8/6
Played: April 20, 2023.
Friday. October 12, 1973. Mid-day. Roger arrives at the private infirmary room where Marshall is “recuperating.” He finds Marshall dressed, sitting in a chair, and reading some of the preliminary ALLOCHTHON data that Charley mined that morning. Marshall smiles as he enters.
ROGER: Don’t ever pull that kind of shit again. Just don’t do it. I can’t take it. And I have a message for you from the Master of the Crossroads, which is: he has a date with destiny, with you, and you cannot change it, whatever you think. So don’t do that shit again.
MARSHALL: Well, fortunately for you, it would only work the one time anyway, so there’s no point to doing it again. But, message received. Thank you for your concern, Roger.
ROGER: Now I gotta get a hug.
Marshall stands and they hug. (Marshall has now attained the ultimate achievement in white man coolness: a hug from a younger Black man). Marshall resumes his seat and Roger drags over a chair.
ROGER: Look, there’s a whole bunch of planning shit to do but … stay cool, man. Stay cool.
MARSHALL: I’m doing great. Don’t have to worry about me. I have plans –
ROGER: I just have to ask: just out of professional curiosity, did you experience any … visions while you were, you know, there?
MARSHALL: (shaking his head “no”) No. No, not really anything. It was surprisingly, um … mundane, to be honest. Which sort of, you know, robbed it of a lot of its power, I think.
ROGER: Well, or you did it wrong, which is what happened.
MARSHALL: Or I did it wrong, right!
ROGER: But, anyway, yeah – I mean, it worked out, so the other thing I want to tell you is that, while you were out, and while we were building towards this, there has been more information given us about … well, there was a split in a timeline when you – when we – pulled you back. And the timeline we’re in, we really don’t want to have collapse back to where it was. Because where it was headed was all out war with … whatever they’re calling themselves. I’m still gonna call them Ozzies. They took out our families. They took out whatever they had to. So … I got the message loud and clear from the loa, which is, they have to go down. Reinhardt absolutely had to go down but now there’s an all out war – or it will cost us and when it costs us, it’s all going to go south. So we gotta make more deals. I mean, we picked the Deal Maker – the Devil is the right way to go. But as careful as we can without losing our souls. That’s how it always is with Him. But we need to not go in guns blazing – or fire burning – anymore. We need to roll up the assets like they taught you in spy school. That’s the message. Because I know I’ve seen that future and we don’t want to go there.
Mitch suddenly emerges from behind a privacy screen.
MITCH: The good news so far is we’ve successfully avoided it, right? We’ve got a cool bird.
MARSHALL: (startled) Mitch!
Mitch shrugs and takes a seat.
MARSHALL: Uh, well, yeah. I mean, I hear you. So, you know, that’s not going to happen. There isn’t going to be a war between us and them. I’m going to make sure there are no civilian casualties. And the thing you said about the timeline … that’s interesting. Because I think – I don’t necessarily think that I’m that timeline’s Marshall. I kind of think – I kind of get the sense that all of you are here, in my timeline, if that makes sense.
ROGER: Good to know it hasn’t gone to your head, man.
MARSHALL: Ha, so yeah. (He pauses for a while). That – the eventuality you saw, I think you left that behind. And in this one, I think everything’s going to be OK.
ROGER: Well, we’re going to work really hard to make sure that’s true, right?
MARSHALL: Oh, yeah! No, I’ve given this a considerable amount of thought and, uh, once we’ve all checked in, I should go talk to Sidney.
ROGER: Alright. Well, let me know if you need help from one of the others.
MARSHALL: I probably won’t. The man has a club foot so, you know, he can’t really get that far. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.
ROGER: As I remember, he did roll over pretty fast. But, yeah: not again, man. That’s all.
MARSHALL: It’ll only work the one time! It doesn’t – the Math knows about it now, so the Math can contemplate it. So it would have to – it couldn’t be this again. It would have to be something even …
ROGER: That’s the other thing – that’s one of the things that we discovered. Their Math is flawed – they have a blind spot.
MARSHALL: Well, yes, that’s what my, uh … thing with the gun was all about. I needed to see. I mean, just so much of what had been going on with us didn't make any sense. It just was incoherent from an intelligence perspective. And it was driving me crazy, this feeling that we were just … that we were just running an experiment, that we were the experiment, wheels turning, and everything had been accounted for and even us thinking we had accounted for something or suspected something – even that was predicted. Like they had us. They knew everything that we were going to be thinking down to the very last doubt. So could they plan for anything? Could they plan for all things? Was it always going to happen that way? And, uh, you know … when they got me in the room, I just was like, “This is my chance to test it.” And their Math didn't predict it. So their Math … their Math isn't flawed. The Math works. What's flawed is the underlying assumptions going into the Math. The Math can only show you – and this is where the Language is better than the Math – I think the Math can only show you what is most probable to happen based on a series of other probabilities that have already been determined. It doesn't predict the future. It just tells you what the likeliest future is given the circumstances. And, you know, you can get that down to a really high accuracy rate. You can get it to like, 99 percent. But it can't account for everything. It can't account for a man who will just shoot himself in the head rather than following instructions. And that's the kind of thinking we need to employ if we're going to solve the problem that is OZYMANDIAS, I believe.
ROGER: It’s not just individual actions. The other flaw in their Math is that they don't believe in spirits. They don't understand the dead. They don't think the dead don’t have minds, which is a serious flaw if you're trying to manipulate minds because there's a larger mind-space than just living minds.
MARSHALL: Oh, yes, I mean, there’s no –
ROGER: No, I mean, that’s actual math that they deny. They do not believe it. Which means that they’re — whatever calculations they’re trying to come up with to break things, right, it has a giant hole in it. So I wanted you to know.
MARSHALL: Yes, no – I appreciate the information. And I feel I should go talk to Sidney to start, well, getting this all straightened out.
ROGER: I think maybe you should check in with Arch first.
MARSHALL: Yeah, true. I should. I should probably do him the courtesy of going to him since, uh, he’s the boss and what-have-you.
ROGER: Well, you are also allowed to sit in bed and recover, you know? It’s a courtesy that they do for people who were in your situation only hours ago.
MARSHALL: I know, but the thing is, we have a magic man! We have access to a certain source. And, uh, he can do miracles, man. He. Can. Do. Miracles. So I feel great.
ROGER: There’s always a price to pay for magic. Remember that.
MARSHALL: I know. I know. I’ve been paying it my whole life.
Roger heads out. Marshall resumes reading the ALLOCHTHON files. Mitch closes his eyes and kicks his feet up on the bed. By late afternoon, Marshall is ready to meet with Sidney. He heads out, deeper into the ALLOCHTHON back offices, and finds Roger seated outside the small windowless room where they are keeping Sidney Gottlieb. Marshall enters and takes a seat.
SIDNEY: They weren’t kidding about your – I hesitate to call him a taisher anymore. He’s a healer. A psychic healer. A real psychic healer.
Marshall glances Sidney up and down, reading his body language. Sidney looks tired and seems wary.
SIDNEY: So you did what you did knowing you’d likely be saved.
MARSHALL: No. I knew that I had more than the average person's chance in that situation to survive, given the assets in play.
SIDNEY: I still don’t understand why you did it. Just to … put an end to what we’re doing? That was the only goal in your head?
MARSHALL: No. My God, you’re bad at this Sidney. It must be because you came from Agriculture or something. I don’t care what your little cabal does. You can develop a world made of ontological mineshafts and live with harems of beautiful, breedable women or whatever. I don’t care. I just do not like being played. I do not like people using me without my knowledge. Keeping secrets from me. Predicting what I’m going to do all the time.
SIDNEY: You joined the wrong organization, if those are the things that you do not like.
MARSHALL: It's precisely because of that kind of thinking that the organization recruited me. Because if the organization got all their intelligence from morons like you, the Enemy would predict us out of existence. There would be no Project SANDMAN. Everything you do is so predictable. You make predictions and then those predictions come true because you yourself are predictable. And you were imposing your predictability on me! And I'm not gonna live like that. I'm not going to participate in your little experiments where you can cause subduction zones across the United States because you're just interested in seeing what's going to happen. That's not what I do, you understand?
SIDNEY: Well, at this point, URIEL is no longer a project of the Continuity Working Group so if you were –
MARSHALL: (cutting him off) Here’s the thing, Sidney. I'm here with a peace offering because I think that there's an opportunity here for everybody. So, you understand the situation you're in. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking to yourself: I just need to get the fuck out of here. If I can get back to D.C. or Virginia or whatever, I will come back and I will crush these insects. I will purge URIEL from existence and everyone they've ever loved. I have files. I have things on you that you don't even know, boy. I've been doing this for years. I know you have all that. And you're probably right! Because you're Sidney Gottlieb and you don't get to where you are – you don’t get to be Sidney Gottlieb – without a treasure trove of dark magic and secrets in your closet somewhere. I'm aware of that.
But you're aware that there's a magic man down the hallway who can light you on fire with his brain, Sidney. He can think of you and you can erupt into flames. And you also know that if you don't play your cards exactly right for the next 24 hours you could wind up a matchstick like your boy Reinhardt. So you're just trying to get out the door. You're just trying to get out the door, get to the car – “I just need to get to the car, I need to get home and this will all be over.” So, we’re at an impasse. We could just kill you right now. We could go full bore on this, I mean really just burn the whole thing down. You die, which you don't want to have happen. And the alternative, if we just let things stand as they are, you're going to get back to your little secret island base somewhere and you're going to retaliate against us. So I have a proposal for you. And that proposal is that, rather than us working for you, we work together, with me serving as an intermediary between you folks and my team. Because I think that you thought you could manipulate us into achieving your ends, but I don't think that my team will be used in that way. But that doesn't mean that we can't both be valuable to each other.
SIDNEY: Well, obviously you know that the things that you've just talked about with respect to Hort's abilities – with respect to your team's value for the Project and for us in the Working Group – you have found your way to a position of great strength. Obviously, moreover, the six of you are far too valuable to threaten or – at this point – further inveigle or in any way try to contrive some sort of … (pausing, he sighs). I mean, you’re not ours anymore. And obviously Reinhardt’s death paid for your freedom, essentially. I’m not looking to take revenge on anybody.
Marshall does not believe Sidney is lying when he says this.
SIDNEY: We’re not that large, you understand. When it comes to the Steering Committee, there's only a few of us. And our plans are all parallel with the Project at large. These plans do not go against the Project’s … look, as much as you seem to think that we are endangering life, limb and ontology with our experiments, we are not.
Marshall again does not get the sense that Sidney is lying. There’s no shakiness in his voice; rather, he speaks with the sort of hubristic confidence of a man who believes he can open and close subduction zones as he wishes.
MARSHALL: So here’s what I’m proposing. We can shepherd this operation to a safe closure. Everyone saves face. Reinhardt was a maniac. I had been operating under deep cover for years to try to find who this mole was. The mole was Reinhardt. He was confronted in this conference room. He went violent. I got shot, but I miraculously survived. No one needs to be blamed for anything. No one needs to know anything. I have ultimate plausible deniability with my team now. They know that I would sooner shoot myself in the head than work for you. I can facilitate a working relationship between the Steering Committee and URIEL with assurances that our independence is going to be reasonably respected – that we are not going to have ops secretly conducted on us or secretly sprung on us. And I had a third thing – and that is that you get us access to either the remains of, or the living mother of, Agent Charley Helix. We require access to the mother. Those are our three terms. In exchange, you walk out of here alive, not on fire, we do not cause an actual civil war within Project SANDMAN. Everyone saves face. Everyone looks good. Everyone goes home.
SIDNEY: OK. I obviously have to consult with the other members of the Working Group but I'm for this arrangement. I'm very much for it. I believe that both myself and Frank will want to retire. It's time, I think, for the both of us to bow out of both the mundane and secret war. That's not going to leave the Continuity Working Group with much in the way of juice within the Project. It should make your job easier.
MARSHALL: Excellent. Love that.
Marshall again does not detect that Sidney is lying.
SIDNEY: I don’t want to see anybody else in the Working Group hurt. Like I said, with Reinhardt it'll be a very easy post-mortem to make him into a monster. God knows what he was playing with that Tibetan cannibal ritual he kept pestering us about. But we’re better off without him. With any luck, we can put some disinformation out there to make him persona non grata and make his plans to create “perfect warriors” into a joke. Lord knows, there’s plenty of Aquarian dupes out there in the armed forces already. And … Agent RAVEN will be no problem but it may take some time.
MARSHALL: Well, time is all we have. We’re going to meet again at 9 AM tomorrow. At that time, I need to know what the official position is of your group.
SIDNEY: I will make every effort to, um, convince them of the … wisdom of taking this arrangement.
MARSHALL: Great. Excellent. It'll be great to work with you, Sidney.
Marshall leaves and goes to seek out Charley and Archie. He finds them in the computer, Archie busily reading and annotating the reports Charley has pulled and Charley plugging away at the system, glancing between monitors. When Marshall arrives, Archie looks him up and down, coldly.
ARCHIE: Mitch said you were close to 100 percent. Physically, at least.
MARSHALL: Yeah, I am. My eye is still knitting itself back together, I guess, but … yes, otherwise, I’m right as rain. Bad haircut, but that’ll grow back. Or maybe I’ll shave my head. I don’t know.
ARCHIE: What about your head – I mean, mentally.
MARSHALL: Oh, how am I feeling? I'm, uh, great. I'm feeling really … free. And I think things are going to be OK for us. Us being URIEL. I think it's going to work out. I think we can – I'm more optimistic about our future as a group, as a club, than I was before. So, you know, on balance I'd say it was a good thing.
ARCHIE: Has Mitch got you on something? I mean, are you high right now?
MARSHALL: Ha, no, I wish. It’s been a long day but no, I’m just on saline solution or whatever it is they pumped into my veins. But, you know, I guess I should apol–
ARCHIE: – you can understand my –
MARSHALL: Ha, no, you go.
ARCHIE: You could understand my wondering if you'd lost your bearings.
MARSHALL: Yes. I shot myself in the head, Archie.
Archie looks at Charley to see how she’s taking this.
CHARLEY: (nodding) Yeah, he shot himself in the head.
ARCHIE: (angrily) Marshall, what the H-E-double-L were you thinking?!
MARSHALL: Well, I mean, I should start with an apology. It's, you know … I had to hope it was gonna work out like this. I said this to Mitch but I couldn't really know if it was gonna work, if you know what I mean?
CHARLEY: Shooting yourself in the head is a really fast way to die.
MARSHALL: Yeah, it is.
CHARLEY: Like, a really, really fast way to die. A really fast way to die. You almost died. Like, really died.
MARSHALL: Yeah. Yeah. That was the point of it.
CHARLEY: That was really weird, that you shot yourself in the head.
MARSHALL: It definitely was. But that’s what this group is, isn’t it? We’re just a bunch of weirdos. Isn’t that what keeps us together?
ARCHIE: So this is some sort of childish thought experiment? Punching yourself in the face to show that you have free will?
MARSHALL: Well, I mean, kind of. I mean there was some strategy to it. I did have three of the most highly placed members of the OZYMANDIAS cabal in the room. So it’s not like … I mean, it was childish, sure. But was there strategy to it? Yes. Because if I really wanted to just test the theory, I could have just done it in a room by myself. I didn’t need to do it when I did.
ARCHIE: That’s right. You were in a room. You were in a room that we worked for months to get you into! We had a plan! I thought you and I had a good plan. I thought you and I came up with the plan!
MARSHALL: Well, you know, we never discussed what would happen when OZYMANDIAS actually recruited me. The point was only ever to get recruited. On top of that, I just don't understand how you don't see it, Archie. Why don't you tell me? Why don't you tell me? Like, you're a Mormon. And you are an esmologist. And according to all the esmologists I talk to, you’re one of the best of a small group. So you can kind of see it. Well, you can kind of see everything, right? Like, you’re kind of an oracle. You know everything looks like probabilities. So how do you deal with the question of free will? Is everything that’s happening just a mathematical formula that some group of people in a room somewhere thought up and knew that we would do?
ARCHIE: I don’t want to talk philosophy with you right now!
MARSHALL: But it’s not just philosophy! This is living! The question of what the six of us are doing in SANDMAN. Whether we’re just rats in a maze whose every thought and action is being predicted, scripted, whose – through behavioral models and esmology – narrative has been established for the rest of our lives. Who can live with that? That’s madness! To be an actor in a play that you don’t want to be in, reciting words that you don’t want to say because somebody else planned that you’d say them.
ARCHIE: So you were … were you taking the coward’s way out or did you know Mitch would save you?
MARSHALL: I did not know Mitch would save me. I hoped that he would but I didn't know if he would. I didn't know if he could get back there in time. I didn't know if it was going to be grievous enough that I would die instantly. I didn't know if he would be able to bring me back from the precipice. But I had seen it – I had seen what he did with Bernadette. And I thought, hey, let's give it a chance. The worst thing that happens is that you die.
ARCHIE: Did you spare a thought at all to what that would do to us? To the team? To the mission? I thought we were friends, Marshall!
MARSHALL: (tilting his head) I mean, did you, Archie? I mean, we are friends, I guess, in a sense …
ARCHIE: OK. Fair enough.
MARSHALL: You know, we’re in this – we, all of us, have this bond. And that bond is … there’s something to it. The Math has brought us together. But does that make us friends? That’s a really interesting question.
ARCHIE: I don’t even know if you know what friends are, Marshall. And I wasn’t talking about the goddamn Math!
MARSHALL: But how can you not?! The Math – you are the Math! The Math speaks through you! How can you not be stumbling over these thoughts constantly? If you did engage seriously with what it is you do, and what is done to us with the Math, I think you’d understand –
ARCHIE: You need to segregate, you need to block that off from real human interaction. But now I think that maybe that’s not a thing you understand. How can we trust you anymore? How can we trust you going forward? Sure, the tactical situation is evolving and we’re going to land on our feet. You should thank whatever passes for God in your cosmology for Mitch Hort, that’s for sure. But how can you say you didn’t betray the Club? What do you think you just did?
MARSHALL: (after a pause) A long time ago, Mitch came and visited me at the Mission. And he was talking about the Club. About betraying the Club. And I said to him, well, what if it benefited the Club, to betray it? What if it was like Judas betraying Jesus – necessary in order for the plan to unfurl. What if a little bit of treachery is needed?
ARCHIE: Who do you see yourself as in this metaphor?
MARSHALL: Well, do you think I see myself as Jesus?
ARCHIE: Well, I’m detecting delusions of grandeur.
MARSHALL: Is it a delusion of grandeur to compare oneself to Judas, the greatest traitor in history? But, Christ couldn’t have been crucified unless he was betrayed. I’m not actually saying that I'm Judas. Or even think of myself that way. I am just sort of saying … you don't have to trust me, Archie. Because you don't have a choice. We have to do this. Together. The Math – the dharma – has made this happen. And we can't change that. So you can either trust me or not –
CHARLEY: I’ve never heard you talk about math so much before.
MARSHALL: Well, the Math – the esmology – it explains so much when you really think about it. So, anyway, you know, you're stuck with me. I would hope that you would come to learn to trust me again because I think that I am trustworthy. And I am sorry – genuinely sorry – if what I have done has irreparably caused a breach between us. That would be a great loss. But it was a price I was willing to pay in order to test my theory. And in order to position us the way we're positioned now. I thought it was a reasonable move under the circumstances.
ARCHIE: Well, I’m glad you’re alright.
MARSHALL: Thank you, Archie. I’m glad we’re all alright.
There’s a pause and a silence. Marshall clears his throat.
MARSHALL: So, I spoke with Sidney and I told him that I'm going to work for them as sort of a liaison who will help slowly turn URIEL to their cause. That I’m really just a complete mercenary who doesn't care whose team he's on as long as he's winning. So, I think he thinks – I think I've reestablished a sort of predictability of thinking with him. I think he thinks that I'm safe now, or safer at least, and that I'm potentially more aligned with him than with you guys. But obviously that's not the case. Part of the deal is, we're going to wind down this operation safely using whatever means necessary. Everyone is just going to spread the story that Reinhardt was a rogue asset, had been compromised, I was shot but survived, etc. etc. Sidney will stay here to facilitate everything happening since he probably has the deepest institutional knowledge and then when this is wrapped we are going to part ways from them on independent terms where we will continue to collaborate where we can but mostly we can keep an eye on them because they're weakened now and if we can keep them not suspicious of us – if they think that they can put us in their rear view – they'll just sort of leave us alone. Then we can seize the initiative and monitor what they are doing. We can sort of flush them out more fully without them knowing that they're being flushed out. So that puts us in a better position there, for their dismantling. And, uh, I also insisted that they get us Charley’s mother and Sidney says that that can be accomplished, but it may take some time.
ARCHIE: That's good. Jolly West is a bit of a loose end. Frank … I don't think Frank's going to be a problem. I don't think he believed a hundred percent what we told him. But he was ready to play the cards he'd been dealt and to deal us in.
MARSHALL: Were you going to say something, Charley?
CHARLEY: You’re gonna get my mom?
MARSHALL: I said I wanted her alive or … or otherwise. And he said it can be done. He said it could be done easily, but it would just take some time. And he wasn't lying as far as I could tell. So, you know, I hope I don’t get your hopes up too much with this. I’m not trying to get your hopes up. But I thought it was worth a shot. And it seems maybe it can be done.
CHARLEY: And if she’s not well, maybe Mitch can fix her?
MARSHALL: Maybe! Mitch can do almost anything. He’s a real … Superman. So, I was thinking, if you folks have what you need here, and we’re all back on, at least, “working” terms, that I might go find where Jocasta went.
ARCHIE: Yes, she has been gone a while.
MARSHALL: Yes, I think there’s something a little … wrong with that girl. So I feel like one of us should go find her before she does something that maybe she should not do.
ARCHIE: Well, OK. Let’s talk with the team. I’m wondering if chasing down Jo is a job for Roger.
MARSHALL: We can certainly talk to the team. I had just noticed at the back of the packet that the cadet brought me that there was some sort of, um, abduction? Down in Louisiana? Is that right?
“Mississippi,” Archie corrects, and the three of them head out to find Roger and Mitch. Once located, everyone gathers in a private conference room. There, everyone gets on the same page with the lie they will tell the rest of ALLOCHTHON about what happened; Archie says he will work on developing a meme to “shore up” the story among the rank-and-file. Marshall proposes that they hold an all-staff meeting at 9:30 AM tomorrow, after he confirms, with Sidney, URIEL’s “special relationship” with OZYMANDIAS. Roger says they’ll need Sidney to announce whatever the wind-down procedure for this op was going to be, “the close-up plan or whatever Ozzy’s plan was.” Marshall agrees: he says they should, at the meeting tomorrow, have Sidney explain that Archie’s “independent analysis” revealed “new information” which he brought to Kendrick’s attention yesterday. That information means that the operation needs to mov into the “next phase,” with Archie joining the chain-of-command in order to assist with that process.
After the meeting, Marshall says, Roger and Mitch, along with whatever resources and agents they need, should fly down to Louisiana to deal with this abduction. Archie asks, “Is Louisiana the best place to send him? Aren’t there a few other places?” Roger responds, yes, he needs to go down there.
ROGER: There’s a man I have to meet – someone we have yet to encounter who will help us close these things, according to the loa. And there’s some connection to be made down there. So, yeah, I need to go down there. Also, I didn't tell everyone this … I wasn't sure about it at the time and I'm sort of putting two and two together now. It seems from what you're telling me that the abductions are like … them using helicopters and people and faking abductions, right. But on the flight over here I did see, over Louisiana, maybe an … irruption? That was not part of their plan. It was large and blue and it was ... it covered a large area and flashed lights like those kind we encountered beneath Mount Shasta, which flung me back in … flashed me back to Vietnam. I know I'm probably sounding like I'm in the UFO meme right now but I don't think it was part of what they've been spreading. So I suspect that Point One is kind of becoming more important. Or it’s the place where this is going to slip away from us.
MARSHALL: I have thought the whole time, from the jump, that there’s something suspicious about all this. And I think that, from the minute they started it, that the ontology’s been poisoned. I think that we’re dealing with a real, um, “leakage” situation here.
ROGER: Mitch, do you have any opinions on where we should be?
MITCH: (chewing some ice) The question was … what? Do I have an opinion on what we should … ?
ROGER: Where we are and what we should be doing?
MITCH: I feel like we’re moving really rapidly in a direction that is out of my personal wheelhouse and I think that’s great. Really I’m just enjoying listening to you all talk about stuff. It’s fabulous. The less I have to, uh, do stuff, the better. Because I don’t want to break anything. I mean, hands up, who wants me to break something? Yeah, see, no one wants me to break something. We’re all on the same page.
MARSHALL: Yeah, because you can really break things.
ROGER: And you can also fix things.
CHARLEY: Uh, Dad. Am I supposed to be working on something here? Can I go to Louisiana? I'd like to go to Louisiana. I mean, I've never been. But if I need to work on something here …
ROGER: I've tried to talk to you guys about the fact that what's been wrong here is the dead. That's the miscalculation they made. That's what's going on here. And honestly, I hate to say it but Charley, you're kind of our expert. I have appreciated you helping me learn a little bit more about being a medium but I think in terms of walking on the other side, while I have contacts there, you walk there. So I think it would be right for you.
MITCH: Yeah, sorry, of course that's a whole blind spot – if I can go off on a tangent for just a second. What strikes me as odd is that OZYMANDIAS’ apparent position – like, Sidney Gottlieb’s official understanding – is that there's no such thing as ghosts and no life after death and etc. etc. Because like, if nothing else, we've been writing reports, right? So that's been going up the chain and the people who have been reading them, I guess have just been assuming that we're severely misinterpreting events and stuff. But why are they thinking that? Is there somebody who gave them a meme? And if so, why? And if it’s just some kind of emergent thing, from them being weird dumb esmologists who got things backwards and wrong, that's probably worth knowing. Also, because that's going to affect how they planned things and how they thought about stuff. So I feel like that's something that should be followed up on but I really don't feel like I'm the person to follow up on it, which is why I'm telling y'all.
MARSHALL: That's an interesting question. It seems like something Archie might be able to mine. I’ll give it some thought …
MITCH: Am I straining a gnat? Making a mountain out of mole hill?
ROGER: No, no. If you’ve found a weakness in the enemy, you should exploit it.
MARSHALL: Yes, you’ve correctly identified a blind spot. Why would they? I mean, men like Sidney Gottlieb don't spend a lot of time in the field. And, you know, it's one thing to sort of theoretically know something but do you really believe it? I don't know. It doesn't seem totally irrational or totally inconsistent with what we know about them that they would just not believe in spirits or the afterlife but you are right that if they're cultivating teams like us, and all these teams are reporting back all this phenomenon, that they wouldn't think that. So that is an interesting conundrum.
ROGER: Well, I've watched them take every report I've ever written and turn it into some kind of weird speak about personalities and other things like that so for me it's pretty much par for the course.
This discussion reminds Marshall to tell the team what Sidney told him in the room about the Book of Mormon and the “language” in Archie’s “head” that they wanted to tap. Marshall then pitches his idea of going after Jocasta. Archie pipes up and tells Charley that yes, she can go to Louisiana.
ARCHIE: You’ve been such a trooper today, sweetheart, and look at all this amazing work you’ve done with these computers. You should go with Mitch and Roger. They’ll take good care of you. Marshall says they’ll outfit them with whatever they need.
Marshall tells Mitch he should go pick the team he needs and decide what resources he wants to bring, or have sent to, Biloxi. Roger balks a bit: usually he and Mitch just take a car and some beer with them.
MARSHALL: Well, Roger, you’re on the executive track now. So you’re going to need to learn to make decisions and manage personnel and this will be a good opportunity to do that.
ROGER: “Management”?
MARSHALL: You’re on an upward trajectory, whether you know it or not. You’re upwardly mobile! So why don’t you pick who think you need, keeping in mind that you’re going to need a memeticist, probably, or at least someone with NLP skills.
ROGER: That’s OK, boss. You tell me what I need because I’m “upwardly mobile.”
Marshall doesn’t get it and keeps listing off what sort of personnel they may want to bring. Roger, only a little sarcastically, thanks him for his confidence. Marshall pitches his idea of going after Jocasta. “I think maybe we’ve kept Jocasta’s mental health on the backburner for a little too long. My suspicion based on my reading of her therapy file is that, well, I kind of think she may have snapped. So I feel like we should go rein her in before she does something irrevocable.” The question is how to find her? Mitch asks if they have access to a large map of the United States which, naturally, they do – drawers full of them, in fact. Marshall is elated that Mitch is going to do one of his “tricks.” While everyone is distracted getting set up, Roger pulls Archie aside.
ROGER: Do you really want to send the blind to lead the blind back to us?
ARCHIE: I mean, he's not wrong. Jocasta was upset about how things went down. But I also think she can take care of herself …
ROGER: It has been too long, though. Someone does need to go look for her.
Mitch approaches, having found a set of darts (somehow).
MITCH: I mean, maybe somebody assassinated her? Literally, it didn't occur to anybody until now … like, what with the high stakes.
ROGER: And she had Reinhardt last time we saw her, barely alive. So confirming that she didn’t get taken is important.
MITCH: Maybe the Devil – not the Devil, sorry – some other figure showed up to claim Tony and ended up taking Jocasta, too, because she was there and blonde.
CHARLEY: Yeah, but if you do the map trick, we’ll know if she’s dead or not.
MITCH: OK, so here's the thing. Here's the thing, Charley, and I want to be completely clear about this. This map trick is not reliable in getting us the information that I'm asking for – that we're trying to get. It's just going to … it's going to advance the plot, is what it's going to do, OK? So it might not even take us to Jocasta. It might take us to … I don’t know – Medicine Man Steve, the exciting guy that we would have been trying to meet for months and months.
MARSHALL: I love it when he does this.
MITCH: But I’m doing my best right now. I try not to over-rely on this kind of thing, but I’m willing to try in this case because, um, well, Jocasta’s worth it.
Marshall starts tacking up the giant map.
MARSHALL: My skills are best used in getting Jocasta back here. Regardless of how you feel about what has transpired in the past 36 hours, I can be trusted to the extent that I have the Club's best interests at heart. One of those best interests is that we need Jocasta. I think that I am singularly the best equipped person in this group to actually talk her down from the psychic ledge that she's on. The danger that I'm worried about for Jocasta is not that Reinhardt is going to manage to take control of the wheel or that someone's going to assassinate her. My concern is that she's going to not sleep for 48 hours and is going to accidentally drive her car off a cliff and die in a fiery car crash or that she's going to a psychotic break and shoot up a diner. That's what I'm concerned about. But I think, whether you believe in me or not, I think that right now only I can get her back.
ROGER: Well, since you are executive material, you may wish to take some resources like some people who can kill assassins, just a suggestion from one of your fellow suits.
MARSHALL: I’ll give it some thought but I think that this one will require a certain amount of faith on my part. OK! Throw the dart, man.
Mitch readies up and tosses the dart. It sticks to the board, landing about two-third of the way down, and halfway across, the state of New Mexico. Mitch approaches the map. The dart has landed right outside White Sands. Marshall claps his hands and asks if everyone is “cool,” then they should adjourn and get ready for tomorrow. Everyone agrees. Before going to bed, Marshall calls Dave and tells him to get a car and haul ass to White Sands. He also sends Morris Parks a note saying to meet him at the tarmac tomorrow at 9:30 AM.
Saturday. October 13, 1973. Morning. ALLOCHTHON assembles in the hangar and Sidney makes the announcement as arranged. With “phase two” underway and Marshall on his way out to the plane, Archie retreats to a private office to contemplate next moves. He pulls out a notepad and makes a list: crafting a meme to help “juice” the lie about Reinhardt is item one; cluing Hilary Postel into things, as much as feasible, while possibly “curing” him of the Indian Mound meme propagated by OZYMANDIAS, is item two. He decides to take them in reverse order, since he needs the personnel. He summons Hilary to the office and fills him on the Reinhardt lie.
HILARY: People were acting a bit strange yesterday, I have to say. But I saw you talking to Kendrick. What do you reckon the damage is?
ARCHIE: Well, at the very least, this whole operation – ALLOCHTHON – is compromised. We just have to close the subduction zones and shut everything down as safely as possible.
HILARY: What on Earth would possess them to take those kinds of liberties with Americans’ safety? I can understand them doing this kind of thing in the Third World, Arch, but Middle America?
ARCHIE: Yes, exactly. I think we have to ask if this isn’t the hand of the Enemy, somehow. In the subtle, convoluted way these things work. I don’t mean that there’s an irruptor pulling the strings behind a wall. It just means that … you know, Reinhardt’s been in the game a long time, and you know what it does to people.
HILARY: I certainly do.
ARCHIE: Listen, one of the things that we – my team, well, your team, our team – URIEL – kept running into in the field, this business that you pointed out about the Mounds: it wasn't crazy. There's something there. There's something there about the Indians.
Archie spells out to Hilary how he’s become infected with a meme, pointing out intonations and pathways of thinking, the manner in which he “learned” to ignore the Mounds. “They didn’t want people above the top level poking around these sites,” Archie concludes.
HILARY: Is this just a pragmaclast hunt? Are they hoping that these subductions will trigger some kind of mass bounty that they can just scrape from these mounds? Go in there and find these treasures that didn’t exist before the subduction happened? I mean, it sounds crazy … but I know that there are vaults at Granite Peak, and at Oxford, and a couple places in the Middle East, where there are off-the-books shards. I mean, I say, “I know,” but I don’t know for certain if my suspicions are solid, Archibald. But I feel certain that the Project is keeping certain powerful artifacts off the books.
Archie and Hilary discuss further, Archie filling in Hilary a bit about what they’ve learned from ALLOCHTHON’s files. Hilary eventually asks if there is any source material on this situation he can consult. Archie says yes, but that he needs to review and redact parts of it first. He says he’ll come find Hilary when he’s done. Once alone, Archie gathers the most relevant sections of the ALLOCHTHON files, redacts (lightly) the most damning or dangerous parts, but leaves enough “there” that Hilary will likely be able to suss out the truth on his own. Later, Hilary returns to Archie with his conclusions.
HILARY: I see what they’re getting at, Arch. But what this would suppose, right, if we go by the theorizing in these files, it would say that humanity, post-Ontoclysm, generated new cultural forms to resist the blandishments of the Anunnaki. And there’s all kinds of theories about this. How much did our collective unconsciousness shape the fake history that comes before 535 AD? Did we create Christ from whole cloth? All of these religious figures that ended up being memetic inoculation against, but still penetrated through, with these hierarchies and obedience and all these other things? These religious impulses, they attach to the parts of the brain that they engineered in us, yes, but they still act as protection against … going back to the Sumerians. Going back to the original religious impulse given to us by … Them.
Obviously, all of this is above my pay grade because, well, much of it, clearly, is just rampant theorizing. Because no one knows – absolutely no one knows – what the truth of it all is. But you and I have seen Roger in action. You and I see what he is connected to. Archie, I believe one of the reasons why you are such a good memeticist is because of your religious background. I always have. And even though your holy book is riddled with inaccuracies, maybe they're not inaccuracies –
ARCHIE: I have to apologize to my wife.
HILARY: (laughs) Well, so now we have to decide, how important are these mounds in keeping the subduction zones hemmed in? What drove them to build them? If they've only just been triggered now, is there a continuity running backwards and forwards in time that these zones are – and have always been, and have always will be – soft spots in the ontological fabric? Did, when these Indians moved out of the mists of History B, into History A, did they see something? Were they told something by some sort of creature of the collective unconscious. We know so little about their religious beliefs except as they come down to us, to the modern day, and so I believe what you would need is somebody who has more expertise in American paleo-archeology than I do. And that would require bringing them into the fold here.
Archie realizes, then, that the person he needs to talk to about this is … Hobo Stan, traveler of the Hidden Roads.
Meanwhile, Roger, Mitch, and Charley touch down at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. It’s about noon. They quickly get a car to Pascagoula, where the two abductees are being held at the sheriff’s office. When they arrive, they find the building absolutely swarmed by media: news vans from all other southern Mississippi and Louisiana, a veritable circus of journalists and UFO believers and just generally curious lookers-on. Of course, all this is going to plan: OZYMANDIAS’ plan to spread a meme about UFO abduction. Roger also spots, among the crowd, a couple of SANDMAN “men in black” who are keeping tabs on the crowd. Mitch catches two auras out of the corner of his eye. These belong to two middle-aged men, one of whom is carrying a large tape-recorder and a satchel. Both the men’s auras are so bundled up with excitement that Mitch knows for sure that they are UFO believers and their intentions are plainly to speak with the abductees, come hell or high water. It seems likely that if they were to be interrogated more deeply, all kinds of things could come out.
On the plane to White Sands, Morris turns to Marshall.
MORRIS: What happened to you? Lookin’ rough.
MARSHALL: Oh, I shot myself in the head, Morris. (pause) Ha, no! I’m just fucking with you.
MORRIS: Haha, yeah, I was just three days ago telling everyone how you from San Francisco, you guys are the most stable men I know, you actually care about each other, and here you are telling me you shot yourself. Nice joke.
Marshall then unspools the lie about Reinhardt, though he doesn’t mention the man by name. Morris asks where they’re going. Marshall tells him to find one of his team-mates, the blonde woman they “saw” during the LSD vision-quest in Ohio. Morris asks why Marshall is bringing him along.
MARSHALL: You seem like a cool dude, Morris.
MORRIS: Well, I’ll try my best to find her, given that I’ve sensed what she’s all about –
MARSHALL: You can do that? You can sort of intuit your way to people?
MORRIS: I shouldn’t promise things I can’t do for sure. But if you have a general idea of where she might be, I might be able to.
Morris asks what sort of emotional state Jocasta is likely in. “Not a good one,” Marshall says.