Good Stranger
April, 15, 1974 | Monday
Michael
Jeff, if you could give me two rolls at this time: Aura Sight (Analysis)-15 and First Aid (Human)-15. That would be a great start.
Oh. I forgot to mention. Once Mitch and Hilton have had a moment to meet the gaze of the burn-scarred, half-alive old man, it's apparent to both of them that he is Illuminated.
"Good stranger, I am ill and lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to Carcosa."
Jeff
"Okay, wow. Jeez. Can you walk?" Mitch doesn't like the idea of having to carry this guy the five or eight or ten miles back to the school, but if he has to he will. "Can you walk, buddy? You're in no shape to get to Carcassone right this second, you need some help. My name is Mitch." He taps his chest, like he's trying to communicate with someone through a language barrier. "Mitch."
Aura Sight.
>> SUCCESS by 1
First Aid.
>> SUCCESS by 4
Michael
The mustachio'd gentleman, now on his back, looks up at Mitch and Hilton. His cracked lips try to offer some new, cryptic statement after his plea to find Carcosa, but his voice cracks under the physical abuse his body's been through.
Mitch's aura sight shows clearly the burns, the cancer in most of his body, and Mitch as such knows that trying to heal him will be as challenging as trying to save Alan Watts was back in November, maybe even more so with all the redundant injuries and diseases plaguing him. Looking closer, Mitch can see his lungs are in horrible shape too, full of that weird white dust covering his old-timey clothes. The clothes themselves are worn, stained, as if this has been the only clothing he's been wearing for years.
Looking for a cause for all these injuries, Mitch can surmise using the medical knowledge he's cultivated since discovering his healing powers that the old man has been exposed to an intense dose of ionizing radiation, prolonged exposure to beta radiation most likely. A nuclear accident or a source of radiation like a nuclear test.
Could Mitch use his healing to get this man well enough to handle a few miles back to the school—you know, just get his "health points" to a place where he could move and walk and maybe even talk some more? Sure. But it's clear that the old man would need to expend a lot of "fatigue points" to accomplish that four-mile walk due to the nature of his long-term radiation illness, some of the ground of which, nearest to The Entrance, is over ground with no trails (see map). It would take a long time and a lot of periodic resting.
Jeff
(That image is not appearing for me, for whatever reason, but I think I get the gist regardless)
So, Mitch's options as he quickly runs through them:
1) Attempt psychic surgery to get the worthy on his feet, then assuming that doesn't go south, haul him back home with Hilton trailing along
2) Abandon the worthy here and tell Hilton to keep it secret
3) Send Hilton back home to tell Mary-Lynn come out with a stretcher. Mary-Lynn can probably be counted on to find me on the mountainside, which for most people would be a very nontrivial task. Meanwhile I wait here with the worthy, maybe start trying to heal him
So the question is, what genre of story are we in right now? I read a lot of middle-grade chapter books once upon a time, and a typical climactic event in one of those might be the mystic father-figure giving the young reader-surrogate a quest like "hike five miles back home to deliver an important message"
But in most genres it'd be foolhardy to the point of criminally negligent to put such a burden on young shoulders
There's a very slender slice of literature wherein option number two would be a good and moral choice. Maybe the worthy vanishes back into the aether as soon as nobody is looking directly at him. But all in all I think the best choice, probably the only really viable choice, is number one
So Mitch gives the worthy a little water (Mitch has some water, don't question it) and tells Hilton he's going to try to get the worthy on his feet. It might not work and it'll take a few minutes, and Hilton can't help in any meaningful way, but if he pays attention he might possibly learn something.
Having diagnosed the worthy's maladies, how many HP does he need to heal the body before the worthy can walk? Assuming it's not a number that will cause Mitch to pass out, Mitch tries to give the worthy that many HP.
Cure.
>> FAILURE by 1
Dang. I think he needs to try again.
But it's ten minutes or more before it becomes clear it's going to be another ten minutes or more, so, I'll pause for response
Michael
Well. That failed Cure ten minutes seems like a period for Mitch to try to talk with the worthy a little more as he regains a Fatigue Point through natural rest and the attention of Mitch's mundane first aid attempts. Also, I have a few more pieces of info to give Mitch from his Aura Sight about the worthy's body, some nagging but less-evident injuries than the burns, cancer, and radiation poisoning.
GURPS Psionic Powers p. 6: If a skill roll is failed, any attempt to try the same feat on the same (or an identical) subject is at a cumulative -1 and the attempt has an additional flat cost of 1 FP. Also, fyi, Failure (with a Cure attempt) costs you 1d FP.
I would also say after the failed ten minutes of psychic healing is done, Mitch could try to use Cure again or use just ordinary First Aid-15 to help him get back some HP.
In the ten minutes Mitch tries to align his aura and soul with the worthy's, Mitch sees one more, long-healed injury in the worthy's head. Could be a gunshot wound by the look of it, a fairly nasty one when it was suffered, and the extent of the tissue healing and cranial status seems to indicate he suffered the head wound long ago, in his youth. Mitch's Aura Sight helps him estimate that this guy is likely in his 70s.
During Mitch's psychic attempt to heal the worthy, the man regains at least enough wind to try to speak again. He opens his eyes again, tries to sit up on his own with his back on a nearby rock, squinting into the sunlight at Mitch and Hilton. "Mitch," he repeats. "I haven't heard..." He trails off, looking at Mitch carefully... Illuminated-ly. "Were you there? In the City? At the Powerhouse? Did you escape before the Great Light?" As Mitch lays on hands, the worthy doesn't ask why Mitch is concentrating so hard and applying his hands to his body's bare burned flesh. He seems to know, inherently and intrinsically, that Mitch is a healer, trying to help him.
Jeff
"I dunno man, maybe. I doubt it, though."
Mitch glances to Hilton. How's he dealing?
First Aid.
>> SUCCESS by 5
Aura Sight on Hilton.
>> SUCCESS by 9
stupid failed cure attempt, costing valuable FP (1).
Michael
Mitch glances to Hilton. How's he dealing?
Hilton has kept his distance, physical and psychic, from the mysterious old man—Hilton's aura has a good chunk of caution and trepidation to it. But he's not afraid per se, just very carefully setting himself at a distance, like the old man is some piece of ordnance that might have a rusty wire ready to blow. He can't communicate with Mitch using ESP or anything like that, but the unspoken bond that's grown between Mitch and Hilton the last six or seven weeks lets Mitch know Hilton is holding up under the Mysterious Circumstances pretty well.
Hilton's aura also shows Mitch that, oddly, the young man is still actively using his clairvoyant powers to keep a bead on the old man, even though he's well within eyesight.
"Do you want me to go back and get help, Mi.... Mitch?" Hilton seems to keep opsec actively in mind, intentionally not using Mitch's last name after all Mitch has given the old man was his Christian name.
"I could run."
(4 miles as the crow flies, a little longer on the trails and roads hugging the south side of Shasta.)
Jeff
It's not as far as I'd thought, which is good. Before committing to a plan, how's the First Aid coming? I'm thinking Mitch and Hilton will walk the worthy to Panther Meadow and take a breather, and from there either Hilton will go back and get Mary-Lynn and a car, or else we'll walk the rest of the way back.
Michael
Oh yeah, with 20 minutes of First Aid you can get the old man back 1d6-1 HP (minimum 1) and he'll of course regain a couple of FP from further rest as well.
Jeff
>> 1d6-1 … 4
So how mobile is the worthy?
Michael
Mobile enough. He'll be moving slowly, but with the rest and treatment he's received, he can walk.
As the three of you walk through the Mount Shasta wilderness on the way to Panther Meadow, the old man keeps a keen eye on the foliage and underbrush around him. Occasionally he pauses to rest, to conspicuously sniff the air. Unless prompted to converse, he keeps silent, following his two presumed "rescuers" blankly, stiffly. Mitch's Aura Sight conveys that the old man is intensely keen on interpreting his surroundings: curious, suspicious, with a stripe of paranoia within his aura. He occasionally looks to the sky to the sun shining through the broken springtime clouds, but mostly keeps a suspicious eye on his surroundings at eye level.
Jeff
Usually these people fall over themselves to exposit at Mitch, so he's rather enjoying the silence. The hike to Panther Meadow is probably only a half-hour or less, even with the worthy's doddering. Mitch will wait to press him until they reach the site. I forget what amenities Panther Meadow campground has and I certainly dunno what it looks like in April. Maybe there's a water supply to refill canteens
Michael
As you all hit the campsite and parking lot, about a quarter-full with station wagons, VW campers, and other cars on this April afternoon, as well as a few weekday hikers, the old man's eyes fairly goggle out of his head. Mitch (and Hilton) catches a glimpse of this pure awed shock before the old man gets his emotions back under control, but the Aura Sight never lies; it's still there: shock, confusion, and that persistent stripe of paranoia threatening to overwhelm the entire swirling Illuminated mass. But as he turns to Mitch and Hilton to speak—because arriving here has loosened his tongue, considerably—he speaks at length for really the first time yet.
"Good stranger," he says as he sits down to rest, his body clearly pushed to its limits by even this short hike, "this... all this. I apparently breathe and I appear to live, but this... this must be yet another realm of mystery I've been flung into, unawares. Am I dead? Doomed to encounter perplexing Hell after perplexing Hell in succession for eternity, after all the psychopompic torments into which I threw my poor puppets? Is this what the afterlife entails?" The old man laughs, raggedly and wheezing, the sanity draining from his aura as Mitch watches.
He pauses. "I spent so much time a doubter, a sneerer: and yet in these, my final years, I have seen such things... things I'd imagined but by no means believed, phantasies I'd engaged out of pure fun, whilst secure in mine own sense of realism. That reality could appear to my eyes as a decadent fancy in a piece of yellow literature, a trip to an ancient, alien kingdom, all of us doomed to wander our own Carcosas, our name etched on a gravestone long since dedicated and long since discarded...." With this, the old worthy cries out. "O false Christs all, how this unfeeling universe and its rotten archons punished us for our hubris!" He cries this last bit very loudly, which leads some of the hiker bystanders to see what is troubling this ranting, ill-looking, old-fashioned mustachioed gentleman.
Jeff
Mitch raises a metaphorical eyebrow at the reference to Christ. "Okay, number one, what should I call you? I'm Mitch, this is Hilton.
Mitch can guess the worthy's name but not with much certainty
"Number two, you know the year? Today's date, you got a guess?
"Number three, I'm thinking we walk back to my house, if you're up for it. It's about three, four miles down the road. If you're not feeling that, that's okay, I can wait here with you while Hilton runs to the house and tells my old lady to bring the van."
Mitch glances at Hilton, reasonably confident that the boy is up for going down the road to the school unaccompanied; it's a lower-difficulty errand than making his way over the trackless mountainside.
Michael
"Perhaps... perhaps the young one should fetch the 'van. We can talk while we await its arrival." Hilton looks at Mitch and the old man, a look in his eyes and aura seemingly asking Mitch silently, "You sure about this?" before he gets set to head down the road to the school.
Jeff
Ok, cool, does he have anything on the other two questions
Michael
Hilton departs down the road the few miles back to school.
The old man looks at Mitch once Hilton is out of earshot and the half-dozen or so hikers have lost interest in the now-quieted old ranting man.
"I have an intuition as to what you are going to tell me in response if I answer you your 'number two' question as honestly as I can. And then you will tell me—gently, perhaps, but firmly—that I am a madman, a bedlamite, because instead of 1944 or thereabouts I actually find myself in the year 1986 or 2023 or 2162 or what have you. Will I believe you this outrageous fancy? Perhaps. Because I can sense you and I—and that Negro child, to some extent—belong to what I might ironically have called some sort of 'Secret Fraternity.' You tried to heal me of the terrible ailments I have suffered since being harmed by the Great Light. You feel you owe this to me. I tell you now, greater kindness has no member of this Fraternity ever shown me." Mitch sees real respect and humility in this prideful old man's eyes. "For you see, where I am from of late, the City now vanished, the members of this Fraternity set upon another like jackals—or, worse, like courtiers—at the behest of those who enslave them."
"Similarly, my name... some instinct in my heart is telling me to give you my name would be to give you power over me, if I am indeed in Hell. Can I trust you with the name my father gave me, as you have trusted me with yours? Call me Dod for now; that will do. It is a simple name, and will fill the lonely space in your conversation dutifully, for a single dull syllable."
Jeff
"It's cool, man. I'm Mitch, you're Dod. And you're right inasmuch as everybody says it's April of 1974.
"I don't think we're in Hell. This is California, specifically the big rock candy mountain. What city are you from?"
Michael
Dod laughs heartily. "The difference between Hell and California, young Mitch, depends greatly if you view California's fair face from the eyes of a solon in Nob Hill or those of a Chinese laborer dying in a ditch. For many, these two territories, Hell and California, are co-terminous—or, perhaps more accurately, co-incidental."
Dod looks up at Shasta. He doesn't get the reference to the Big Rock Candy Mountain or doesn't address it, but he does address "where he's from." "Of late? The City I called my erstwhile home was in the desert. I had wandered north, across the border from desolate Chihuahua, escaping Old Mexico intent on finding a desert City spoken of in the laudanum deliria of poets of my acquaintance. I thought that if I found it and made it there, I could... I could steal everything back that we had faintly remembered we had lost. I fancied myself a lone Prometheus, an ancient on one last errand to steal fire back from the gods. Instead, they caught me... like a fly in amber. Put me in their service. For thirty years, I reckoned during my captivity and enslavement. I did not age. They can do that; to them, the elixir vitae is common as dishwater. They said it was a gift for their most prized pets." Dod scoffs.
"And then, the fires came. The Great Light. So many died. Thousands, hundreds of thousands. Prized pets and petty slaves alike. And our masters, yes. Many masters. I roamed the desert, shattered, losing hair and teeth, the pain of the flames somehow yet residing in my bones and sloughing skin. Like a wanderer from an ancient tale, I willed myself back home. Home so I could die in peace."
"And then I saw a golden doorway appear in the sands. One of theirs, I could tell. It was too good to be true, but what choice had I? Better the amber again than this, I reasoned. But instead: cool breezes, sturdy pines, a holy mountain: California, you tell me, again. A healer and his student combing the forest for me. You can see why perhaps I held you and your lad in some suspicion."
Jeff
Mitch lets out a low sigh. "The whole here, there, home and away games business gives me a headache. What's real? What's a dream? Is any of this world real?
"Sorry, I got philosophical for a second there. Wherever you were, here you are now. I can get you back to the school and try to ease your wounds. An uphill climb. No guarantees, but I'll do what I can."
Michael
"I know I do not have long," Dod says. "I wish to be of aid to the Fraternity while I can. Whatever help I can give, I shall give in return for the help you are offering me." Mitch can tell Dod is entirely sincere about being of help, as well as sincerely fatalistic about his chances.
Jeff
Yeah, on the +1 to -14 scale of severity of illness multiple malign tumors are IIRC the example for a -14 to effective Cure skill modifier.
Michael
About 30 minutes later, Mary-Lynn appears driving the school's van and picks up Mitch and his mysterious companion. Mary-Lynn warmly greets and helps the frail old man into the van and settles back into the driver's seat after he's boarded. As Dod slumps down into one of the child-sized passenger seats, looking fairly child-sized after his many ordeals himself, Mary-Lynn says, "Archie called while you and Hilton were out, and I gathered it wasn't just to say hi." Mary-Lynn has, again, learned to deal with many weird happenings around this mountain (and otherwise) and doesn't bring up the old man until/unless Mitch does. Mary-Lynn figures Mitch will let her know what's needed: a guest bed at the school, another chair around the table at dinner, etc.
Jeff
We get Dod into a guest bed. If he was able to walk to Panther Meadow he's surely able to shower, probably dress himself. I imagine he needs some clean clothes, whatever imagination-monster rags he's now clad in.
I'm pretty sure that using Mitch's Cure ability on Dod is a nonstarter, as he seems to be beyond the threshold that Alan Watts was merely approaching. However before I commit to not trying it, can I get confirmation that Mitch isn't going to be able to get his effective skill to the minimum required to roll (3)? No amount of prep is going to counteract a -14 modifier.
So let's try something different. Mitch will sit with Dod and watch him while he naps or reads a magazine or watches grainy black-and-white TV, and attempt oracular divination from the noise in Dod's bioelectric aura.
I forget exactly what Archie and Mary-Lynn said to one another but Mitch will decide Dod is a higher priority for him personally, and wait until Dod is in a state where Mitch can't do any more for him immediately, before Mitch calls Archie back.
Likewise he'll wait until after he's spoken to Archie, or tried to, before he sits Mary-Lynn down and lays out for her the situation as he understands it. (It's not like he has a lot to share at the moment.)
Michael
We get Dod into a guest bed. If he was able to walk to Panther Meadow he's surely able to shower, probably dress himself. I imagine he needs some clean clothes, whatever imagination-monster rags he's now clad in.
So given Mitch has Fashion Sense, he'd be able to see once the white dust and grime has been beaten off them, that Dod is wearing a worn, frayed, sober men's suit of a style that might have been worn in the mid-1910s. Mitch looks for a tailor's mark and sees one from a tailor whose location on the tag is San Francisco. Picturing Dod in whatever 1974-era castoffs Mitch might have lying around is really sparking my imagination. But, as noted in the Fashion Sense description, Mitch can give others a +1 to Reactions if he dresses them, so, yeah, Dod's big mustache suddenly looks hip and au courant for 1974 once clad in Mitch's togs; with Fashion Sense, everything old is new again including big old-timey mustaches.
I'm pretty sure that using Mitch's Cure ability on Dod is a nonstarter, as he seems to be beyond the threshold that Alan Watts was merely approaching. However before I commit to not trying it, can I get confirmation that Mitch isn't going to be able to get his effective skill to the minimum required to roll (3)? No amount of prep is going to counteract a -14 modifier.
Mitch does get the sense that the advancement of the pathology of Dod's various radiation-caused cancers is unarrestable, even with Mitch's Cure ability taken to its (present) limits. Mitch also assumes that he'd do no better with modern medicine circa 1974, and guesses he's a lost cause even with Project SANDMAN TL 7+1 oncological developments. Mitch's Illuminated senses tingle in a way that states, "Dod is going to be around on this side of the sod for as long as he is useful to What Is Going On Right Now," and that What Is Going On means both in the sense of Mitch, Dod, and Hilton (provisional)'s ol' Skull and Bones Fraternity and in terms of what is happening with that semi-urgent phone call from Archie. This entire adventure with Hilton indicates that events once again seem to have narrative heft around here, and Dod's going to be part of that.
So let's try something different. Mitch will sit with Dod and watch him while he naps or reads a magazine or watches grainy black-and-white TV, and attempt oracular divination from the noise in Dod's bioelectric aura.
Turning his Aura Sight again upon Dod (and turning on the school's chintzy little black-and-white TV, which Dod sits in front of slightly awed by), Mitch takes ten minutes to read the way the stimuli of a warm shower, some cool clothes, and the best mid-afternoon televisual entertainment 1974 America has to offer has on Dod's aura. He's a man out of time, Mitch knows, but a man who also knows far more than the average run of man in either 1914 or 1974, and that seems to indicate once again his importance to the proceedings, what's about to happen to URIEL. What's the nature of that importance? Within his memories, his emotions, his brain's ability to take in the impact of his 60-year leap in time. I'll be using Aura Sight-15 roll as Mitch's Sense roll for discovering the Oracular information (and will roll it secretly, along with the interpretation roll (IQ-14).
Supplementing Mitch's Illuminated sense that Dod is going to be important to whatever is happening "narratively" right now is also the sense that the guilt and paranoia that reside deep in Dod's aura are an expression of profound horror and regret over Dod's own hubris. Those "false Christs" again. Yes, those words were an abnegation of unnamed others, certainly... but also of himself, and Dod's own past actions. He blames himself for his current predicament and, in viewing the television (especially in his aura-betrayed reaction to the commercials, Mitch sees), Dod blames himself for the world he's returned to. Whether it's a literal hell or not, Dod sees this nightmare of midafternoon reruns of Hogan's Heroes and Bewitched, of soap operas and Ronco ads and game shows, as a finger of fate, of responsibility failed, pointed right. Straight. At. Him. He's taking it all very personally, very solipsistically. And the weird thing about Mitch's oracular seeing is that it actually agrees with him, and opens up the probability that that feeling of guilt is going to be central to what happens next with Dod, and with URIEL in general.
Jeff
Hmm, do I want to ask him about Carcosa now or hold off until I've checked in?
"Hey, Dod. Quick question. When I met you, you asked about Carcosa. What's that word mean to you? I'm about to message my associates."
Split the difference.
Michael
"Hey, Dod. Quick question. When I met you, you asked about Carcosa. What's that word mean to you? I'm about to message my associates."
"A trifle," Dod scoffs to himself as he watches a housewife selling kitchen cleaner on the teevee. "A little potboiler, a myth I penned about a lost soul, wandering Earth for a seeming eternity looking for his esteemed, ancient city of Carcosa, finding the unfamiliar ruins thro' which he peregrinated were his home all along: his home was indeed the land of the dead. When I emerged and saw you and your lad, I signaled you with a salutation from that tale. It seemed... à propos, in the moment. Despite your assurances that I am not dead nor in hell, the tale itself turned out quite prophetic, now that I think of it." A rueful laugh. "I would be quite surprised if anyone at all here remembers it," Dod says with a dismissive gesture at the television. A moment's pause, and then Dod says, quietly, "Your associates?"
Jeff
"Yeah, okay. My team. My club? My party. Trying to fix stuff or keep it from getting worse... Helping me is helping them. Helping us."
Michael
A cold chill throughout Dod's aura. "I see. If they're companions of yours, I suppose..." and he sort of drifts off, closes his eyes, goes silent in the easy chair in front of the TV. His aura is weak, but he's alive. He just needs some rest.
Jeff
Is Pete around? Can I get Pete to sit with him?
Either way, time to call back
Michael
Is Pete around? Can I get Pete to sit with him?
I think we could go for a Pete call in the form of an Ally roll, 9 or less, go ahead and roll.
Jeff
>> SUCCESS by 0
Michael
Hey, there's Peter himself, he'd just arrived and is hanging around playing guitar for the kids in the active play area before dinner. He just spontaneously decided to stop by, coincidentally enough. "Brother Mitch!" he shouts as he sees Mitch poking his head out of Dod's guest bungalow to see if Peter's around.
Jeff
Mitch gives him the high sign. "Come meet Brother Dod," he calls, which should get Pete moving his way. When he's close enough for quieter tones: "Shasta spat him out this morning and he's in pretty bad shape. Had a piss poor time in the city past the sea."
Michael
Over the last few months, Mitch's ministrations as a fellow Illuminated have largely cured Peter of the Comte meme (please ignore the demiurge's not having updated his character sheet); Peter is truly an Ally now, and one who has succeeded in radically changing his personal mythology and ontology around the great mountain whose name he has adopted. Peter still keeps in touch with the old ladies of the mountain, Pearl and Nola, but he's no longer a follower of either of them. He's on Bigfoot's side now. Peter peers in at Dod asleep in front of the TV and perceives his Fraternal aura. After a quick once-over at Dod's "truest inner self," Peter sighs and says to Mitch, "Poor man. He's been used, wrung out, hurt, and exiled. And yet, I don't see any other destination for him. There are a few—very few—threads leading south but most of them just stay here. At the school." A substantial pause; Mitch can see Peter is thinking hard, plumbing his depths, consulting his Visions again. "'The city past the sea'," he says, echoing Mitch. Peter may be done with the Ascended Masters and the Comte but that doesn't mean he can't include them in his new ontology, now as entities to be wary of instead of reverent towards. "What do you suppose they used him for?"
Jeff
"His version of the story is, he wandered away from the army of Pancho Villa, found the Enemy in a city in the desert between Juarez and Chihuahua, and they kept him like a pet for sixty years until the Bomb. But we're talking about the Enemy; everything is ad hoc justifications and vibes. We can keep him here, keep him comfortable. He doesn't need heroin or a quart of gin a day, so...
"Anyway I gotta call this in, we're back in dramatic time so Archie will have something to tell me, too. Can you stay with Owl Creek, there? I don't want him to wake up alone. Probably he'd be fine but, jeez, look at him. Do we have brandy? I'm pretty sure he's a brandy guy."
Michael
Literature, defaults IQ-6 (7) for Pete:
>> FAILURE
"Anyway I gotta call this in, we're back in dramatic time so Archie will have something to tell me, too. Can you stay with Owl Creek, there? I don't want him to wake up alone. Probably he'd be fine but, jeez, look at him. Do we have brandy? I'm pretty sure he's a brandy guy."
In a gentle, almost whisper-quiet voice, Peter Mt. Shasta radiates mercy and care. "Of course, Brother." It's clear by his aura, at least during the first bit of Mitch's spiel, that Peter isn't sure whether to take any of what Mitch has said literally (and he certainly doesn't "get" the Pancho Villa and Owl Creek references, but Peter definitely senses that Dod is Important and moreover a member of the Illuminated, and thus he should use his own personal preternatural sense of calm to make sure the old man stays safe should he wake. Mitch goes to the main school building and dials a 213 number in Tarzana. (Probably makes sense to do a Mitch-Archie phone conversation in this channel for the wiki's benefit.)
Jeff
Sure. "Hello?"
Rob
"Mitchell!" Archie greets Mitch with genuine warmth. "How's life on the mountain? How are the children?" (he always asks about the children) Archie tells Mitch about the SLA bank robbery / Hearst shooting, the Bohemian Club fire, and the Jack London movie. "No air raid sirens blaring just yet, but to have those all come over the transom on the same day seems a bit too coincidental to be coincidental, you know? But look who I'm telling, ha ha." (I'm happy to play this all out if wanted, but I don't know if there's enough conflict/uncertainty to make a full scene?) "I'm not sure what the connection is, besides various San Francisco Bohemians. Feels like Emperor Norton territory."
"I've got my hands full here in L.A., but I sent Jocasta up to give Marshall a hand. I'm sure he'd appreciate your talents too."
Jeff
"Huh." Mitch is nonplussed, for once. "Speaking of Norton stuff, I got a guy here. You know Ambrose Bierce? Or is he one of those guys it's weird that I know about?"
Michael
(I will intrude briefly to state that yes, Archie knows who Ambrose Bierce is)
Jeff
Mitch quickly fills Archie in on Dob's appearance. "So that's today's miracle. He'll be here for the duration, I guess. Unclear what it's for but I guess we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Anyway even with our guest I'm probably wasted babysitting up here, you still want me to go sniffing for trouble in town? Anything in particular?"
Rob
"Well, Marshall may have more specific ideas for you, but yes, we're basically in the 'sniffing for trouble' stage of the mission." When Mitch tells him about Bierce: "Ambrose Bierce... The Ambrose Bierce that wrote 'Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'?!?" (As if there was another Ambrose Bierce it could be.) Archie gives a low whistle of surprise. "Wouldn't he be a hundred years old?" He chews on that for a second. "Golly. Can you bring him with you? Maybe put him up at the Mission?"
(Edited because "'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' Ambrose Bierce" sounded anachronistic to me. There's a reason it takes me two days to advance a conversation one beat! I think about this stuff!)
Jeff
"I dunno, I don't want to move him. He's pretty frail. I think he wasn't aging where he was but he's still as old as he was. Wasn't. Ugh. It sounds wrong. I'm thinking we keep him comfortable here...for all we know he'd evaporate if he gets too far from the mountain. But we've got people here who can watch over him."
Rob
"Right, right. That makes sense. Of course." There's a bit of disappointment in Archie's voice: not about tactics, just that he was excited to meet Ambrose Bierce. "Well, make sure he's comfortable, and secure, and then do get down to the city as soon as you can. Thanks, Mitch."
Jeff
"Sure, man. I hear you. You want me to tell Mary-Lynn to set up for anyone? You gonna send a doc or scientist to politely and unobtrusively observe Brother Dob, or anything? He's been pleasant enough but I think he might get skittish if he felt too poked. Still getting him interviewed would probably be smart. Ugh, you don't need me to tell you. I'll head down from the mountain tonight."
Michael
(Re: Mitch getting to the City, this [private jet] is one option should he care to take it, otherwise it's a 4-plus hour drive.
Jeff
Oh yeah Mitch would absolutely take a private plane
Michael
And we can pick up the What To Do About Dod discussion at HQ