Happy Hour Somewhere
Bill
Roger would like to get some face time in with Sophie, one-on-one. He has a little bit of an apology he'd like to make, and a follow-up, months later, to a conversation.
Wednesday, October 3, 1973. Earlier in the day, Roger drops by the library, and negotiates the logistics: he'll drive, in return for her favor driving him back from the 4th of July party. Back to Livermore in time to miss traffic. He asks her to meet him down in Charley's lab, where he's working on some equipment.
When Sophie finds Roger down in the lab near the end of the day, he's packing up a few open-topped boxes of various pieces of jury-rigged electronic equipment. He grabs a big one, plus what's clearly a modified metal detector on a pole. His hands full, he points with his head at one last one.
"Help a brother out? If you can open doors, we can get this all out in one go."
As they cross the campus to his car, a couple of the green bulbs wired and duct-taped into the mess of wires light up. Roger's spent most of the afternoon wiring together a bunch of his bug-finding equipment and the chip RFID detector into a single, silent, close-area scanner in a milk box, with an egg timer to only turn on after a ten minute walk. There's a few other bulbs that light up only if they detect anything, and stay lit up for a minute or two.
Michael
"Of course!" Sophie smiles brightly, clearing the way for Roger through Building 451, out through the doors, and into the parking lot. "I've been meaning to ask after both you and Charley this week amidst all the catching up. But it seems over the past few months you two have become lab partners! How is she really doing, Roger?" Sophie looks surreptitiously around the mostly-empty campus pathway to the parking lot for eavesdroppers or lurking ears; she completely ignores the new Quonset hut set up a few dozen meters from Building 451 … and the URIEL secure reality shard storage unit, turning her head from the latter quickly and noticeably. "I feel … I feel awful I couldn't come back to her, and to you, with more answers about … her origins." She's still canny, still making sure to speak in riddles and half-references even out in the outdoors here.
Bill
"She's quite the partner, for sure. Really hard to remind myself she's just a child. I, uh, saw something of her origins. At GP. Uh, this past month, in fact — the cheval program took over their old creche, err, space. Hold up for a second; I think maybe that electric gumbo in your box is shorting." Roger helps Sophie guide the box to the ground, then pulls a screwdriver from one of his boxes, and adjusts some things. (And takes the opportunity to take a reading, looking to see if she's got anything live on her.). Trust but verify, trust but verify he thinks to himself.
Michael
(I'll make an Electronics Operation (Surveillance) roll with equipment bonuses secretly here. But if you'd like to roll a Holdout-14 roll (a +1 bonus from good RP) to aid this ploy, go right ahead.)
Bill
>> SUCCESS by 0
Michael
In the coding of the lights Roger has wired into this detector, Roger can see that Sophie's person (and her purse) scan negative: no stray radio frequencies, no surveillance devices, no EM signatures.
Bill
Roger goes around to the passenger side, and puts the boxes in the back seat, then gallantly stands holding the door open for Sophie. "Your chariot awaits." Once they're both settled into the car, he'll face her, and with his hands in his lap, where only she should see them, signal in ASL: "Little O-P-S-E-C check. You can open up once I signal." Aloud he says, "If you're up for it, I can show you a little of what I've been learning at Altamont." He winks: "Buckle up."
Bill
Assuming no objection, he takes off like a bat out of hell, having some fun, and to shake any tail. He'll use a street light timing to pick between his two choices of bars; one to the left if he's got the light, one to the right if he doesn't, saying a little prayer to le Maître at His crossroads as they come up to it. Once they've turned, he'll say "OK, that should do it for OpSec. Let's talk a little more freely. Sorry to spoil a little of the mood, but this is kinda the workplace you made when you pointed us to our mole."
He doesn't slow down unless Sophie asks him to.
Michael
On the contrary, Sophie seems thrilled, excited by both the speed and the skullduggery. "Why, Roger, you'll get me thinking you're a debonair Eton-bred secret agent at this rate," she says with a wink, subtly adjusting her wig, as if to lampshade her "disguise."
"And don't you know you're not supposed to expose me to undue excitement in the 'field' anymore?"
Her ironic grin fades a bit, as she says, "Well, as for the... investigation, if you can call it that, it was a total and utter dead end. A rest cure in Wyoming riding horses with a few other elderly, senile Sandmen, daily meetings with headshrinkers and memeticists whose speciality is rooting out alien memes, and … then, of course, a bit of the old drill, as they say at the dentist's office," she says, pointing at the crown of her skull. "No sign of Agent RAVEN."
Bill
"Sophie, Charley's been doing her own lookin'. Turning over all kinds of rocks. It was great of you to go lookin', but she ain't the kind of girl to stop because someone else did.
And as for Agent 00, once we worked out a better covenant between us, I found out what that last car ride was like for you. I apologize for his behavior. But now I know you were scared for me. Are you still? Are you still worried for Charley, for me? For URIEL?"
Michael
"Am I … scared?" Sophie blinks and inhales. "I'm still concerned, obviously, for all the things I let trouble me, what I once fretted and tore myself apart over. Charley absolutely still deserves answers, and I'm so glad that she's still looking."
"But you have to understand, Roger … I don't feel like I did when I left you all three months ago. Pathologically. Of course I'm still concerned about the way the Project wields its power over all of us: the violence, the violations, the … personal losses. But I'm no longer … " Sophie drifts off for a moment, gathering her thoughts. "The obsession, the grudges, the anxieties, the nights tossing and turning and trying to put together the pieces of every mystery like a bloody crossword, even the ways that my earlier contact with the Enemy had made me sick... all that's gone now. For good." And with that, a return of the bright, sprightly smile to Sophie's face. "Exposure to glyphs had made me sick, Roger. I learned the glyphs to help protect you all and they in turn made me obsessive, and dangerously disloyal. That burden is utterly vanished now."
"As for that Fourth of July night, the 'me' of three months ago couldn't possibly have reciprocated, considering what was on her mind … but she wasn't offended, if that's what you're worried about." A smirk curling at Sophie's mouth's corners, maybe a bit of coy shyness. "Quite the contrary, in fact."
Bill
“Woah there, girl! We’re just having a drink!” Roger conjures up a flirty grin and a light laugh, plastering over a hollow feeling. “No, chica, I’m still in enough trouble from the Agent’s premiere weekend — all these months later! Too much on my plate, but uh, good to see you smile.” He looks out at the road, and rustles up the gumption for the light social drinking hour, but he’s no longer feeling it. Am I catching the paranoia? Or did I only like my friend when she was fucked up?. He uses their arrival at the bar and a few jests about warm British beers to recover a more comradely tone, keep it light. Lets this gregarious Sophie ask the questions for a bit, see what she’s interested in knowing.
Michael
What do you say, why don't we try out that new HT and do some Carousing-14 (giving you a +2 bonus for RP, vibes, and presumably picking up the check).
Bill
>> SUCCESS by 6
Michael
"I don't want to talk too much about work … but I will say that my job this week is trying to internalize the details of both the SCANATE and Agrigenics operations. You and that … vegetarian cultist," and at this, a two-gin-and-tonics-in Sophie brings her more gregarious tone of voice down to a stage whisper, hissing through gritted teeth, "she shot you for God's sake! You've been on rehab assignment, just like me! Here we are, the walking wounded, drowning our sorrows after being reactivated." Sophie swallows hard, plays idly with the slice of lemon in her nearly-empty drink, spearing it with her plastic swizzle stick. "What went wrong, in your opinion? If, of course, you're all right in talking about it." She puts the swizzle stick in her mouth, sucks the lemon pulp and gin off, and signals the waitress for a third round, then looks Roger in the eyes, expectantly.
Bill
Roger raises his glass: “Keep on walking, wounded. Keep on.” He lets out a long sigh. “It’s been pretty messy since you left. We were really concerned for Charley, you know? Especially Archie. Marshall got pretty sick of the lot of us. Now we’re always debating and second-guessing ourselves. Somebody was bound to get hurt. But then, this business being what it is, chances were always there. I don’t know, Sophie. It’s only been a second, but what does the team look like to you now, having been away?”
Michael
"Do you want my frank assessment after three days back? Jocasta is … off in her own world, far more than she was when I left. Marshall, you're right, he's … well, he's never really trusted me, has he? And now he probably thinks I have a chip in my head to spy on him especially. The boss looks … he looks tired, Roger, and I swear I've heard him just in the time I've been back … talking to himself in his office. And not in the jolly way he would with the puppets years ago." Sophie's upper lip crumples a bit at that. "And where is Genevieve, anyway? She's meant to at least be advising and consulting with us, yes? There's been no sign of her since I've been back, and in one of the drawers of my desk is some kind of … dream journal?
Bill
Roger nods at most points as she rattles this off, with just a short, "Huh, I thought you and Viv would at least hang out; I didn't think she'd avoid you." as a comment as she does. Then he starts: "Yeah, trust. You'll find that hard to come by here these days, not just with Marshall. Me, well, trust is my business, has been since I was a kid. Giving Someone Else your very body, you have to master trust. Takes a lot of work building it up, and I don't let a few knocks — even sharp, hard, sudden ones — blow it up. I want to get back to building it back up, always, not like some. I want to trust you, Sophie."
Michael
"Well," Sophie says, after taking delivery of a fresh G-and-T, "trust is earned, isn't it? And of course you're going to have questions for me, coming back from the head-crackers as I did. Perhaps you can understand what it's like for me right now, Roger, given your own, er, 'giving someone else your very body.'"
"I sit here before you, my affect and my personality vastly changed. And I'm consciously aware of it, Roger. The past two weeks I have been trying to somehow understand these moods, these urges, these … desires I have now." Sophie has that edgy look she had a couple of times on Monday, where she's seemingly trying to collate two sides of herself … or perhaps two selves, equally valid to her superego, jostling for primacy. "There is part of me deep down that is horrified, absolutely horrified by how I am acting, but then I just seem to … slip into some kind of autopilot. I smile and nod and act just like the girl I was back in 1965, taking that El Al flight under my diplomatic cover, puffed up on patriotism and an unshakeable belief in my own genius."
"It's almost as if when I take the path of least resistance … my brain rewards me, and when I don't … ah, well, what's the use in trying to describe it. It's all happening in here." She points to her temple. "Totally subjective."
Bill
“You’re right, it does sound familiar. If I can give a hard-earned tip — if you want to own your own head, you’ll need to ignore shit like subjective and objective, and just worry about knowing who the hell you are whatever’s going on. Never stop asking who is me here? But be open to some weird answers.” He shrugs. “I know you’ll also need some space to figure that out, but don’t count on getting it. Oh, and don’t be afraid to remember things the other you knows.”
Michael
"The only lacuna in memory I have is from the 24 to 48 hours or so following the surgery. Of course, there's always the epistemological question of how would I know that there's something I specifically don't remember. Nothing seems missing to me. But I suppose that doesn't count for much."
Bill
“Oh, I’m sure you got plenty of gaps; we all do. Especially us old crew, from before Jo.” Roger looks her right in the eyes.
Michael
"Roger. Please. Don't make me think about that. There was … there was a glyph involved." She closes her eyes tight, tilting her head down, trying to make a vision disappear from her mind's eye.
Bill
“Oh, bien sûr … Yes, I see … They’d figure with it all tied to a glyph, it’d take it out again, make you safe to interact with us. Huh. My money was on you not even remembering the gap. Sorry to underestimate you. So, not thinking at it directly, that catch you up? Help you see the causes of the mood change around the old haunts?”
Michael
Sophie nods curtly. "Yes. Yes I suppose that explains it."
"This is a dangerous box to open, Roger. You saw what happened when I went off half-cocked." Again, a fidget and adjustment of her wig. "The fact is, at a certain point it doesn't matter if they're watching us directly and constantly or not. We're all in this life, for life. You don't retire, even if you 'retire,' if you catch my drift. Even if there's no active measures listening to us or watching us, they'll still be reading our after-action reports, still sending you all into hot zones to see what happens, to see how you … mutate." Sophie takes a long sip of gin, swallows.
Bill
“For life, yeah.” Roger wistfully holds his beer up to the light. He starts quoting: “Life is short. We do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So be swift to love, and make haste to be kind.” He puts it down, and stares into it. “Heard that from a priest; they make it a blessing. Not sure your English priests know it. A blessing, ha. Sophie, I just died, so I really know how short the time is. Our brass is careful. We have OpSec counter-procedures in place. You’ll probably find out how much when Marshall does you over. Careful, yes. But slow? Not anymore.”
Michael
"Our brass?" Sophie coolly regards Roger, lets that hang in there between them for a moment, and then she squints her eyes, blinks, and shakes her head, suddenly changing tacks. "One moment. You're saying you … actually died when the Fry woman shot you? You had an experience of … leaving your body? How did you come back? The report was frustratingly vague on who managed to render the first aid to bring you back and patch you up."
Bill
"No, sorry. You're right, I didn't die in that sense. My number came up, ticket should have been punched — it was my time, the loa knew. Then it wasn't. How … thinking about it, that isn't my secret to tell. Heh, frustratingly vague, huh? I guess those counter-procedures are working." Roger glances up at the bar clock. "We're hitting up against the end of our likely window of shadow. It might be longer, but if it were me shadowing, I'd have probably caught up to us by now, getting the target back under the eye." He looks at the door to the bar. "Yes, Sophie, active measures or not, They're watching. Reading the reports. But one thing about being inescapably in this life: do something long enough, and you get good. They keep honing us as weapons. I hope to live long enough to show Them how sharp."
Michael
Sophie sits with this for ten, fifteen seconds. "Two things, if I'm catching your drift here. First of all, I'm absolutely committed to remaining in the fight against the real enemy. I proved my loyalty to the Project, proved to them I wasn't falling down into either serving the Enemy or emulating them. Fighting that enemy is my top priority upon my return here to URIEL."
"When it comes to the Project itself … I need to tread carefully. You're probably wondering if they found out how I felt about David, about Charley, about … our former teammate? I never betrayed any of those specifics consciously, in therapy or in technical interviews. I could tell from the tenor of their questioning that they suspected I was having doubts about the Project's methods. Mostly because of what happened to David, from what I can tell. That helped me keep the bits about RAVEN and our former friend … compartmentalized."
"I gave up my love for David to get out of there, Roger. I can remember him — they probably couldn't risk tearing out my memories for fear it'd unravel my education and training — but I can't feel my care for him, my … my love for him." A perfectly neutral expression on Sophie's face. "Not even enough to feel that I miss him right now." "I'm afraid if I help you … they'll do that to me all over again, but this time with you." A pause. "With URIEL."
Bill
"Sophie, Madre de Dios, that's … I don't what to say. Except gracias. Thank you for that gift, keeping our secrets. I am sorry." He falls silent for a bit, out of respect, nodding, but thinking to himself Given the cost, I hope she's right, and it worked. But then he raises his head, and looks at her with a grim look. "And I'm sorry about this, but here's the thing. You have to be in now. I hear your fear They'll do it again to you, how terrifying that is. But it's a certainty, if we lose again, that They'll do it, to all of us, not just you. They … he! did a version of it to all of us once. We can be certain They'll do worse if we cross Them again and lose. And we're in it now, Sophie: we're doing this, we have to. If you won't help to at least keep quiet, you'll damn us all."
"Sophie, it's not the whole Project. You, me, all of us can be just as loyal to the Project as we ever were — more. But if you're really loyal to the cause and the Project, and if you love us, then there's no backing out of fighting Them. Tread carefully all you need to, and we'll protect you as much as we can. But you're in this fight."
"We're all in this, for life."
Michael
(Would you care to give me an Intimidation-16 check as an Influence roll? I know you're not browbeating Sophie here but you are laying down the cold hard facts with very little in the way of amelioration. I've assessed your pluses due to Carousing and other factors and the minuses due to the nature of the aid request and it landed you a +2 net bonus.)
Bill
>> SUCCESS by 3
Michael
The mask that has popped up on Sophie's face at odd points during the conversation comes down again; a sense of vulnerability and... hope? shows up once again in her eyes. "It's not the whole Project? Are you sure of that? Because the possibility that it is is the bit that fills me with despair."
Bill
“Besides the obvious that we are the Project too, and the usual order-taking ground soldiers — yes. There is hope there. Finding out how much would probably take some brilliant statistician once she understood what we know of Their type.”
Michael
With that, a desperately-needed laugh. "I'm so rusty, Roger. They obviously wouldn't let me do any work while on rehab. Three months! I'm hoping I'm not desperately lagging behind all of you … " Sophie smirks, "finely-honed weapons."
"But yes. As I said at the outset, I know trust will take time, I know my condition may throw up obstacles, I know I may not have everyone on my side quite yet but I will help, however I can. Whoever's got it in for us specifically, you're right: they'll take and take until there's nothing left … if we don't stand together." Sophie slowly puts out her hand across the table, for Roger to hold.
Bill
He takes it. "I'm sure we can bring our brass around, with a couple more verifications. Trust but verify, you know the drill."
The door to the bar opens to a lone man who happens to be wearing a trenchcoat against the October weather. Roger turns to Sophie: "Probably nothing, but I think that's a cue to leave. Let's get you back to Livermore."
Michael
"Actually, would you mind dropping me at the Holiday Inn in Livermore? I know it's silly but … ever since I got back Monday, I haven't been able to work up the nerve to go back to my flat. I can't bear to think of the scalphunters going through all my things."
Bill
"Damn, chica, you don't quit!" he flirts back. "No, groovy, I'll drop you off wherever you want — as long as you know I'm dropping you off."
Michael
"Well, if the Operation needs to know where I am until I get back to my place at the weekend, it's room 116." With a toss of her blonde bob, she turns towards the door of the bar and looks back — rather coquettishly — at Roger. "Shall we?"
Bill
He winks and takes her arm. "Duly noted. Your ride awaits, hot stuff."
Brant
Back at Livermore, after dropping Sophie at her hotel, Roger pulls up to find Marshall standing outside with Dave. They are smoking and Marshall is leaning against his car. When he spots Roger's car, he stamps out his cigarette and smiles.
"Just the man I was waiting for. How did it go?"
Bill
"Pretty well, I thought. I guess I don't get an A+ on my OpSec, though, since the op got spotted by at least one person. Lucky it was a friendly, huh?"
Brant
"It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to notice when the team's only Black agent and its recently-returned, possibly-compromised chief researcher go missing for an hour mid-day. It's a small office, you know." A pause. "So, spill: what do you make of her? Do you think she's trustworthy? Or were you two ... talking about something else ... ?" He winks, still smiling.
Bill
"Well, that is still the operating cover, if anyone asks. She was surprisingly flirty and hey, I did get her hotel room number. But no, we should probably take this to the Rooster House for a debrief."
Once they're situated in the hut, Roger switches into the choppy, post-op debrief style. He summarizes up to the level he thinks Marshall wants, and using the vocab, however personally distasteful, Marshall would want to hear it in. His thesis statement: for what he could test technically and draw out personally, he thinks she's clear for bringing into the "party". And if not, there's gonna have to be a clean-up quick, because to draw her out, he made some overtures to her as part of the evaluation to see if she could be bought in out of the cold. Tech-wise, she and her immediate person are clean, but after the usual SANDMAN clean-up crew is done with her apartment, and she gets back in it, it'll need another sweep like after the destruction of the chip. Personality-wise, she'll be re-integrating for a while, but her core seems still there, and most important, accessible to her — she can with concentration think in other ways than the result of the hacking, like the old Sophie. That's something we can help her improve. Her soul (even in the debrief he still uses that word) is pretty beat up, and there's a lot of fear suppressed, but fed on hope and actions to carry out, it could heal. It'll be a long time before she really loves again … and with the new personality layer on top, wives lock up your husbands.
As to OZY: she remembers the Sixth Man, and doesn't think she revealed that: using the multiple narrative layers as Marshall guessed. It looks like They bet that the removal/aversion to glyphs would take out her access or ability to talk about it. But with subtle prompting, he was able to get her to show that the memory of the erasure and overcoming it is still down in there with her. But she thought OZY's actions were Project actions; that's of a whole with her general freak-out on Project methods after David's death. She never investigated the possibility of a rogue group or further into Them. Providing independent input that split the two in concept seemed to rally her. Is this all still a trap and some hidden part of this personality is gonna betray or report on us? Yes, it's a possibility, but Roger heard enough of the old Sophie in there to try trusting … and verifying.
Brant
Marshall takes in the whole debrief without saying much, except for the occasional follow-up question. When Roger is done, he says: “Nice work. Perceptive. This information — and what we gleaned from her earlier — throws a few things into doubt. Query, for instance, what her purpose was in self-reporting. For a long time I thought it was a plot or feint on her part. To ferret out information about RAVEN, at first. Then I thought she was trying to learn more about OZYMANDIAS. But now I wonder … what was any of it for? Perhaps it really was to see what she could learn about RAVEN. Tried, and failed. All that work for naught. Because she doesn’t sound especially … concerned about the Sixth Man, or the potential for conspiracy within SANDMAN. Maybe she really did think she needed to self-report because all that she’d learned or suspected had driven her to disloyalty. Or potential disloyalty.” A pause. “And how are you, Roger? We have not had a chance to really catch up.”
Bill
Roger sticks to the mode of reporting he's been in. "Physically: weirdly better than I was before the gunshots. Head-space: Situation Normal. I really think I've got a handle on what the Agent wants, and providing him a purpose — our purpose — seems to have settled him in better. And me, well, I think I'm better now that I've made a real weapon to bring to this fight." He pauses. "As for my other loa, I believe I've done their penance, as required. But I don't know. I pray, and I offer recompense, and I listen." He pauses again, a little too long, looking between his shoes and Marshall's face. "But, in front of you now? Knowing I have to speak true or you'll headshrink me into oblivion? ... I guess I realize, I haven't called to them. 'Cause what do I do if they don't answer?"
Brant
“Well, if that is something you think I can assist you with, let me know. Keep listening. People don’t do enough of that.” Marshall gestures that Roger is free to leave, if he likes.
Bill
He salutes, only one quarter sarcastically. “Amazing the things you realize under the stare of a CO.” He hustles out of the hut.