A Meeting at SRI
Michael
Mitch is like, "Two meetings in one day? Come on now."
When Mitch arrives back at the SCANATE office after his run-in with Pat and Doug Engelbart at the commissary, he sees Mary-Lynn in the office for the first time! She's dressed sort of late mod, in a bright orange and blue coverall dress — very different from her slinky lounge vibe at the Skyline or the down home casual dungarees-and-checked-shirt she wore to their Pong bar date last week. Like she's in her equivalent of "office wear." She gives a smile and a wave to Mitch as she sits down at SCANATE's little round table with a Styrofoam cup of tea. Hal and Russell sit side by side with Pat at Hal's right and Ingo at Russell's left leaving the two new recruits to sit next to each other.
"Right," Hal says, checking off something on a clipboard. "Russ and I figured we'd get the team together now given the next few weeks are likely to be pretty busy around here. Just got a few agenda items here today. The first one is officially welcoming MJ here to the team and putting together a testing regime for him in the coming days. Russ?" Targ peers through his thick glasses at Mitch, "Yeah, MJ, we were thinking that we'd bring some of the PK testing apparatus out of mothballs this week and work on seeing if we can get your pyrokinesis to work reliably, first through EM shielding and then at increasing levels of distance. You all know our primary mission, given where the money comes from," Russ peers at the door out to the hallway briefly, "is the clairvoyance stuff but it's obvious MJ's talents lie primarily in psychokinesis. So if it's okay with you, that's where we'd like to start."
[pause for Mitch's response]
"This … getting the PK equipment out of mothballs wouldn't have anything to do with the … Blowdried Hero of the Six-Day War coming in later this week, hmm?" Ingo says archly, stirring some Sweet 'n' Low into his Sanka. Pat laughs.
"Is he gonna show you some dirty pictures from his seats in first class again, Hal?" Ingo and Pat both smirk, and even Russell has a chuckle as Hal squirms. Mary-Lynn smiles unevenly but she has no idea what these boys are in-joking about at all.
Jeff
Mitch shoots Mary-Lynn a here we ago with all this nonsense look as he sits next to her, but says nothing initially.
Mitch will clear his throat as the laugher over Ingo's bon mot subsides. He hadn't actually told them about his pyrokinetic abilities, he's pretty sure. Did Mary-Lynn assume it was a topic to share? Did he say something unguarded in front of Price? Did the guys who saw him blow out that fluorescent light just put two and two together? All plausible. "Sure. Sure, man. I mean, yeah. Although, especially given that you seem to be fine with making, like, a back-handed allusion to it, I was kind of wondering about how it works, this being a secret CIA-funded program to weaponize clairvoyance against the Reds. Do y'all make reports on the regular or do they just have hidden microphones everyplace?" He chuckles as he asks this, but looks to Targ expecting some kind of answer. "Are we gonna have to put on a recital at some point, show it all off?"
Michael
(re pyrok: I believe you mentioned it in one of the intake interviews and then of course the exploding fluorescent set off some alarm bells; Mitch's power profile has been acknowledged since his first official meet with Puthoff and Targ as far as I know.)
"Well," Targ says, "Ingo and Pat here are already 'singing for their supper,' you might say, seeing how their abilities and control over them are pretty advanced. But I have a feeling once we have some data on what you—and Miss Turner!—can do, that our funders will be extremely pleased."
Hal says, "MJ, we're funded fully through fiscal year 1975: even if we were to bring on another half-dozen part-time test subject-trainees at current rates, which we would like to do, we'd be solvent for a good long while. There aren't any hidden microphones or anything like that, but Russ and I do report on a regular basis to our funders. Pat and Ingo will tell you from experience we don't like to have any of them in the, uh, 'room where it all happens' if we can help it."
Ingo says, sipping his coffee, "They absolutely ruin the vibrations. All expectant. Like dogs waiting for their supper."
"Quite." Russell picks back up the conversational thread: "Hal and I handle all the experimental data, analyze it, and summarize it for the less scientifically-conversant, which certainly describes our friends in intelligence and at the Pentagon." Hal says, "You may meet Mr. Green, our on-site Agency liaison and observer, at some point, but he is awfully busy most of the time."
Jeff
Oh, while I'm mulling that over it occurs to me I should do a set of Detect rolls just to confirm the situation hasn't changed
>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 2
>> DETECT … SUCCESS by 7
>> ANALYZE … FAILURE by 1
That is a failure of analysis! If there was something worth analyzing I can try again, here are rolls for that.
>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 2
>> DETECT … SUCCESS by 2
>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS by 6
Anyway. Mitch stares off into space for a couple three seconds, or maybe he did that as soon as he arrived at the building, I dunno. Then, "Yeah, that makes sense. I'm not going to pretend I'm excited about the idea of being a show pony, but..." He shrugs, and turns to Mary-Lynn. "What do you think?"
Michael
As Mitch flips on his Detect (History B), Pat's head hitches a tiny bit — a tiny, barely-noticeable double-take — as he flashes a look at Mitch.
The History B energy is back to its prior level of low ambient potentiality — no pools above Mitch's or Pat's or anyone else's heads in the wiring or the light bulbs. Mitch can stretch out and sense that the low-level potential stretches through much of the rest of this Electrical Engineering building that the SCANATE offices are in, as they did last week.
Mary-Lynn smiles in response to Mitch. "Well, as I told y'all when I first came in," she says to Hal and Russell, "I want to find out what I can do with these hunches and gut feelings and such, make 'em a little more reliable if I can... with your help. I mean, I'm as patriotic as the next gal and if I can help my country in the bargain, so be it. I'm here to train and learn and, well, if y'all end up finding my abilities can be helpful, I'll practice them however you need."
"Hear hear," says Pat, lighting up a Winston and offering one to Mitch and Mary-Lynn. "Oh no thank you, Pat … my voice, dontcha know."
Jeff
Mitch accepts a cig, lights it.
Brant
(With his mind?)
Jeff
(He's holding a lit cigarette. What does your heart tell you?)
"They say these things'll kill you, but they say that about a lot of things."
Michael
Pat rocks back and forth chuckling softly, clapping with mirth a couple times with his cig between his fingers; he really likes this kid's moxie. Mary-Lynn's seen this before, so she smirks knowingly as if to convey, "That's my man." Targ and Puthoff have a … sort of indescribable look of incredulity — like "can you believe our luck"— combined with pure shock lying underneath. Ingo keeps his expression very neutral, but Mitch can definitely see the faintest curve of a smirk at the corner of his mouth. "Well, friend … I can tell you that that trick is liable to make Uri a liiiiiittle bit jealous."
Jeff
"What's he got to prove, he's going on Carson. I'm never gonna go on Carson."
Michael
Hal tries gamely to get the meeting back on track. "Any other business?" he says to Russell.
"Actually," Pat says, "I was hoping we could do another set of coordinate scans this week, Hal. Maybe have the new kids observe Ingo and me, have them see what it's all about."
"Local or global," Targ says, not looking up from his notes.
"Well, I'm always up for global, but maybe at some point — it doesn't have to be this week — Mary-Lynn and MJ here want to be our local foci; they can each get in the car and drive somewhere you write down inside of sealed envelopes, blah blah. What do you two think?" Pat asks.
Jeff
"Sure, why not? I got no moral objection to going for a drive. See the sights while they last."
Michael
"All right, so... this week's agenda, a global coordinate scan on … Wednesday for Ingo and Pat if that works for you all—MJ and M-L, if you want to witness, please feel free to come in that day. Friday Uri is stopping by to spend the day and he's making noise about taking a bunch of people from the Institute, from Noetic Sciences and elsewhere out to dinner in the City, I'm assuming we'll want people to RSVP for that … " Russell says.
Pat interrupts: "Nothing doing, I'm needed out in Tahoe this weekend." Ingo takes a drag off his cig and says, "Perfect excuse." Pat sighs through his nose, then says, "Come on, it's bad enough Uri's gonna be hanging out here all day, throwing everything off. It'll be even worse if he brings Puharich."
"Odds are he will be," Hal says.
"Well, regardless, if any of you want in on dinner let me know by Wednesday. Edgar Mitchell will be there, MJ and Mary-Lynn — The Institute of Noetic Sciences is his baby — if you happened to want to meet a man who walked on the Moon."
Mary-Lynn says, "Well, you know me, Russell, I have the Skyline on Fridays but … I wouldn't mind meeting some of these folks. I'll see what I can do."
Jeff
"Sure." Mitch wonders what Price's Tahoe commitment is (something relating to the wife he doesn't talk about except in passing, probably) but it doesn't seem organic to the conversation to ask. Then he has a thought, the kind he usually leaved unvoiced but in this company …
"I wonder if that affects your aura, having been on the Moon."
Michael
Ingo perks up at this. "I get auras … sometimes. I will say Mr. Mitchell is … an exceptional man. I'm sure you've heard or read how he had an... experience on the way back from the Moon as he looked at the entire planet Earth all at once. He called it a savikalpa samādhi. The experience definitely changed him." Ingo sounds positively envious: he does love space, after all.
Hal offers, "Edgar also was able to conduct some long-distance ESP experiments during Apollo 14. Zener cards, essentially. 25% hit rate. A bit above what would be expected by pure chance. Suggestive, but not to our current standards here."
"If he'd used the ESP training machine I designed for NASA before the mission, maybe he would have done better," Russell grumbles as he goes over to a nearby file cabinet, "It was in the Times, I think. Caused a big stink when he got back to Earth. Oh yes, here it is." Russell brings out a New York Times clipping from 1971.
Jeff
"Zener cards … Feels like that kind of thing ought to be easier to prove and replicate than it seems to be," Mitch muses. He glances at Mary-Lynn. "We've all met someone who always guesses well, who drains watch batteries, seems to know what you're thinking. Like every school system has a couple scattered among the teachers. Folk magic. But overcoming the burden of proof … " He trails off, recalling the lit cigarette still in his hand.
I wanna aura check folks, or just Swann and Price and Mary-Lynn, in that order of priority.
>> ACTIVATE … CRITICAL FAILURE
Shit did I lock myself out?
Michael
I don't see anything under Unreliable that says an 18 locks you out of trying again … hmm.
Jeff
Okay then
>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 0
>> DETECT … SUCCESS by 2
>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS by 3
MoS of 3 examining Swann. I can keep going w/ separate rolls for everyone or let the one roll cover all, your call
Michael
Everybody's auras are looking hunky dory, normal, no taint or parasites. None of the other three espers in this room are actively or passively utilizing their powers. Emotionally the three folks you're scanning are all currently fairly neutral; getting down to talking about confirming Edgar Mitchell's powers (or indeed Uri's) hasn't got anyone's emotional heat rising too too much.
Jeff
Cool, cool beans.