Charley Dreams of Granite Peak
Michael
Charley is flung into severe disorientation thanks to the light glyph that assaulted her eyes. When she opens her eyes, Charley sees the hallway has become fifty times larger. The distance between sides of the hallway is somewhere around two football fields; it's a similar distance to the ceiling. Or perhaps it's Charley who's become fifty times smaller. Your companions are nowhere to be found: you are an insignificant ant, wandering the halls of the gods. A sense of despair, meaninglessness, and insignificance washes over you, and the vast golden plain before you and behind you looks utterly unconquerable.
The light level has returned to the same soft ambient glow it was before the light code flare.
Charley, it's time for a Fright Check. Fright Check-11.
Mel
>>>> FAILURE by 2
Michael
Okay, let's see what the result is: roll 3d6+2 and we'll check the Fright Check Table.
Mel
>>>> 3d6+2 = 7
Michael
So, 7. "Stunned for one second. Every second after that, roll vs. unmodified Will to snap out of it."
>>>> SUCCESS by 4
Charley remains stunned for a moment, and then calms herself. She can't see Jo or Roger, and as I may have mentioned, the now-vast hallways are seemingly uniform all along their surfaces. But as Charley's eyes adjust to the new spatial perspective and the ambient light, she sees, a few hundred feet further down the hallway, what looks like a piece of a different metal on the wall at a height of about four feet. From this distance, it looks like a plate or a grill or a grate … something rectangular, made of steel …
⨼ August 4, 1973 ⨽
Oh.
Oh no.
As Charley approaches the metal inset and gets close enough to really see it, she realizes the grate is the same size and shape as the grates that used to lead to the ductwork at the Indigo Program creche wing at Granite Peak. Behind the grate is... a duct identical to the ones she remembers using to try to escape her creche at Granite Peak.
Mel
(Ok Charley must know this is just an illusion, right?)
She calls for Roger and Jo and listens and observes.
Michael
Hearing-15 check, please.
Mel
>>>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
As Charley observes intently, both down the vast hallways and into the grate, she feels behind the grate the hum of the HVAC systems at Granite Peak, smells the stale air, and hears... the sound of her creche's educational-entertainment center, which she always left on very loud back when Charley would try to escape her creche. Television programs, films, commercials... she can hear it all plain as day. Beyond the grate is her cell at Granite Peak. Charley is sure of it.
There is no sign of Roger or Jo after she calls to them.
Mel
If Charley is sure of it then I’ll let her go towards the grate to investigate.
Michael
Charley takes her toolkit from her belt and unscrews the grate from the golden wall. She removes the grate and shimmies up to the duct.
It's like second-nature for Charley being in these ducts. The memories of her years in Granite Peak flood back and she remembers the route back to her own creche unit innately. In the later years, when the wonders of her educational-entertainment unit began to pale and she first started "exploring" the complex through the ducts, she would hear voices coming from other units—other kids, like her, doing their interactive computer lessons about the reality war, learning Danbe—and wonder who they were.
That was around the time that, in her solitude, Fi and Foe started visiting her.
As Charley finds the grate that leads back to her creche unit, she deftly removes the grate and hops down to rush back into her sleeping pod. The room is just as she left it: no decorations, no text other than the green characters that fly across single monochrome computer screen and the QWERTY keyboard attached, her 16 television screens playing through broadcast television and closed-circuit SANDMAN educational programming, connectible via audio through her big clunky headphones. And as soon as Charley hops down to the floor, the locked door to her creche opens. And there are Dr. Haynes and two very large SANDMAN commando guards, their unmarked military-style uniforms bearing their only insignia: the indigo stripe around their upper right arms. Stun batons hang at their sides. Charley's never seen them used but she knows from her technopathic powers that they have big, powerful batteries.
"Oh, Charley. Have you been wandering the ducts again? You know we can't have you getting contaminated. Lucky for you you can't leave this floor, eh?" Dr. Haynes's mouth is a thin line; she's clearly upset but there's no punishment here in the Indigo Program, the behavioralists were dead-set against it. There's only a sense of taking away the creature comforts: a hug here, a visit with tame animals like cats and foxes there. Charley has only heard rumors of the cat reward; her behavior since arriving hasn't been good enough to earn one.
"You're disappointing me, and your teammates," Dr. Haynes says, Charley knowing innately that now she won't get to participate in the monthly Indigo Braintrust, where the kids get to interact in person (not over closed-circuit TV, but at the cafeteria!) on problem solving puzzles and gaming out Anunnaki scenarios. Charley's only been to a couple of those because of her behavior. "And you know what that means. It's solitude time, now. Meals to be taken in-creche. Entertainment offerings curtailed, temporarily. Charley, you're so important. Your independence can be an asset! But you must conform. You know why, don't you? Independent thinking and curiosity is how They recruit us. And you don't want the world to fall back into Their hands, do you?"
At this, a voice speaks in Charley's head. It's Fi's gentle, exotically-accented voice. "Tell them you agree you made a mistake. We must speak with you, Foe and I, alone. It's vitally important, and it must happen [now|then]." Those final two words said simultaneously. It's only with that weird "[now|then]" that Charley looks at herself and realizes she is now in her Indigo pajamas, not her Mount Shasta climbing clothes, and she is 5 years old, not 7.
Mel
Charley does as the voice instructions. “Dr. Haynes.. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. I understand it’s important I follow the rules.”
Michael
Dr. Haynes tries to approximate a smile. "That's... wonderful to hear, Charley. I'm so pleased. Now I'm going to leave you alone now to think about what you've done. Review your work. Read a few filmstrips on the Enemy. Try to really internalize and understand the importance of what we're all doing here. I'll check back with you tomorrow and maybe we can have a talk session to work through your feelings."
Dr. Haynes and the two guards leave Charley's creche, the door sliding locked just like the ones on Star Trek. Almost immediately Foe speaks to Charley in her mind. "Aye, lass, ye did a tremendous job there," Foe's rough-and-ready medieval blacksmith's voice grumbles in Charley's head. "We'll need the solitude to plan what's next."
"Charley," Fi says, sounding a little bit like Viv, "Do you have any idea why you might be here, [now|then]? Do you understand [what is happening|what happened] to you at this juncture? Think carefully and consider."
Mel
Charley does carefully consider what is happening. (Can she still use her abilities of her 7 year old self? If so can she get a quantum role to help her understand what is happening with time and place?)
Michael
As Charley tries to tap into her abilities from her present-day (future?) self, she finds herself able to remember all her training on quantum physics, mechanics, and temporality are accessible, but only with some real effort to remember. No penalty, though! Physics (Parachronic)-14.
Mel
>>>> SUCCESS by 7
Michael
Charley hasn't heard much from Fi and Foe since leaving Granite Peak. She's almost relieved to hear their voices again. This connection, these ancient voices that preceded her fully being aware of her past lives... Charley realizes that Fi and Foe were the first manifestation of her abilities! Long before being able to turn the TV on from across the room, long before feeling the flows of electromagnetism around her... she had her imaginary friends. At two years old, right before They took her away from Twentynine Palms and her mother, Fi and Foe were there. Protecting her. A connection to the past. Her past. A quantum waveform that outlasted her own very short life so far on Earth in this body. Fi and Foe were her first lessons in the immortal soul. The first connection of Charley to real magic.
And the act of disobedience, the crawling through the ducts that happened when Charley was five and a half, it was the beginning of her intensive SANDMAN training beginning to take those flights of imagination out of her mind and replace them with pure scientific materialism. Charley remembers what happened after she tried to escape for the nth time. And Fi and Foe couldn't protect her. It's only when she got free at Livermore, with Dad and the rest of the Ransoms, that she felt she could contact her past lives and understand them once more.
This is the day that Fi and Foe began to slowly die inside her.
(Basically in-character and in-universe from Mission 2, Fi and Foe were only ever Phantom Voices (Annoying), but my feeling is the way Charley described them to Archie, they were Charley's 2-year-old brain trying to understand her first experiences of her Past Lives! Of course they'd turn out to be imaginary friends. And while SANDMAN discovered this and sent Charley to Dr. Stephenson to help her process this past-life awareness, they also sought to take away the "magic" from these aberrant psychological experiences of Subject C for Charley. SANDMAN were particularly distressed at the idea of Fi being from "Assyria.")
Mel
“I’m not sure Fi? It’s nice to hear you and Foe again, I missed you. But I don’t understand. I was seven in a golden cave and now I’m five and at Granite Peak. Or I’m somehow both.”
(Can she get a History B hidden lore?)
Michael
“I’m not sure Fi? It’s nice to hear you and Foe again, I missed you. But I don’t understand. I was seven in a golden cave and now I’m five and at Granite Peak. Or I’m somehow both.”
Foe laughs, a big booming jovial laugh. "My girl. My pride and joy! You are indeed both! It's so simple once you know how the world really works, isn't it? If I could lift you up and toss you in the air with delight, I would!"
Fi chuckles at this, and says, "Calm down, Foe! But yes, Charley. You are both! Which means you can act here to give yourself... a second chance. There is an important test of your wits and abilities here, a secret that happened outside your sight at age 5, but is now well within your grasp as you exist in both times."
"Dr. Haynes has a very special visitor in her office right now," Fi says. "And you need to see and hear them. I know you've just been caught and sent back to your room, but... I bet if you're clever, you'll find out how to do it."
"And if you succeed, little one," Foe says, "you'll have us back with you in your [future|present]. All the time. With all our memories and knowledge. We'll still be your friends. And you'll be able to fully understand how you are we and we are you!"
Roger Martin inserts the key card into the elevator's control panel and silences a nervous gulp. The elevator light blinks on, and the doors slide open. Roger descends down the Project Indigo elevator, hidden in the depths of the lowest levels of Granite Peak. He's not supposed to be here. He's not even sure how he got here. He doesn't really know where here is. But he knows he has to help a little girl down here.
Not just any little girl, 1973 Roger says as he takes full control of his past self's consciousness. My fellow agent. My pupil. Agent Helix, dammit. Stealth-14 roll to start, Roger, please.
Bill
>>>> FAILURE by 1
Oops, maybe it's more time for Fast-Talk.
Michael
The problem is, of course, Roger's not sure where he's meant to go. And so he has to wander the hallways of this dark sublevel of Granite Peak a little bit to get his bearings. The lighting is generally dim in these halls but the walls are clean and white, a little like an Army hospital. It feels awfully familiar after having been zapped repeatedly in the golden halls of Mount Shasta.
Roger finds his way to a series of doors—each of the doors does have one of those institutional safety windows at adult height— marked with giant Latin alphabet characters in stencil on the wall next to them. "A, "B," and then "C." This is where Charley is.
Down the hallway, a woman in a lab coat and a man in an Army uniform, rank Major, his gold oak leaves glinting in the fluorescent light, his face unreadable, just like Roger's commanding officer during Marshall's doomed Cambodia mission, pass by in a corridor perpendicular to Roger's hallway, talking animatedly and walking hurriedly. "Well, tell them I want them to get him on the horn now, goddamn it, I don't care how late it is there!" Major [REDACTED] shouts at the woman.
Behind Roger, he can hear a pair of men approach. "Hey. You. What are you doing down here?" Roger turns around to see the two guards who flanked Dr. Haynes a few minutes ago when they brought Charley back to her creche.
Bill
Roger tries to turn the lost look to his advantage. "Sorry, got turned around down here. Electronics Surveillance, here to figure out what happened. With the... [he switches to Danbe] kids."
Michael
So I'm gonna let you use Electronics Operation (Surveillance) like Fast-Talk here, throw some language about security cameras and mics and such at them, plus knowing what you know about the Indigo Program and what the kids can do to electronics at this point, I'll give you a +2. So Electronics Operation (Surveillance)-15.
Bill
>>>> SUCCESS by 1
Roger will also hint at past "incidents", hoping to cold-read prompt anything going on right now.
Michael
The two guards give each other one of those none-too-subtle "what is this guy talking about" looks of disbelief but one of the guards says, "All right. Where do you need to get in?"
"You got this, Darryl?"
"Yeah, this is no problem. Go take your break." He looks at Roger. "I gotta be around you if you're gonna be near the kids. They can't be linguistically compromised or contaminated. Which creche do you need access to?"
Bill
"Work order said 'C'. And I know the deal". Roger switches to Danbe: "No dirty language, yes?" If the guard doesn't speak too much Danbe, Roger will use it to affect superiority.
Michael
"Danbe's good, yeah. They're still learning it. C's a handful, let me tell you, this must be the sixth or seventh time you guys have been down here this year."
The guard uses his keycard to open Charley's room. Charley is lying on her sleep-pod, on her side, murmuring just like she was in the golden hallways. "Charley? This man is here to fix your educational-entertainment unit," the guard says in Danbe or its best approximation of these words.
Bill
Roger lets the guard take the lead with interactions, like he's supposed to, and plays to his role, examining the surveillance. He's up in the bubble camera, he's checking the door, he's evaluating how a little girl or possibly a bad agent could disable them. And then doing so.
Michael
Okay, cool. We'll wait for Mel at this point. And yes, a "bubble cam" is just how I envisioned the surveillance rig on top of the educational-entertainment console in the creche-unit, except 10-15 years more advanced than '73 tech
Bill
Grey and black and maybe with a strip of walnut veneer.
Mel
(So, Roger enters the scene at the same point she is talking with her imaginary friends? )
Michael
(Yeah!)
Mel
Charley doesn’t move instead says, “Okay” in Danbe. But will soon look over at the men.
Michael
It's Roger. He's a couple of years younger, and dressed more conservatively than his field attire, but it's him. And Roger sees Charley, two years younger, looking sad and trapped and broken here in Granite Peak, a mere 5-year-old kid. It's hard to consider what's going to happen after both their 1973 consciousnesses go back to where they're supposed to.
Bill
While his face is a little sad for a second, if he catches Charley’s eye without Darryl looking, he smiles, and winks, and lays a finger on the side of his nose. Then he goes back to futzing with the security.
Mel
Upon seeing Roger, Charley’s eyes go wide for a moment. But she restrains her emotions just as she has been taught to. Then in a weak tone says, “Where is Dr. Haynes?”
Michael
Darryl says, "Dr. Haynes is in an important meeting right now, Charley."
Mel
“Oh yes. I forgot it’s with ummm.” She looks at Darryl hoping he’ll fill in the blank.
Michael
"Never you mind who it's with," Darryl says. "How's it coming there?" he says to Roger.
Bill
At this point, Roger lets out a “what the heck did the kid do here?” And he (depending on roll) sets off a big short in the wires he’s been crossing, wires with as much stinky, smoky plastic on them as he could find, connected to as big a voltage as he could discover.
Michael
I guess Electronics Operation (Security) could be used as a sabotage roll.
Bill
>>>> SUCCESS by 3
Mel
Charley starts coughing.
Michael
A small but very potent electrical fire breaks out suddenly in C-creche. Darryl curses and heads to the hallway for the fire extinguisher as the smoke rises and fire alarms begin going off in Indigo Complex.
Charley and Roger are now alone.
Bill
Roger holds out his hand, and gives Charley’s tinier one a squeeze, and whispers: “Maman Brigette sent me.” Then he shouts: “Hey, Darryl, we can’t keep this kid in here. Is there an office we can take her? Dr. Hayes was it?”
Michael
Darryl is intent on getting this fire out before they have to start considering a full evacuation of Indigo Complex—how much fucking trouble would that be—but Charley knows where Dr. Haynes's office is.
While Darryl attends to the fire, Charley and Roger make their way out of C-creche and into the hallway. A couple of worried faces appear in the portholes of D-creche and F-creche: Delta, an older girl of about 10, and Foxtrot (Fox for short), a boy of 6 peek out at Charley and Roger as they hustle down the hallway towards Dr. Haynes's office and the Indigo administrative offices and complex of suites (infirmary, cafeteria, common area, computer banks).
(I figured it'd be a good idea to give Charley and Roger a chance to infodump at each other in-character before we deal with getting into/snooping around Dr. Haynes.)
Bill
Put off for a second by her even younger age, Roger hesitates to explain. But the first time he pauses, and Charley pulls him in another direction, taking charge, it reminds him of her old soul, and that the Charley he knows is in there. So he quickly whispers, "Charley, Jo said this is a trap and a test. The gold halls sent us each into our own nightmare, but you can wake up. I did, with help. This is a very real dream, so real it may be also be the past. But it's still a dream, Marshall showed me that. He was in mine, and he helped wake me up. That's the trick see: they keep separating us, but we are connected, whenever. Forever." He squeezes her hand a little again.
(Charley's higher self may have to lead a bit more than Roger's; I've got to knuckle down and work today after being a little too distracted yesterday. But I will check in.)
Mel
Charley's heart is racing; this time and place carries fear and pain. She hasn't felt it with the reassuring presence of Fi and Foe, and oddly being in her creche was also reassuring in its familiarity. But Roger is here!? To help her escape?! Charley finds the collision of past and present times terrible to navigate. The halls of Granite Peak are screaming with fire alarms, and as every guard rushes past, Charley holds her breath and hopes not to be noticed. She pulls at Roger to hurry and tries not to think of the other children calling out behind locked, cold metal doors.
Fi and Foe's plea to seek out Dr. Haynes's office is the force of will guiding her steps. But as they near the doctor's office, Charley slows and tightens her grip on Roger's hand as he softly explains how he is here. "So, this is a dream, Roger? I want to wake up, but my friends Fi and Foe said I need to see who is visiting Dr. Haynes in her office. But maybe that is part of the test and trap? I wonder what would happen if I changed this past chord? Would I still be the same? Could I be better? Could we save the other kids? We should try, shouldn't we? I mean that wouldn't be so bad, right Roger?"
Bill
"I don't know how much we can change. Maybe we can strengthen the past you. I think you already have: just knowing there's a better future waiting for you will change you. Get you through the long road ahead." Roger looks around furtively. "As for the spirits (?) you mentioned? Unless you made or have a compact with them, never trust sudden help. My dream tried to show me a person, push me to relive interactions with this mystery. I only woke when Marshall skipped us out. Charley, it is known you are drawn by curiosity. It would be the perfect thing to trap you with. Concentrate on what you want, not the spirits or this dream. You want to get out. You want to save yourself and Jo, in 1973."
"Only if you know you need to see this person for your own reasons should you spy on them, not if spirits tell you."
"Charley: you already made it through this. Your father, Archie, he's waiting for you, both this past you and the future you. You and he, you have that connection, forever."
Michael
Fi and Foe are still present in Charley's mind—Charley can feel them, close—but they are silent, watching to see what she decides to do.
Mel
Charley looks up at Roger and nods. "I know. But... You asked me what I want. And I want it all! I want to understand why things are the way they are, and I don't want to lose anyone!"
Michael
Charley can, however, now hear Dad's voice, softly singing "This Little Light of Mine" across time and space, penetrating the portentous, loveless aura of Indigo Complex with a father's love, compassion, and worry (a good trick!).
Mel
"Roger. I hear. I hear, dad. He's singing to me." Charley now feels like the five-year-old she is (and isn't) and says, "I'm hungry and tired. Can we go home now?"
Bill
Roger tries to remember what worked for him. “Can you find us a quieter spot, like to hide? Free from distractions and voices and temptation? Where you can listen to that voice, and let it wake you up, like in the morning in your bed in your home.”
Michael
Charley knows plenty of hiding places (ducts, etc.), but doesn't know anywhere around here that would fit Roger too. But there is the infirmary. It is in the admin wing but is often empty and is a good place to take a breather... and it has lollipops! Charley's used it to rest and hide when she's been in the ductwork before.
Mel
"Yes. This way." Charley, takes them to the lollipop room.
Michael
Roger and Charley listen in before entering the infirmary; the lights are off and there's no one audible inside. When the door slides open, it's revealed to be empty.
The infirmary looks to Roger like a school nurse's office for a particularly well-off public school; clean white surfaces, a couple of exam benches, locked white cabinets for medical supplies, and brightly-colored posters (no figures or words, just abstract geometrical patterns). There is indeed a glass jar of lollipops on the resident medical doctor's (who is not Haynes, for the record) desk. The desk is in a smallish cubicle, the desk holds a phone—with one light lit up on it: an active call elsewhere on this floor's circuit—and a computer terminal. The cubicle also contains a locked metal filing cabinet.
Bill
Roger is really relieved for his [cover story|past self|younger Charley’s health] to end up where he should have taken a smoke inhalation victim. He grabs two lollipops. And then sees the other temptations. He’s not a parent, but he does know something of the logic of compromise. “Charley, I know you see that computer. And that phone. And that cabinet. I heard you, you want it all. But we’re tired, and we have to go home. So. You can’t have it all. But maybe none is its own distraction. So. Quickly. Pick one, just one. I’ll look out. But remember, just what you want, not what they want you to.”
Mel
Charley smiles, takes a lollipop (or is it a sucker?) from Roger and picks up the phone covering the mouth piece as she does.
Michael
Hah, no need to physically cover the mouthpiece, you can tap in with I/O Tap
"...you keep telling me and telling me that one day I'll have these kids, Doctor," says the military man with the blurry face from the hallway. (Roger recognizes his voice; it's definitely the same black ops Captain from Marshall's mission to Cambodia. Roger supposes he got promoted in the past four years.) "And then you have a setback, or one of them escapes their cell and starts crawling around the ducts, and now the timeline to their being field-ready extends another 12 to 18 months. Do you know how much effort it took to find all these kids, with the right backgrounds for your little program? Twenty years of Secret Schools made a bunch of neurotics. Coming up on ten years of this program and you've got what. A bunch of kids who love computers and televisions? I could go to any grade school in Silicon Valley right now and get that!"
Dr. Haynes speaks next. "Major, I understand your concerns, but this isolation creates a psychological pressure-cooker. It's necessary in order to inoculate them from the Kings' influence of course, but we need more resources, we need a better language for them to learn in situ to help that programming stick. Doctor," she says to the person on the phone; Haynes and the Major are on a conference call right now it seems with a third party, "you insisted they be fully immersed in media to prepare them for the next 30 to 40 years, but I'm telling you letting them watch that much television is breaking down control here!"
The Doctor on the other end of the phone line speaks. "There's no point in training these children if they don't know the world they're going to live in for the rest of their lives. We need them media-and-machine-savvy if they're going to thrive. The fundamentals of the program are sound. These kids are the new elite agents of SANDMAN. They'll be running the Program in twenty to thirty years, running the memetics, running the ops section, confronting the Kings at the base level of reality. They're... they're bodhisattvas. Right, Major?"
The Major: "What they are right now is a top weapon I can't get my hands on. We need a compromise here. I propose the ones that are over age 10 get deployed by spring of '72. Find them bases, families, cover identities, what have you. They'll be available to me for detachment on missions having to do with tech, media, reality shards, irruptions, whatever they might be trained in. By '75 I want the program closed and all twenty-six kids deployed. Future child psi talents should be funneled to the proper cover organizations. You know the ones I'm cultivating in San Fran and New York."
The Doctor on the phone: "All right, Major. You've earned the benefit of the doubt from me. Dr. Haynes, you'd better get a three-year plan together for shutting down the program. You've done excellent work but the Major's right: we need to move on to Plan PSAMETIC. They can't learn English—or even Danbe—first. Get together with the computer linguistics folks and tell them to find a way to get the basic syntax of Aulang out of Ransom's head by '75. Is that all, Major? Haynes?"
Dr. Haynes chokes back what sounds like a sob. "These kids... these kids..."
Doctor on the phone: "You've got three years, Patricia! If you can't get them straight by then you know what will happen to them! You've got the entire SANDMAN arsenal at your disposal: NLP, memetics, brainwashing—hell, put a chip in their heads if you have to! They'll be fine. Stop worrying about them. The Indigo Generation will show us the way." A pause from the phone. "I have to go."
Fi and Foe, together, as a chorus: "They're leaving the office now! You have to see his face, Charley! You're the only one here who can see him for who he is!"
Bill
(Roger doesn't hear Fi/Foe, right? Or are his Phantom Voices/Spirit Empathy acting up too?)
Michael
(No, they're strictly part of Charley's Past Lives/Wild Talent/Racial Memory package.)
Bill
(On Charley, then, to decide if she goes to see. As a player, I sure hope she does, but Roger's maybe too distrustful to back that choice up. He could be persuaded, though, or just ignored, or tricked.)
Mel
Charley rushes for the door!!
Michael
As Charley rushes to peek out of the infirmary door, give me a Stealth-15 roll to see how well you hide from being seen.
Mel
>>>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
Charley peers down the hallway at Dr. Haynes, dabbing at her mascara, and the Major walking behind her. He puts a "reassuring" hand on her shoulder but she squirms away. "Get your hands off me!" Charley gets a good, long look at this man's face, his uniform and ribbons and medals, and the name tag on his chest: "REINHARDT." As she looks at the man, Charley begins to feel her consciousness return to her body. Fi and Foe both whoop in victory, and Charley can feel them both accompany her as she whooshes nearly two years into the future and several hundred miles to the west, back to her body at Mount Shasta's golden hallways. Roger is with her, conscious and aware, and before both of them is Jocasta, who is seated on the golden floor, catatonic, eyes closed.
Mel
Charley catches her breath and looks at Roger grinning until she sees Jo. She quickly moves to her side and shakes her. “Jo! Jo! Wake up!” Jo motionless Charley starts speaking more then singing the words of “This Little Light of Mine” but her voice quickly gives out and cries replace the word.