5/5

Played: October 17, 2021.

Friday, July 13, 1973. Genevieve and Archie wrap up their conversation, with Viv explaining in a roundabout way that she hopes to provide Charley with some tools for better regulating her interactions with the spirit world and her past lives. She suggests looping Roger in on that process, given his background and abilities. Archie doesn’t quite understand everything Viv is explaining, but agrees to let her give it a shot.

Monday, July 16, 1973. The team trickles into Livermore starting around 9:30 am. Marshall arrives with Sophie’s cat Lena in a pet carrier. He finds Charley and places the carrier at her feet. He explains that he learned recently that Sophie owned a cat, so he went to her apartment over the weekend to retrieve it. He figured Charley would be a good person to watch after her until Sophie returns. Charley is delighted and thanks Marshall.

Jocasta is uncharacteristically late and seeming a bit beleaguered. She finds Roger standing outside the conference room, well-groomed, holding a manila folder containing the findings of his investigation from over the weekend. The two go in and Roger updates the team:

We have findings from our surveillance of the main target, whose name we don’t usually mention but who we’ve been calling Fred Cohen. The target seems to have left and gone up to uh, Tahoe, to reside there, leaving his bachelor trailer available for a little reconnaissance. After a careful B&E — I think I’ve ghosted the place — I found what looks to be some plans around real estate in the San Jose area. Given the target’s known abilities, it seems that, uh, he may be attempting to try and create some kind of project to buy up things that are going to be of value in the future. And then there was some, like, weird project name he gave it which I didn’t recognize. Um, a … googolplex?

The team reviews the documents and land survey maps obtained by Roger, which he has started marking with the coordinates of the properties owned by Price. Notably, among the lots starred by Price, by far the largest — with the word “GOOGOLPLEX” written above it — is a Christmas tree lot that he owns. Charley explains to the group that the word “googolplex” was coined by a mathematician back in the 1940s who asked his young son to name a hypothetical number starting with one and followed by a hundred zeros, and the boy came up with the name “googol.” A “googolplex” is a one followed by a googol zeroes; basically, an absurdly high number that couldn’t fit into the known universe. It’s more like a joke than a real number.

Roger turns the floor over to Jocasta. Jocasta lights a Virginia Slim and sighs:

My trip to Tahoe was a little more, uh, unpredictable. When I arrived our target was not yet there; he was still in transit. I watched his home (she gives a brief description of its layout) and then decided I would just wait it out until he arrived — which he did sometime after midnight. I got the lay of the land and decided I would wait until morning when he looked like he was coming up to do some fishing. I decided I would wait until he left the house and then go in and turn it, uh, look for anything I could find of interest. But as soon as he left a woman emerged. I don’t know if it was his wife or just a companion. She was a woman around his age. I was surprised to find her there because I was not expecting him to have a family based on the research I had done. She proved a little hard to shift and I didn’t want to — given his abilities, whatever his psychic abilities are, which we’ll get into in a moment, they seem particularly potent and I didn’t want to risk triggering them by, uh. doing anything drastic and bringing too much attention to the place. So I gave her a shot with the ikoter. She was strong enough to resist it — not completely, but she didn’t go down as easily as she should have. So whether she’s got any ability or whether she’s just a particularly strong-willed person, I don’t know. I was able to give her a little post-hypnotic suggestion. I don’t think she’ll give anything away about me being there but it gave me a very short period to go through his house. I didn't see anything immediately suspicious but in his study, I suppose, he’s got a little shrine to his career — a little, you know, honorarium to himself and his work. While I was there I took his badge and then I left because I did not want to be around if he came back. You know, there was obviously … I had to give her some hypnotic suggestion, I didn't want to be around to see anything that might put him on my trail. So I got way out of town and I did a psychometric read on the badge and something fairly extraordinary happened.

As you know, I have been experimenting with the use of, uh, entheogens to enhance my own psionic abilities and that — whether that coincided with his psychic ability to see the future or whether it deliberately opens a window with which we can communicate … I was able to see an extremely clear vision of him, I would say about 12 to 15 years ago, when he was a cop in Burbank. Uh, I just got back last night because I, you know, needed some rest and I wasn’t able to come into the office over the weekend so I have not been able to research this but he was involved in some way — whether he was assigned to the case or whether it just happened on his beat — to something called the “La Cienaga Strangler.” I haven’t been able to do any research on this case — that’s on my agenda for today — but apparently it was a mass murder case in Burbank in the late ‘50s or early ‘60s, and he had had a vision of the future that gave him some important clues to the identity of the killer, but because these were attained through psychic visions he couldn’t get anybody to believe him. He couldn’t get anybody to accept that he had seen the killer. And he’s carrying around an enormous amount of guilt and shame over this. So how this has affected his future career, that’s, again, going to be some work to do today. But I saw the opportunity to possibly defuse him as an antagonist and maybe make him sympathetic to us as the … when he saw me, he didn’t know who I was. He was having a vision he couldn’t understand. I believe he felt it to be some kind of religious vision. I was able to imply that at some point in the future he would be at SRI and that, when he did so, he should make contact with Mitch.

Mitch interrupts: “With Mitch?” Jocasta confirms, yes, with Mitch, but clarifies that she did not provide him with a name. Instead she told him to be on the lookout for “the man with the cards.” So Mitch may, at some point, want to deploy the Tarot at SRI.

Jocasta goes on: she does not think that Price is necessarily hostile to URIEL or SANDMAN. Nor does she believe he has any idea who Jocasta is, since the first time he “saw” her she was in disguise, and the second time, she was wearing a ski mask. Otherwise, she has not been able to ascertain much about him, aside from the self-loathing associated with his inability to stop the Strangler. She posits that he is at SRI partly in order to help him get a better handle on his abilities and partly to process his feelings of guilt. Roger asks what all this has to do with a real estate scheme. “He sounds like he’s still the kind of guy who wants to make himself rich.” Jocasta responds, “Sure. But a person who wants to make himself rich isn’t necessarily a person who wants to obliterate our history. So that might help us figure out whether he’s a pawn of the enemy or whether he’s just a guy who wants to use his abilities to get loaded.”

Archie reminds everyone that the team’s remit is to take a look at what SRI is doing, to keep an eye on them, and certainly to keep an eye open for potential movements or interference by the Anunnaki. As far as he understands it, however, he hasn’t seen any evidence of their hand in this. That said, URIEL’s other remit is to monitor for people with genuine paranormal abilities — “the real deal,” as he puts it — because ideally such individuals should be under SANDMAN’s umbrella, not some other organization’s like the CIA. Jocasta notes that there may also be a connection between SRI and Charley, given what her vision revealed about the chip in her brain.

Archie: “Price … well, we’re not supposed to call him ‘Price’ for some reason, so, uh, Cohen, he’s not a test subject, right? He’s there in some security capacity?” Jocasta confirms: he may have started as a test subject and been “graduated” to some other role. Roger points out that Price still has clear connections to the police, explaining how some local cops drove by Price’s property while Roger was casing the joint — plainly, they are watching the property for him while he’s in Tahoe. Jocasta wraps up by stating the she’s seen no evidence that Price is affiliated with, or an agent of, the Red Kings.

Marshall asks Mitch how things are going at SRI. Mitch says it’s too early to say. They’ve just given him some dumb tests. Marshall says that increasingly this operation seems like a misdirection by the Librarian. “I mean, it’s a psychic cop. How many of those does SANDMAN have? Like, so we recruit him? I don’t know. Who cares? Like he’s gonna make millions of dollars selling land in northern California? That’s like the great American tradition. That’s what made California. Like, what are we doing here? I don’t see any hand of the Red Kings. I don’t see any hostile intelligence agency like the Russians or the Chinese. It’s just a dumb cop who can see the future trying to get rich with a bunch of idiots who don’t know how to do standardized testing.” Jocasta notes that, if she could see the future, it wouldn’t benefit her at all if she didn’t know what to look for. So maybe somebody is telling him what to look for. But Marshall notes that Price has had 15 years to cultivate his abilities, maybe he’s just gotten better at it. He concludes that maybe this operation isn’t worth the resources they’re devoting to it.

Jocasta and Marshall go back and forth. Ultimately Jocasta agrees that maybe URIEL does not need to put a ton of resources into this, setting aside the possible Charley connection. But she says it makes sense to keep Mitch at SRI since Mitch is the team’s best method of feeling out History B. Archie agrees. “I put a lot of stock in Mitch’s horse sense, his ability to read people. It makes sense for Mitch to keep going to SRI, at least until he meets Price and is able to get a read on him.” Roger also observes that they’ve only been at this a week-and-a-half and they’ve already turned up at least two psychics. He’s powerful, and he’s worth watching. Archie urges the field team to be especially careful going forward, given Price’s abilities. If the team is going to approach him, they need to do with care. Marshall laughs at this, remarking that Jocasta has structured things in such a way that Price is likely going to be singularly motivated to hunt her down, given the theft of his badge and what Jocasta did to his wife or lover. Jocasta said that was part of her plan. Classic misdirection. At the end of the meeting, Marshall informs the team that he cased Sophie’s apartment over the weekend and relocated her library and some other things to the secure archives. He says if anyone wants to look through the boxes, they’re in back.

The meeting adjourns. Marshall flags down Jocasta and hands her the needle and the broken pen he found at Sophie’s apartment, wrapped in a handkerchief. He asks, in a low tone, that she use her psychometric abilities to get a reading on them. Jocasta says she’ll get on it later in the day, after she’s done some research on the La Cienaga Strangler. She then seeks out Viv, and asks her if she can provide Mitch with any coaching on how best to interact with Price, given what they know about him. Viv thinks for a bit and works up a profile of the man. She advises Mitch and Jocasta:

So here’s the thing, a man like that appreciates an audience but he doesn’t respect it. So he [Mitch] can’t get inside of him that way. Like, he could get close to him but he can’t get inside of him. Which might be enough. It depends. Like, if Mitch goes and plays the fool and lets him regale him with stories, he’ll stay under his radar because this is all bluster. It’s entirely fake. It’s a thing that he puts on and it’ll allow Mitch to extract data as long as he keeps himself from shining too brightly. But that won’t be anything authentic about this man, so that’s like the layer of protection is keeping you from actually accessing the information.

Jocasta asks what motivates or entices a man like Price, and Viv explains:

A young guy who he sees as an analog to himself, who actually has these powers, who could be capable of doing what he was unable to do. It doesn’t even need to be an active hero, like if you were to feed him little pieces of like … maybe you have prophetic dreams, maybe they’re about danger situations. It might be enough to give him ideas without needing to concoct anything because the more lightly held it is the more he’ll create his own, which means the more he’ll fill the space with the information that you’re actually looking for.

Mitch says he doesn’t like to talk about his dreams. Viv tells him to just make them up; it doesn’t really matter, Price won’t be listening for authenticity anyway. “You’re a clever guy.” Mitch says that’s nice of her to say, and heads off to SRI. Viv then departs to locate Roger before he heads off to monitor the SRI situation. She asks Roger if he would be willing to provide Charley with the training she needs to protect herself from the forces she’s dealing with. Roger laughs: Charley’s way ahead of her, she’s already been to his apartment to talk with Papa Legba. They make plans to collaborate on figuring out their next steps, and how best to present it all to Charley. Roger remarks that maybe she needs a better father figure. Sick burn.

Roger, Jocasta, and Charley research Price’s properties in more depth. They determine that, in addition to the “googolplex,” there are six other locations marked by Price. Half of them are present-day computer companies. One is the Hewlett-Packard Campus near Stanford. Another is owned by a company in Cupertino called Four-Phase Systems. The other three are vacant lots and farmland. Charley suspects that the three starred properties that remain undeveloped are property most important to Price, since a single retired cop (obviously) cannot afford property that is already owned by companies like Hewlett-Packard. She suggests that Price likely used his abilities to determine what properties are going to be valuable some day and then had to seek them out on his own using maps and in-person scouting. However, none of the other properties identified by Roger have anything like “googolplex” written over them. That starred property is the only one marked with actual writing. Otherwise, the area in which Price is primarily gobbling up land is the property around his trailer.

Archie wanders in and suggests they put up a map of the area and start drawing lines between the properties to see if they form any sort of geometric patterns, as occurred with the RFK posters. Heading back to his office, Archie sets himself to his next project: trying to figure out, in esmological terms, what exactly is going on in northern California to explain all this recent activity with History B. He decides he may contact Andrew Krane to discuss some of these things.

Roger heads off to Menlo Park to act as backup for Mitch. On the drive there, he listens to breaking reports about the existence of a tape-recording device found inside Nixon’s Oval Office. At SRI, Mitch takes a series of redundant, simplistic tests. They discharge him at around 4:00 p.m. and he heads down to catch a shuttle bus back to the main SRI campus, which resembles a small community college plunked down in the midst of a residential neighborhood, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. As he walks through the front door of the admin building, he observes CCTV cameras everywhere. Mitch gives his information at the security desk and is then escorted through a maze of hallways to a waiting room. His next test will be for visual acuity, which they are setting up now. Mitch waits. As he does, he detects, very faintly, the hum of History B channeling through the floors and walls of the building. It is dim and very weak. Mitch gets the feeling that there was either something (a) very powerful, ontologically speaking, on this site a very long time ago and it is now beginning to fade or (b) encapsulated or encased weakly within the building. Both options strike him as viable.

A tech fetches Mitch. Neither the tech nor any of the other people Mitch is able to observe carry any indicia of History B. As Mitch walks into the testing room, however, he notes that one of the keyboards faintly radiates History B energy. Mitch cooks the keyboard with his mind. Apparently, without the keyboard, they cannot run the visual acuity tests, so the techs dismiss him and say they will reschedule for the next day. Mitch acts nonchalant and heads out. As he walks down the hallway back towards the lobby, he spots Russell Targ, Patrick Price, and Harold Puthoff down by a water cooler. Mitch is able to determine that Price is not illuminated, but has trouble reading his aura. None of the three carry any History B taint, however.

Puthoff sees Mitch and the group approaches him. Puthoff already knows who Mitch is and extends a hand: “Mr. Hearst! I’m really glad to run into you. We’re going to be talking tomorrow, but this right here (he gestures to Price) is Pat Price. He’s one of our subjects and trainees here at the project.” Mitch says, “Oh, so you’re the guy, cool,” and Price responds: “Nice to meet you. Is it MJ?” Mitch says he goes by MJ or Mitch, whatever. Puthoff then chuckles that they’re really excited to have a new person to bounce ideas off of, mentioning this “really cute chick” who was here the other day. Mitch refrains from lighting him on fire. Puthoff concludes by telling Mitch he’ll be meeting with both himself (Puthoff) and Targ tomorrow.

Mitch wanders the campus, someone apparently having forgotten to act as his escort. As he does, he triangulates that the History B energy appears to be centered around the Project SCANATE offices and that it is running, very weakly, through the phone lines coming into and out of the building. Whatever held the taint together, it is apparently located inside the electrical grid, though it diffuses and disappears after only about 50 or 60 feet. Mitch finds this disturbing. He wanders until he feels he’s fully charted out the perimeter of the energy field, and then departs to rendezvous with Roger at their designated location. Inside Roger’s car, with more coverage of the unfolding Watergate story playing over the radio, Mitch tells Roger what he learned:

So the good news is I don’t think that, like, history is in any immediate danger of being erased by these people or anything like that. I don’t really know exactly what’s going on. I got a quick look at Price, not enough to get very much information at all. Maybe I’ll get another bite at that apple at some point. I know he’s not — there are some things he’s not, and that’s good. Like he’s not an active agent of the Red Kings, for instance. Pretty confident on that one. I mean, pretty confident on that one.

Roger asks if anyone else in the facility is tainted. Mitch says no, but there’s potentiality. “There’s this threshold that gets crossed, and suddenly there’s been a cult there forever, right? So there’s, you know, if suddenly-there’s-been-a-cult-there-forever is like a hundred, and background radiation is like a two, then this is a six. You know, noticeably above baseline but it’s still a long way from scorpion men popping into existence.” Roger tries to clarify, but Mitch is vague. He says that, ideally, URIEL would have a guy like him to keep an eye on the place. But they don’t have a guy. They just have him. On the other hand:

Maybe it would make sense if we had, like, a list of sites that are like this — because this is not the only place like this — I mean, you know that, and then maybe like once a week I should be driving around and checking on all of them. Maybe I should be doing that? Has that occurred to anybody? That’s me right now. Roger, you’re smart, what do you think?

Roger says if there’s a thousand sites he’s not gonna be able to hit them all, man, but that he could always come to Altamont with him to race sometime. That’d be a good start. Mitch says Altamont’s a great example! That’s a place that’s higher than a six, though he doesn’t want Roger getting too wedded to the idea of six meaning anything. He just pulled that number out of his butt. Roger pauses at this and, going back to the situation at SRI, confirms that no one is going to die, right? Mitch laughs and says, “Well, we’re all gonna die.”

“Today?” Roger asks.

“Not today,” Mitch confirms. But, he says, “what this reminds me of is the thing — this is what this reminds me of, is when we were checking out Krane for the first time and we saw those guys. You know, Carl and Richie. And they went off and we were like, ‘Oh we don’t need to worry about that. But we don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know what’s going on here. We’re missing something!’ And the thing that we missed is those guys that just wandered off. And, you know, then we didn’t figure out what was going on until it was, like, almost too late. And I don’t think that there’s that kind of pressure here. Yet. Maybe some day. Not here yet.” The two of them discuss Mitch’s ad hoc History B taint numbering system and their plans for the next day before taking off.

Back at Livermore, Jocasta wraps up her day’s work researching the La Cienega Strangler, writes up her findings, and then finds a quiet place somewhere. She centers herself and attempts to read the needle and the pen from Sophie’s office. She is flooded with emotions of pain, physical pain. Probing further, she catches a vision of Sophie giving herself a makeshift tattoo. She appears to have been inking herself with an Anunnaki glyph, but also testing herself to see if she could resist doing so to completion. Coming to, Jocasta heads off to find Marshall.