Too Many Clubs
April 20, 1974 | Saturday
Leonard
Around 9:30 AM, the Venture Toons direct line rings — the single-line one on Archie's desk, that the secretaries gossip about half-jokingly sometimes — and Jocasta is on the other end, back in professional soldier mode despite sounding a bit haggard. "Morning, chief. The hydra's in the cage."
Brant
Archie’s assistant clicks in. “I have Dr. Redgrave, patching him in.”
“Well, it sounds like more retro-creation bullshit, Arch,” Marshall says immediately, not even saying hi. “I’ve got Sophie here with me. We met with one of Jolly’s old assets — Black lecturer, used to do some work with him in ‘Nam — and he makes it sound like DeFreeze was subject to some serious neurosurgery and memetic rehabilitation. He got contaminated with something. The whole interview was strange. Anyway, the coincidences are fully cascading now in a way that seems — you know, temporal reversal theory, etc etc.” A pause. “Oh, sorry, is there someone else on the line?”
Rob
Archie confirms that the convoy went smoothly and that Jocasta can speak freely. Assuming she can, he asks her, "Are you safe? What do you need from us? How soon can we extract you?"
To Marshall, he says: "Retroactive creation, right. Things do feel like Oakland: buckets and spades. Tell me again why we don't just get Jocasta and the Hearst girl out of there? Roll them all up and stop DeFreeze and his cronies from pulling off whatever they're planning?"
Brant
“Yes, right. Jocasta — Arch and I are running a lot of cover for you. You know SOP in these circumstances but we’re giving you slack in the interest of thinking differently. What’s your plan? Where’s this going? What’s your read of the girl?”
Leonard
"I know, Marshall. I appreciate your trust. But I think it's going to pay off," Jocasta responds hesitantly, gathering her thoughts about everything that's happened over the last few days. "I agree that there's a lot of Oakland happening with the SLA — a lot of Mansa, I would be willing to bet. I can't definitively say how but I'd bet a few of them were connected to that crowd and picked up some of the B energy they were carrying around. That said, they're mostly a bunch of lefty intellectuals drunk on their own bullshit. I don't think we're going to get much out of them besides bafflegab, and I get big rat energy off of DeFreeze — and he's at least raping her. He can collect a bullet to the head any time and I'd be happy to deliver it."
She pauses for a thoughtful moment to explain the Patricia Hearst of it all, knowing she's in deeper emotionally than she should be. "There's something...special about the heiress. Something we maybe haven't seen before. Whatever they did to her, whatever combination of abuse and brainwashing and whatever Red King taint they're carriers for, it's transformed her. She's got a package of psychic awareness, spiritual insight, a kind of instinctive understanding of the fluctuating nature of our history — she might be an incredible asset, but she's very fragile, and it won't take much to lose her. She's absolutely connected to all the Bohemian stuff; she's got some persona she's generated...or unearthed?...based on that poem, and she's got the Hearst blood, and Sterling is in her somehow. We've picked up a passenger, Elsie Martinez, who was connected to them too, directly, not abstractly. And...I've got some connection, too. I pulled a bit of Jack London back with me from, from somewhere else. Not all of him, not physically like Bierce, but...he's inside of me. She may be the key to what they did, how they broke away from our history, from their history, and why it didn't last and broke down into whatever we have now."
It doesn't take people with as much insight as Marshall and Archie to tell that she's pretty scattered about what's been happening, but they can also tell that she believes it, that she's seen something that is looming large in whatever is going down right now. "I'm sorry this isn't harder intel. It was tough getting in with them, and she's got me thrown for a loop a little. But my advice is, we need to wait it out just a little, handle her with kid gloves. She has something planned for down here, for LA, and it's way beyond whatever little tin-soldier stuff the rest of them are thinking about. But I think if we isolate her too soon, if we just take the rest of them out and turn over our cards too quickly, she might get spooked and clam up. You should listen to what Roger turned up, too...I think, uh. Look, I might be too close to this right now. I'm sorry. But it's very big. I can feel it. If we can figure out a holding pattern, I'll give you a full debrief in detail."
Brant
(Can I make a Psych roll or something to try and gain some insight into what's going on with Jocasta internally?)
Michael
Absolutely, you do a Psychology-18 roll and I'll also roll Detect Lies secretly.
Inverarity
>> SUCCESS by 4
Michael
(Leonard can flesh this out as much as he likes, and given that Jo is sort of free-associating and freely expressing what's been going on in her head and with Patricia, I'm going to say there's no Will roll to resist the Psych attempt.)
It does seem evident to Marshall that Jocasta is deeply psychically enmeshed with Patricia right now. The fact Jo concedes that History B influence might be part of the stew of circumstances that led to Patricia developing this suite of abilities and implicit power over the SLA shows that Jo's still operating under Sandman protocols and not tainted with B herself. The fact that Jo doesn't specifically know what Patricia's plan is shows that Jo is going off of faith and instinct right now, which... again, skirts the line of old SANDMAN thinking but is more in line with what URIEL said we wanted to be up to after ALLOCHTHON. The idea of profound trauma unlocking psychic or mystical abilities, well that's right in line with all URIEL's research and experiences in the field: at the St. Francis, in our other investigations and elsewhere in the literature, such as it is. Whatever the case, Marshall can tell that Jocasta has deeply identified with and is acting as an advocate for socialite, art student, revolutionary, mystical poetess and suspected double-murderer Patricia Campbell Hearst.
Jo is being truthful and honest and forthright about all the circumstances here: about Patricia's influences, about George Sterling and Jack London and Elsie Martínez and Ambrose Bierce, about Jo's own instincts saying that Patricia might be capable of something big or, at the very least, explaining what happened with the Bohemians the first time around and how it all got reversed.
Leonard
[Yeah, that's about the size of it. Funny enough, it's too soon for 'Stockholm Syndrome' to have entered the psychological vocabulary -- the event that triggered it only happened in 1973, and wasn't officially proposed by psychologists until '82 -- but I'd just add that while Marshall thinks it's clear that Hearst has developed feelings of good faith and association with her captors, Jocasta seems to be developing similar feelings for Hearst, who's her captive! Whether this is just her being her just having a lot of natural empathy or something more pathological, though...] (edited)
Brant
"You sound especially, ah, taken with the Hearst girl, Jo. Moreso than we've seen with others we've encountered, like Bernadette. Why?"
Leonard
"Like Bernadette?" Jo snaps, instantly regretting the sharp tone in her voice. "She's nothing like Bernadette."
Marshall can hear her steady her breathing, trying a quick meditative technique for calm and focus. "Most of what we've faced so far has been explicable in terms of both effect and motivation, right? Even if it's taken us a while to see it. The CWG, corrupted by good intentions into perverting the mission. Moore, Bernadette, Carl and Ritchie, Keiner, even Frank -- tempted by the Red Kings, who fed their ambition or power-lust or ego. Hearst is different somehow. She's not immune to those factors; no one is. She's as vulnerable to the other side's built-in weaknesses as anyone, and I'm still not convinced she's not planning something truly malevolent. But she's manifested real, actual power. She's been subsumed into an almost complete identity disintegration, and the result is a conflicted but astoundingly integrated new personality. She communicated with me psychically with almost no prompting and she's clearly outmaneuvered some deep brainwashing techniques by the SLA; she's in charge and she knows it, and they don't. She's in touch -- spiritually, materially, genetically, psychically -- with not just the forces, but the individual personalities, that we have every reason to believe succeeded in launching a counter-ontoclysm less than a hundred years ago. She's not just some dupe or striver who happened to be good prey for the Enemy. She's something special." She sighs.
"Look, Marshall, I'm not stupid. I recognize that there are profound similarities between Hearst and I, and I'm aware of what influences those similarities might have. But if we're being smart, we shouldn't just...go back to the old ways, just roll her up and throw her in the trash with the rest of them. I can't see clearly what she wants, and it could be something terrible, and I'm willing to do what has to be done if that's the case. But let's, let's keep thinking differently. Let's see what we can find out from her before we decide to return to routine."
Brant
“By no means am I advocating that we return to the ‘old ways’!” Marshall says, picking up more defensiveness from Jocasta than he expected. “We must strive to think differently at all times, in all things — but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think clearly. You seem to have gone ‘all in’ on Hearst, to a degree that seems inexplicable to those of us looking at this situation from the outside. You say she is special but we run up against special people all the time; you’ve personally put a dozen or more of them in the ground. I’m not casting aspersions or calling your judgment into doubt! I’m simply trying to get a better handle on what is happening here. It is a fine line between thinking differently and making mistakes in an effort to overcorrect. We can’t afford any failures right now. If we fuck this up we’re going to find ourselves — all of us — in a hole at Granite Peak.”
Leonard
There’s a short pause. When Jocasta speaks again, there’s a rote element to what she says, as if she’s said it before, under similar circumstances.
“My professional opinion is that we should hold off on engaging in any disruption of the SLA and continue monitoring them to gain clarity on their plans. Someone should stay embedded with them in order to do so. If you think I lack the objectivity to continue on that role, it’s your prerogative to replace me.”
She hangs up.
Brant
(Is it possible to dial back the number she’s calling from? I doubt Jo would answer but Marshall wants to try getting her back on the line.)
Michael
(We got Charley's caller ID doohickey at the office in LA where she originally connected, so if Archie is quick enough on the dial...)
Leonard
She’ll pick up
Brant
(I don’t want to presume Archie would do anything, Marshall would ask whoever is on the line to get her back on the phone but since he can’t do that himself, we’ll see what happens.)
Rob
When Archie and Marshall are alone on the line, Archie will say, "What do you make of that? Is she okay out there?" (But then, sure, he'll call her back for more.) "Let me try to talk to her."
Brant
“She has me worried, I won’t lie.” Marshall lets Archie take the lead.
Rob
Assuming Jo comes back on the line, Archie tries to calm any troubled waters. "Nobody's questioning you, Jocasta. We just want to keep you and Miss Hearst safe."
"Look," he says, "when I say 'why don't we roll them up,' I'm not talking about going in with the FBI, guns blazing. I mean why don't we — URIEL — take hold of the situation? Nobody needs to, you know, go under the knife."
"Otherwise, what's the play here? Wait for these deluded radicals to trigger a reality quake, and hope it works out better for them than London and Beirce? 'Thinking differently' doesn't mean doing nothing. I'm uneasy just 'monitoring' when retrocreation is in play."
"Say, that reminds me!" he says to Marshall. "The Clampers know more than you might think. I'll tell you about it after." Back to Jo: "You've obviously connected with Hearst. That's good. So can you turn her? Find out directly what she's planning? Make her an asset?"
Brant
"And Jocasta," Marshall can't help himself, "you must understand my questions are not coming from a place of accusation. If you feel we are judging you, or doubting your abilities, we are not -- so query where those feelings come from. My only concern is the safety and success of our group. The Club. You're a part of that."
Leonard
"Understood," Jocasta says, only a bit brusquely.
"I think we can turn her, Archie, yes. I think we have to. But we have to be careful, that's all I'm saying. I don't know how much of a role the other SLA cadre had in this other than activating her power — intentionally or otherwise — but I do know they're not particularly instrumental to her plans now, if they ever were. That said, if we just get rid of them and spring the whole truth on her, she might not be able to handle it, or more likely, I'll lose her trust and she'll tighten up. I've very quietly and carefully introduced some of it into our talks, but until we get a better handle on her mind-state...well, this is just a hunch, but she might be capable of a lot more than even I've seen, and I've seen plenty. I'm not advocating doing nothing, but I think it might be wise to keep up the façade for at least a day or two just to figure it out. You've both done enough of this kind of work to know it can't be rushed."
She cups her hand over the phone and mutters a question to one of the SANDMAN staff near the receiver. "I assume Roger hasn't checked in yet. I think he's probably got a few things to say about DeFreeze. And speaking of a reality quake, I think another reason to be cautious is the possiblity of what might happen if she and Martinez and Bierce get together. I'm sure they did what they said they did, and I think their intentions were good, but until we can be assured of both their plans and their abilities, it could be playing with dynamite. And I include myself in that caution as well, now that I've pulled a piece of London from his history."
Michael
(Hey, Leonard, you want to give me a Spirit Empathy (London)-16 roll real quick, pivoting off something Jo just said?)
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 1
phew!
somebody's a little upset today
Michael
"In every future I saw, every future I wrote, I witnessed the power relations of master and slave abide and return. It was as if it were impossible for humanity to work in harmony with each other, as if we collectively craved the whip—or the chance to wield it—no matter our race or social class. Yes, George and I and the Crowd swept the masses—millions, billions of imaginary men, women, and children—into plague-pits, torture-chambers, mass slaughters at the hands of the Oligarchy's paid brutes: playing pieces with which we could quantify the Struggle and find a solution." London looks pleadingly to Jocasta, as if for absolution. "I have to believe it worked... if only for a little while."
So in that dream which connected Jocasta up with the London memeplex—Jocasta exploring an astral/dream zone somewhere between The Scarlet Plague, her own "memories" of the 21st century, and maybe an actual glimpse of a possible 2024?—Jo realized (and I believe this has come up in hints and vague foreshadowings up to this point, maybe from Ambrose at Shasta, etc., but with Jo's connection with all things London, this will become clearer) that Jack's role in the Bohemian cabal was as esmologist, navigating all the possible futures that the Bohemians were playing around with and picking the "fittest" one.
London's "sf" novels in the post-'quake timeline (starting with The Iron Heel from 1908) reflect post-'quake Jack's memories of future histories he glimpsed in the old overwritten timeline. Which means that Jack, (and by extension the rest of the Crowd) were definitely tangling with big-picture geopolitical issues in their brief 20-year timeline, testing the limitations and boundaries of the futures they could create. Many of these novels depict disasters of one kind or another; the worst-case scenarios, where the eternal problems of mankind like the class struggle lead to atomization and disaster. If George's memories of the old timeline were all scarlet djinns and witches and gnomes, draughts of pure poetry and Fancy, and if Ambrose's were all about memories and histories and lives being erased (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An Inhabitant of Carcosa), Jack's were instead the wrong turns the Crowd didn't take. To do what Patricia wants to do, if she does want to bring the old Bohemia back, she'll not just need people with memories of the old timeline, and Illuminated to move the world, and memetics to change the masses' minds, but navigators (Jack always did like talking about his time at the helm of his yacht right after the earthquake in 1907, Jocasta idly woolgathers) to figure out the mass politics of it all and to avoid apocalypses of fascism, pestilence, war, class oppression.
(And on a meta level, it's not that Jo's Spirit Empathy is an omni-skill that will give her access to Expert Skill (Memetics). But she will be able to access specific futures that Jack saw/remembered in his post-'quake life, of course merely through a glass darkly.)
Leonard
[She'll sit on this until she's able to integrate it into a bigger discussion with the whole group, but she'll especially want to mention this to Archie.]
Bill
Roger will have called in briefly in the early morning from the garage where he took the van back to, where he gave it that crack-of-dawn once-over for hidden electronics-- for ones that weren't SANDMAN issue. He won't wait for Archie to get on the line (if he was even in that early), just leave a message for Archie: "package delivered safely, checking on some things, will be in the office late afternoon." Per SOP, he'll have done everything by the book to shake possible tails before getting to the garage. But just in case, he'll establish some visible bonafides by calling some cousin in the 'hood and crashing on his couch for the morning. Vets know you catch your sleep while you can. After being seen and known to be in town by that crowd, he'll again do some random walks to shake tails, then show up in the office around 2pm.
Roger will crash in a seat, slouch, and whistle. "Bossman, that was a crazy one. And I'm not just talkin' about the transportees. Is Mitch around? I got a nagging suspicion that Cinque brother has a chip in his head, and there's someone out there trying to set it off."
He pulls out his folding AAA map and tells the story of the transmission. "Based on Cinque admitting he'd turned for the Man and been brainwashed for his trouble, then this weird radio signal, it just felt too much like the scenario with the chip. I don't have near enough of the full picture, and it might just be all the paranoia around here rubbing off on me, but my gut says that we gotta check out his head. And before some rogue Ozy remnant grabs the info out of it or turns him into a killing machine or something."
"Sorry-- that probably sounds a little left field. But on the killing machine guess-- did I clue you in on the sniper attack on the police that serendipitously crossed our path? Ai-yai-yai"
Michael
(It makes sense to say the current phone call with Jo is happening after Roger's morning check-in that the package was delivered but before Roger comes into the office in person at 2 or so.)
Rob
Well, Roger's call doesn't make Archie more confident about the current "sit back and see what the SLA do" plan.
I apologize for losing track of the exact details but what is the current situation in L.A.? Am I right that all the SLA members, including Cinque and Patty, are now holed up together in one safe house we arranged for them — but Jocasta is not staying with them and neither is Roger — is that correct? But they now trust Jocasta enough that she can come and go from the safe house? And are the SLA completely in hiding or is the idea that now they're in L.A. they can circulate among their comrades? And where is Elsie Martinez?
Michael
No worries, Rob. Here's a roundup for your questions.
Jo, Roger, and Mitch are all in LA having driven/trailed the three SLA vans containing all nine active members of the SLA down to the Project/URIEL-provided safehouse in Compton. The safehouse is covered in surveillance rigs, both audio and video, transmissions are monitored and being recorded from another building on another block.
Jo can come and go as she pleases, but the two other drivers aren't really inside the circle of trust (other than perhaps the odd rapport that Roger seemed to have built up with Cinque, based around Cinque considering himself a fraud and a fink and confessing as much to Roger, plus that episode in Bakersfield.)
Elsie Martínez is currently holed up (as of Saturday afternoon) at Jo's (not yet open for business) occult bookshop cover business.
The SLA's precise immediate post-escape-from-SF plans aren't known to us yet—surely more of that will come out from the safehouse surveillance—but as Jo has been saying on the phone report-in, Jo has the vibe that Patricia (at least) has something big planned for LA. They'll definitely have more luck leaving the house in LA, considering a) it's a much bigger city population and area-wise, and b) seeing as how everyone thinks they're still in San Francisco. The one downside to this Compton safehouse, of course, is how much of a fish out of water the SLA's eight white members will be in this neighborhood. But this is the way Cinque wanted it.
Brant
"OK, let's take stock," Marshall is on speaker phone now. Let's say he's with Sophie at Livermore. "We have the SLA, led by DeFreeze. DeFreeze is a snitch and a product of radical Working Group behavioral modification. He is being influenced, perhaps with a fair degree of control, by an outside force. We do not yet know what that force is.
DeFreeze and the SLA kidnap Patty Hearst. Hearst is malleable; she is young and impressionable, directionless, adrift. But she is also special. Not Mitch special, but special, as Jocasta describes. We do not know if she was always like this or if she only came into these ... new abilities since her abduction. Query: did she 'contract' a memetic 'passenger' from DeFreeze? Is her new paranormal — for lack of a better word — identity something she 'picked up'?
Now the problem is we have two dead civvies and half the country looking for Hearst. We have stashed them safely for now but we cannot keep them concealed forever. The press is not going to let this bone go, it's too sallacious. We know DeFreeze is unstable, unreliable, and perhaps even a threat to the degree that he is being directed by some antagonistic outsider.
Now, further, our analysis suggests that the entire SLA robbery was a diversion for something else. Our analysis also suggests that the 'thing' the robbery was supposed to divert from had something to do with a small fire at an elite gentlemen's club, the Bohemian Club. Upon investigation we learned that the Club is heavily guarded with memetics and hypnosis. And, alarmingly, the Club followed up this investigation by contacting Mitch, directly, with a warning.
Simultaneously, Ambrose Bierce — a member of the Bohemian set and, we now suspect, part of a secret society that managed to pull together enough raw ontology to cause a sort of 'controlled' ontoclysm — emerges from Mount Shasta, having spent decades in History B as a slave to the Red Kings."
"I think we have two problems. The bigger problem is the second one: what the fuck is going on? But we have an immediate problem: what are we going to do with the SLA, DeFreeze, and Hearst? I think we need to tackle that problem first. We want Hearst alive. Perhaps we even want Hearst for ourselves. That would mean zeroing her out. New identity. The works. We think some parts of the SLA are salvageable, but some elements are not, DeFreeze among them. If our parameters are — one, keep Hearst alive; two, not simply liquidate the SLA; three, capture or kill DeFreeze; and four, stage a resolution to this whole situation for media purposes — how do we solve the problem? I think it can be done. But I think we must think creatively."
Michael
(btw, I'm fine with making the discussion here for the entire team at the time when they're all either at Venture Toons or calling in, just for ease of planning)
Jeff
"Too many clubs. Too many Clubs. Too many teams. I've seen inside Cinque's head, and Roger's gut was right. He's got a chip in there, the same magnet tech that they put in Charley, but interfering with his brain instead of just logging signals. I watched it calm him down when he should have been a nervous wreck. That was on automatic, I think, triggered by stress, but the thing has a receiver built in, for activation or new instructions.
"So my guess is somebody, WISHING WELL, the Bohemians, they set up Patty and the SLA. They're taking advantage of the Enemy's extremely-well-documented capacity to instantiate the aftermath of careful planning, with the goal of, I guess, making something big and bloody. The 1970 irruption all over again. Maybe whatever they wanted to happen then didn't happen, or didn't happen enough, or properly. Or maybe it happened exactly the way they wanted and now it's time to run the program again..." Mitch trails off and chuckles ruefully.
"Time. Archie told me something once, that history isn't real. I forget exactly how he phrased it but I was all excited about what I thought was a hole in the logic of History-A, History-B, thought I'd figured something out about the Enemy's presence in the timeline, and he reminded me that it's all fake anyway. If you're reading a story and there's a monster and they make a big deal about how the monster can only be killed with a silver bullet, and then in the end they kill the thing by shooting it with a gold bullet, that isn't a plot hole. Because the monster doesn't exist. The rules are whatever the story says it is. I may not be making much sense. But like, when was the Ontoclysm? Was it in 535? Was it in 1907? Was it in 1970? Is it still happening right now?"
"History as a palimpsest. There's a timeline. We wipe it and make a new one, call the instant of the wipe 535. That timeline, we wipe it, too, and make a new one, call that 1907. Then we wipe that one and call the new one 1907 again. Then we wipe that one and call the new one 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974.
"It's like the man said. 'We lied. We are not at war. There is no Enemy. This is a rescue operation.'"
Brant
"That's ... very good, Mitch," Marshall says, breaking the silence. He's stopped pacing and is looking at Sophie with a sort of stunned expression.
Michael
Sophie is taking it all in, and takes a few seconds to collect her thoughts.
"The idea of someone using the Enemy as a sort of... ontological cover, or retrocreative aid, for their activities... well, that's no longer beyond the pale, is it? Knowing what we know about the CWG's activities during ALLOCHTHON. Staging those 'abduction experiences' knowing they'd have some magnetism symbolically to the Enemy. You've said it before, Mitch: the Enemy, such as they exist-qua-exist, are an opportunistic infection." "But yes. Putting the Enemy aside for a moment since, as you note, Mitchell, 'there is no Enemy.' It strikes me that the major missing piece of data at this moment is what does the Bohemian Club want?. Esmologically we have a rough idea of where they stand. Before all this, my educated guess would have been, well, it's to keep their hands on the wheel, isn't it? They've already written themselves as the winners of history and naturally they don't want to lose that. They've already once put down an artists' utopia, one that allowed the Enemy in. 'Maybe whatever they wanted to happen then didn't happen, or didn't happen enough, or properly.' And yes, perhaps our Bohemian Club need to do things like this SLA thing every now and again in order to keep their rule secure." Sophie clears her throat, and then introduces and recites a passage from Book X of the 1937 Paul Shorey/Harvard Loeb translation of Plato's Republic:
We can admit no poetry into our city save only hymns to the gods and the praises of good men. For if you grant admission to the honeyed muse in lyric or epic, pleasure and pain will be lords of your city instead of law.
Jeff
"Yeah, if I was writing history, I'd be sure to put in a super famous historical smart guy, the super famous historical smart guy, and have him explain how and why what I was doing was morally right and needful.
"They have soothsayers of their own, because you would want some, if you were them. And their soothsayers tell them, scare the plebs with a massacre? And it didn't occur to them until very recently that we might have a problem with that."
Bill
“You don’t scare the ordinary people with a massacre. You scare them with riots.” Roger has a stony look. “The world gone upside down, and most important, the bottom flipping to the top. It’s the middle needing scaring, and they fear the folks below much worse. It’ll be riots, the poor getting away things the middle can’t— that’s what they’ll make of the SLA.” (edited)
“Doesn’t matter which ‘they’ doing it, either.”
Michael
Given we're playing Thursday, if there is anything else from our various and sundry interviews, researches, surveillances, drives down to LA, etc. etc. we need to talk about in character, please do so between now and Thursday night. I will have a text dump on Thursday before the session on what happens at the SLA over Saturday 4/20/74 and Sunday 4/21/74.
Brant
I think we just need to have a big group talk I’m afraid to say. An old fashioned group meeting. I know everyone hates those but we probably are at a juncture where some big decisions need to be made and vetted about next steps.
Michael
I'm absolutely fine with doing that live on Thursday!
And I love those, for the record.
Would remind everyone to have a peek at Andrew's treatment for The Star Rover.
Jeff
FWIW Mitch is maybe bored at long talky meetings but I'm down with it