7/2

Played: July 22, 2022.

Monday, August 13, 1973. URIEL reunites at Livermore. By now they have identified the mystery woman Mitch remote viewed in the basement of Agrigenics HQ as Bernadette Fry, the same woman who served as the company’s liaison to Venture Toons down in Los Angeles. Marshall and Archie open the meeting by asking the field team what they’ve learned about Agrigenics over the past week.

Mitch: We went bowling. I didn’t bowl.

Marshall: Why didn’t you bowl?

Mitch: I didn’t want to bowl.

Marshall: I feel like bowling would be like, super your thing.

Mitch: I have a bowling shirt but I did not bowl.

Marshall: Like you kind of have that air about you — like a guy who would be good at bowling. Roger, did you bowl?

Roger: Well, I mean, I would have been fine but you can understand the ambiance was a bit, uh, not my scene. I mean, you know: charming as hell, there were lots of people, we made the place. But I don’t think those … boys … would’ve liked the competition.

Mitch: It was a weird place to do it. In the bowling alley.

Marshall: Uh-huh. Why do you say that?

Mitch: I mean, because of what Roger just said about the kind of people that you meet in a bowling alley not being the kind of people that you're going to want to be effective at recruiting into your anti-Agrigenics campaign, right?

Marshall: Right.

Mitch: So it's weird that the guy — Dan is his name? — right, that Dan was in a bowling alley. I talked to like the bar back about him a little bit and apparently he’s been doing this for a while and when he first showed up the bar back was like, “Why are you doing this here? Shouldn’t you go to some place where there’re hippies?” I mean, you know, phrased a little differently. Apparently Dan got like, really defensive and was like, “It has to be — no no, it has to be here.” I don’t know, maybe defensive is a strong word, maybe I misremembered that, um, but he was apparently adamant that this was the place where he was going to do it. Makes me worry that Dan is on some level some kind of honey pot. Like he’s laid out for us.

Marshall: … yeah.

Mitch: But that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because we could’ve just as easily found him in Berkeley. So that I don’t understand.

Roger: He’s not the brightest bulb.

Marshall: Maybe they have this specific place under surveillance or something, and so they have deceived him into thinking that it is a safe space but it’s actually a space they have him monitored at. So, as a honey pot, his point would be to lure you specifically to that location for, uh, some purpose. Perhaps to be observed? Um, that’s interesting.

Mitch: My guess was going to be that either Dan has some kind of precognition or he has an advisor with some kind of precognition and the precognition pegged that our meeting was going to take place where it did. But that is kind of implausible when I say it out loud.

Marshall: And he’s not part of the other club?

Roger: He doesn’t seem to have much woojie about him.

Marshall: Like, your club, Mitch.

Mitch: Oh, yeah, no. No, I would have mentioned that. I would have mentioned that.

Roger: Tradecraft-wise, he wasn’t doing too bad for an amateur. I mean, he picked a place where we were able to have fairly private conversations — you know, it would scare off a lot of people, it's incredibly public, lots of exits. On the other hand, we were very easily able to suborn him, track him, get all of his information. So, you know, he's not very good at it but he did come across as fairly honest. He allowed us to, like, slip up and we were able to cover up — he just didn’t seem very, um, crafty.

Marshall: He must be a lure.

Roger: He’s a patsy, I’d give you that.

Marshall: What I’m saying, he’s like … I think they found maybe their most naïve person and picked him because he’s too garrulous or whatever. Um, so it’d make perfect sense, because then he’d make dumb mistakes.

Roger: The only trick is that they’re trapping us into … investigating them? Which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

Marshall: Yeah. Right.

Roger: It would seem more like they would want to spin us away or make us think there was a crazy —

Marshall: Unless! No, that wouldn’t work. I was gonna say, unless — well, if Agrigenics is involved in History B, maybe someone is trying to point us to Agrigenics using him. So maybe it’s not Agrigenics who’s using the honey pot, maybe there’s a different party that is using the honey and the pot is to get us to investigate Agrigenics.

Mitch: Well, Agrigenics is involved in History B, I can confirm that first hand having witnessed it.

Roger: First … distant hand, maybe?

Marshall: Right, and I say “we know” because of the glyphs on the cereal boxes. But you’ve seen the real deal?

Mitch: Yeah, it was weird. I didn’t like it.

Jocasta shares the dossier of information she gathered on Dan and the psychological profile she worked up for him. Her conclusions were that he was not writing the fliers in the style of a crazy person merely for effect. His warnings seem authentic, though written with clear alarm and in sort of a frenzy. Marshall listens and then says he thinks the team can safely disregard Dan for the moment, with the understanding that he is likely a lure or a trap of some kind.

Marshall: But I don’t want to leave him as too loose of a thread. I would like him tied up in some way because, you know, if he keeps going out and distributing these pamphlets and stuff, I don’t want him to be ginning up other interest. So we’ve got to get him to stop doing that.

Roger: I did my best to make a link there — cultivate him as an asset. I hope that you would entrust me to maybe be able to do some of those things pretty basically, sir.

Marshall: OK, no, I mean, that — if you’re volunteering, that would be great.

Roger: I made contact, he’s my asset.

Marshall: OK, that’s great. He’s your asset, your responsibility. I think you’re going to do a great job with it. It doesn’t need to be anything too extreme — he sounds pretty novice, like he’ll be a good introductory asset for you.

Marshall sounds condescendingly proud of Roger as he says this and Roger thanks him sarcastically. Then:

Marshall: OK, now — speak to me of your vision quest, O Mitch. What, or who, is this — what should we do about this mysterious woman? How can we track her down? Why is there a meditation pod in the basement of this building? Why don’t I have a meditation pod? These are all relevant questions.

Mitch: I feel like you could get a meditation pod if you really wanted one.

Marshall: Well now I’m fucking getting a meditation pod. If some ridiculous “natural foods” business has one — anyway.

Roger: Waterbed though, man? They’re messy, they break.

Mitch: Well, speaking of lure, it was weird that I was lured to there. Apparently we’re all like — everybody read the memo that, I guess, I must have written about or something over the weekend. So, um, yeah. You don't need me to repeat all that. But I thought that it was weird that like, to the extent that I was trying to focus on anything it was going off of Dan's description, and where I ended up was definitely a weird location. But it wasn't — it didn't seem to match any of that particularly closely. And then when I tried to leave, to shift my … my consciousness elsewhere, there was resistance. And that was weird. I don't have a lot of experience doing this and I don't know that I enjoy it. And she seemed to know that I was there which … so that means either they have somebody there like, all the time, waiting for remote viewers to show up, which, I mean, that’s a lot I think. Or she had some kind of foreknowledge that I was going to be there at that time from some source. And — I don’t know, I could not understand what was going on with it at all. Whether it was a property of the room, a property of what she was, something she was doing personally — some kind of gestalt between, well, between the two? Like the room was empowering her with her pre-existing remote-viewing-trapping power? I don't know. That sounds dumb when I say it out loud. I'm a little bit out of it at the moment, guys. Sorry. I'm not a big fan of remote viewing. I thought it was going to be fun. I don't …. I don't like it so much. I feel like it's one person doing the work of several people in a way that I find, uh … I don't like it. I don't like it. It takes something that should be a group activity and makes it a one-person deal and that's not good. That's not good.

Marshall leans back in his chair. He explains that what URIEL has learned from SCANATE, at least, is that psychic sensitives can sense other psychic sensitives if they're projecting — that is, if they are using remote viewing or otherwise extending their senses beyond the abilities of “baseline” people. So let’s assume, he posits, that Bernadette Fry has a suite of abilities similar to Mitch’s: she can project her senses elsewhere, she can “see” places that people normally cannot “see,” and who knows what else. Set people on fire with her mind? Sure. Whatever. Regardless, Mitch’s remote viewing of the Agrigenics basement did not, like, project Mitch’s soul there in any way. There should be no “silver tether” linking the “him” in the Agrigenics basement to the “him” who was sitting, physically, in a nearby van. All that happened was that Mitch saw into the basement and Bernadette felt she was being watched. But it is unlikely, as far as URIEL knows, that she knew who was watching her or from where.

He goes on:

Increasingly I think the honeypot theory is a really good theory, Mitch, because it — when you look at it from that perspective it all does kind of seem like a trap. There's even like, if you think of it like a man-eating flower there is even a sort of a flower thing in the basement. Like there's a pod in the basement that this thing is like flowering around and things are being lured into the basement. It's like they're putting out — so if we think of Agrigenics some sort of an invasive plant or something, some sort of man-eating plant or whatnot, or like something out of … what was that movie from the ‘50s about like, pod people? If it's like a pod person situation, it's putting out all these little feelers and lures to bring people in. It's sending out Dan Millers and bringing psychics to it to remote view them and it's putting out glyphs on cereal boxes so that people in the know will be like, where are these glyphs coming from? All to lure us in.

Roger interjects and says that we definitively know that Agrigenics is connected with History B. Marshall agrees, yes, exactly.

Marshall: But why? Like, why? I mean, never mind — we never know why until it’s too late anyway.

Mitch: Well, History B doesn’t really have “plans.” It has “vibes.” They have “aesthetics.” Everything just falls into place after the fact. There’s not a real purpose to it.

Roger: And if History B is trying to break through, we have to go watch it.

Marshall: No, yeah, we do. We absolutely do. That’s the quandary we’re in —

Roger: So if it's a trap, it's trap we have to throw ourselves into — or, rather, you're going to throw me into it. I'm happy to go do some 24-hour surveillance as necessary.

Marshall: Well, uh, yeah. That’s basically what I'm thinking. It's just that like, we do need to do something about it but we have to proceed with the utmost caution. So you know, we just have to be extra careful or extra unpredictable or something. Because if she knows she's being watched in the basement of the building then there's something weird about her. And I don't want to just send you in a car to sit across from her house and see what she does. She's going to know you're there if she knew that Mitch was watching — that someone was watching her in the basement, and she's going to be expecting to be watched now. So how do we do we deal someone who knows and wants to be watched is the question.

Roger: If she has that ability to detect — just like we were doing with the the last mission — sticking to like, we're watching the building, we're watching the company, those folks who do that kind of thing that kind of surveillance are less likely to cause an immediate and major reaction because we're just ordinary, right? So if we just go watch the building, it doesn't sound like we're like watching her, right? You're right, if we went straight to her house and started peeking through her windows, you know, she might, you know, fry our brains or something.

Marshall: Yeah, right. She needs to be watched, I just … there's a finite amount of intelligence that may be gathered from watching her at her place of business versus watching her at home. It's always a preference to watch them at home. I mean, my first preference would be to have a break-in. Like, send you to her house or to her office or something at night. Send Jocasta. Like, something about all this screams Jocasta to me, so if you have any ideas, Ms. Menos.

Archie: I was going to say, why don’t we get Jocasta into her house or we get Jocasta to run into her on the street and make currently physical contact?

Marshall: Oh, right, that second one is a good idea because she's going to be expecting someone to be breaking into her house. She’s gonna be expecting something. So I just — I don't want to send anyone into harm’s way. But yeah, just bumping into her or something, I don't know, she — Jocasta — could maybe even get like a read on her if she bumps into her and like, touches her hand or something.

Jocasta: Well, I can use any number of the false identities I have, I think, to get into Agrigenics. I'm sure that they have a human resources department, they keep files on their personnel. You know, I have all kinds of — I have all kinds of law enforcement identification that I could plausibly use to have them let me in take a look at their files. And even if that tells us nothing, I could probably contrive to take something of hers from her office when she's not there and do a psychometric read on it which would spare the possibility of catching her armed or on her guard in her home or on the street. And then if we wanted to pursue that further I could — I mean, I don't need to see her when I'm at Agrigenics, but I could also try — well, I doubt it would be wise for me to try and access that basement area on my own but I could probably at least find out something about it.

Marshall: No, I think that’s a really good — I think that, yeah, we can send you inside — everything you just described is like the perfect plan, if we do it during normal business hours and if we have Mitch nearby to kind of keep tabs on you. Not necessarily using your remote viewing but just, you know, with a mic in a van or something.

Jocasta: I could even take a walkie-talkie in with me.

Marshall: Sure. Just so we have someone there in case something goes wrong. I think that’s a great plan.

Roger: We also have to make sure that she’s not in the building by surveying and making sure she’s out. Unless there are others.

Marshall: I mean, maybe what we could actually do is — maybe we could have — she's going to be expecting to be followed. But we might as well send our best follower — person to follow her, which would be Roger. So maybe we should have Roger follow her from her home one day, like some morning, and just kind of keep an eye on her to report to Jocasta and Mitch on her whereabouts. Like, how far away she's going to be, what sort of stops she makes along the way, etc. Maybe if they need to buy time he can stage some sort of, uh, delay of some kind or whatnot. That way we have eyes on all the relevant people.

Jocasta: I was going to say, if we don’t want to overcomplicate things at all, we could just have Roger slice her tires one morning and the delay it’s gonna take her to get it fixed is the time I go in and do what I need to do.

Roger: I’d be more subtle than that. There’s other way to make an old clunker clunk.

Marshall: I'm gonna leave those sort of decisions to you folks. You can handle that how you want. But I think the ground game — assuming Archie approves — is that we get Jocasta inside with Mitch in the crow's nest observing and Roger somehow dealing with the Bernadette element.

Roger: Your point, being subtle with her sounds like the right things to do and honestly, until we know if she has brain melting powers, I’d like to keep things plausibly deniable.

The team evaluates possible covers for Jocasta and briefly debate whether to send her in posing as law enforcement or as an agent of some benevolent organization like the World Bank or the United Nations looking to recruit someone for a “good works” project somewhere. The team also reviews the information Jocasta’s been able to retrieve on Bernadette. Like Dan, she has a clean criminal record, though surprisingly she’s young — real young, only 25. She has no known or documented affiliation with any intelligence agencies like the CIA. And she lives in Dixon, where Beale Farms maintains its P.O. box.

Marshall: I mean, Mitch — I have a few things to say about coincidences. Maybe at a different meeting. But these coincidences and you … they just keep piling up. Everywhere you go there are coincidences.

Mitch: (sheepishly) Ah well … I mean, you're not wrong.

Marshall: Yeah. I know.

Mitch: I can't really argue with you. I was thinking up some kind of counter argument there but nothing happened.

Marshall: Roger, be aware that Dixon is like the Castro Valley Bowling Alley times three. So you’re going to want to be extra careful out there. It’s old farm folk.

Roger: Alright, so sticking out like a sore thumb. I may need a different car and I will definitely be bringing my FBI badge.

Marshall: Yeah. Please do. Archie, do you think there's anything else we need to do about Agrigenics or should we adjourn for the day?

Archie nods and recaps for the rest of the team about what he and Marshall found out about Venture Toons in Los Angeles. Marshall and Archie agree that Venture Toons is likely a dead end, or if not a dead end, at least not something worth investigating too much more at this juncture given everything else going on with Agrigenics. Certainly, someone at Venture Toons was able to draw the glyph that was printed on the cereal boxes, but the design for the glyph ultimately came from Agrigenics, so the ultimate goal remains the same. “Plus,” Marshall says, “the LA SANDMAN team is — well, Venture Toons is on their radar now so they’ll be watched to some degree.” With that, the meeting breaks up and everyone pretends to go off on their various assignments before gradually reconvening in the Rooster House about 45 minutes later. Once everyone is settled, Marshall summarizes what he learned about Alpha Leonis, the burnt-out mansion in Laurel Canyon, and the Solarans.

Marshall: So the conclusion I draw from this is that I think, Charley, that — and I'm telling you this because we're trying this radical honesty policy, you know normally I would not put this on a child — but the conclusion I think would be that Alpha Leonis is your biological father. You don't have to do anything with that information. I don't know. But I just felt like you should know it.

Archie: Now, we don’t know anything for sure. It’s just a theory, Charley. It’s possible. It’s certainly — but he was the person your mother was investigating.

Charley: OK, so, what … so, OK, what is — why would you think that? There were probably a lot of other people there. What — what, why do you think it’s him?

Marshall: Well, the most recent iteration of the cult — the one that he immolated — was mostly women. A few trusted men, but the ratio has always been skewed. He sort of kept the women around him like a harem. His psychological profile is that like, he's the alpha. Like all the women belong to him. I don't think that he would tolerate one of his male confidantes sleeping with one of his women. That is not to say it didn't happen! That could have happened. Maybe you are — (excitedly) I mean, this is a theory! Maybe you are the secret child of one of these rare male members and your mother attempted to escape with you because she knew what would happen if she stayed and it was revealed that you were not Alpha Leonis's child. That's another theory.

Archie: (increasingly uncomfortable) Anyway, the point is that this is a bad character and what he did in Los Angeles is very bad and he's in the wind now. And I think we have to find him.

Marshall: Well, I had a call from Jolly West down in LA, who was responding to the report that I filed and he said that his team’s esmological predictions are that Alpha Leonis is, uh, coming to San Francisco. Like there’s a 75 percent chance of that happening. So, you know. This is all something to think about. I don't know if there's anything — any action to be taken out of this. I don't know if we can move on to the next thing because people don't feel it needs to be discussed but …

Roger: We kind of have to discuss it a little bit more because, again, this is what le Comte wanted us to do. What he's been trying to force us to do. He came down from the Mountain and appeared to me on a rooftop to try and get us to do this. It feels really weird hearing that come out of Archie’s mouth, that we have to do this.

Archie: Well, we do. I mean he's either an agent of the Enemy or maybe he's not. Maybe he's — Marshall had a theory that maybe he's like a traitor to the Enemy and that’s why they want him killed. We’ve had this conversation before. Maybe Jolly’s predictions … maybe he’s going to find his way to Mitch. It’s as you said, a coincidence. It’s the sort of thing that feels likely to happen whether we do anything or not.

Marshall: I mean, that’s another reason, though, that Mitch should be looking out for him.

Archie: Absolutely. We all should. But he may just show up on our doorstep.

Marshall: Right, well, that's brings me to the coincidences thing because something that occurred to me was that — which I think is maybe evidence of Alpha Leonis being your father, Charley — is that, if the bearded man, if Alpha Leonis is Mitch’s double, Mitch’s whole thing is coincidences. Everything that’s happened ever since we've gotten him on the team, everything has just been so coincidental. That's kind of his thing. That's like … that's Mitch's vibe. He's a coincidence machine. And wouldn't it be a coincidence that the child of his doppelgänger would wind up with us, with the History A version of his doppelgänger. Of all the people that his daughter could wind up with, of course it would be a perfect coincidence that basically Mitch’s niece — or whatever — came here to Livermore.

He pauses.

Marshall: You're all looking at me like I have three heads.

Mitch: No, I mean, you’re not wrong.

Archie: No, Mitch just said History B doesn’t have plans, it has vibes. This is how they operate.

Mitch: It’s just there’s coincidence and there’s contrivance. There’s chess and then there’s the game of chess.

Marshall: So we gotta keep an eye out for this dude. He is bad fucking news. And odds are he’s coming here for some reason. So we gotta be alert for that shit.

Roger: Do you have standing orders if we encounter him? Is it shoot first? Shoot from a long distance so he doesn't do something to us? Bag and capture to bring back?

Archie: I think we — given both the importance of what, of who he might be and what he knows, and the fact that the Comte does want Mitch to kill him, I actually think that the goal should be to take him alive if at all possible. I don't think we want him dead.

Marshall: Right. If encountered and you can safely observe and follow without being noticed, that is the first preference because it would be great to know where he is and what he gets into. If he’s encountered and you’re spotted and you cannot safely follow him, then I think a tactical retreat, evasive maneuvers back to Livermore so that you can’t be followed, etc., is the goal. He’s a completely unknown quantity in terms of power. He’s been doing this for decades — or at least a decade, at least since, you know, Charley. He — yeah, he’s a dangerous dude, so I don’t want to risk any of you trying to deal with him.

Roger: Is it dangerous enough that we should only use ourselves as investigators or can we still pull on networks?

Marshall: I think we can pull on networks. I get the vibe from him that he isn't like necessarily plotting against us or even knows who we are, but that he knows on some level that his destiny is out there and his destiny is Mitch and he's gonna find him. So I think it's safe to draw on other asset networks for the time being.

Quietly sketching in her notepad, Jocasta ponders what Alpha’s next move will be. This is part of Alpha’s now established pattern: gather a group to him for some purpose. The purpose is step two with the question marks. He has a purpose in assembling these groups, to what end? Whatever it may be, step three is that they all disappear or get killed or vanish. Now, not everyone died in that fire down in LA. URIEL could go back and try to find some of the people who fled. But with LA SANDMAN on the radar, that’s probably not in the cards for right now. What she does know that is Alpha’s going try to put together a group of followers again because he needs the belief. He's nothing without a cult. He needs belief. So that’s got to be why the esmological models predict he will be coming to San Francisco: there’s just plenty of people to prey upon. Marshall apparently had the same thought; he proposes that the team get in touch with their various assets and contacts and tell them that if they hear any word of any new, emerging cult movements in the Bay Area that involve the Sun or a big bearded man who looks like Santa Claus, that they notify URIEL about that immediately. Then he says:

Marshall: Unless there's more to say about that we have one other thing to talk about from LA. Do you want to explain this, Archie?

Archie: Well, I wonder how far into it we're going to go. I guess … you should all know that we making some moves to try and get closer to OZYMANDIAS. In particular we're making some moves that might help Marshall make contact with them and suggest that he's sympathetic to their program. And so in order to make that believable, we staged — or are staging — a little bit of a pantomime. Marshall, I think — well you're gonna play it how you want a play it — but we assumed that we were going to be watched in LA, that the LA SANDMAN office is likely sympathetic to or infiltrated by OZYMANDIAS. And so for their benefit we had a little bit of an argument um that gave Marshall reason to question my judgment and in the process make clear to anyone who might be listening or investigating the conversations we had in order for him to make clear his interest — suitability — possible sympathy to the OZYMANDIAS program.

Marshall: So, we tell you this because I have this theory that — well first, we tell you this because it's important that you know, sort of in terms of internal security, that you know people may contact you from within SANDMAN to ask you questions about Archie or about myself or something along those lines. That is good if that happens. It will lead to my second point. You know, you might notice a car following you or something along those lines. Just be aware that you might be being watched and it might be related to this thing we're staging. Which leads me my second point. The second point is that the operating theory of this double blind that we're running is that I think that we can use — I think we can meme our way into OZYMANDIAS. And when I say “we” I mean me and maybe some of you as well. I — we’re — Archie and I are going to be running this thing, this pretend rivalry, to get me cultivated by OZYMANDIAS. Our fights with each other would naturally — if they were realistic, and we'd want them to be realistic — would result in divisions within the team. People would pick sides. So part of making this meme happen is you all need to play your roles in these fights as Archie and I are sort of circling each other and having this sort of espionage silent war. You also need to be affected by that and act accordingly, because we want us to be realistic. Because we want OZYMANDIAS to come in here and say, “These people, you two or you three or whoever, we want to bring you on board.”

Roger: So who's the turncoat here that's going double agent? Is it Archie going against SANDMAN or is it you going into OZYMANDIAS?

Marshall: It is Archie pretending to go against SANDMAN writ large, which will trigger my obligations to report him. So he will be sort of our anti-SANDMAN agent. He’s not so much a double agent as he is pretending to be anti-SANDMAN. I will be the double agent with OZYMANDIAS. My true loyalty lies with the club. But I will pretend to be an asset with OZYMANDIAS.

Roger: Are any of the rest of us supposed to turn?

Marshall: That’s what I’m saying, maybe —

Archie: The way for this to be realistic is for you to respond as naturally as you would if you were to find out —

Marshall: — if you were to find out that Archie really was going to bring down SANDMAN. Well he’s thinking about it, anyway.

Archie: If I was having doubts about the mission, crisis of conscience, and doing things — that my loyalty to SANDMAN, in particular to this sort of OZYMANDIAS program was in doubt, and if you were sort of forced to choose not between a blanket betrayal of SANDMAN or not, but rather — and I imagine you can all imagine that this is was real — imagine that you were being asked to choose between two paths within SANDMAN or two poles within it. Represented by Marshall and myself.

Marshall: That’s a much better way of putting it.

Archie: You don't have to — as I say, the best thing to do is to, as much as possible, respond as you would naturally, as if this were real. The more honest you are, the more convincing your deception will be.

Jocasta: This is like one of those movies where somebody plays themself though, right?

Marshall: Right. Yeah. I mean it has to be — it has to have verisimilitude to your own profile. You know, to SANDMAN’s profile for you.

Jocasta: Right, but what I'm saying is that this scenario that you've concocted — and I understand the utility of it, I think that this is absolutely what we need to be doing — but speaking of it as if it's at a remove from the reality of the situation is maybe giving it a little more … I mean, that's essentially the situation we're in, right?

Archie: (chuckling) That’s very good, Jocasta. Yes. That’s what makes it work. If you think of it like the picnic blanket metaphor at the St. Francis, layers on layers of explanation, and you can always move up incredulity or down incredulity. But, yes: the more the pantomime, the masquerade, resembles reality, the more the reality resembles the masquerade, the more effective it will be.

Marshall: And if I can piggyback on that metaphor, another way to think of it is that you can only be — there's only two perspectives. There's the subject and the object. There's the one that perceives and there's the perceived. If you can look at any situation with a slight remove — be aware of your own awareness — you can think about it more clearly and more rationally. You can influence it in ways that you might not if you weren't aware that you were aware of it. That's why we're telling you this. That's why we're — if we wanted you to just unwittingly play along with our acting we would have done that. But we want to give you this opportunity to sort of mold your own fate because now that you know you're playing the game, you can play it.

Jocasta: Fair enough.

Roger: You don't have any specific direction though? It's up to us to figure out what is the best play here? There's no hidden moves in the game that we need to to work on at this point?

Marshall: No. No, I don’t think so.

Roger: I gotta say my normal play here would be to not let you split the team. To try and play both of you.

Marshall: Alright!

Archie: Go with that. That’s actually a very natural — and I appreciate that that would be your reaction, Roger, and that's — it's a natural role for you to play.

Mitch: You’ve got your chess and your game of chess (tapping his temple with one finger).

Marshall: Ah, yes! The wise man speaks.

Roger: You also have chess pieces. Which we actually are.

Mitch: Yeah, well, it’s an imperfect metaphor.

Roger: But is this coming down like, fast?

Marshall: Well, I don't know. I mean, we know nothing about how OZYMANDIAS operates or how quickly it moves or how desperately they're in need of another asset or whatever. I mean we'll just have to see.

Roger suggests that the team develop a signal or code to alert each other as to when they are not acting the role. Marshall agrees and acts if he has any recommendations. Roger does: a hand signal. Because even though URIEL now knows that OZYMANDIAS cannot record everything Charley sees and hears, they must also assume that all the phones are tapped and that there are hidden cameras everywhere. A hand gestures is easier to hide, and doesn’t show up in a written transcript. Marshall slaps Roger on the shoulder and enthusiastically endorses the idea.

After a beat, Marshall inquires if they’re done — meeting over? Mitch says, “Wait!” and stands up. He closes his eyes, spins around, takes two steps forward and grabs the first thing his hand lands on. Opening his eyes, he sees it is one of the playing cards that Roger placed on the walls while he was blessing the Rooster House against unwanted intrusion. The King of Spades. There’s nothing behind it, and the card itself is just a card. “But what if the card is a spiritual camera? That the loa use to watch us?” Marshall asks. Roger pipes up: “Yes, that’s true, but they were invoked to keep silent, OK? Silent as the grave, specifically.”

"Hmmm," Jocasta says to 'herself'. "The King of Spades. The masterful lord, in compete control. Self-disciplined, self-satisfied, self-reliant. The man of bad faith. The bad man to fall in love with. The deceiver. The warlord, the aging emperor, the wise but cunning king." She lights a cigarette. "Probably doesn't meaning anything."

As the meeting starts to break up, Charley — heretofore silent — suddenly says in a quiet voice: “I have a new talent or … well, I can go to the astral plane. Just so you know.”

Archie: You can go where, sweetheart?

Charley: Uh, it’s kind of like, when you’re dreaming? But it’s … it’s more realistic. It’s it’s it’s it’s … it’s hard to describe. It’s sort of like a plane of existence that’s related to dreams and when you’re dreaming it’s like … it’s like your consciousness or your soul, when you’re asleep, it has the ability to, um, to go a different dimension. And it was kind of like the camping trip, when Mitch and I had — we had our dream? Did I tell you about that, Dad? The dream with Mitch?

Roger: (interjecting) Did you have a guide? Did you go alone?

Charley: No. I mean, yes. I did have a guide. I did have a guide, yeah.

Archie looks to Roger in a sort of exasperated way, conveying as best he can that he wants Roger to tackle this. Roger sighs.

Roger: Your dad this week. So you had your guide and you followed directions and you explored and then you came back, everything was good? You didn’t make any deals?

Charley: No, no!

Marshall: And we’re confident these aren’t just elaborate dreams? And I’m not dismissing dreams when I say that. I think dreams are incredibly powerful.

Roger: You’re powerful in them.

Marshall: So how do you know this isn’t just the dream state? What makes this the astral plane?

Charley: That’s a good question. It was my first attempt … with the idea of, if there is this plane, if there is this area on the astral plane that one can travel to and reach places in, which was the case when we were on the Mountain, I’m assuming — it felt like more than a dream when we reached my mom. Y’know? She spoke to me. So that’s my guess. I mean, that’s my guess. It seemed like it was more than a dream. So I thought, um, I thought I might try and do that again but I didn’t get very far.

Roger: If you had signatories with you, who were guiding you, it most likely was not a dream. But in that case —

Charley: Maman Brigitte, she kind of confirmed what I’m assuming was a successful … um … entrance into that space. But I didn’t get very far.

Roger: Well, that’s impressive. Just — by the way, did the music help?

Charley: Yeah. That was a good idea.

Roger: Yeah, it’s helped me too.

Marshall: Well, OK. Just be careful, I guess.

Charley: The other part of what I encountered while I was there … you know the ARPANET? And I don’t know if you remember when I had that weird message from what could have been LO — we weren’t sure if that was part of a name. Or what. But, um, yeah. I ran into LO while I was there. And it’s definitely related to History B. Um, it’s a creature of History B. Baby form.

Marshall: OK, so just to make sure I’m getting this —

Charley: It’s friendly!

Marshall: Yep, OK, hold on. So you have learned how to travel to another plane of existence, that is not a dream, and there you have encountered a baby irruptor who can communicate to you using the computer?

Charley: Yeah. It’s essentially ARPANET, is how I took it.

Marshall: So you’re saying ARPANET is an irruptor? The United States’ military’s interconnected network of computers?

Charley: Of course.

Mitch: Didn’t we already establish that?

Marshall: Wait, did we establish that ARPANET itself was an irruptor? Or only that there was an irruptor in ARPANET?

Mitch explains to Marshall that, no, it’s not just an irruptor “riding” ARPANET. It’s ARPANET itself. Marshall is sort of stunned. “This seems like a big fucking deal. And a problem,” he says. Charley explains that one way to think of it is that there’s this thing out there, the noosphere, a realm of pure thought, where ideas have forms. Their thought-forms. And these forms, they’re less … attached? to whatever material body they might inhabit there. “My experience on the Mountain,” she says, “gave me the key to this. To this, uh, understanding that dreams and reality are not … sequestered from each other.” Marshall takes a deep breath and avoids the Fear. Charley goes on.

Charley: I had a weird thought the other day.

Marshall: Oh?

Charley: Do you think we’re done evolving?

Marshall: Uh … no, I do not. Neither biologically nor spiritually. Humanity is always evolving. All living things evolve.

Charley: Do you think that They are? Like, do you think maybe this thing could be influenced? Like maybe we have an opportunity to evolve it into — I don’t know, something that … something that …

Marshall: Oh my god, you’re right! We could weaponize it! If it’s just a baby, and it’s not protected, that means that the Enemy doesn’t know about it either! Like, that’s genius! We know this, we know where it is and we can take control of the situation! And we can shape the concept of ARPANET. We can control the network!

Charley: Do you think these things … do you think they’ve ever had like a true friend? A true human connection? Like a different relationship other than what seems to be — from what I’ve noticed it seems like it acts like a parasite and completely takes over the person. But what if — what if this is an opportunity for something different. It wants to be my friend and maybe I can teach it what real friendship would be like.

Mitch: OK, so, uh, several things. Several things. One, my like immediate response is it would be amazing if we could do that. That would be fabulous, I think it's — there's a real limitless possibility there. And it's something that probably we shouldn't just cast aside. Two, I've had a number of interactions with irruptors, right? I think probably above average for the number of people in this room. I’ve had conversations with irruptors and … you know what ELIZA is? Or was? Is? ELIZA? And talking to an irruptor is kind of like talking to ELIZA. It’s like there’s a person there except there’s not really. But it like, it acts like it thinks it’s a person. But it doesn’t. But it acts like it thinks it does. It doesn’t think but it acts like it thinks. Does that land? Three, when you say it’s half-formed —

Everyone sort of looks at each other because no one said anything about the irruptor being “half-formed.” Mitch goes on.

Mitch: — there’s like a real potentiality there. And maybe there’s something more to it. Maybe it’s not just a set of programmatic responses. Or it doesn’t have to be. I don’t know. It’s — I’ve never had a conversation with an irruptor and walked away thinking, “That was somebody that I could really talk to and have a conversation with and like, a meeting of the minds. It’s always been an actor playing a role that they weren’t particularly committed to or that they were doing they’re best at but they were just … a bad actor. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Charley: Yes. It’s been really paying attention to our conversations, to our — it’s almost like —

Mitch: When you say “our conversations”?

Charley: Conversations happening, just conversations generally.

Mitch: OK.

Marshall: To Mitch's point, the irruptors that you've dealt with have all been adults. So assuming that there are — that irruptors do come from — assuming for a second that there's the idea that irruptors come from somewhere, there would then be a place where irruptors come from, in the event of some sort of an ontologically unstable thing. So assuming that that is actually, memetically, a genuine baby irruptor, and you’ve only dealt with adult irruptors, and the impression you got from the adults is that they were all playing a role they didn’t want to play and they were playing it badly, it implies that there was someone playing the role. And maybe that someone is psychologically that baby irruptor who somehow gets molded into becoming a History B agent that is hostile to us.

Mitch: If the Mansa concert had gone down the wrong way, it wouldn’t have been a baby kusarikku that was born there.

Marshall: Um. Yeah.

There’s a brief pause before Charley reveals that she is 100 percent certain it was an irruptor of the ugallu type. It did not resemble the typical ugallu that she learned about at Granite Peak, but it was an irruptor.

Roger: Well, if it's on the astral plane and the spirit guide was there with you, I think we might want to talk more about what the spirits thought of it. We have also had incipient spirits that have always been there — but not been there — coming into existence recently, but having always been there. This is crossing boundaries and I think we need to consult with them, especially if it's on their turf.

Charley: Oh, well, she was afraid of it.

Roger: We need to find out more.

Jocasta: Charley, it's … it's hard for me to even make this offer because you're so far beyond us in so many ways that it seems almost patronizing but let me tell you that being able to contact these other planes, being able to see the things you see and perceive things the way that you perceive them is a big responsibility and it's very dangerous. And I just want you to know that you can always count on me, on Roger, on everyone in the team to help you because we want you to be able to fully experience those sensations without … well, they can take you to some dark places.

Charley: Um. Yeah, it was pretty scary. At times. At times it was kind of scary.

At this, Marshall asks what Charley’s mala bead situation is. “Does the girl have any mala beads? Can we get her some mala beads?” This pings something in Roger, to whom it suddenly occurs: has Charley even been baptized? Does she have any of the ritual protections of any faith? As if reading his thoughts, Archie says: “Well, Melanie has been meaning to take her to church … ”