Jocasta Surveils SRI
Leonard
What Jocasta wants to do next: she'll do some research to see how the SRI parking lot is laid out. Specifically, she wants to see if there's a marked section where the VIPs (c-suite execs, directors, lead scientists/researchers) park. She doesn't need the names or anything, just if such a section exists.
After leaving Livermore for the day: she's going to stop at a drugstore and pick up some obvious distractions: a big, goofy pair of reading glasses and a short red wig. This is just in case she gets spotted and needs to go back into SRI for any reason in the future.
When she gets there, late in the afternoon but when there's still likely to be personnel working, she'll park the van far enough away that it won't be easily spotted. She'll do another brief, focused meditation, with the goal of being confident and open to where the path leads her.
After that, she'll take a strong-ish dose of mushrooms and start walking through the VIP parking area, if such a thing exists, and very briefly touch each car, doing a psychometric read on each. If any car yields a particularly noteworthy or unusual vision, she'll write down its license number and check who the plate belongs to later. If there is no such parking section, or if her attempts don't yield anything that seems relevant, she'll decamp back to the van, and when everyone goes home for the day, she'll put on standard night gear (black clothes, ski mask, etc.) and just do a quick tactical surveillance of the facility for future reference.
There's a couple other things she might do after this, but that's her main agenda.
Michael
So I see three rolls here. First is a roll to case the SRI campus, and while I think both Stealth and Shadowing could be used here (and might depending on how things go in the parking lot) I'm going to have you make a Tactics-14 roll, really more to get a sense of the campus's strong and weak points security-wise, etc.
The next roll will be the Meditation roll, this time only aided by a +1 for the mushrooms; no New Age LPs or quiet incense-filled apartment are available. So Meditation-15.
And then we'll do Psychometry, which I may abstract out a little bit considering you'll be doing multiple rolls while under the influence of psilocybin. So we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
>>> SUCCESS
>>> SUCCESS
Michael
For a government-employed think tank, SRI's overall security is pretty lax! The campus was laid right into a fairly thickly-settled suburban residential district. The front doors to the main SRI building have a pretty large set of parking lots laid on in a 180-degree arc from the front door. A circuit around the block in the van reveals a high chain-link fence—not barbed-wire-topped, Jo notes with interest—around the property but residential yards and side streets abut the SRI campus from several angles.
From the outside, SRI looks more like a newly-built-and-designed high school or community college than Livermore's very squared away, private security-riddled high-security campus. Sure, getting into the building requires some kind of new-fangled electronic ID—all the doors, including back doors to the main SRI building and various outbuildings Jo could see through the fence—seem to have these plastic swipe-card receptacles on them, but the parking lot itself isn't behind a security gate. Jo does notice closed-circuit cameras on the outside of the building peeking at all the front parking lots, though. The "VIP" section, such as it is, seems to be a set of reserved spots in a tucked away 50-or-so-spot side parking lot near one of the side entrances that seems to lead to the lab buildings (Jo can tell they're labs by the exhaust vents, large service entrances, etc. etc.). If she was going to try psychometry, it'd likely be with those cars, she thinks to herself as she gobbles some dried mushrooms and waits for the effects to hit.
Give me another HT-1 roll again, 9 or less to avoid hallucinations that might affect your skills in the upcoming scene. Obviously these hallucination penalties won't apply to Psychometry.
>>> FAILURE
Michael
Missed it by 1. That's only an hour of really bad hallucinations! So with that in mind, if Jocasta still wants to head to the parking lot while tripping, in order to stay out of the view out of closed-circuit cameras and any passers-by, she'll first need to roll Will-15 to do it without being too badly affected by the hallucinations in the first hour.
>>> SUCCESS
Michael
Okay, Leonard. Can you give me two separate IQ rolls for Jo's Psychometry, no penalties, and I will roll your Stealth secretly at a 12: -2 for the shrooms, +1 for the Tactics roll.
>>> SUCCESS
>>> SUCCESS
Michael
The mushrooms come on a little weaker than last night's trip; whether that's a difference in potency or just Jocasta's neurotransmitters being a little fried, she's not sure. But before she even begins working the cars in the parking lot while trying to stay hidden and unobtrusive to observers, either eyewits or cameras, she gets a deep deep sense of Bad Vibes from the adjoining lab buildings. They loom larger-than-life in this altered state of mind for Jo, feeling like the heaviest negative energies encountered during her many Natural Guard and URIEL missions. Something bad is happening in that building. It's enough to put Jocasta in the frame of mind of a bad trip, but the effect is weak, hanging out in the pit of her stomach like a nagging suspicion.
Jo lays hands on the wing mirror of a racing green beat-up mid-'60s Jaguar: a fixer-upper conspicuous in this parking lot, the car of a 30-something car nerd: perfect engineer bait. Jo gets a strong vibe off of it; a feeling of excitement, intrigue, pleasure, a job well done, and it's only a week or two old! Very promising feelings for such a dull, heavy place, but where do the mushrooms think they go? Jo wanders a bit more, staying out of the line of sight of the CCTV cameras as best she can. She finds her way to a big Buick. It's got a "Support Your Local Police Department" bumpersticker on it, as well as a Burbank PD parking sticker on the windshield. A cop's off-duty sled, and it's brimming over with vibes. Jocasta touches it, and she gets something closer to a true vision. It's still just impressions, half-formed memories, but there's a powerful force — emotional and psychic — behind it.
Jo flashes back into the Buick's emotional past and sees a vague blur of two men: one shorter, bespectacled, and matching the description, even in this vague a vision, of Hal Puthoff, one of the psychic program's two heads. And with him is a taller man, broad-shouldered, with silver hair. His face is ruddy and suntanned, his voice booming. Puthoff seems pleased as punch and is clapping the larger man on the back; all Jo can get is emotions off Puthoff but they match the bouquet found at the '66 Jag. The older, taller man, though. His soul is a placid pool, pure Zen cool. He smiles and shakes out a cigarette but he's also a little unnerved, reeling a little bit from what happened in the lab back there today. The older man commiserates with Puthoff for a moment, lights up and takes a puff, then looks directly at Jocasta as Jo can see and hear him clearly say to Puthoff: "Say Hal ... you wouldn't by any chance see that girl, a redhead, crouching down by my car over there?" quizzically as he points at the Buick. Puthoff's emotional aura goes from joy to confusion and fear as he seems to indicate to the older man that he sees nothing of the sort. Fright Check for Jo, rule of 14 (pass on a 13 or less).
>>> C-C-C-CRITICAL SUCCESS
Michael
That's a critical success on the Fright Check, so with that comes clarity, the mushroom trip seems to come to a premature crescendo as Jocasta realizes this man, the man with the off-duty cop Buick: has the psychic ability to see forward in time. As God as her witness, Jo knows, sure as anything she's ever been sure of, that that older man with Puthoff made real eye contact with her a week or two ago.
Jo is cool as a cucumber as she memorizes make, model, plate, and distinguishing marks on both the Jag and the Buick.
Leonard
Rather than press her luck, Jocasta decides this is going to be more than enough of a lead for now. She’ll walk briskly back to the van, and head off someplace remote and quiet away from the city. Once she’s there, her agenda will be:
Make a quick sketch/map of the SRI campus, making note of the security features, exits, etc.
Jot down a note to run the plates on the Jag and the Buick
Do one more meditation session, this one unhurried and more focused, basically trying to synthesize everything she’s learned over the last few days into an actionable report to present back to the team at Livermore
Get some much-needed sleep
Michael
One more Meditation-14 roll then.
>>> SUCCESS
Michael
Wow, okay. As far as the events of the last 18 hours or so (Monday night through Tuesday afternoon), Jo's Monday evening trip was more profound, deeper, more affecting; but Tuesday in the SRI parking lot gave her a definite impression that SRI's program is not merely attracting weirdos and self-promoters. Whoever that older man was with Puthoff, he's the real deal, able to project his consciousness not only across space but across time. In Jo's experience with her psychometric abilities, she's never had this kind of direct two-way contact with someone across time, and given the fact the older man saw her in her crouch hiding behind his car, this wasn't just a random vision of Jo: it was him seeing her using Psychometry a week or two in the future. This would seem to be the most important development of the last 24 hours. Of course getting a hunch on Charley's mom's name is crucial, but the LSD trip was full of obfuscating factors, spiritual tinges, random data. But most importantly, the acid trip seemed to train and prepare Jo for the afternoon at SRI, teaching her on some level to reach out and make a connection. This experience in the parking lot was both the drugs and Jo's psychic power working in complete communion. In other words, she took what the Emperor cryptically said in her trip about hide and seek and did it.
In other words, the report back to URIEL should definitely contain the SRI stuff. Whether Jo wants to mention what precipitated it, the acid trip, which has far less in the way of actionable intelligence, well, that's up to Jo.
Leonard
After taking an hour or two Wednesday morning to make herself presentable and prep her materials, Jocasta will poke around the URIEL offices to see if Archie and Marshall are available. If she finds them, she'll ask for a moment of their time to talk SRI stuff.
Rob
Archie looks up from reading, grins. "Jocasta! Come on in." But his desk and the chairs a guest would normally sit in are stacked with books and files. With Sophie gone, Archie forgets to return things to the library. No outright security breaches - he at least puts the classified files away - but his office is kind of a mess right now, a mix of linguistics, esmology, and Biblical stuff along with the usual half dozen newspapers and magazines. "Or... why don't we just grab the conference room?" That "we" can include Marshall and Viv; Archie takes Jo's lead as to how private this debrief is.
Leonard
"That's what the conference room is for, chief," she winks. She expresses no preference for who sits in on the meeting; she assumes the brass will want to be there, but she can see the utility of Viv being there since she knows SRI people, Mitch since he'll be going into the place, etc. However many people are there, she'll Xerox that many copies of her slim presentation packet.
Brant
Marshall is already in the conference room when they arrive, sitting in half Lotus pose on the table, eyes closed. When they enter, his eyes snap open and he hops down. He nods and smiles.
Rob
(I can't remember if we (Archie, Marshall) know what Jocasta has been up to - I mean, I know we don't know about the acid trip, but I can't remember if we knew she was surveilling SRI or not? At any rate, whenever the appropriate people are there, Archie asks whatever's appropriate to give Jo the floor: "so, what's up?" "so, what have you learned?" "so, what's happening over at Menlo Park?")
Michael
(Marshall ran into her on her way out yesterday and they exchanged some banter over her doing some surveillance at SRI. )
Leonard
"Well, as you may know, I went out to SRI to do a little covert surveillance -- or so I hoped," Jocasta says, passing around some brief sketches of the facility, the lot, a quick assessment of their security systems, and so on. "I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for, but I felt like we didn't really have an angle on what was happening there and I thought maybe getting a read on the facility might provide some direction before we just send Mitch in there cold." "Now, as you also may know, I've been trying to refine my psi talents in a way that makes them more useful on mission. I've been doing this with the aid of entheogens, which has been, well, received differently by URIEL brass," she goes on, smiling in what she hopes is a disarming manner at both Marshall and Archie. "Previous attempts, as was the case in my early training, have occasionally yielded dividends," she says, sliding her sketchbook to the center of the table with her finger right next to the bold, thick letters ANDREA. "But they have been sporadic, and a bit unfocused. I have reason to believe this is changing with more intentional experimentation."
She drops the officious military jargon and sloops her shoulders in the knit sweater-top she's wearing, and slides towards them several printed-out photos of one Patrick Harold Price.
"My main reason for going out there, honestly, was that with everything else going on, I didn't really feel like SRI was a priority. I couldn't understand what it had to do with anything or why it was so important to Sophie to steer us that way; some of the major players over there seemed like hucksters and self-promoters, and I couldn't see an 'in' for URIEL.”
"So I thought, after some guided meditation and some, uh, chemical processing, it might shake the cobwebs to just go over there and take a look around. The best way seemed to be to use my psychometric ability to get a read off some of the personnel -- preferably the higher-ups, since they were the ones most likely to really understand whether or not the project was legit or some kind of money or political hustle. And that's how I happened upon the owner of a late-model Buick sedan, California license plate 947 AML: Mr. Pat Price."
"I got an extreme charge of knowledge and sensation from the car. I saw him and Targ, him with the whole research team. As you can see from these packets, he's ex-law, and has a rep as getting a lot of borderline paranormal 'hunches' on this or that crime -- usually a dodge or a frame, but the SRI brass think he's legit enough to test," she says.
]"Well, they're right. I'd hardly put my bare fingers on the chrome of his Buick when I saw him, looking right at me. Not now. Not from a window. Not on a surveillance camera. A few days ago, maybe a week," she concludes. "He saw me then, before I went there. He can see ahead, through time. He's got some kind of psychic divination ability, a...glimpse of prophecy, very narrow maybe but real." She looks at Archie with a fixed eye. "I'm as sure of this as I am anything I've ever seen with my gift. He's the real thing. I don't know what he's up to, or how he fits into what they're doing, or really even the way ahead, but I do know that at the very least, they've got someone with authentic and pretty weighty psi power in that program, and all the vibes I got off of him were very, very bad. Sick to my stomach bad. History B bad? I can't say. But...bad."
Brant
Marshall is just sort of sitting and taking this all in. He is going to defer to Archie and Mitch, at least for now, and observe.
Rob
Archie can't or doesn't mask a skeptical look when Jo mentions entheogens, but when she insists on her sincerity at the end he believes her. "Thank you, Jo." To Marshall as he goes to get Mitch: "You're right, I think he should hear this." While Marshall collects Mitch, Archie looks at the photo and info on Pat Price, still processing. "So you went to Menlo Park... yesterday? But... this Price fellow 'saw' you there... several days before that. Do you mean he had a premonition, like 'you will meet a beautiful stranger'? Or, did he literally see you?"
Leonard
"It's hard to tell. All due respect to the gang over at SRI, this isn't exactly a science...yet," Jocasta replies. "If I had to guess, though, he literally saw me -- a vision, not a premonition. I can't tell if he thought it was happening...then...or if he knew it was a vision of the future, but I'm sure he actually saw me."
She thinks for a moment. "He described me to Puthoff by the cover I was in. So I don't think I'm made, but if he's that closely attuned to me, it might not be safe for me to be there close to him. But Mitch, seriously -- keep both eyes open around him. He's real trouble, I think."
Turning again to Archie, she continues. "Mitch is a lot better at sniffing out that History B taint. If he goes in and picks any up on Price, or just gets a whiff of the badness that I did, it might be a good idea to have someone turn his house while he's there." She gathers her thoughts again, knowing she's going out on a ledge she just learned was there, but determined to stand on it. "Archie, I think that what I'm learning is that I can use my powers to...sort of open up a two-way communication with people who have similar powers. I can not just read their essence from objects, which is what I've done in the past; I can...make them see me by seeing them. And vice versa. And...I think, in the right conditions, I might be able to do the same thing with whoever is monitoring us through Charley." She sighs. "Not a lot to go on, I know. But that's what I've come to think over the last few days. It's something, anyway. A first step. Sorry it isn't more concrete."
Brant
“If we’re supposed to be doing something about this program I’m still not seeing it. Increasingly I wonder if this is part of the Librarian’s game — a misdirection. So what if Stanford is researching extra sensory and, ah, paranormal abilities? So what if they may have found a few legitimate subjects? We haven’t seen any trace of the Kings here — yet, at least,” he holds up his hands, “and frankly I’m not sure our limited resources are best spent investigating a program that by all appearances so far is a legitimate use of Company resources. I could be wrong. The Librarian has played me successfully so far. But right now, I wonder if we’re being intentionally led astray.”
Rob
"I'm as in the dark about Sophie's motives as you are, Marshall. But just in bureaucratic terms, this research at Menlo Park is unauthorized. That is, Targ and Puthoff are getting funding from the Company but not from Granite Peak. And this kind of thing is supposed to be our, I mean SANDMAN's, turf. So I'd say URIEL's remit is just to keep on eye on them for now. To look for History B, anything that looks like the opposition, or just vulnerable to the opposition. And maybe, if any of their test subjects can do anything more impressive than ruin Granny's spoons, bring them in under SANDMAN's skirts instead of CIA's." "Jo, what do you mean by, 'bad vibes'?" Archie doesn't make finger quotes around the hippie lingo but you can hear them in his voice. Gesturing to the intel on Price, "A fortune-telling cop with a knack for catching crooks: wouldn't he be one of the good guys?"
Jeff
"Archie, there are ways in which you and I are very different people."
Leonard
“To be clear, I got different sensations from Price and the location in general. He read to me as very together, untroubled, almost too at ease,” Jocasta answers. “It rattled him a little when he caught sight of me but he was very cool otherwise. But it’s the place that gave off the v…that seemed so disturbing to me. Psychometrics don’t work like a camera; they record…emotional content as well. And what I mean to tell you is, the emotional payload in there is heavy. It gave me the same sensations I’ve felt in some extremely dangerous situations. Something very bad is happening there. And Price’s whole demeanor read to me like he knows it.”
Rob
Archie takes that in. "What do you think, Mitch? Maybe we shouldn't be sending you in to this place solo. We could come up with some reason to put Roger on the scene..."
Jeff
"Is he our King of Swords or our Hanged Man? That's the question. I, uh, I did a little, with the cards." Mitch sinks a bit lower in his seat. "I wasn't gonna bring it up because what I got was pretty vague. But the impression I got, SRI in general is a bunch of witless mostly harmless types, except there's a King of Swords who thinks he's in charge, thinks he knows what's what, can't see the forest for the trees. A malign figure, either straight-up malicious or just the wrong guy in the wrong place. He might not be one guy, he might be Targ and Puthoff both. Or maybe he's a personification of the harmful forces that overlay on the clueless dweebs and Targ and Puthoff count as clueless dweebs... And there's a Hanged Man, who's definitely a guy. Older guy. Sanguine and, you know, comfortable in his situation. Psychically aware, a mentor figure type. I'd say this Price maps to the Hanged Man, but the Hanged Man isn't usually a bad actor. Crooked cop, I wouldn't expect that. So I dunno. It doesn't quite match up, but that might be because of the way I was looking at things. I tried a different perspective."
"When I got a read on Puthoff, he gave off a king of swords energy," Jocasta nods. "Cocky, slick, about to open up the throttle on a machine that might be going faster than he realized."
Leonard
"That tracks."
Brant
“Well, I guess we send the magic man in and see what happens — we can position Jocasta or Roger at a nearby diner, or in the van. Depending on what he finds, I can perhaps run down more information with my people at CIA, but I’d prefer to avoid that route for the time being, lest we draw suspicion.”
Jeff
Mitch stirs, interested, then sits back when he realizes "the magic man" is him, not some previously-unknown asset or the Oldtimer or something.
Leonard
"At the very least, I can dive a little further into Price's background, see if anything jumps out at me before Mitch goes in," Jocasta offers.
"Just be careful. Like I said, I know I haven't given us a lot to go on, but that man has some real power, and whatever's happening inside, it's far worse than just a couple of researchers with too much grant money playing pattern-recognition on the CIA's dime." She leaves the rest of her presentation out in case anyone wants it and starts to pack up. "If there's anything else you'd like me to do, let me know. In the meantime, I'll see what I can dig up on Price, and someone -- me or Roger -- should turn his house." She turns to Archie before stepping out. "I'd like to try something with Charley, too, chief. But only with you around, and only with both of your permission."
(That's all I got here, but we can keep going with this scene if y'all have anything else. Just didn't want to hold up Mitch-at-SRI any further.)
Michael
(One thing I can say for Price's file is that he has a local Bay Area apartment while he's working with SCANATE at SRI; Tahoe is too far to commute. Jocasta would have gotten this local address with the PD retirement files, like a forwarding address; I think I remember seeing this info either in the remote viewing book or another source, so I will try to dig that up for us.)