8/2

Played: February 9, 2023.

Sunday. October 9, 1973. Afternoon. URIEL holds an emergency meeting to discuss their imminent departure from Travis Air Force Base for the Redstone Arsenal outside Huntsville, Alabama, where they will learn more about Operation ALLOCHTHON. To the best of any of the team’s memory, no operation like this has ever previously been conducted, domestically. A mass subduction event like this, on American soil, is novel and unsettling. 

MARSHALL: My plan, at least, and I think it's advisable for everyone, is just go and like, do the work. Like, we're just gonna follow orders. We're gonna play it real cool and normal. We're gonna hear what they have to say. We're gonna do what we're told. We're not gonna ask too many complicated questions. This is not the time or place to be making waves. We have too many plates spinning on too many poles – also the world might end, if it is as big as they're saying it is – so I think we just need to whip out the old playbook and just, you know, go play by play.

ARCHIE: Right. There’s almost a clarity to it. It's not the wilderness of mirrors with OZYMANDIAS. It's an actual, mass irruption of the actual Enemy.

The team also discusses the latest events in the Middle East: the surprise attack on Israel by Syria and Egypt. Presumably that conflict is requiring additional SANDMAN resources in the Middle East, sensitive as that area is to potential History B exposure and ontological instability. But is that really the case? The team bandies about the idea that the Yom Kippur War (as the media has dubbed it) may have been sparked by SANDMAN as cover for this subduction event. Or perhaps the Red Kings have used the subduction event itself as a feint to distract SANDMAN for the real operation – a potentially apocalyptic military conflict in the Middle East. 

ARCHIE: The less imaginative possibility makes a little more sense – that Egypt and Syria are in league with the Enemy, and the war itself is the Enemy’s doing, to cover up something, perhaps. But this could all be different fronts in a massive assault

ROGER: “In league with” could just be, uh, them being manipulated by the Enemy, right? 

ARCHIE: Right, right. That’s what I mean.

Marshall shuts this down after a while. International politics are way above their pay grade.

MARSHALL: We’ve received orders from the Peak to mass mobilize in Huntsville. We’re going to do what we’re told. This is a real big to-do. We have a lot riding on this one – not even just the ontological implications of the Enemy but just, like, whether we as a unit can survive this. So I think we just need to get on a plane and go out to Huntsville.

MITCH: You seem a little anxious.

MARSHALL: Yeah! I’m very anxious! This is gonna suck, man!

MITCH: It’s gonna be OK.

ROGER (whispering, elbowing Jocasta): He’s brassier than usual today. 

The team debates what they should bring. Marshall believes ALLOCHTHON will equip them with everything they need: cars, glyphs, ikoters, whatever. Roger is having his Chevelle flown out; they may need a fast car out there and it’s the only vehicle Roger really trusts. Charley requests having ORACLE disassembled and reassembled in Huntsville, for possible use. Archie says that can be arranged. Mitch pockets the Norton coin. Roger raises the idea of bringing the Redgrave Statue from the St. Francis with them, since Charley’s testing has revealed that it is capable of mass-healing people within a certain radius. “But that would probably be incredibly embarrassing for Marshall,” he quips.

MARSHALL: I mean, I’m not embarrassed by it – we can bring it. I guess I'm just reluctant to bring too many reality shards to an ontologically unsettled hot zone, you know? Like, we have no idea what this is, or where that statue came from. I mean, we “know” where it “came from” but, you know. I don't know. It just feels like bringing a dirty bomb into a radioactive site or something.

ARCHIE: Also, I just worry that someone else is going to want it. It’s our stuff. If it gets claimed or requisitioned … 

Besides, Marshall points out, they can always call Sophie and have something flown over later. 

The meeting breaks up, everyone hustling to pack and prepare before their flight that evening. But on their way out the door, away from prying eyes, Archie discreetly stops Roger. He tells him he’s been giving Roger’s dream some thought. He asks Roger to retell him the dream in detail, listening intently. Then he nods and says, “We’ll just have to keep our eyes open. If things start going down that path … robots, you know.” 

ROGER: I look to you, because apparently the other – I’m pretty sure he was an “other” – other you knew not to tell everyone else so … so, like, when we tell the rest of the Club? That’s on you. You just let us – let me – know.

ARCHIE: Ah, because you haven’t told the rest of the Club?

ROGER: (emphatically) No. This is all opsec. He said nobody. 

ARCHIE: Yes, OK. Just … we'll keep this between us. For now. And keep an eye out for, you know … robots.

6 pm. URIEL touches down at Redstone Arsenal airfield outside Huntsville. Several anonymous-looking government sedans are there to greet them upon deplaning; these transport them briskly to the Marshall Space Center at the Arsenal, where SANDMAN has set up ALLOCHTHON’s command post. It is a humid 77° F under clear skies, with the sun hanging low on the horizon.

Upon arrival at the Marshall Space Center campus, certain members of URIEL observe SANGUSH and GU.SHUB glyphs placed on signs and buildings to ward off any “civilian” observers. Plain-clothes MilOps agents discreetly patrol the area. URIEL’s drivers pull up to a huge cargo plane hangar where several hundred SANDMAN personnel are being processed through reception and security. Archie thinks, as they exit the vehicles, that Huntsville must have been selected due to its proximity to various subduction sites that have “sprung up” roughly along the Appalachians and throughout the Mississippi and Ohio River Valleys. A site that is basically a two-hour flight to any potential hot zone is a good “forward position.”

URIEL observes that, like them, many of the Sandmen on site have “self-sorted” into small groups. Roger and Jocasta note an absence of active military personnel; the “grunts” seem to have been segregated out and processed through another reception area. At the “front” of the hangar, behind a small stage with a podium and mic, is a giant rear-projection display screen similar to the ones used by NASA. A team of technicians are busily completing its installation and setup, which includes hooking it up to a host of strange-looking computers. Rows of chairs are set up facing the board; cubicles and temporary “break-out” rooms are being set up along the side walls.

Marshall spots Jolly West and MORNINGSTAR at a distance; he also glimpses Kendrick Mead, who seems to be working in a supervisory capacity, directing people around. Charley notices Delta, one of the older Indigo Children from the Peak, who is now about 13 years old. She is chatting amiably with a group of five other agents, none of whom Charley recognizes. (Delta’s “speciality,” Charley recalls, had to do with eidetic memory and computation – she was able to recall, collate, and process information at an almost inhuman level).

When Mitch notices Delta, he squints and brings her aura into focus. She seems perfectly healthy, though her aura is, surprise, indigo-colored. The electric pulses in her brain are firing very rapidly, far more rapidly than Mitch has previously observed; Mitch would guess that she’s incredibly intelligent. Emotionally, she is closed off, scared, untrusting, but attempting to put on a brave face. And she has a chip in her head, situated exactly in the same place as Charley’s was. 

There’s no sign of Frank Stanton, or Anthony Reinhardt, or anyone else of similar rank, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. In fact, Archie tries to discern who is in charge, but comes up empty. It seems no one with command authority is in the hangar yet, at least not in the “public” areas. He recalls that the Telex URIEL received said all directives will come from Control, and Control is, presumably, still at the Peak. No surprise there: the existence, identity, and composition of Control is one of SANDMAN’s most closely-guarded secrets. The rank-and-file only know that Control is believed to include some American, some Canadian, and some British members – basically, the leaders of the “old guard” who were involved in creating SANDMAN during World War II. 

Roger decides to go have a smoke outside. Everyone else takes a seat and starts reading the packet of materials they received as they entered the hangar, though Archie continues to discreetly observe the crowd, marking who’s who and trying to suss out the dynamics of the room. No one seems unnerved by either Delta, or Charley, or any of the other handful of Indigo Children who are milling about. That strikes Archie as a bit odd, since the INDIGO Program was supposed to be highly classified. 

“Archibald Ransom!” A friendly voice, English accented, interrupts Archie’s musings. He snaps to and sees Dr. Hilary Postel walking up to him, hand outstretched. 

ARCHIE: Hilary!

HILARY: My God, it’s been years! Where’s the rest of the team?

Archie points out the rest of his people; Marshall stands and approaches, shaking Hilary’s hand but saying nothing. 

ARCHIE: Look at this whole operation! This is unprecedented. 

HILARY: Terrible! Terrible, terrible business, Archie. I don’t know what they'll end up doing with my particular set of skills here but –

ARCHIE: I feel the same way. It's all hands on deck but what on Earth – how are we going to be useful?

HILARY: Well, I suppose once we start getting some data in from some of these subduction sites we'll be able to, well, come up with some ways to shrink them down and get rid of them. But the real question is: why did this happen? I’m sure there are plenty of personnel asking those questions, both here and at the Peak right now. But that's what I found myself most curious about. We haven't heard any stories of any … (lowering his voice) massacres or cult gatherings …

ARCHIE: And why did this happen now, with everything else happening in the world?

HILARY: Well, again I'm going to need – I'm going to need to see some of the data to give you my considered opinion. But one's initial opinion – one's initial suspicion – must be that the two are related somehow.  

ARCHIE: Stands to reason.

HILARY: Why here in America? Why here in the New World? The land of the Templars. The … the Western Lands. Why would a war like that echo thousands and thousands of miles away?

ARCHIE: Well, I don't know how they're going to deploy us, if they're going to lock us in separate rooms, ha ha –

HILARY: (chuckles)

ARCHIE: – but it is swell to see you, circumstances notwithstanding, Hilary, so let’s compare notes, if that’s allowed, as things unfold.

HILARY: I would have to imagine, Archibald, that the reason why they brought this enormous brain trust here, all at the same time, simultaneously, in the same space, is that they want to take advantage of these kinds of realizations. But you know, we're going to get our marching orders tomorrow and those marching orders may send any one of us to any one of these sites with or without our teammates. Now, I keep a good relationship with the permanently stationed Sandmen in the Boston area, but ever since I left San Francisco, I've been basically left my own devices at the Semitic Museum … so I don't, um, I come here without a team. I come here without any close set of comrades to tag along with. So, of course, if I find anything interesting I'll let you know.

Archie subtly directs the conversation around to what Hilary’s been up to in Boston, what life in “semi-retirement” has been like, but without directly asking.

HILARY: I’d call it more “exile,” that’s what I would call it. I mean, that's fine. There's plenty to go through in the collections at the Semitic, believe me. Plenty of work to do covering things up. But I haven't been abroad on any kind of dig or investigation, God, since before I came to URIEL. In any event, I may be getting …

ARCHIE: Be careful what you wish for.

HILARY: – ha, yes, I may be getting my wish for field work. I don’t know. I don’t recognize any of my colleagues from the applied anthropology side of things here, so I may be one of the only ones unless they’re already in the field. In which case, I don’t envy them having to be the first boots on the ground in one of these subduction zones. 

Outside the hangar, Roger siddles up to a group of MilOps personnel – the unsavory ones, scalpers and black baggers, not rifle-toting commandos – and bums a light. He makes small talk. What he gleans is that nobody knows why this has happened. Even Control and the big names at the Peak are kind of clueless. They do have some early reconnaissance on the ground in some of the areas right now and the rumors that have come back over Saturday and Sunday seem to indicate that the borders of the zones themselves are kind of hazy and uncertain. Also: the zones have manifested in pretty rural areas. So, that’s good: fewer people means less opportunity for the zones to “solidify” and expand. But it’s also bad. It defies SANDMAN’s general understanding of how subduction zones work, and without “belief” to fuel them, how can they be shut down? One of the MilOps boys tells Roger: don’t expect to be working with your team on this one. They’re going to be splitting people up, sending them all over the place. They don’t want people too familiar with one another working together for fear that they’ll “reinforce” their own “preconceptions.” Roger thanks the group and heads back inside.

Eventually, an announcement is made that people can head to their assigned rooms, which are offices that have been converted into makeshift dorms. Everyone consults their packets. Marshall and Roger are rooming together; so are Mitch and Archie. Once in their rooms, Mitch tells Archie about Delta’s chip in her head. And Roger fills Marshall in on what he learned during his smoke break. 

Jocasta is assigned to bunk with Charley. (Jocasta arrives in the room before Charley; she takes this opportunity to scribble a note and slip it into Charley’s luggage). When Charley arrives, she unpacks and finds Jocasta’s note. She’s confused. In ASL, she signs:

CHARLEY: Is it safe to talk?

JOCASTA: Is it ever?

CHARLEY: Well, um … OK. You saw this? So you had like a dream?

JOCASTA: I read the signs.

CHARLEY: OK. I don’t really understand but … 

JOCASTA: I don’t either.

CHARLEY: Oh, OK.

JOCASTA: Just something I thought you should know.

CHARLEY: Jo, do you have any sense as to why these zones are popping up in this area?

JOCASTA: Oh, I know as much as you do. This is far beyond any experience I’ve ever had. It's obviously very major. I think it's going to be very dangerous. Maybe in a way that none of us have really been prepared for. I think Marshall is right. I think we need to be subtle. We need to be quiet. We need to go with the flow. But, I don’t know … I have … I have a feeling of great dread.

CHARLEY: Well, that’s no good.

JOCASTA: No.

Jocasta then tosses a copy of The Late Great Planet Earth onto Charley’s bed. 

JOCASTA: This guy’s got it all figured out, I guess, so …

CHARLEY: OK, well, I’ll take a look. But I’m pretty tired, Jo, so …

JOCASTA: I don’t mean to frighten you, Charley. I really think this is going to be a transformative experience for you. But it could be rough. I just want you to be ready for that.

CHARLEY: I mean, you should be fine, if the future that we saw or experienced before is any indication. We'll be fine.

JOCASTA: Hm. We’ll see.

CHARLEY: That was, um, pretty terrible for you. But you were alive.

JOCASTA: That’s true. But you know what they say in situations like, if you come home alive at the end of the day, it’s a good day.

CHARLEY: Yeah. Did you see that kid there? The other kid?

JOCASTA: The little girl?

CHARLEY: Yeah. She’s another Indigo. Her name is Delta. Or at least, it was.

JOCASTA: What do you think about her?

CHARLEY: Um, well, I don’t know her that well. She has an incredible memory. That is what I remember being her strongest talent. But beyond that … I don’t know her that well.

JOCASTA: Do you think we can trust her?

CHARLEY: (shrugs) It’s just weird seeing another Indigo about.

JOCASTA: Do you think you want to talk to her?

CHARLEY: I dunno. I dunno. Maybe.

JOCASTA: Well, whatever you decide, know we have your back. Get some sleep, I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be quite the day.

They go to bed after wishing each other good night.

Monday. October 10, 1973. 9 am. After breakfast, everyone assembles in the hangar. The rear-projection screen is now operational. On it is a giant map of the United States, with red dots signifying the various subduction zones that have popped up over the past 72 hours. Banks of computers occupy the space immediately in front of the screen; these are staffed by technicians who are busily feeding information into the system for analysis. Between them and the rows of chairs where everyone is seated is a small stage with a podium, mic, and a table with chairs. A few men sit up there. Kendrick Mead is among them, as is John Merrick, to Marshall’s surprise. And so is Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who is recognizable to both Marshall and Jocasta. He rises and approaches the lectern. After tapping the mic, he says:

SIDNEY: Gentlemen, ladies. Please be seated. I’m going to keep this relatively short and sweet but once the orders come in, you may be asked to move with all alacrity. I'm going to hand things over to Dr. Mead to explain the metaphysics and ontology of the situation we're dealing with. Then I'll get into Logistics. Kendrick?

Kendrick approaches the podium as Sidney takes his seat.

KENDRICK: As you can see here on the map (he gestures at the board), we have identified the twelve distinct subduction zones that appeared two days ago across the eastern United States. Most of these zones are pretty far from populated areas. A couple do butt onto major settlements, such as the one over Lake Champlain in Vermont. It's very close to Burlington. As you can see, one is very close to Huntsville, in central Tennessee. We have conducted, again, much aerial reconnaissance and there have been unexplained phenomena throughout these zones. The size of the zones varies. We're only dealing with initial reconnaissance on the ground but the sense is that the largest zone is the one (he holds up a silver pen-like object and clicks it; a red laser dot appears on the board, near the Gulf Coast) between the border of Mississippi and Alabama. That's the zone that’s the largest and which registered the most intensely on the electromagnetic spectrum. At the moment, we need to get human intelligence on the ground. These zones have been largely cordoned off at this point, again, most of them are far away from populated areas, but we do need to understand how these zones are affecting human subjects close to them. 

We have fed all of the mission-specific personnel into the Granite Peak Central Personnel Computers. In an attempt to avoid possible memetic contamination, we will be, for the most part, separating you from your operational groups. Your specialties, of course, will come in handy on the ground in all of these situations depending on what role you are to fulfill on your new operational team. 

For the taishers out there, I'm just going to tell you right now this is going to be a very, very long set of days for you. We don't have nearly enough people with the ability to detect and analyze History B energies; most of them are stationed in the Middle East right now for obvious reasons. We're going to be asking a lot of you but mopers and stimulants are available as needed. 

Those of you with specialties having to do with memetics, esmology, and neuro-linguistic programming, you will probably mostly be tasked with interviewing any eyewitnesses to any of these subduction zones and phenomena. For those of you with more specialized backgrounds, you'll be asked to wear a lot of hats on this mission. We don't know what we're going to encounter. We don't know, most importantly, what triggered this series of subductions. No theory is too outrageous. When you report back from the field we want to hear every detail we can from you – they will all go into our esmological calculations. No detail can be overlooked. For those of you who need immediate transportation or communication, mobile phone units will be assigned to each unit. I think that's all I have as far as logistics goes. Sidney, what do you want to let people know about the other side of things?

Sidney rises and steps to the lectern again.

SIDNEY: We were obviously caught with our pants down here, folks. We have a war now – 48 hours old in the cradle of civilization. We're not as staffed here in North America as we'd like to be. Everyone who can be spared has been called. We want you to be able to get rest. We want you to be able to operate at peak efficiency. But I'm going to tell you that this is going to be, as Kendrick mentioned with the taishers, it's going to be a difficult few days. The end result, obviously, is that we need to see all twelve of these subduction zones shrunk down to zero. That's your task. That's your job. Control has your back. The computers will tell you where to go and your fellow Sandmen will be there with you through thick and thin. 

Marshall rolls his eyes internally. This is Sydney Gottlieb trying to give an inspirational speech and failing miserably. Clearly, he’s not used to talking to this many people. Why is he in this role? He wonders. He's a behind the scenes kind of guy, and has been a Sandman for a very long time at very high levels, both at the Company and in the Project. It strikes Marshall as unusual that he is the operational chief of this mission.

Mitch reads Kendrick’s and Sidney’s auras. Kendrick seems pretty calm, pretty together. Physically healthy. Motivated. Sidney, on the other hand, has something else going on behind his eyes. He seems distracted, like he is thinking of something other than the mass subduction event that is happening across the United States. The impression Mitch gets is that Sidney is hiding something. 

SIDNEY: Assignments will be forthcoming in the next half-hour. Stay here until you receive them. Thank you.

The hum of conversation picks up as the audience talks among themselves. After a few minutes, people break up and mill about. Hilary takes this opportunity to come over; he greets Archie, who introduces him to the rest of the team. Roger gives him a special handshake.

HILARY: Dr. Redgrave, you have come into your own, haven’t you? I hear about you all the time. It’s amazing all this work that you’re doing, to tell you the truth.

MARSHALL: … yeah.

HILARY: It’s great to see you again.

MARSHALL: Yes, great to see you too.

HILARY: Oh, do you know who I saw earlier this morning? I think she (he looks to the back of the room) – Mystic Kate is back there, somewhere. They brought her out of retirement. 

MARSHALL: Huh, wow.

A brief silence descends.

HILARY: (looking to Charley) And how long have you been with the team?

CHARLEY: Oh, not that long.

HILARY: Well, it's good to meet you as well. I've only heard the barest outlines of the program that you've come out of but … um, I hope you're finding the … I hope you're finding the job at least interesting. In any event, I came over here because, now that they’ve seen fit to give us the geographic information, well, you know my specialty is certainly not um pre-Columbian America at all, but I had a hunch when all this was happening that we might be looking at something. Let me just sketch something for you very quickly — (he takes out a notepad and draws a crude map of the eastern United States). They weren't kidding about that computer lab over there; you can get almost any book that you could get at a reputable university library. It’s really amazing the work that they've done to put all of human knowledge into computer banks. But this is what I wanted to show you. I had occasion to look at some of the maps of pre-contact America and I'm assuming that you're familiar, given your religious background, with the native mounds that dot the land from the Appalachians through the Ohio River Valley down the Mississippi?

ARCHIE: (nods) There’s some sort of correlation with the mound builders?

HILARY: I would say so!

He lays his crude map with the twelve subduction sites marked on it over a map he’s printed out. 

HILARY: It's not an exact match but what you'll notice is that the clusters of Native mounds, they sort of … weight themselves towards a central spot in each case. That seems to indicate – not all twelve, but eight or nine out of the twelve – are very suggestive. As I say, I’m not sure what it means, not sure what it entails, but suggestive.

ARCHIE: I’ll say! Have you reported that to the Powers That Be, whoever that is? I’m not even sure what the chain of command is here.

HILARY: Not yet. 

Marshall notes that Hilary is staring intently at Archie as he conveys this information. 

ARCHIE: Have you got any theories as to how this would relate to History B?

HILARY: All I know is, if I were going out into the field, I would probably want to be assigned to one of those eight out of the twelve that I've identified. That's where my curiosity would lie. But of course I don't have the ability to make those assignments. They're being made by esmological calculations on those computers right over there.

Hilary is not, Archie thinks, the savviest operator. Clearly he is using the opportunity afforded by this break as cover to convey, as best he can, some message.

ARCHIE: Well, maybe we’ll if Charley wants to take a look at this fancy computer system?

MARSHALL: Why, Hilary, would assume that you would come to this conclusion and the machines wouldn't? Like, why do you … your implication is that the machines are going to pick wrong, so we should tamper with them and pick one of the eight – or something along those lines – but why would you assume the machines won't come to the same conclusion you did?

HILARY: Do you think that any of these programmers or esmologists care the least about dead Indians?

MARSHALL: So your implication is that, because you care about dead Indians, you came up with this theory? But the organization’s greatest esmologists, powered by our most powerful machines, would come to a different conclusion? 

ROGER: Yeah, it’s called bias.

MARSHALL: Well, yes, but both things can be true: they can have a bias and still come to the correct conclusion just like Hilary has a bias and came to this conclusion. I mean, I have to assume the people in charge took this information into account.

HILARY: I’m a scholar of the ancient Near East, Marshall. And the reason why I am a member of SANDMAN is because I am a scholar of the ancient Near East. The predecessors to SANDMAN first met History B in the process of colonizing the globe and they didn’t just meet them in Mesopotamia. Obviously there was a little bit around King Solomon’s Mines in Tanzania, I believe, a few other places outside the Near East, where History B was found. But have you talked to any of the applied anthropologists that work in North America? Every time you talk to one of them, they will tell you that the ontological and belief energy of the pre-Columbian civilizations was not enough to leave a mark on the landscape. You don’t have an archaeologist on your team anywhere, so I’m just telling you what … how it is.

MARSHALL: And you were not consulted?

ARCHIE: Well, he’s here now to be consulted. We’re all on the same team.

MARSHALL: Why don’t you bring this to them? They want – they told you, all of us, to bring them this kind of information.

HILARY: I know what they told us.

Marshall picks up that Hilary is showing some real guts, like he’s attempting to express a deep concern for URIEL’s well-being, much as Viv described in her meeting with him in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He’s trying to help, but he can’t – or won’t – go much further than he is. This puzzles Marshall: what's the implication? So far we know there is either a bad actor within SANDMAN – i.e., OZYMANDIAS – but as far as we know, this is an actual crisis. So if Hillary is implying that something's wrong and that we should be doubting the organization writ large and the whole command structure of this operation, why won’t he tell us? 

Some members of URIEL – Marshall, Jocasta, Archie – have a modicum of archaeology training. Turning over what Hilary told them, Jocasta buys Hillary's theory about Sandman being so blinkered about the ancient Near East and Anunnaki and irruptors all having this flavor that Mitch talks about – why are they all bull men? why are they all Sumerian-flavored? – and  we know that a lot of it has to do with the foundations of European language. People lived on this continent; they built communities and they lived in large groups near these mounds. There was a lot of belief energy here. 

Marshall takes that a little step further. In his mind, when Roger said would the computers have biases, but even then, SANDMAN wouldn't completely discount connections with mounds. What's most interesting from Marshall's point of view is that Hilary’s observations about the mounds and SANDMAN’s biases might help explain why this happened spontaneously and the other spots that aren't connected to mounds may have been triggered by other “stuff.” Could there have been a keystone that caused all of these irruptions to happen at the same time, like one person spreading a meme that awakened people's memories of a world before European colonization? Perhaps. But we haven't seen any evidence of that. He summarizes these thoughts for Archie and Hilary, and Archie notes that – in addition to the Littlefeather’s Oscar protest – there is a fair degree of Indian and Indigenous peoples’ rights activities going on across the country right now.

ARCHIE: Hilary, do you think any of these sites are more significant than others, in your opinion?

HILARY: It does seem the concentrations of the ones in Ohio and West Virginia are meaningful. Tennessee, as well. That central bet. That’s Hopewell and Adena culture. I would want to get on the ground to one of those but also, the one in Louisiana is close to some mounds as well. The one near Cairo, Illinois – that’s also near one or two sites. And the ones that aren’t near sites, Archibald, they’re over water.  You've got Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin. You've got Lake Champlain in Vermont. You have the very big one down at the Gulf Coast. They're all near water. Who knows what's in those waters? Who knows what is under those waters? What we assume is glacial melt and glacial scraping could have been something that happened during the Ontoclysm. 

Their conversation is interrupted by Kendrick, who announces from the podium that assignments will be coming down in a few minutes. Hilary bids everyone goodbye. URIEL hastily discusses what they’ve learned, and briefly debates having Charley tap the computers to either manipulate URIEL’s assignments or learn early where they’ll be going, and with whom. Marshall worries aloud that doing anything other than “peeking” at the results would be dangerous – there are other Indigo Children present, and they have no idea of their capabilities. Everyone agrees and so Charley keeps her interference cursory, rapidly drawing out of the system URIEL’s assignments: Mitch is going to the zone closest to Huntsville; Marshall and Archie are being deployed to the site outside Columbus, Ohio; Roger’s going to the Gulf Coast; and Jocasta and Charley are being flown out to Cairo, Illinois. As Charley furtively shares this information with her team-mates, Kendrick’s voice comes over the loudspeaker once again, instructing everyone to take their seats for their assignments.