Kohoutek
While Marshall, too wired to sleep, starts sketching out his report, Mitch wanders the now-haunted hotel, looking for hidden messages he might have left himself. He finds his way out to the topiary garden, where a group of young people are smoking a joint, standing around a large telescope.
“While Marshall, too wired to sleep,” says one of the kids, offering Mitch a look through the telescope. “What am I seeing here?” Mitch asks. “Comet Kohoutek!” they all say, like it should be obvious. They insist it’s the “comet of the century,” it’s been in the papers for months. Mitch has never heard of it.
“That’s not a thing,” says Mitch. “Is it?”
Brant
So on that Monday after the conference, Marshall will head into Livermore to write and file his report with Archie, who I imagine would be required to review it and then send it along to Granite Peak.
He is going to hew to the truth but present the narrative in the most positive possible light, like what happened and the end result were not only intentional (broadly speaking) but were, in fact, good.
The contours of that narrative would be that Mitch and Marshall realized there was an ontological subduction zone at the Stanley Hotel soon after arriving. Over the next two days, through their investigation, they discovered that a kusarikku was on site attempting to manipulate and intimidate certain conference attendees into conducting a ritual which would summon the distributed consciousness of Harry Houdini. Mitch and Marshall did not realize at first the purpose of this ritual, but managed to clandestinely insert themselves as participants. It was only during the ritual that they learned that the intent was to bring the unsettled memetic nature of Houdini's death to the fore, thus creating a reality temblor that would reassert the existence of History-B.
They attempted to stop the ritual but were only partially successful — the participants’ uncertainty regarding Houdini's death resulted in a category [insert SANDMAN code for “minor”] reality temblor. In these circumstances, Mitch and Marshall invoked Emergency Protocol [blah blah blah] to remedy the situation by “fixing” the memories of the participants. This worked, and as a result History-A reasserted itself.
Through all this, Marshall will drop footnotes and citations to various SANDMAN directives, protocols, etc. that seem to condone or authorize his and Mitch's actions — both to give them cover but more to create the impression that they were at all times acting within SOP. He will conclude by noting some proposals for further containing the subduction zone at Stanley Peak, implying throughout the report that the subduction zone has always been as “big” as it is now — like, “we left it as we found it,” except that we also saved the world, but hey we're just two dudes who were exercising emergency protocols to stop a reality quake.
He will not mention anything about the comet, assuming Mitch even brings it up.
Jeff
Does he mention that we have a magnetic tape with Harry Houdini on it?
I mean, maybe we do
Brant
Oh, yes, he does mention that and says that they have it safely at Livermore.
So we can assume they'll send someone to get it but we'll almost certainly have a day or two for Charley to analyze it.
Jeff
"Hey, Charley? We have a reel of magnetic tape, audio tape, here that Harry Houdini might be hiding in. Maybe. What do you think?"
Brant
Let's put Houdini into the tapes from GRAIL TABLE. He'll start in 1973; maybe he can fix the world. (edited)
Rob
Or mash him up with the songs from History B
Michael
The contours of that narrative would be that Mitch and Marshall realized there was an ontological subduction zone at the Stanley Hotel soon after arriving. Over the next two days, through their investigation, they discovered that a kusarikku was on site attempting to manipulate and intimidate certain conference attendees into conducting a ritual which would summon the distributed consciousness of Harry Houdini. Mitch and Marshall did not realize at first the purpose of this ritual, but managed to clandestinely insert themselves as participants. It was only during the ritual that they learned that the intent was to bring the unsettled memetic nature of Houdini's death to the fore, thus creating a reality temblor that would reassert the existence of History-B.
This is brilliant, nasty work. If the boys at the Phoenix Program could see him now, eh?
Propaganda roll please, Marshall, because that's what this is.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
Cool. I will likely come up with a detailed response from Granite Peak tomorrow. My brain's a little scrambled at the moment.
Brant
Yeah man shouldn't you be tripping and conversing with the spirit of Joyce Jun'r or something?
Michael
Basically I can do grand sweeping narrative stuff right now but the moment I start thinking about numbers my eyes cross
Bill
Roger will shut up and let the professional come up with an answer. (edited)
Michael
I dunno guys, one might start to worry about y'all taking ALL the wrong lessons from the history-rewriting demons who are your sworn enemies. I guess that's why we have Corruption.
And hey, good news everyone: other than the Corruption hit that Marshall and Archie are about to take to shore up their respective subduction zones, no one else needs to add any delayed Corruption at this time! Jo and Archie are lucky that our merman friend didn't get a chance to flash the "Love Me" glyph that the kulullû had carved into his left front flipper
That could have gotten ugly.
Archie corralling it into a second laundry bag was probably the best strategy possible.