7/3

Played: August 8, 2022.

Wednesday, August 15, 1973. With Archie holed up in his office pretending to plot against SANDMAN, it falls to Marshall to debrief the Field Team and discuss next steps in their investigation of Agrigenics. He listens as Roger, Mitch, and Jocasta recount their findings. Roger expresses that he doesn’t quite get this one — the idea that History B is a kind of taint, a tangible thing in the soil that grows, that infects the food, that you can eat.

“But if Mitch sensed it, Mitch sensed it,” he says. “They’re doing weird stuff. I wanna know is it … us? Is it any kind of an agency? There’s a lot bankroll here.” Marshall detects a trace of paranoia in his most-reliable field agent and volunteers to find out from SANDMAN if Agrigenics is a cut-out for some “friendly” or “semi-friendly” agency, like the Department of Defense or the CIA.

Roger: I mean, it feels very CIA. It has that flavor. No pun intended.

Marshall: Sort of, yes. But I don’t know … it’s a little, uh, esoteric for the CIA, to be honest. But, um, what does — so does anyone else want to jump in with their thoughts on the whole situation generally? And how we should proceed? And like, thoughts, recommendations, impressions that they got from all this research and from the field team’s observations?

Mitch: It's weird because it seems like a different model of what History B taint is than what we've dealt with in the past. Like there's some kind of physical chemical trace in the soil that they're trying to find — seeking out — that's not — that's a different framework for thinking about History B’s intrusions than what we saw in Oakland or in Colorado. Certainly at the Saint Francis.

Roger: I mean, when it imbues itself into objects it's usually that object is now weird and special not, it then is contagious.

Mitch: Yeah. Or just dirt.

Jocasta: On the other hand, a lot of the History B mythology that we've heard about centers around food and being provided for. You know, the Anunnaki as being givers of sustenance and, you know, our daily bread. I don't know if that necessarily translates to anything but it's not — it's not completely out of the framework we have for understanding it.

Roger: It’s weird because it’s usually about — the contagious stuff is usually thoughts, memes, thing like that. Not, I mean … it’s creepy. I’m not saying it’s not true. It’s just … weird.

Marshall: Um, what do we make of Ms. Fry and her colleagues? I mean, from what you’ve described to me I don’t see — assuming that I run the clearance and that this is not a government affiliate in some way that we shouldn’t be trifling with, so it is the Enemy — I don’t see why we shouldn’t burn their house down and shoot them with high powered rifles as they’re fleeing the scene. Like, that seems to be where this should be going.

Roger: Well, we should interview at least one of them to find out where they got the soil and the other tainted objects of this Farm.

Marshall: True, yes. True.

Mitch: I mean, she drew those glyphs — and she did draw those glyphs — she learned how to draw glyphs from somebody somewhere. Probably that would be good information to have if their weird research is going to bear fruit. It would be good for us to know that rather than just burn everything down. I mean, that’s just the scientist in me thinking.

Marshall: No, that’s certainly the preferred option but … I’m just kind of, you know, concerned that they’re expecting us or that they are more powerful or prepared than we know about. I would love, obviously, to take one of them alive. Take Bernadette alive, that would be optimal. But I don’t know. I’m just very skeptical about how that would all go down. But, I mean, I’m not the tactician. Like, I’m just the company man. We have at least two people here who are skilled black ops (searching for the word) … uh, people. What do you think?

Roger: Well, first we should find out if there is any more, right? You know, getting the actual count of the enemy is usually first. So is it Agrigenics? Is it just her and these boy toys or has she got other contacts at Agrigenics? Are there more? That’s the first thing to find out. Because if it is just them then yeah, we can take them. Assuming we’re like, going in full bore.

Mitch: For what it’s worth I feel like I could just burn the house down without a lot of difficulty. I mean, maybe I’d be in for a rude surprise if I tried it but I ddin’t get the sense I thought it felt like it wasn’t flammable.

Roger: Inflammable. Wait. No. One or the other.

Marshall: Jocasta — like, what’s your take? From your file, this is like, what you do. It’s why you’re here. Do you think we could tranquilize her from a rooftop? Shove her in a van? What are your thoughts?

Jocasta: Well, I mean, I concur with Roger that we should find out to what extent infiltration of the company has occurred because if their — whether she introduced it by herself or not, we need to find out how deeply they've gotten into whatever they're trying to do because that might mean that taking her out won't make any difference at this point. Or that they'll just take whatever knowledge she's half given them and do something even worse with it. But if it turns out that it's just her or one or two people, I mean … you can get to anybody, right?

Marshall: So it sounds like the next action item needs to be to get some of you — Jocasta, Charley — into Agrigenics. I guess that is the box to check. Like, I'll run up — I'll talk to some people within SANDMAN about this situation, Jocasta can find a way to get into Agrigenics with Charley or, I don't know, whatever you guys want to do with that. And then meet again once we have some actionable intel?

Charley: Jocasta, I thought I was just gonna sleep in the van? I mean, how am I … how am I gonna do any … well, I didn’t think I was going to go inside.

Jocasta: Oh, no no no. You’re not. I think the plan is still, I’ll go inside under a cover identity, find out all I can find out, you’ll be in the car trying to find out anything you can do with your astral projection or whatever else you can do. Mitch will be there watching you and then Roger will be delaying her long enough for us to do what we need to do before she gets there. Is that correct, everyone?

Everyone nods and murmurs yes. The meeting breaks up. Roger heads to the garage to pick up some equipment to facilitate Bernadette’s “car troubles.” Jocasta puts in a call to Agrigenics. Posing as Mary Smith, she holds herself out as a highly-placed representative of an NGO that provides milk solids to African countries. (That way the West can sell formula and milk substitutes to the African market, which is too GDP-poor to be a viable outlet for consumer products like televisions and luxury cars). After talking to a few people, she is eventually put in touch with a certain Christopher Butler, to whom she explains that her organization is interested in the work Agrigenics is doing. She wonders if, perhaps, Agrigenics has anyone on staff who might be interested in a well-paying consultancy gig with her and her group’s unnamed benefactors? Mr. Butler is more than happy to discuss the idea in more detail; the two set up an appointment to meet the next day, at Agrigenics HQ.

Thursday. August 16, 1973. Shortly after midnight, Roger drives to Bernadette’s residence. He parks a fair distance from her house and stealthily creeps to her driveway. There, he disables Bernadette’s car and the microbus by draining the battery in Bernadette’s car, then setting up a short inside the microbus, so that when they try to use the latter to jump the former, it fries everything. With that accomplished, Roger sneaks back to his waiting car, changes clothes, and tries to grab some more shut-eye.

At dawn, Roger wakes up and drives closer to Bernadette’s residence so that he can monitor the situation. From his new vantage point, he is able to watch Bernadette as she attempts to start her car, finds it won’t work, huffily goes inside to get help, and emerges with a couple of her male roommates. As predicted, they pop the hood on Bernadette’s vehicle and attempt to jump it from the microbus, but oh no! Sparks fly and there’s a whiff of smoke and now the microbus is dead, too. Bernadette gets visibly more upset and then marches inside, leaving her entourage outside to scratch their heads and poke the microbus’ engine.

Mitch picks up Charley at the Ransom’s house in one of URIEL’s unmarked surveillance vans. The two drive to a truck stop located on the interstate relatively near the Agrigenics building, arriving at about 9:30 am. Once parked out of sight, Charley lowers the back on her chair, lays down with it, and closes her eyes. Mitch turns down the radio and watches Charley, monitoring her aura as best he can. It’s tricky, he finds, attempting to read the aura of a person who is — what’s the word Jocasta used? Astral projecting? Her emotions seems dim, distant, like a part of her is far away. But her vitals seem normal, at least.

Around the same time, Jocasta “disguised” arrives in the Agrigenics parking lot, having rented a boring old beige sedan to go with her square Mary Smith ensemble. She carries with her an oversized shoulder tote inside of which is a pistol ikoter and a walkie-talkie tuned to URIEL’s private frequency so that Mitch can listen in on the other end. Jocasta’s about to exit her vehicle when she remembers something: reaching into her glove compartment, she takes out a pocket .22 inside a thigh-holster, which she straps to her leg beneath her summer dress. After checking her hair in the rearview one last time, she heads inside.

Charley opens her eyes. She is standing (well, hovering) at the truck stop, but everything is different. There is a heavy, ponderous energy in the air, and everything is limned in light. Certain things — the trees, the signs — are distorted, oddly shaped. The sky is a different color and the clouds swirl in strange, kaleidoscopic patterns. All the vehicles on the road and the people at the truck stop are moving in what looks like slow motion, at time stutter-y, at times fluid. Charley gets the distinct impression that where she stands is not a healthy place within this realm: this truck stop, it feels like she is standing atop a painful scar in the Earth. But now is no time for dawdling. She races off to the Agrigenics building, floating inches off the ground as she weaves between the slo-mo vehicles on the interstate, which roar like beasts of the jungle as she passes them by.

Turning the corner up the Agrigenics driveway to its parking lot, Charley sees for the first time the glass cube that is the corporation’s headquarters. Her danger sense suddenly goes wild, and in the material plane, Mitch detects a ping of dread and fear in Charley’s emotional state. In her ear, Maman Brigitte whispers in a coarse voice: “That castle is built upon a pit. A pit to Hell itself.” And lo, Charley can sense it: a dark, rotten … thing beneath Agrigenics, a horror that nonetheless calls to her. With Maman Brigitte’s warning, and having the night before Renshed herself a comprehensive understanding of Hindu cosmology, Charley realizes that she is touching upon the shores of the place where the gods dwell and play. The noosphere. The fifth dimension. Antarloka. Here, the emotional and spiritual emanations of mortality become more than mortal … and whatever is down there, in the Agrigenics basement, it is deeper still than even this place. Charley shudders and snaps out of her reverie when she sees a shadow-version of Jocasta striding slowly through the front doors, into the Agrigenics lobby. She follows.

The lobby of the Agrigenics building has a different ambience than most corporate offices Jocasta has found herself in. Rather than a pretty young receptionist sitting at the front desk, there’s an armed security guard. Everything feels very secure, very sensitive. Eventually, once she’s checked in and received her visitor’s pass, Jocasta is greeted by a handsome man in a well-cut suit who introduces himself with a firm handshake as Richard Butler, Director of Public Relations for Agrigenics, Inc. Jocasta introduces herself as Mary Smith, and uses the opportunity of this initial interaction to get an empathic read on her host.

He’s a company man, first and foremost. Not that he’s hollow behind the eyes or anything — he’s not brainwashed — but he exudes the aura of a most-high priest standing in the nave of his god’s cathedral. A veritable avatar of the corporate master he worships. Butler is the Metatron, Jocasta muses to herself, the Mouth of Agrigenics. He speaks with his master’s voice. With this comes confidence: Butler is remarkably sure of himself and seemingly untroubled by the concerns of this world. His wants are the company’s wants, and his motivations are dictated by the One he serves. From her perspective in the astral plane, Charley too observes that Butler is linked intimately with Agrigenics, and the building itself. He is rooted here, she thinks. This castle is his home.

Butler escorts Jocasta upstairs to a conference room on the execute floor, Charley following in the astral plane. As they go, Butler explains: “I’ve brought in a few people from our remaining Third World sales divisions. As you know, we’ve been shifting more and more to domestic production and domestic research but we’re still very much invested in the work we’ve done in the Third World the last 10 years. So, well, we’d love to talk to you about what you’ve got in mind.” Jocasta thanks him for his time and, once assembled in the conference room, gives her presentation about how her NGO is looking to recruit new talent — especially from the research and development side of things — for consultancy work. She lays on the flattery as she does, noting that her group has “been in this business since the ‘50s and we can’t even buy the type of publicity that you guys have gotten in the last few years.” The thrust of her spiel is that Agrigenics is in a position to do her organization a favor, one for which both the company and the individuals she recruits will be amply compensated. Charley listens in for a while but quickly grows bored and distracted. She can still feel the thing beneath the building. It calls to her curiosity.

Back at Bernadette’s house, Roger watches as a tow truck pulls into Bernadette’s place. The tow truck driver gets out and checks under the hood of her sedan then heads back to his own vehicle to fetch another set of jumper cables. It’s clear to Roger that Bernadette is determined to get into the office; she’s not going to use this as an opportunity to play hooky for the day. He picks up his car radio and signals Mitch that she’ll soon be en route and then makes preparations to follow her once she’s on the road.

In the Agrigenics conference room, Jocasta wraps up her presentation and answers a few questions, noting in conclusion that obviously anyone they recruit will need to be carefully vetted first. The talk seems to have been effective; Butler and his teem appear impressed and receptive to the proposal. They agree to give Jocasta access to some of their employee records once their own secretarial staff has had a chance to review the best candidates and pull their files. Butler asks for a minute alone with his people to discuss; Jocasta takes that opportunity to “go to the ladies’ room.”

In that moment, Charley snaps back to her body inside Mitch’s car. Her brief time in the astral plane has already passed; if she wishes to return, she will need to project anew. This she does almost immediately and, a moment later, she finds herself flitting across the spiritual interstate back to Agrigenics HQ.

Now alone, Jocasta walks hastily but discreetly to the elevator bank where she identifies a particular elevator unlike the one she took upstairs with Butler. This one appears to only go down. She glances around to see if anyone is watching and, seeing no one, surreptitiously presses the DOWN button. The elevator dings and the doors slide open. Inside, she sees only three buttons: B1, B2, and B3. Jocasta knows from Mitch’s report of his remote viewing experience that the floor with the meditation pod and the weird angular hallways is on B1, so she removes her glove and presses that button.

It’s now 10 am. Marshall has spent the morning making calls to SANDMAN and various contacts in the intel community and determined that Agrigenics is not a SANDMAN cut-out, nor is it directly affiliated with any major government agencies like the CIA or the Department of State. The phone rings. He answers.

Marshall: Ahoy-hoy.

Receptionist: Please hold for Dr. Stanton.

A pause.

Frank: To whom am I speaking?

Marshall: This is Dr. Marshall Redgrave. Is that you, Dr. Stanton?

Frank: This is Frank Stanton. Glad I caught you.

Marshall: Oh great.

Frank: Are you in a secure area to speak?

Marshall: (looking around at the URIEL library) Um, sure.

Frank: Well, Dr. Redgrave. We have ourselves a bit of a problem here, don't we?

Marshall: Um, yeah, no. It’s not great, Frank.

Frank: I’ve been giving our friend his marching orders the past five years. He's been through a lot of personnel shake-ups. He's been through a lot in his life. Your report has me extremely concerned for the continuing security of Operation URIEL, as it stands.

Marshall: Sorry to hear that, Frank. But I wouldn't have reported it if you didn't have reason for concern.

Frank: Well, the real question now becomes: where do we go from here?

Marshall: Well, I — I leave that sort of decision-making up to the brass, you know?

Frank: But I’ve read your report, un-redacted, top to bottom. And, I mean, listen: I didn't go to Harvard Medical School but I can tell you that the portrait that you've painted of Archibald Ransom in in this August of 1973 is not the man I brought into the organization.

That turn of phrase intrigues Marshall. He pauses for a second to discern if Frank is subtly suggesting he doesn’t believe Marshall’s report. But no, a quick analysis suggests that the true purpose of Frank’s call is that he wants to hear what Marshall has to say about Archie in person, as opposed to what he put in his report. Frank goes on:

Frank: You’ve worked with him for how long now? Three, three-and-a-half years? Something like that? You know his quirks. You know his background. You have enough clearance to know what he’s been through in his life.

Marshall: Well, I think the … problem is that Archie Ransom hews to a very specific morality. Morality is important to him. It must be from his Mormon upbringing and it, you know, when it works, it works. Part of why he’s somewhat indispensable is that his sort of simple, glad-handing, American father way, it really works. On a subliminal level. With everyone. Particularly everyone in URIEL. It’s kind of why he keeps this team together. But that sort of, uh, old-fashioned morality, it brings him into conflict with some of our organization’s methods and practices. And perhaps some of the decision-making that goes into those methods and practices.

Frank: You said his morality is part of the reason he's indispensable —

Marshall: Right.

Frank: — why would you say, or what would you say are the other reasons he should be considered indispensable?

Marshall: Well, I mean, you know, he’s a skilled memeticist, he’s a great esmologist, etc. etc. etc. But I mean, really the reason he’s indispensable is because you have the fucking girl here. I mean, someone up there knows something about that. The man had a son, the son died, the son’s name was Charlie. And now he has a daughter named Charley who was born on the same day? Or something?

Frank: Let’s not get — let’s not get —

Marshall: No no no! I think it’s — to be clear, I think it’s genius. I mean, why wouldn’t you run this type of an op on someone? Particularly an eccentric prodigy like Archie? The reason I say it makes an indispensable is because, like, how are you going to see the experiment through if you get rid of him now? I mean, you have the girl, you can't swap out an Archie for an Archie, and she'll know —

Frank: Dr. Redgrave, the INDIGO Program is being shuttered. It’s done. There will be no Indigo Children. We’re already moving onto the next stage.

Marshall: Is that why she was sent here? Just because they needed a place to put her?

Frank: That’s classified.

Marshall: See, Frank, I don’t think it was random chance. I think she was sent here specifically and I think it had to do with Archie. And I think the organization, or someone in the organization, is invested in the Indigo Children if the program itself is shuttered. So I don't think you can get rid of Archie. So how do you deal with a problem like Archie? A man who has principles that bring him into conflict with the organization but also — you know, he is the organization. He makes this team work and he's got the girl.

Frank: Well, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to ask you why you considered him indispensable because he himself is indispensable to that next stage I was talking about. There's going to be another class of children. They just won't be raised the same way the Indigos were. And they'll need a teacher. But with what you've told me, my primary candidate for that role has clearly been compromised. He may even be infected with alien memetics. I mean stranger things have happened, right? No matter what his gifts are, we can't let somebody like that around the Next Generation.

Marshall: Oh no, I mean, absolutely — 100 percent — absolutely agree. But you know, candidly I think he just needs some talking to. The man's never talked to anyone in his life, I don't think he's ever as expressed a sincere emotion to anyone but his wife in however old he is. I mean, I think you just need to get him with like a doctor and just talk to him for a while.

Frank: Duly noted.

Marshall: But do keep me apprised —

Frank: Well, doctor — sorry —

Marshall: No, no, after you!

Frank: I’m just gonna have to ask you to be patient as we — we're going to have to keep a closer eye on him. So, if you do notice increased or suspicious surveillance around URIEL over the next few months I just hope you'll understand that it's so we don't end up getting a very rude surprise from one Archie Ransom and his morality, as you put it. It’s a delicate situation. We can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, these plans have been in play a long, long time. Longer than you've been with the Company, doctor. The structure remains unbuilt. And we need to finish building it. Now I'm going to be retiring from CBS this year. I'm just going to move into sort of New York media grandee sort of … the netherworld of every old newsman who's been part of the media complex the past 30 some-odd years since the war. It's … it's not going to be easy for me. There was a time when — you may have heard the scuttlebutt about this at Granite Peak — but there was a time when it was believed that Archie would be my successor. Now that obviously can't happen anymore. But as I said, the role that he is going to play in our Next Generation could be even more important than the head of North American memetics. So just keep them safe. And if he does do anything, um, radical, you have clearance to use any of your methods to bring him back down to earth.

Marshall: Well, uh, thank you for the call, Frank. I’ll keep an eye out for your men though I probably won’t see them, haha. Devastated to hear about your retirement, but do keep me apprised of this second generation of kids —

Frank: Third.

Marshall: — third generation? Ha, well, “look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Anyway, I don’t know if you know this but I wrote a well-received paper about child psychology and trauma —

But Frank cuts him off and the two hang up with a terse exchange of pleasantries. Marshall gets the distinct impression that Frank does not want him anywhere near the next generation of children. He wants him to act as Archie’s minder. A less glamorous job, certainly, than being involved in the newest iteration of the INDIGO Program, but one that could mean more down the line.

Charley slips through the main entrance of the astral version of Agrigenics HQ and races to find Jocasta. She does, just as Jocasta touches the B1 button in the dedicated basement elevator. Instantly Jocasta is confronted with a vision of an elderly woman, who is crying. The sun outside is very bright — how does she know this? there are no windows here — and she is hitting this button and someone is standing behind her in the elevator and the grief that she is feeling is endless and profound. The elderly woman turns to a man behind her — Jocasta does not recognize him — and says: “I just really want to thank you again for giving me the opportunity to say goodbye once more.” The man who is standing behind her clasps both her hands as the elevator descends. He responds: “I am just honored and pleased, so pleased, that you gave us this opportunity to do this for you and your family. Now, before you go down to B3, I wanted you to take some time in our special meditation pod to center yourself and think of your husband as you remember him.” Jocasta watches as the elderly woman bursts into sobs, sheets of tears cascading down her cheeks. She whimpers: “I will see him again one day, won’t I?” And the man replies, “I have every firm, eternal belief that you and your husband will live many, many happy years together.”

As this is happening, in the astral plane, Charley feels … something open up right below the elevator. A portal. Or a rupture. Between the inner astral and the outer astral; between the realm of emotions and projections, the shadow of the waking world, and the realm of ideas and symbols and dreams. Charley surmises that Jocasta’s use of psychometry has opened a path between the two planes. With her time remaining, she could cross this threshold and enter the etheric world between worlds. But she decides discretion is the better part of valor — Archie said that once, it sounded good at the time — so instead of plunging head first into this aperture, she merely descends the elevator shaft and then peeks her head, phantom-like, through the closed doors. What she sees horrifies her. In the material world, Mitch watches with rising concern as Charley’s faint aura radiates fear … or anger? Or is it revulsion? No, he’s 90 percent sure it is fear. He watches as her pulse accelerates and her brow breaks out in a sweat.

Jocasta blinks. The vision is gone. The elevator doors are closing; she quickly slides out before they do. She is left with the lingering but potent sense of the elderly woman’s grief but cannot in that moment make heads or tails of what she saw. She returns to the conference room, where Butler supplies her with some records and materials on Agrigenics’ work, promises that more will be forthcoming, and offers to escort her out. Jocasta declines, and takes the main elevator back down to the lobby.

In the astral, Charley discovers — almost too late — that the floor with the meditation pod, where Mitch observed Bernadette, and the portal that Jocasta opened, it is all one big trap. A vortex, a whirlpool, something that will swallow her whole if she does not escape now. She struggles against the undertow of this sinking pit beneath Agrigenics; in the material plane, Mitch starts attempting to wake Charley up as she struggles to return to her body. He can sense that a part of her is slowly vanishing, but before he can act, Charley snaps awake, breathing heavily, clammy with sweat, but apparently none the worse for wear.

Mitch: Hey. Hey! How you doing?

Charley: Oh. Oh! Is — is Jocasta here?

Mitch: No. Should she be?

Charley: Uh, well, yeah. She was leaving. Uh, oh … oh it’s — it’s really — it’s not — it’s so bad. It’s so bad, Mitch. That room with the meditation pod is some sort of … trap.

Mitch: Was there — did they have somebody there? Like is there somebody there 24/7? Was there somebody there for you?

Charley: No, no.

Mitch: What do you mean, it was a trap?

Charley: Oh, yeah, um … looking at that room, from the astral dimension, it suddenly … I mean, I just took a peek! So the plane I was on, I was on a plane, and then there was a hole that opened up to a deeper, lower level that I have not been able to reach yet. And, uh, I had already been warned that it was dangerous, that deeper level of the astral.

Mitch: And you rode the plane through the hole or you bailed out … ?

Charley: No, no, I just looked through the hole …

Mitch: OK.

Charley: I just looked through it and I — I — I — I was getting sucked in!

Mitch: Like it’s a lobster pot?

Charley: Yeah! It’s like a soul … sucking … machine!

Mitch: OK, well. We could break it. We could break it.

Charley: So, you know … I have so many questions. If it is a soul-sucking machine, what is — like, I also saw something. I was able to see — Jocasta, she was in the elevator, she touched the button to go down to the basement, that would lead you to the basement. And she had a vision. I was able to somehow kind of share in that vision and I saw — maybe not all of it, but anyway, the impression that I got — which, this is another reason why I think it’s a soul-sucking machine — is that there was this old woman that was being taken to the basement or basically like, like, “Here you go ma’am. You’re going to get into the elevator and see your dead husband” type of trip. And, um, “I’ll see you in 20.” Like, he didn’t even go down with her. He didn’t even go down her!? It was really weird. Really weird. And I got the impression that her husband was dead. So, yeah, I don’t know. And my spirit guide said it’s essentially hell. That it’s essentially hell. Underneath there.

Mitch: OK, so, like a souls-trapped-body-is-frozen kind of deal. That's, what, the inner innermost part of hell? Is the frozen lake? OK. OK. We can work with that. I mean, I could … I could break it. I could break it.

Charley: Great. Well, would that seal it up?

Mitch: No. It’d just cause damage. It might break the lobster pot but we probably want to know what we’re doing before we do anything drastic. Unless Jocasta is trapped somehow, in which case, um, we’ll just take the building apart.

Jocasta, Mitch, and Charley depart, driving toward a McDonald’s a few miles away that the team had designated as their rendezvous point. About a half-hour later, at 10:30 am, Bernadette, with Roger on her tail, arrives at the Agrigenics building. Roger does not follow her into the parking lot, but instead just visually confirms she made it. He then drives away to join the rest of the team for French fries and milkshakes. He arrives just as Marshall pulls into the parking lot with Dave. Once everyone is settled in a booth in the corner, the team debriefs. Then:

Marshall: Sounds bad, gang! Sound real bad.

Mitch: Yeah, I think we should take action.

Marshall: Yeah, I super agree. I think we need to start putting some bodies in trunks, to be honest. So, how do we wanna go about doing this?

Jocasta: My advice is, we find out some way to turn that fucking place into glass that doesn’t let out whatever they’re concealing in the basement and then we take these personnel files (she taps the files she obtained from Butler) and we find every person on them and throw them out of a helicopter.

Roger: So this is what it’s like when Archie’s away. No voice of reason, we’re just going to blow things up.

Mitch: I mean, I could do that right now.

Marshall: Well, we have two paths open to us. I think in terms of violence the first path is, we can go for Bernadette. We know her routine enough and we've invested enough time and resources in her, we can get her. We know we can get her. And who knows what we can get from her once we get her. I mean, once we get her I can get everything out of her. The other path is, I think, going to be the building itself in some sort of a raid or otherwise and once we’re in position, maybe Mitch can do … Mitch’s thing? And hope for the best?

Mitch: Well, we can do A then B but we can’t do B then A, so I feel like rolling up Bernadette is the logical next step. That’s not my personal areas of expertise. I can assist.

Roger: Yeah, we'll take care of it. We should probably take one of the boys too. They'll probably crack first anyway. I still don't see the link between the weird bio lab and a soul-sucking pit to hell. But they're — I think Bernadette would be the person who would help us with that link.

Mitch: I'm curious what they're trying to do and what they think they're trying to do because I'm pretty sure those are two different things.

Marshall: Well put.

Roger: Or are being manipulated.

Mitch: Yeah. Right.

Jocasta: It seems like whatever they're doing down there, they're powering it with … people's despair or … ?

Marshall: Yeah, there’s people in the pod.

Jocasta: Or their sense of loss? What I don’t know is what they’re fueling.

Mitch: I mean, I’ve been guessing frozen corpses. You think there’s more to it than frozen corpses?

Jocasta: Frozen corpses in hell were the traitors, right?

Mitch: Yeah. Exactly.

Jocasta: That old lady didn’t seem like a — well, I don’t now. Maybe her husband was a bad guy.

Mitch: Well, define “bad.” I mean, you know, people collude with History B for all kinds of reasons. You know, it's not like this world is so great. We've had this conversation before, we don't need to again.

Roger: Yeah, we’ll take it as read. History A sucks.

Jocasta: One thing we may want to — I mean, obviously, and this is probably irrelevant — like, let's just snatch somebody up from there and bend their finger backwards. But Roger, is it your sense that they're somehow generating History B vibes in a physical way rather than in memetic way?

Roger: It didn't seem like it. I mean, she made glyphs, right? That's what Mitch was saying but you don't grow glyphs, right? But there's some kind of taint in that place —

Jocasta: Ah, but what if she is though?

Roger: I mean, OK, yeah I can see it.

Jocasta: What if they’re imprinting glyphs on a genetic level in grain?

Roger: That’s beyond — I don’t know why you’re asking me that, man. That goes way over my head.

Mitch: There could be like a species or strain of bean that as it grows up on the trellis, the vines naturally form the shape of a glyph. Like, that could be a thing. If I could imagine it, it could exist.

Roger: Well, History B has its own plants, maybe, and maybe they’re growing those plants here? And it helps bring more History B here, right?

Marshall: Or maybe what they’re powering is an area of permanent ontological instability, of History B inside History A, so that they can grow History B native plants in our timeline and distribute it what way. Maybe in order to do that they need to suck in souls. Souls that they need to like, power it.

Mitch: This is going into just like, wild crazy speculation and we need more intelligence on this one. And I think that what we need to do is put the sack on Bernadette.

Roger: OK, let’s take Bernadette out.

Mitch: She freaks me out.

Roger: We’ll pick her up on her way back from work tonight.

Marshall: Do you guys need Dave?

Roger: Sure. We could definitely muscle. But my main concern, though, is psychic ability she might have. She certainly is going to be going to bear with glyphs so we’ll have to have our ikoters set to blast her brains out.

Charley: Uh, quick question: does it, is it your guys’ impression that Bernadette knows more about this whole … whatever is going on than Butler?

Roger: I don’t know about Butler. I mean, Bernadette knows a lot. She’s made glyphs, she’s manipulating those kids …

Jocasta: Butler is just a machine for that company. I knew it the second I talked to him.

Mitch: There’s more pieces in play than just Bernadette.

Jocasta: Oh for sure. I’m just saying Butler is not the éminence grise, he’s —

Marshall: He’s the pawn to her knight or bishop or rook or whatever.

Jocasta: Sure. It wouldn’t hurt to —

Roger: Do we need to find a king? I mean Bernadette will lead us up the chain, right?

Marshall: Let’s get Bernadette. If you guys want to pitch me some ideas about how you want to have it go down or have a day to think about it or whatever. But you're the field team.

Roger: She lives on a lonely country road. We can just do a classic ambush.

Mitch: Cars are basically death traps. It’s 1973, have you paid attention to anything? Cars are basically death traps.

The team discusses the possible logistics of abducting Bernadette for a little while, including setting up Dan, Roger’s new “asset,” as a patsy for her abduction (and potential demise, should it come to that). As they do, Jocasta flips through some of the materials Butler gave her — the project summaries, the research papers, and so on. She discerns from these materials the following: companies like Agrigenics started off as outgrowths of this green revolution, meant to help feed the Third World and to avoid disastrous famines in the future, but these individuals whom Butler has identified have not been selected just because America wants to feed the world. The work that some of these people are doing by bringing these advancements in breeding and genetic engineering home is to more effectively feed Americans. The unspoken thread running through all of this research is that one day Americans will need to be fed like people from the Third World. There is a very real possibility of serious famine, these papers hint, because of projections on population growth, on climate change, the possibility of nuclear accident or war. How do we feed more people with less land? That’s the question. And it is a question that runs through a number of these people's work, including Bernadette's. To Jocasta’s mind, this is an unusual coincidence because it sounds to her like an OZYMANDIAS project. But that’s the way of it with URIEL: it’s coincidences all the way down.