going to say is that, yes — that if it is a psychological operation of some kind, or feint as Archie put it, it’s only working on us, in this room, because we understand enough of these things to be affected by it. But people out on the street … it’s so niche of a … of a stroking of the id, to have any sort of real effect on a societal level. I mean, so people are like, “Oh some art students envisioned a world where Bobby Kennedy lived.” That doesn’t weaken enough of the infrastructure to create the sort of event that they would need. Unless they’re doing this just specifically to distract us — people who would know enough of these things to be confused by this.
Archie notes that the posters are not necessarily intentional. They could be, as Mitch pointed out, echoes or reverberations of something else, something that has yet to have happened in the past. Marshall asks again whether that simply points to the existence of a hypothetical “History C,” to which Archie responds: “I just think that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should assume that everything that is not History A is the work of History B.” Mitch notes that the team doesn’t have any reason to think otherwise right now. Marshall concurs.
Only half-following the discussion, Jocasta quietly ponders the obvious: did we kill the Kennedys? Might SANDMAN have had something to do with the Kennedy assassinations? Maybe. Neither she nor any one in URIEL to her knowledge has the clearance to really know the answer to that question, but her mind spins off in a thousand directions. Is Nixon a better president for SANDMAN’s purposes? Well, it depends on whether you think Jack or Bobby was going to end the war in Vietnam. The fact that RFK was the “peace” candidate in ‘68 did set off alarm bells. And why are we fighting in Vietnam? To stop the domino effect — to prevent the worldwide spread of Communism, of course. But there’s also a lot of reality shards and a lot of subduction zones in Southeast Asia. That’s a decent theory, right? We need to be there for ontological purposes, to stem the tide of History B, and anyone thinking of taking us out early, well, that person might be a problem …
She snaps to as Marshall asks if there are any major events going on in San Francisco right now, any “conventions or whatever.” Sophie says she’ll look into it. Roger says he thinks the field team should head back out and try to gather as many of the posters as they can and to better chart out the circle identified by Sophie. Charley wonders aloud what they may be missing; there seems to be obvious connections here but their contours are murky. If this is a message targeted at us, she says, what does it mean that it is emerging in the weekend leading up to July 4, America’s Independence Day? Why specifically “American Magic,” if SANDMAN and URIEL are the ones who wield a kind of magic to stop History B?
Mitch asks if the memeticists in the group think this could be the start of some weird ad campaign, a sort of “teaser” of things to come. After pondering a moment, Archie says the posters are very au courant — they emulate proper campaign posters, but more closely resemble a project that an art student would come up with than true political advertising. Jocasta offers to give a psychometric reading to the posters, but first offers up her opinion that they were put up in high-traffic areas with the clear intention of being seen by lots of people. The Embarcadero. The ferry landing. Bus stops. The post office at the Rincon Annex. The Army recruiting center on Davis Street. “This wasn’t some kid who brewed it up and stuck it on a signpost outside his apartment. These were designed for — these were placed for visibility with the general public, is my belief.” She then removes a glove and touches the “American Magic” poster … but gets nothing. Shaking her head to clear her mind, she tries again, touching this time the “Defeat Atlantis” poster. This poster flood her senses. She has a vision, very brief, of three annular-shaped jet planes soaring through the air above the Rincon Annex. Her heart swells with patriotic pride before the whole scene evaporates, and she finds herself standing again in the conference room at Livermore. Jocasta shares her vision.
Marshall laughs, saying he is loathe to once again bring up the idea of a History C but, “I mean, what do we make of that?” He says his recommendation would be to send the field team back into town to investigate the circle formed by the posters, which they do. Sophie sets about making calls to various hotels within the poster-circle perimeter. Fifteen minutes in, she goes white, thanks whoever she was speaking with on the phone, and tells Archie, Marshall, and Charley that, this coming Friday, there is going to be a giant science fiction convention at the St. Francis Hotel in Union Square. Marshall asks why this news has Sophie so worried. She explains that science fiction conventions strike her as a particularly fertile ground for outré beliefs and strange memes. Marshall proposes sending Archie and Charley to the convention, and muses about setting up a focus group in an effort to see if he can “reverse engineer” the thinking that went into the creation of the posters.
In town, the field team finds a half-dozen other RFK ‘72 posters. They call in their findings, and Sophie reveals what she learned about the convention. The field team heads over to the St. Francis to scope out the scene. Recognizing that the St. Francis is for a “certain type” (i.e. rich white people), Roger elects to drop off Jocasta and Mitch and then drives around the block a few time to observe the comings and goings. He observes various people moving staging materials, panels, booths, and similar convention-type equipment into the hotel through the loading dock.
Mitch and Jocasta enter the hotel through separate doors. Jocasta mills about the lobby a bit before spotting a table with a few pamphlets on it. She grabs one. The cover reads “Westercon SFCon ‘73” and bears a picture of what look likes a tentacled sea monster attacking the Golden Gate Bridge. The back cover depicts the Golden Gate Bridge with a giant moon looming above it, and the face of an “exotic” looking woman wearing an elaborate headdress smiling out at the reader.
Mitch wanders wherever the energy takes him. Over time, he realizes that the atmosphere feels … expectant. Like the evening air before a coming thunderstorm on the prairie. Nebulous and pregnant with possibility. The vibe is not as strong as what Mitch sensed while in Oakland, dealing with Zeb and the Mansa concert, but it is there. Something will be happening, but he doesn’t know what.
Mitch finds the same pamphlet table as Jocasta, grabs one of the booklets, and flips through it to see what is happening and who the VIPs will be. While he’s doing that, Jocasta tracks down a few of the female organizers and, posing as a journalist, asks them questions about the event. They are all very enthusiastic, excited in particular about a journalist covering their con, but they are too strange for Jocasta — monomaniacal about the convention. She has no basis for relating to them and finds it impossible to get into their heads.
After noting in the pamphlet a certain “Andrew Krane” as one of two “guests of honor” (the other being Genevieve Abeille), Mitch heads to the bar to find someone to talk to. He takes a seat next to Jerry Jacks, the convention’s chairperson. Jerry is having a heated conversation with two other people seated next to him. Immediately after Mitch orders himself a beer, Jerry turns to Mitch and asks, “And what do you think of Andrew Krane?”
Mitch: I don’t know anything.
Jerry: (sighing) Well, you’re going to referee this argument, because I will tell you, the minute Andrew Krane stopped writing stories about actually doing incredible things in space, and started writing all these … how do I put it … it’s social sf, and I hate it.
Jerry’s friend: I don’t see why you’ve got to be so old-fashioned about this, Jerry. I mean, you chose him as a guest of honor … him and Genevieve …
Jerry: Yes, I know I did, because I respect everything he did up until 1963. And then, it all went into the trash barrel. I still love him, I still respect him. He’s a giant — a giant — of sf, but …
Mitch: So did he win the Hugo after he went into the trash barrel … ?
Jerry: I would say that the Hugo was the turning point because, Arrest, a decent novel – I will give you that. But it was at that moment he stopped dreaming of the stars and everything since then has been set on Earth. I mean, even the Atlantis series is, yeah, occasionally you get a really good jet fighter action scene, or maybe, like, you know, you’ll get a good espionage scene, but then it’ll be 20 pages about how the crystals of Atlantis work. I don’t care about that! That’s fantasy! I don’t want fantasy, I want hard sf. In any event, I respect him as a giant of the genre. he will forever be an immortal. I respect him immensely, but I don't like the novels he’s been doing the last five years — and I think it’s Genevieve’s influence. That’s what I think.
Mitch: Not enough math?
Jerry’s friends remark that they like Genevieve Abeille, though they have trouble pronouncing her last name (it’s French). Jerry is undeterred: “I don’t want to read about people just beating on drums and having shamanic rituals. It’s not science fiction.” He and his friends descend into further argument about whether the future of science fiction is warmed over psychedelia, and Mitch tunes out, finishes his beer, and leaves the bar.
From Livermore, Marshall reaches out to Donna at Granite Peak to see what sort of information she can gather on human factions or cells that attempt to harness the power of the Anunnaki for alternate ends — to create new histories, make themselves rich and powerful, etc. Donna is able to send him something fairly promptly, consisting mostly of old files and reports of SANDMAN breaking up cabals who tried to wield “magic” to “change the world,” but who were ultimately co-opted by the Red Kings. In her lab, Charley ponders what a science fiction convention could mean from an ontological perspective, and her mind turns naturally to the utopian humanism of Star Trek. Archie realizes he is treading old ground: he used to work with the science fiction community, doing marketing for Star Trek back when he lived in LA. Heck, didn’t he meet that Nimoy guy … or was it Nemoy? Leonard something? At one point?
The field team piles into Roger’s car and hits the road. Roger describes the strange nerdy types who were helping to move the con equipment into the hotel. Mitch reveals what he learned about Andrew and Genevieve. They stop at a bookstore and pick up all the printed works they can find by the two writers. Chief among these is the Atlantis trilogy: Andrew’s magnum opus, a tale of Atlantis emerging from the sea off the East Coast of the United States, which forces a realignment of the Cold War. Now, the polarities have shifted — no more America versus the Soviets, now it is America versus Atlantis, a communal utopian society whose alien magics rival the incredible war-tech of the United States. Pioneering the American war effort against Atlantis is MARPA, the Magical Advanced Research Projects Agency, which, as described by Andrew, strikes the URIEL team as being horrifyingly analogous to SANDMAN.
Upon arriving at Livermore, the field team briefs the office team on their findings. Ideas fly back and forth about what is going on: arguments and questions about the intersection of art and science fiction, the influence of History B on History A (and vice versa), and who exactly Andrew and Genevieve are. Marshall supposes maybe this is all just a “crummy commercial,” a weird artsy ad blitz for Andy’s novels. He flips through the files Donna sent him and shows the group that Andy was known to the FBI through his now-ex-wife, a Communist sympathizer. But none of this information explains why the posters are tainted with History B.
The team goes over the plot and the characters found in the Atlantis series, as well as Genevieve’s fiction, which is strikingly surreal and utopian — real trippy shit on the nature of non-duality, written in a strange way that it can lull the reader into a near-hypnotic state, like an assault on both sides of the brain at once. She can craft a good meme, that’s for sure. Jocasta, smoking and a bit paranoid now, wonders aloud if we did this? Is SANDMAN sponsoring this guy? Is this Andrew Krane person a catspaw for the Russians? If not, how would he know so much about the ontological war, about SANDMAN, about the tools and memetics used by the Anunnaki? After much back-and-forth, the team decides they need to get eyes on these two writers.
As the meeting wraps up, Charley raises a new issue: did the field team speak with any witnesses to the posters while they were out and about? Roger said he had, but that he also was a witness, in a sense, since he too just happened to stumble upon the first poster while walking downtown. This gives more credence, in Charley’s mind, to a theory she’d been percolating, namely, that the posters were retro-creations. But how does one determine if that’s the case, if all you have is subjective witnesses who will always have remembered the posters always having been there? Charley proposes to put Roger under and use some of her technical equipment to probe his unconscious memories, which, she says, will confirm whether the posters were “always” really “there.” Roger bravely agrees.