A Call from Jolly West
Michael
On Saturday afternoon, Marshall gets a call on, like, whatever the official SANDMAN-reserved phone line is at the Mission. Sunshine will probably let him know about it. "Dr. Redgrave. Dr. West here at UCLA, how is everything up there?" It's Jolly West, the head of LA SANDMAN.
MutantsMichael changed the channel name: Marshall and Archie back from LA, Sat Aug 11 1974 — Today at 8:55 AM
Brant
So I know who Jolly West is because I'm a nerd and also I have access to Wikipedia but what does Marshall know about Jolly West?
Michael
Quick answer, yes. More complicated answer: figure all the extremely weird stuff in his biography at this point—the working with "brainwashed" Korean War vets, the LSD (and the elephant), and his planning right now in 1973 for the Violence Center at UCLA—are all SANDMAN ops of one kind or another. Marshall would know he's been with the Project since at least the Korea stuff.
And I think Marshall would more or less have the general complexion of the man's career at this point. He's a decade older than Marshall with at least that much longer in CIA/SANDMAN.
Brant
"Jolly!" Marshall adopts a friendly tone. "Oh, you know: living the dream. Funny that you called, I just got back from your neck of the woods. To what do I owe the honor?"
Michael
(2) [Marshall] will also, at the same time, file a perfunctory "notice of investigation" report with whomever he needs to at SANDMAN LA. This is the type of report that, like, law enforcement files when they're doing work in another jurisdiction — vague, conclusory, just a courtesy, really. He'll say that he and his colleague Archie were in town running down some leads for a case they're handling in the Bay Area, and to investigate a fire that they believe is related to another matter they're handling.
"Hey, I keep my eye on the inbox seven days a week; I don't get to take days off anymore. Your trip to LA is why I called. I got your AAR this morning. On point 2, the 'fire' you were checking out... that wouldn't happen to be the Solarans thing, would it?"
Brant
"Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry to be making you work on a Saturday. But — well, at the time I didn't know it was the Solarans. Only figured that out when I got down there. They're a group that's been on our radar for a while now. They keep seeming to pop up. Anyway, the fire was in my neck of the woods — I have a house in the Canyon, Linda Ronstadt's old place? — so I figured I should check it out."
Michael
"Well, obviously, we're all pretty upset at how this ended; we didn't expect the Solarans' leader to do anything this rash, but we have the post-event memetics out there now muddying the waters and we should avoid lookie-loos, curiosity-seekers, and opportunists with how the narrative is being soft-soaped. If you do come across their leader or any further evidence of them trying to re-form up in your backyard, let us know? It would be good to take Alpha Leonis off the board before he does anything really difficult to paper over. He Knows, of course." Marshall can hear West's portentous tone, there: he's admitting that Alpha Leonis is clued-in on History B and is letting Marshall connect the dots on the mansion burn being an attempt to trigger a temblor of some kind. West is also tacitly admitting that the Solaran mansion burn was a lapse on LA SANDMAN's part, which is interesting information to divulge in a pleasant (yet oddly urgent) Saturday morning courtesy phone call.
"Anything we can do to help you out on Point 1, your Bay Area case?"
Brant
"Oh, is that his name? Alpha Leonis? Ha, well, sounds like you're already two steps ahead of us, then. I take it he's been a known quantity to you guys down there? Don't mind me asking — I'm not casting any judgments, really I'm just curious — but if he's In The Know, why haven't you just had one of your boys pick him up?"
Marshall is, for what it's worth, trying to sound kind of stupidly friendly, naïve almost. He's playing up the stereotype of the Bay Area Sandmen being weirdos and castoffs.
Michael
Give me an Acting-16 check please.
Brant
>>>> SUCCESS by 9
Michael
"Honeypot," Jolly says right away. "He's been attracting strays to him since the early '60s and following his patterns on the map... well, let's just say the Project has been able to profit from those movements and from the people he plants his memes in. His cult memetics have been solidly 'UFOs are going to come and save us from environmental ruin and nuclear war,' not a whiff of real Enemy or Sumerian memetics so far, but there's something about him... I mean, he's got pretty obvious NLP ability—and yes, that's with source code. He did something with his group at White Sands, New Mexico back in '65—another wipeout like this one, essentially; a mass disappearance instead of a fire—but it didn't leave behind any evidence of taint or subduction. Believe me, the Project was concerned enough to go over the site they were last seen out there with a fine tooth comb; it was real close to the Trinity site. If you want the records, it's under Operation CLARION in the books. He popped up in LA in '69 and has been doing this big papa act since then, but mostly keeping a low profile after Manson. We've been tending him, like a little bonsai tree." Some real affection creeps into Jolly's voice; maybe that's just his pleasure at the successful Manson op turning the counterculture into fearful demons in the minds of Middle America. "My analysis was that he was enjoying a kind of retirement from proselytizing and just enjoying the girls and the food and the drugs. I botched it, I freely admit. Something would have had to happen to him—some kind of programming or sudden mortal fear outside of my psychological prediction matrix—for him to try to trigger a temblor like he did. Maybe the Kings called him home, told him to get off his ass and make something happen."
"Our taisher had a look at the mansion grounds post-burn and... there's a little bit of subterranean friction in the ontosphere there, let's say. So we're keeping our eyes on it, making sure nobody else profits from it. Lookout Mountain is really close by and we've got our black-baggers and lamplighters keeping it under constant surveillance until it all settles down a little."
[Secret Detect Lies roll, Jolly West is telling the truth here; the only place Marshall feels a little bit of a lacuna is West probably knows more about the '65 events than he's letting on.]
Brant
"Operation CLARION," Marshall thinks to himself, as if making a note to remind himself of something later. Then he lets out a low, "I'm impressed" whistle. "Damn, that's something. Well, sounds like you have the situation under control. Wasn't trying to step on any toes with my trip, of course -- 9 times out of 10 these things just peter out into nothing, you know? Anyway, yeah, regarding the Venture Toons thing ... naturally I'll reach out if we need your assistance but for the time being I think that's a dead end. They're tangentially connected to an outfit up here that we're looking into; did some commercial work for them, I guess. I don't know. Advertising is more my ... colleague's thing." Marshall tries to sound disdainful and annoyed at the word "colleague."
"But I think they're just dupes. We got what we wanted out of them."
Michael
"No, I mean, we ran the numbers this week... if he ends up anywhere else, it'll likely be the Bay Area, maaaaybe Colorado or the desert again or Oregon, but our models are figuring it's 75% likely he ends up up there somewhere trying to reconstitute a new group, so definitely be wary."
Brant
"Wow, 75 percent? Huh. Well, I'll put my team on notice. Anything else I can do for you, Jolly? You planning on coming up here anytime soon?"
Internally Marshall is like, "I'M SORRY WHAT HE'S COMING HERE?????"
Michael
"I don't think so, no. Not even any trips up to Esalen planned for the next few months. I'm busy with the Violence Center project right now and all these bleeding-hearts are trying to get it closed down before I can even show them and the university and the government what's possible. Believe me, in 20 years or so they're gonna be on their hands and knees begging for this kind of social control. But everyone's chaps are rubbed a little raw right now because of Vietnam and the racial business. Always ahead of our time, that's the curse of being in the Project, am I right?"
Brant
"Haha, you said it, man. Well, don't let them work you too hard." If Jolly seems done, Marshall will hang up after saying "peace."