Jocasta, Marshall, and Dan Miller
Michael
Jocasta needs to surveil and then black-bag Dan.
So my vision of this is that on Monday morning, Jocasta tails Dan from his home in Concord to Agrigenics in Vacaville, making note of isolated areas he could be ikotered and black-bagged, since we want to snag him on the way into work and get him to the Mission early on Tuesday before we do the Bernadette black-bag on her way home Tuesday night. Normally you'd want to watch someone's commute a few times to get the hang of the route, and we could say that if Jo runs into problems, we push the Dan/Bernadette kidnapping to later in the week. But for now let's assume Monday is the dry run, Tuesday the milk run.
Leonard, I'd like Jo to give me a Shadowing-14, a Tactics-15, and an Observation-16 roll. Again, I'll be applying modifiers to all of these so don't get too hung up on measure of success specifically.
The license plate and address is enough to get back from the central SANDMAN database (tied into various federal law enforcement and educational databases just coming online in the past couple of years) a hit on a young man living at that address in Concord: Daniel Adam Miller, DOB 5/27/52, rising undergraduate senior at UC Davis majoring in pre-law with a minor in environmental sciences. Academic records show a 3.3 GPA with courses relatively evenly distributed among business law and history, agricultural sciences, and core curriculum requirements; the pre-law courses are mostly A's. Parents Richard (dentist) and Judy (homemaker/part-time real estate agent), younger siblings Rebecca (born 1959) and David (born 1963). No criminal record, press clippings show him as a National Honor Society recipient at Concord High (class of '70), member of track team. Federal tax records show he has been working for Agrigenics, Inc. in Vacaville since March of 1973, first part-time during the school year and full-time over the summer. Position described as "legal department clerk: licensing and patents." No criminal record, no records with law enforcement or domestic (counter)intelligence. (Should note that in 1973, the idea of doing a professional internship, summer or otherwise, was pretty rare and was reserved for real go-getters who were dedicated to getting a foot in the door of their chosen field; this must mean that Dan came into Agrigenics with a real desire to work in some kind of bioscience/agricultural business law, which again would have been a fairly specialized field in 1973.)
Leonard
[LOL I was thinking of just flirting with him at the bowling alley and then grabbing him in the parking lot, but I like your plan better: less public and, given how Jocasta's usual attempts at coming on to people goes, probably less likely to end in disaster.]
Shadowing.
>> SUCCESS by 2
Tactics.
>> SUCCESS by 3
Observation.
>> FAILURE by 1
Gaaaaah
Don't hit the j so early in the morning, Joey
Michael
First things first: it is a hell of a long drive for young Dan to go to his internship every day. From his parents' house in suburban Concord, he drives for about an hour 40+ miles north to Vacaville. Luckily for him and unluckily for Jo, most of the route is on the interstate—I-680 to I-80—with very little opportunity for a snatch in less-populated areas. Jocasta tactically identifies two spots that seem logical for an ikoter-and-snatch that won't have a lot of eyewits around and that are close to an interstate for a quick getaway.
Right near the beginning of his commute, there's a fairly unpopulated area near the south end of Buchanan Air Field. A stoplight there with a big billboard nearby would be a good vantage point/hiding spot for an ikoter-rifle shot and for bundling Dan into the van and north to Sonoma. Another plus for this option is that Dan is there before 7 in the morning so while it won't be dark outside, there should be fewer fellow commuters around. The minuses include the fact that it's generally a more well-populated and trafficked spot than option 2 below...
Right near the end of his commute, within a half-mile of the Agrigenics HQ. That area north of Vacaville is, as we've noted, with the exception of the Vacaville HQ building, extremely un-built-up with a pretty low level of traffic once you're off the highway. Pluses here are the fact that there will likely be few eyewits, maybe even fewer than option 1 above, but the minus is that if there is one, they might be a fellow Agrigenics employee on their way to work.
The ikoter blast will make Dan pliable to hypnosis, of course, so standard operating procedure would be to zap him at the stoplight/stop sign, go up to the car, give him the quick five-second Hypnosis attempt to get him to pull his car off the road, and then bundle him into the van and hit him with something longer-lasting (injection, etc.) for the ride to Sonoma. What you do with his car is up to you and may influence which of the two options you choose above (i.e., whether it's better for Dan's car to be found near work or elsewhere).
Leonard, these assessments were courtesy Jo's Tactics roll, so if you let me know which option sounds better, I will set up the snipe-and-black bag.)
Leonard
I have an alternate idea.
So, with Dan, Bernadette, and possibly a third Agrigenics higher-up being on our target list, Jocasta is beginning to worry a bit about exposure. Eventually people will figure something out, but before that, she's going to be somewhat cautious.
She'll pursue the first option, figuring that it's a better shot at grabbing him and that the possibility of exposure from random civilians is safer than the possibility of exposure from Agrigenics employees. She'll take a few hours to scout out the best location, find the best angle for the ikoter shot, map the best route back, etc., and follow the plan as you set it out, but with a couple of changes.
She's going to see if there's an innocuous parking lot, access road, empty field, or anyplace else near the snatch spot that she can take the van to. When she zaps Dan, she won't take him back in the van — she'll take him in his own car. That way she can do the whole operation faster, with less chance of being caught moving his kayoed body or transferring him to the van; and she can take his car and then have it wrecked or chopped or whatever so that when people notice he's missing, they won't have it as evidence. It'll buy a little more time before anyone is able to get on the hunt for him. (There might also be some evidence in his car, or at least something she can read with Psychometry if necessary.) And then she can just come back and get the van — or, better still, send a couple of Livermore flunkies to pick it up — later on.
She'll bring her FBI identification in case she gets spotted or questioned. She'll also bring the rifle ikoter, obviously, and maybe a pistol ikoter backup, as well as some chloroform, handcuffs, black bag, and the other standard issue stuff for a snatch operation. She'll keep Dan in the trunk on the off chance she gets pulled over, to keep from having to explain an unconscious body in the car, and just for the sake of experimentation, she'll requisition a half dozen or so generic traffic cones. If traffic is light right before Dan hits the intersection, she'll line them up across the road and then dart back to her sniper spot, testing the psychological theory — based on work by Asch's conformity tests, Milgram's "street corner" experiments, and the pioneering work of Guy Grand — that people tend to unquestioningly accept event the appearance of authority. Hopefully he'll stop for them, and maybe even get out of the car and look around, before deciding to just blow through them. If it works, cool; if not, she'll just take her shot at the most opportune moment.
Michael
So by the sound of your plan, I think the snatch spot near the beginning of Dan's commute, near Concord's Buchanan Air Field, is the better of the two options. There is a good place to leave the van there long-term (the airfield parking lot) and it's marginally closer to Livermore for van pickup. It's also near the beginning of his commute which gives you more time to move him to the Mission. The cones are also a better idea to deploy earlier in the morning when there will be less traffic; these will effectively give you more time to Aim.
So let me figure out all the bonuses and penalties here:
Guns (Rifle)-15 minus 4 for Defaulting to Beam Weapons (Rifle) plus 6 for maximum rifle ikoter Accuracy bonus (time—with the cones set up plus the stop sign you'll have at least a few seconds to Aim—plus scope; you can't brace because you'll be shooting from the van but I assume that for a job like this you'll have the best TL 7+1 telescopic sight you can get)
Now he'll have some nominal cover from the car: figure the linguistic white noise of the ikoter, unless he has his window open, will encounter some cover, but he'll have no Active Defense. I'm going to give you the -2 "shoot through" penalty on page B408 minus another 1 from the glass's DR itself for a total of -3. So that works out to a Beam Weapons (Rifle)-14 roll for you and then Dan will roll Will-3. If you miss or he succeeds on the Will roll, you can get another snap shot off with the scope of Beam Weapons (Rifle)-12 next round.
(We gotta get her ikoter-certified)
The good thing about an ikoter is that if it misses or the target shakes it off, and they're not clued-in, they're not going to know what happened to them other than a weird ringing in the ears/dizzy spell.
Leonard
[I have a feeling Jocasta is a bit of a technophobe. If chloroform and pistol-whipping were good enough for the people who trained her, then by gum, they're good enough for her]
>> FAILURE by 1
gaaah
>> FAILURE by 2
dammit
I mean how important is this Dan guy anyway
If this starts to go sideways, Jo will just bail and take the direct approach and whack him in the parking lot next time he tables at the bowling alley.
Michael
Well, this much I can tell you: when Dan takes off around the cones and through the stop sign? He visibly shakes off the weird ringing in his ears and doesn't seem to turn at all in the direction of Jocasta's sniper's nest location. I mean... Jo could speed to the spot she'd selected in Vacaville and try for the snatch there (another advantage to using Location 1 as a primary option and 2 as a fallback). If she drives well and fast enough, she should be able to work the same pair of rolls with Accuracy and aiming bonuses... if she's lucky and there are no eyewitnesses.
Leonard
Yeah, she'll give it a try. Again, though, if it looks hairy at all, she'll just speed off and try an in-person ambush. Exposure is worse than delay.
Michael
All right, let's see if you can get this old van to Vacaville before Dan: Driving-13 please.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 3
Michael
Hell yeah.
Since Dan is just taking his old sweet time getting into work on a Tuesday morning, Jo is able to beat him by about five minutes. Second bite at the apple, Joey. Beam Weapons (Rifle)-14 and then Beam Weapons (Rifle)-12. Of course you might not need the second shot.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 8
USE THAT INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY, JOCASTA
Michael
Might as well take the second shot as insurance. Not like you're gonna run out of ammo.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 0
Michael
Jocasta watches the horizon, sees no eyewits, and sends two more blasts at the driver's side of Dan's Chevy Vega at the stop-sign crossroads in Vacaville. The first blast hits Dan and his eyes go glassy; luckily his muscle-memory keeps his foot on the brake. Jo dashes out of the van, runs to the car, ushers Dan into the passenger side and drives a discreet distance away to a well-hidden spot before shoving him into the notchback trunk; luckily Dan's a skinny fellow. On to Sonoma.
So we'll talk in more detail about the Tuesday afternoon series of events planning before next Monday night's sesh but Dan is now securely squirreled away at the Mission and Jo should be able to make it back to Vacaville/Dixon by noon if she wants/needs to be part of Phase II: The Bernadetting.
Leonard
I think she'll hang out at the office, by the 555 phone. She's ready to act in an advisory capacity or as an active participant in the Grabbing of Bernadette, but only if the boys ask her to.
She'll also brief Marshall on the Dan mission and let him know she's ready to interrogate if necessary.
Brant
I mean, if we have Dan at the Mission now, Marshall could give him the whammy real quick and find out what he knows without all this cat-and-mouse stuff Roger was doing (no offense Roger).
So Marshall would give Jocasta the option to stick around if she wants. Then: step one for Dan is to put him in one of the unused bungalows on the property; step two is to stun him with Rapier Wit and then Hypnotize him into calling Agrigenics to report that he won’t be in that day because he’s come down with a stomach bug; step three will be to tell him to go to sleep, dose him with an intravenous hypnotic, bring him back out of the sleep state, let him settle for a minute or two, and go from there. Jocasta can be in the room if she’d like, he won’t remember her when Marshall is done.
Michael
Okay, we might as well do rolls for both Rapier Wit and Hypnotism now...
Rapier Wit is a Public Speaking-22 roll vs. Dan's Will. Ouch. And that will cost 1d6-2 points of Corruption.
And then Hypnotism-18 to put him into the suggestible state ...
... and then a second Hypnotism-18 roll vs. Dan's Will again to get him to call into work.
Brant
Public Speaking.
>> SUCCESS by 15
>> 1d6-2 = 3
Hypnotism.
>> SUCCESS by 7
Hypnotism again.
>> SUCCESS by 5
well that Rapier Wit roll at least knocked him on his ass, i’d imagine
Leonard
If Marshall lays out this plan to Jocasta, she'll suggest one or the other of them also do a Mind Probe to get a direct answer to something along the lines of "What did you see that made you turn on the company?".
Michael
The ariktu that Marshall uses on Dan once he comes out of the drugged state is powerful; Marshall can use a few more syllables of Sumerian priesthood-language given Dan is pretty much out of it. Marshall could almost swear he can feel the ariktu's source code twisting and worming its way around his brain and it travels at light speed between his Broca's area and frontal lobe and back again before leaving his mouth. It's a rush, much like cocaine. And it hits poor Dan square between the eyes. Now Marshall can see and sense that Dan does try to resist its effects—he's got no chance, poor bastard, but Marshall can sense at least behind his eyes, Dan has a will of his own that has some dim knowledge of what's befallen him and is trying to save his own will from it. But the ariktu does what it needs to: puts Dan square into a state of pre-hypnosis that Marshall quickly turns into a full suggestible hypnotic state.
Dan gets on the phone and, in a normal conversational tone of voice (tinged with a lower register one associates with a flu or a stomach bug), tells his supervisor he's sick and won't be coming in today. He apologizes for calling in late, but he was asleep after a night of severe illness. Dan hangs up the phone and Marshall can see that Dan put a little extra into that portrayal of being sick on the phone; his subconscious mind is clearly compliant, cooperative, and anxious to get along and hopefully get through this experience. He is an eager subject.
Brant
OK. "Hi Dan. It's really nice to meet you. I'm going to be asking you some questions for the next little while. It's extremely important that you be honest with me. Understand?" Assuming he assents: "We're going to talk about Agrigenics. How did you get your job there?"
Michael
Dan nods at Marshall asking him to be honest. He then processes the question, takes a few seconds. Then speaks in a flat but conversational affect. "Professor Madden at UC Davis. He said they were the coming thing for someone like me who wanted to work in environmental law. They were gonna change the world, he said. I applied for a part-time job last semester, a clerk job, they were happy to have me. I stayed on through the summer." He visibly shivers for a moment after saying that.
Brant
Marshall glances at Jocasta with an expression that says, "Professor Madden? Mark that name."
"What are you doing at Agrigenics now? Still clerking?"
Michael
"Yes. Trying to act as normal as I can. If I'd run off or decided to quit... they might have gotten suspicious. I did tell them I'd need to leave at the end of the summer though, to spend full-time at school this year and work on my senior thesis."
Brant
"Why would you need to run off?"
Michael
"I... I don't want to keep any secrets." A single tear trickles down Dan's cheek, but he doesn't audibly choke up or sob. "I don't know where I am, but... I don't want to die. Ever since I saw what I saw... I just expected something awful to happen. I guess it finally has. I'll be as honest as I can. I promise."
"I would need to run off because I saw what I wasn't supposed to see. On basement levels 2 and 3."
Brant
Mind Probe. "What did you see in the basement, Dan?"
Michael
Interrogation-17. And 1d6-2 Corruption again.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 6
>> 1d6-2 = 1
Michael
Dan's respiration rate increases; a few soothing words from Dr. Red to his trance subject bring down Dan's heart rate and breathing so he can address the powerful set of NLP instructions he wants, needs to unburden himself from.
"I'd seen the basement elevators. I'd seen the... non-employees going down there occasionally with top Agrigenics executives. I.... honestly don't know why I got so curious. It seems so stupid in retrospect. I knew that the elevators down had magnetic-stripe IDs, but I also knew from my time there that the loading docks connected up to the basement levels. Supplies for the labs were kept down there. So I got into the loading dock on basement level 1. I was careful, I kept to the fire stairwells and took a look down the hallways of all the basement levels. On 2... ah Christ, the screaming when they came out of that lab down there." He's having trouble focusing, Marshall can tell these memories are a virtual torrent of traumatic engrams. "I crept up to where the environment-suit wearing researchers had come out of, got the right angle to see the next person who came out. Research monkeys strapped down. Vivisection. Muscle grafts." He swallows hard. "It was gruesome. These vacuum units sucking up the blood. Monkey blood."
"On 3... level 3 wasn't nearly as gory but it was more... shocking. Dehumanizing. Dozens upon dozens of frozen hibernation tanks, all under dull blue lights... I could see the shadows of the human faces behind the ice and rime. That was the bit that spooked me, that glimpse. I got out as quickly as I could, took the corridor back out to the loading dock. One of the warehouse guys asked me what I was doing down there... I came up with some lie, that I was coming down to get a bill of lading from records but had forgotten my notes upstairs."
"What are they doing down there? I thought this was a food research and agricultural sciences company? Who is making them do this research?" Dan is plaintive now, looking for meaning in a bewildering, alien, initiatory experience. He's seen what the normal run of man was not meant to, and his mind cannot handle it. Marshall's skill in Psychology lets him determine easily that this boy's sanity was permanently (or at very least long-term) fractured by this experience. It's a miracle he's held it together this long.
Brant
Marshall's going to take a good 30 minutes to get Dan under to control: he'll calm him down, focus his breathing, make a few hypnotic incisions to erase or redirect the most obviously horrific and traumatizing of his recollections, then gently guide him into a meditative state for more questioning. Basically I want to Brainwash some of the worst trauma out of him and get him back into a stable state.
Michael
Brainwashing-17. There's not a lot you can do in a half-hour but you can put down the foundation on a longer-term more complete brainwash. How much you can get done will depend on how long he's staying here.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 7
Michael
All right. Yeah, I'd say you've gotten the worst of his awful memories locked away. But I need you to give me a Psychology-21 roll.
Brant
>>> CRITICAL SUCCESS
Michael
That is a crit.
As Marshall puts the finishing touches on giving Dan some relief from his awful memories of the basement, Dan calmly accepts this new programming and seems to experience some true tentative healing of his current unbalanced mental state. As Dan confirms verbally with Marshall the final details of his new "screen memories" about that day he went down to the basement, Dan nods in recognition of the new master narrative.
Marshall ponders how easy it was for him to identify and excise this set of memories. Sure, the Mind Probe is a powerful tool and exposed the truth to the light for the first time since the trauma scarred Dan. But the description of the experience, the convenient nature of his getting to the basement, of his seeing everything in this short period of time and him getting out safely... goddamn it, it feels wrong somehow. Stage-managed. When the concept of this experience being "initiatory" crossed Marshall's mind earlier, the seedling of a possibility expanded in Marshall's mind... what if this was meant as an initiation? What if whoever is doing this Weird Shit at Agrigenics wanted someone—maybe Dan specifically, maybe anyone impressionable—to see all of it? For any number of possible reasons: to dangle Dan out there as a piece of bait for interested spies, to see what the impact of witnessing these kind of scientific experiences would do for bizarre reasons of psychological future shock testing... Marshall feels like the kid saw (or believed he saw) what he did, the details are too many for some kind of pure fantasy/hallucinatory hypnotic experience. But Marshall also believes this experience was less happenstance and more... consciously and intelligently designed.
Brant
Once Dan is under control, Marshall’s going to tell him to stop listening for a moment, then he turns to Jocasta: “I think he’s bait.” He explains his intuition about Dan and his memories, per Mike’s description. “Thoughts?”
Leonard
"Could be. I trust your instincts, but who cast the bait, and were they just chumming the waters, or were they hoping to catch us specifically?"
Brant
“Dan — if you were trying to keep a low profile why make and distribute the flyers? Did you come up with that idea or did someone else?”
Michael
"Something.... something had to be done! They're making monsters in there!" Dan's affect becomes agitated but Marshall's hypnotic work up to this point keeps Dan to only a slightly raised voice. "I was alone! I needed to find someone! Find someone to help me blow the whistle!" And then Dan repeats that exact set of words. Verbatim. With the same exact agitation, the same tones of moral and political indignance in his voice, the same slightly-maniacal whirl in the pupils of his eyes. He only repeats it once though, then gets back down to baseline again. His affect becomes calm, more measured. "It's what I really believed. I just wanted to make the world a better place. I told them so in my interview. I felt betrayed, like the world was conspiring against me and anyone who wanted those things... to feed the world, to heal the planet."
Brant
Hmm.
Marshall puts Dan to sleep with a snap of his fingers and then turns to Jocasta again. “Obviously someone implanted that motivation in him. Likely even that script. His ability to run it through twice, verbatim — that’s skillful work. If we had more time, I could unravel it, get to the origin of it, but he’s fragile as it is and if I try to rush it now I might break him. But! But I’ve been thinking about a workaround for this sort of thing ever since your dinner with Harman. Jocasta, how much control over …” he searches for the word, “your psychometry do you have? Meaning, can you touch someone without it automatically happening, or can you ‘turn it on’ at will?”
Leonard
All that ‘make the world a better place’ stuff, the healing language, it’s all out of their brochures. There’s something both memorable and creepy about it, Jocasta thinks. Almost like an implanted meme. “I can control when it happens,” she responds to Marshall. “It’s harder to control how I react if it’s a particularly intense read, but yeah, I can turn it on when I choose.”
Brant
"OK. If you're game for a little experimentation, I want to try something." Marshall lays out the plan. Step one: put Dan into an REM sleep state, with Jocasta in position touching his head. Step two: Marshall uses regular hypnosis and psychological coaching to "prime" Dan to recover this memory, basically setting him up so he's ready for step three. Step three: Marshal uses the Voice (Mind Probe) to ask, "Did someone tell you to say that (i.e., the thing about something needing to be done, monsters, etc. — Marshall will set up the Mind Probe question so that the "that" he's referring to is the "script" Dan recited twice)?" Step four: at the same time, Jocasta activates her psychometry to see if she can "see" the memory that activates the "trigger" that's been implanted in Dan's brain.
"The thing about memory," Marshall explains, "is that you can't really erase it. If you're going to brainwash someone into believing something, or doing something, you have to preserve the base memory that 'activates' the screen memory or reaction. Otherwise, if you just suppress the memory entirely, or delete it — assuming you can even delete memories in a healthy brain, a big assumption — the victim, uh, person, rather — the person will just draw a blank when the memory is triggered. And they'll know they're forgetting something. People freak out when that happens; it's not an effective tool most of the time. So if Dan here," he gestures at Dan sleeping on the bed, "has a specific instruction implanted in his mind, there must be an original memory lurking behind that instruction, ready to kick it into gear. I think you'll be able to 'see' that memory if I can prompt it."
Marshall's also going to send Dave to fetch his pharmaceuticals bag, in case Jocasta goes into like seizures or something.
Leonard
"I'm game," she responds, peeling off her gloves. "Ready when you are, Dr. Redgrave."
Michael
All right, let's start with another pair of rolls for Marshall: Interrogation-17, and yet another 1d6-2 Corruption.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 3
>> 1d6-2 = 0
Michael
He's fighting it, Marshall thinks to himself after he asks Dan, "Did someone tell you to say that?" Dan doesn't speak for a good two or three seconds, during which time Jocasta lays her hand gently on Dan's. "There.... there was a voice. Was it my voice? My conscience... the voice in me. Was it in me or outside?" Dan's brow wrinkles; he squeezes his eyes tight. He is trying to Remember. Jocasta: Psychometry-13 for this distance of time from the present-day (it happened this summer, between 10 and 100 days ago). Will you use Corruption at the outset?
While Jocasta is going deep into Dan's memories and emotional resonances, Marshall takes stock of this young man's having been put through the neurological wringer. Marshall can't help but be a little exhausted by the process; this is the kind of work that is as exhausting as being a master safecracker faced with an expertly-built mechanism: fine, detail-oriented, manual dexterity kind of work. But it's impossible to have used as much source code as Marshall has used without feeling... like the human brain is also malleable, that it is clay to be shaped by the whims of skilled hands....
(Corruption roll time for Marshall. This will be the only time I call for it this campaign week. Marshall is currently at 52 Corruption so he needs to roll Will minus 5, or Will-13.)
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 1
HA.
Just gonna see how high we can build this Jenga tower.
Leonard
Jocasta, ever equipped with an apple for teacher, will push up to 3 Corruption on her attempt. She's long overdue for a death spiral.
>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
All right, so that's effectively a roll of an 8, which is a success by 5. That's only enough to get emotional resonances off the experience. If you want a true vision... you'll need to add 4 more Corruption to get your 8 down to a roll of a 4 and a crit.
Leonard
That'd take it up to, what, 44? Jesus. All right.
Michael
35 + 3 + 4 = 42
So not yet at 50, but closing in.
All right, I may need some time to narrate this properly. I will work on it tonight but more likely this is a tomorrow thing.
But in an effort to both ramp up the tension and provide me with possible fodder for said narration... Leonard, can you please roll:
a Fright Check at 13 (Rule of 14)
a Corruption roll at Will minus 4: 13
Leonard
Fright.
>> SUCCESS by 0
Corruption.
>> FAILURE by 2
Michael
Ooooh, lovely.
25 points of Corruption will be turned into a new 1-point "as unto the Anunnaki" Quirk... which probably should follow from the Psychometric read Jo's going to have.
I've been in worse memories than this is likely to be, Jocasta says confidently to herself as she concentrates on the emotional remainders of Dan's experience in the Agrigenics lower floors. The emotions are overwhelming, though. It's terror, mixed with... an odd bit of excitement? Like Dan knew he was getting away with something, and his natural curiosity sort of enabled him to continue, to not punk out, to go deeper in the basement. These discoveries, while they seemed to activate some sense of sick horror in Dan's mind... also kind of enticed him?
These emotional remnants, though, are preventing Jo from seeing what actually happened that day Dan went down there. And so Jocasta pushes herself further, beyond the mere set of feelings the experience elicited. What was going on down there?
The memories unfold substantially as Dan has described them—sneaking in through the loading dock to level B1, winding his way through the corridors until he found the fire stairwell (Jo sees him glance down the hall that, from Mitch's and Charley's descriptions, holds that meditation pod and control room) and then he gets down to level B2, the animal holding cells. And Jo again sees what he described: a glimpse of people in heavy environment suits, a glance of experimental chimpanzees, and yes, it does look like some kind of vivisection/muscle graft thing happening, although through Dan's eyes Jo can also see what look like brain experiments going on in the lab as well: not as gory or memorable, but they're there in his memory. And then, down the fire stairs again to B3, where Dan sees the cryonic pods, as described... maybe multiple hundreds of them? This is possibly the most unnerving part of the experience thus far for Jocasta, because the very little she knows of cryonics research from being in the Natural Guard/keeping up with esoteric futurological research, no one, not even the dedicated cryogenic life-extension facilities currently coming online in 1973, have this much capacity. Agrigenics is definitely doing research that has nothing to do with agriculture and food science.
As Dan turns around to make his way quickly to the stairs and back out to the loading dock, standing behind Dan, flanked by two men in security uniforms, is Chris Butler. "Hi Danny. Tour's over. Why don't we go back to my office for a debriefing?"
Suddenly, overwhelming the curiosity and the existential fear of what the company is up to in Dan's mind is the immediate, fight-or-flight fear, of his having been caught. But all it takes from Butler on the special elevator ride up (which, Jo notes, he does without the security, who appear to be assigned to the basement floors) is a few calming words to bring his fear down to a low boil. Like, all of a sudden Dan is merely worried he's going to be fired than killed.
In Butler's spacious corner office on the 8th floor, Dan sits down across from Butler's ultramodern desk. Butler picks up his sleek pushbutton phone, hits a button for a new line, and dials an internal extension. "I've got him, do you want to head up in about 10 minutes?" Butler hangs up. While this is going on, Dan looks around the office. On the walls are, yes, images blown up from past Agrigenics ad campaigns. "Dan," Butler says to him amiably while going to his office's mini-fridge, putting some fresh ingredients—berries, greens, still mineral water—in a blender and running it, "you have been vouchsafed a very important tour of our facilities. What do you think of our work?"
"I..." Dan stammers, "I don't know what the work is."
"What do you think it is?"
"Life extension?"
Butler, whirring away at the blender as if he doesn't care about the answer, takes a moment after Dan mumbles this. "Yeah. Yeah, Dan, you got it in one. Life extension. It's vital work. But you probably think it's pretty creepy, right?" And indeed, from inside Dan, Jocasta knows that Dan does indeed find it pretty fucking creepy. "That is good," Butler says, "we can definitely work with that."
"Dan, I don't have all day and night to talk to you, so the work I'm going to do needs to be brief. But you already kind of hate us and working here now, don't you?"
"I do." For some reason, Dan can't help but be honest to Butler, like every conversational prompt from him is with an authority figure he can't possibly lie to, even though deep down Dan hates this man and what he's doing.
"That's good. That's what we need. In fact, something has to be done. We're making monsters, aren't we? And you're alone. You need to find someone. Someone to help you blow the whistle." There's a knock on the door. "Oh, excuse me, that's just a friend who's going to observe."
Butler goes to open the door. "He's primed," Butler says to this guest, whom Dan does not see; for some reason, Dan can't move his head from Butler's desk. "So, what was I saying just now?"
"You're making monsters. I need to find someone. Someone to blow the whistle."
"Whistle-blowing?" says a woman from behind Dan. "That's not what we want."
"Please." Butler says with firmness to his female guest. "Trust me. You know I've run the numbers on this. If he looks for a helping hand, he's going to find them. They're constantly on the lookout for stuff like this. Right," Butler says to Dan again. "Let's try this again. Your fear, your rage, what are you doing with it?"
"I'm... something has to be done. They're making monsters in there. I'm alone. I need to find someone. Find someone to help me blow the whistle."
"Again." Butler says it with such sincerity, such near-sweetness, approaching Dan and looking deeply in his eyes, hand on his shoulder. "This isn't hard. This is what you already believe. Again. Until I believe it."
Jo wakes up.
Jocasta looks in Dan's eyes as she opens her own and sees—from outside of Dan's body this time—the same pained, enslaved, supplicatory, eager-to-please expression she remembers wearing as she experienced Dan's being brainwashed in Butler's office.
Brant
"Jocasta? Jocasta!" Marshall snaps a finger in front of her face. "Are you there? Did it work?"
Leonard
Jocasta takes her hands away from Dan's temples like they were a hot pan, and her eyes flutter back to the moment. "Uh, yeah. Yeah. It worked." She recounts, in precise detail, the vision she saw, assuring Marshall that she thinks it's right and there was no misreading or interpretation. After she's done, but before Marshall can speak, she practically hisses: "We're getting played, Marshall. Again. And I'm getting tired of it. I'm tired of being a pawn in everyone else's game. That place needs to be ashes. Forgotten. Not even a memory, except to the people who thought they could manipulate us like this."
Brant
"Fuck. Fuck. We — hold on." Marshall goes into his bag and pulls out a syringe, which he uses to draw a clear liquid out of a vial. He injects it into a vein in Dan's arm. "That'll keep him asleep for the rest of the day while we figure out what we're doing here. Fuck. We need to get this information to Mitch and Roger before they intercept Bernadette. And we need to rope Archie in, I guess. God damn it."
Michael
I dig it.
Of course I'm still ready to run the Bernadette/Beale op next Monday but if our plans change that's fine too!
I have a feeling Mitch and Roger will have not yet departed for the snatch point (call it a free use of Serendipity), so we can do a Sonoma-to-Livermore conference call.
Brant
My personal take is that I don't think we need to scrap the Bernadette plan so much as we need to just digest what this means and maybe keep it in mind as Mitch and Roger implement the plan.
Michael
Awesome.