Marshall and Archie Return to La La Land

Index

• Wednesday, August 8, 1973: Venture Toons

• Wednesday, August 8, 1973: The Troubadour

• Thursday, August 9, 1973: KTLA

• Thursday, August 9, 1973: Chasen’s

✈

Brant: Once they're in the air, in their first class seats, Marshall with a vodka-soda in one hand: "So," he says, flipping through a copy of American Journal of Psychiatry, "how did Melanie take the news?"

Rob: It takes Archie a second to clock Marshall's meaning. "How did Melanie — oh, yes, I suppose we did have a bit of a chat." He considers his answer, as if he hadn't reflected on this before now. "She took it well, I think … Quite well, considering. She's no porcelain doll, you know." He sips his drink (just water, flat is fine, thanks), thinks on it a bit more. "I really didn't tell her much she hadn't put together herself. But it was good to come clean, at least partly."

Brant: "Good. Good. Glad to hear it." He resumes reading his magazine.

Michael

Wednesday, August 8, 1973: Venture Toons

Venture Toons is headquartered in a 6-floor modernist building in Tarzana, on Ventura Boulevard. The Valley is generally sort of terra incognita for both Archie and Marshall: Archie's life in LA from '55 to '67 revolved around Hollywood, the corporate and ad HQs downtown, and the local and network television studios (some of which had started to migrate into Burbank and Studio City in the Sixties, naturally) but Tarzana is out in the 'burbs. Ventura Boulevard out here is chock full of those new-fangled shopping plazas where you can visit six different businesses in a little parking lot. There's a diner next door and a bank on the other side of the building and Venture Toons's logo sits both above the front door on Ventura and on a vinyl placard on the windowless side of the Venture Toons building (where the big address numbers are on this modern shot). Venture doesn't have a mascot — no Bullwinkle and Rocky statue or collegial Mickey Mouse in sorcerer robes here — just their Googie-inspired original mid-'60s style logotype that looks increasingly dated in the early '70s. The billboard on top of the building is advertising Jim Croce's new album Life & Times. The building has no other tenants, as the front door (right next to their private on-site garage) leads right into Venture reception. At the front desk is a young, cute college-age girl of Asian extraction. She, like the Venture Toons logo, is dressed a little behind the times: big hair piled up in a sloppy beehive on her head, and a purple mini-skirt that Marshall and Archie can see as she stands up to greet them, which screams "my bosses told me to wear something this brief and revealing" and "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In circa 1968" at the same time. She has a broad Valley accent, saying to the two older gentlemen—one square, one hip—walking into the foyer, "Gyood morrrning, welcometoVenturreTyunes, how kin I help you?"

Oh! Rob, Archie can give me a Savoir-Faire (Corporate America)-16 roll as he susses out the foyer decor and the "vibe" in the offices and cubicles behind the glass behind the front desk.

Rob

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

Well, maybe all Archie needed to do was get physically acclimated to corporate America again to get a handle on this stuff. It has been a while since he's been in a low-to-mid-level outfit like this one, but it's clear from the neighborhood, the outdated, fraying decor, and the bullpen Archie can see through the window, that this place runs on a shoestring. It's not glamorous and it's not thriving. Or if Venture Toons is thriving, it's hiding it well. Five floors, that means that they must do the animation here, which means a team of junior artists and interns doing the cels upstairs. Still seems like a lot of floor space for an animation house this moribund. Also? Not a lot of posters of Venture's properties on the walls. Archie can see a couple of art installation/posters for Venture cartoons—maybe those series from '66 and '67 that pre-date Venture's establishment—on the wall of the bullpen behind the glass. As far as personnel through the glass are concerned, Archie maybe sees half a dozen young folks, mostly working in their own cubicles. A meeting table in the open-floor area of the first floor of the shop has a couple of people, a young man and young woman in their 20s, working on what looks from this distance like a storyboard or a sketchbook.

At the very least they seem to have some young people working here. Venture isn't staffed by a bunch of moribund Termite Terrace also-rans.

Of course young people, especially in the animation industry, work cheap.

Brant

Marshall is standing a little behind Archie, sunglasses on, looking diffident. Here’s his fit.

Rob

(We certainly could have called first, established a contact, backfilled our cover story, but the novelty of doing field work and being on his home turf makes Archie feel like winging it, Mitch-style.)

Archie gives the receptionist a warm smile, turns on the charm. "Good morning, my dear! The name is Archie Ransom." He hands her a business card with his Corporation for Healthy Media info.

"Look. I know this is unspeakably — appallingly! — rude, but I haven't made an appointment or anything. I'm here to see — well, to see the highest fellow on the totem pole here who'd be willing to give ten minutes to an old ad exec, who used to work in kiddie TV about a hundred years ago. You can assure him I am not selling anything! Matter of fact, I'm hoping to hire somebody to make me some cartoons."

"Oh, and don't mind my stylish friend here," he says with a wink, then mock whispers: "He's the one with the money."

Michael

The receptionist peeks around Archie and stares at Marshall, openly, a bit longer than might be strictly appropriate, and then returns to Archie. "Oh yah, okay, Mister... Ransom, sherrr, let me dial up Mr. Kelley in his office." As she dials the internal line, she puts her hand over the receiver and leans in and whispers to Archie, "Do I, like, know him from somewhere?" she says, subtly tilting her head towards Marshall. Mr. Kelley's voice squawks from the receiver as the receptionist leans as subtly away to attend to her boss on the phone.

"Ah, yeah, Mr. Kelley, there's a Mr. Archie Ransom from the Corporation for Healthy Media here to see you, says he's interested in engaging Venture in a new project?" The receptionist looks up at the ceiling and occasionally over to Marshall as she presumably listens to Mr. Kelley. "No, they don't have an appointment," she says after a while. "Yes. 'They.' There's another gentleman with him. Okay. Sherrr. I'll let them know."

"Mr. Kelley says he and his partner Mr. Nikolich will be down in a bit, but that I should escort you to the second floor conference room? If you'll both follow me?"

The receptionist, who in asking Archie and Marshall if they want anything to drink reveals her name is Sharon, takes Archie and Marshall through the bullpen and up a set of stairs near the middle of the building (picture the Mad Men SCDP offices in the Time-Life building, that staircase that Pete fell down that one time). On the second floor are doors that lead into photography labs, telecine conversion and editing machines, light tables, what look like a couple of soundproof recording studios (big red lights marked "RECORDING" outside them), and a lot of production equipment, some in their own rooms, some just sitting out in the halls. A lot of the equipment in the halls looks well out of date. There's also a glassed-in conference room in the midst of all this. And this conference room has some more art up in it: not colored cels or promotional posters, but pencil sketches: as Archie and Marshall wait for the Venture braintrust they can see sketches for characters from local LA fast food promotions, used car dealers, local TV station spots, all from the 1960s signed "JK and NN," plus a couple of more formal sketches on Venture Toons-branded sketchpad sheets: more commercial characters and mascots, it seems, but also a couple of recurring characters: a strapping fur trapper frontiersman looking character, and a bunch of goofy-looking soldiers in the mode of Beetle Bailey. They're dated '71 and '72, respectively, and bear the names "Jacques of the Yukon" and "Squadron: Screwball."

After Sharon delivers drinks for Archie and Marshall, two men enter the conference room. "Mr. Ransom?" the taller, brown-haired man says. "I'm Jack Kelley, co-owner and co-President of Venture Toons. This is my partner, Nicky Nickolich," Kelly points to the shorter, blond man, who offers his hand to Archie along with a murmured, non-committal greeting. (Marshall's intro can go in here or afterwards, your call.) Both the men look to be a little younger than Marshall, in their mid-30s perhaps, dressed and hair cut in a "Hollywood hipster a little past his prime" mode. Kelley lights up a Camel while Nicky murmurs to Sharon, "Black coffee please" and nods his approval. "Shall we sit?" Kelley asks his guests.

Brant

Marshall declines the drink offer but takes a seat. He has a firm handshake and smiles broadly at everyone.

Rob

"Please, call me Archie." Archie takes a seat, launches into the cover story as discussed:

The Corporation for Healthy Media wants to put some PSAs on Saturday morning TV, encouraging kids to eat healthy. Some catchy songs, some fun — not at ALL creepy — cartoon characters.

We were looking to partner with sponsors in the healthy eating space, and Beale Farms came to our attention, and through them Venture Toons. Seemed like they'd be good candidates to produce the spots.

Marshall is there as, maybe, a generous donor to the CHM, as we've established, taking a hands-on interest in this project. (A bit implausible, perhaps, but I think Marshall is the sort of person who can just turn up places and seem like he belongs, and people only think to ask 'why was he there?' days later, if at all.)

He works in a mention of Ransom-Ogilvie ("I guess it's Ogilvie and Associates now") and his days hawking Sharp Cereal with the Ransom Gang. He mentions Beale Farms and the spots Venture is making for CBS. He says he's in town to catch up with old buddies in both the ad and TV industries (making it clear he's well connected with both), and find out who they could get to make these "Healthy Tummies" PSAs. But all the people he knows are old timers (read: senior executives). And Archie knows if you want to reach the kids today you need fresh talent. (They can take that at face value, or, if they're suspicious, they can infer that Venture Toons is more likely to fit a non-profit budget than Hanna-Barbera.)

After that soliloquy, Archie takes a breath, looks around, and sighs with a nostalgia he doesn't have to fake, for a place like this, humming with young people doing creative work. "But listen to me go on," he says. "Tell me about Venture Toons! What are you proud of, where are you headed?" He checks out the art on the walls. "'Jacques of the Yukon,' I love it!"

Michael

[Reaction roll made secretly]

It becomes very obvious, very quickly that Jack Kelley is the guy who talks between the two of the people behind Venture Toons. "Well, I'm glad you heard about the Beale Farms job. We're obviously really excited to be part of something like that on the ground floor." Nicky gives Jack a kind of weird look at that statement; Nicky's overall affect since coming in here is jittery, suspicious, guarded, both Archie and Marshall can easily tell, but even Jack gives off the overall vibe of being a little... off. "Well, Nicky and I met at Chouinard right when Walt was taking it over. We had the same interests in animation, and we did our time working as guns for hire. We broke out on our own in '62..."

At this, Nicky interrupts. "Worked late nights, all-nighters, just us and a few trusted friends, to break into the industry, which as you know here in '62 was a pretty crowded field. MGM closes up shop, then Warner Brothers... a lot of people looking for work." Nicky has just the barest hint of an accent, like someone who grew up in an immigrant household.

"Yes, we just went by Kelley-Nicholson back then and it was all local commercial work. Demand was high, TV was exploding," Kelley says. "But as our names got out there we found more young animators willing to put in the long hours. Moved out here to Tarzana in '68, and really started cooking then." Nicky sips his coffee and clears his throat at this, as Jack continues. "We've put together four cartoon series now—two domestic, two for the international market—and it's through these that Beale heard about us and engaged us. They're paying top dollar for exposure on CBS Saturday mornings this fall and we're thrilled to have the exposure that's going to provide."

[Detect Lies roll for both Archie and Marshall made secretly]

Now, both Archie and Marshall can obviously tell they're leaving huge amounts of information out about the last decade of their lives and careers. I mean, sure, you're meeting potential clients for the first time, you want to make a good first impression, maybe not mention how threadbare a lot of those early animated commercials are, the fact that Jacques of the Yukon only aired in South Korea and Peru or whatever... it's understandable. But Archie feels like these guys are hiding something specifically about their production process. Nicky interrupted every time it came down to how they were able—at 24, 25 years old—to get enough animators together to do those first few spots, or how they were able to parlay a bunch of local black and white ads for used car dealers into their own 5-story headquarters chock full of animators, even if it is amidst the blandness of suburban Tarzana. Between the gaps and the caginess and nervousness (shouldn't an outfit like this be a bit happier to have someone come in unsolicited off the street—accompanied by a mysterious money-man, no less—interested in hiring them?), something here doesn't quite add up.

Rob

Archie stays affable. He agrees that the CBS spots will be great exposure. "Oh, you're going to be rolling in work before you know it." He tries to steer the conversation towards their production process. "So, you do all your animation in house? Will you be able to ramp that up when business starts booming?" He's willing to come off as a garrulous oldtimer to cover for the probing he's doing. "We talked back in the day about animating the Ransom Gang, but the labor was always the sticking point. It doesn't matter how hard you whip your animators, it's never going to be cheaper than crouching behind a milk crate with a sock on your hand, ha ha."

Michael

Jack actually smiles at that, while Nicky remains pretty inscrutable. Jack says, "Well, capacity is definitely... on our mind going forward. We may have cut our teeth learning how to work under tough conditions, but we don't have much fear of falling behind these days, even if we... do find ourselves doing a lot more work. Our current animation staff numbers should be enough to produce plenty of 30-second spots and even a regular series or two if it comes to that."

Nicky takes a moment to interrupt. "We recruit from all the best animation, film, and voice talent schools and training programs in the Southland and around the world. CalArts, USC, NYU. If you'd like to see our people's portfolios and credentials, we can have Sharon put together a packet for you while you're in town."

Jack concludes, "But we are feeling flush after the Beale deal and we plan to go above and beyond our current staffing in '74 and beyond. As you say, Archie, we're on the verge of big things here, and we'd be very interested in seeing what you have in mind in terms of scripts and concepts. I think especially among the younger folks here at Venture there's a lot of eagerness around getting kids to eat more healthily, live more healthily. Beale was a big winner among our staff for that reason."

Brant

“Nickolich,” Marshall says, “what is that? Yugoslavian?”

Michael

Nicky levels a death-glare at Marshall, an openly sour look on his face; Jack looks at Nicky with something approaching fear, fear probably that Nicky is going to fuck up this deal. "My people are Croatian. You understand in the late '50s and early '60s I had to change my name professionally — 'Nicholson,' such a disgrace — because, you know, we were afraid people might think I was Russian. My proper Christian name is Zlatko. Nicky … eh, it's a nickname, I can tolerate it." He looks over to Jack. "This one gave it to me freshman year."

Jack nods. "People were pretty paranoid about such things back then. It wasn't fair."

Brant

Marshall smiles the smile of a high school bully whose taunt has landed. He then glances at Archie as if to say, “Shall I?”

Rob

Archie's return glance says, "By all means!"

Brant

Mind Probe, Marshall uses the Voice to ask: “What are you hiding from us?”

Michael

Okay, go right ahead and roll your Interrogation. Any Corruption to boost?

Brant

I’ll slap 1 on to get me to Interrogate 18.

Michael

(And by the way, since you took the limitation to make the Mind Probe is oral/verbal but it operates just like the power if it was ESP-powered, it makes sense that they won't remember being asked the question, even if they beat you on the margin of success on their Will roll. It's part and parcel of this being part of Marshall's suite of NLP abilities.)

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 7

Michael

(Oh, and it's 1d6 minus 2 Corruption to use the power … like Rapier Wit and Enthrallment, it's an NLP skill.)

Brant

>>>> 1d6-2 = 1

Michael

Nicky speaks first. "We used Yugoslavian animators between 1962 and 1968. My family had connections there from World War II and I hired the cream of the crop from the Zagreb School of Animated Films for pennies on the dollar."

Then Jack confesses. "We're now owned by a cable television conglomerate based in Pennsylvania, called Special Receptor. They're buying up all kinds of little media companies in the hopes for cheap programming as cable TV takes off."

As the Mind Probe's effects wear off, Jack's face returns to its sort-of-pleading expression that was apparent when talking about Nicky's fear of being blackballed; Nicky's face returns to its stony, barely-contained anger.

Brant

Mind Probe again: "Who is your contact at Beale Farms?"

>>>> SUCCESS by 10

>>>> 1d6-2 = 4

Michael

Well, that one apparently had a little extra oomph as they say, hah.

Rob

(Have we figured out who would have done the box design (and the glyph-maze) for Tasty Acres? Venture is doing their TV ads, presumably designed Farmer Roy and Terry the Pig, but would that extend as far as doing the packaging?)

Brant

(No, not yet — Archie should ask if they know!)

Michael

Jack appears to be the only one who can answer this one; it's clearer than ever that he handles the business end and Nicky/Zlatko handles the animation. "Two people met us down here back in May. One was named Bernadette Fry, she was the Beale Farms representative. And they had a liaison from their corporate owner present, his name was Mr. Butler."

Again, as the impact of the source code leaves Nicky and Jack, they return to their emotional state right after Nicky's constrained rant about anti-Slav prejudice.

Rob

I know the Voice wears off immediately, but if he can, Archie will keep the conversation going on the topic of Beale Farms, continuing to lean into the role of garrulous, story-telling ad guy. He talks about marketing cereal: "You know how they say 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day'? That isn't science, that was just a Grape Nuts slogan that stuck. But I'll tell you why breakfast is the most important meal of the day, to an ad man. See, it doesn't matter how good your marketing is, nobody wants the same thing for dinner every night. But folks will happily eat the same breakfast 365 days a year!"

He asks about the Tasty Farms characters, assuming Venture Toons designed them. "The pig is awful cute, but do you worry a farmer and his pigs is going to come off a little, I don't know, 'square'? Seems like the kids just want monsters and space men nowadays, ha ha." And he asks who if anyone is doing the print ads and packaging for Beale/Tasty Acres. "If you can get your pig onto some toys and lunch boxes, now that's the golden ticket."

Michael

Jack looks to Nicky, who takes over speaking about the Tasty Acres characters with some measure of enthusiasm. "Ah, Mr. Ransom, that 'squareness' was somewhat insisted upon by our client. The Beale Farms girl—every inch the hippie—said that, hmm, what did she say, 'Health food will sell in the macrobiotic shops in Berkeley but a plain old corny farmstead will sell to the supermarket moms in Peoria.' They were quite adamant on that. 'Make them cute,' was the command from Beale. I think my illustrators did a very good job in delivering for them."

Jack says, "I don't think any of us are under the delusion we'll see any appreciable marketing revenues for the Tasty Acres characters. But we're hoping the wholesome homespun style will give us a leg up. I don't know if you noticed, Archie, but there are a lot of... well, dirty cartoonists out there these days. And I mean that in both the moral and artistic senses. I like a clean line on my characters, a clear open face, heroes and villains." Archie can tell Jack is maybe selling him a line here; he's taken Archie for a moral Mormon type and wants to make sure he knows there's no louche, dangerous, Fritz the Cat type "X" in Venture's "comix."

Brant

“I’m interested in this health food … thing. I have a place up in Sonoma — you probably haven’t heard of it — and I heard Beale Farms is nearby. Vacaville, maybe? Anyway, wellness, it’s the next big thing. In the Bay Area. Proper diet is going to be a big part of that. A healthy diet, healthy media consumption. You know. Do you have a phone number for this Ms. Fry? I’d love to sit down with her for a chat sometime. Next time I’m in Vacaville. Or wherever.”

Michael

Jack takes a moment to process this, realizes that this is probably in essence some form of reference-checking to see what kind of job Venture did for them, and says, "Ohhhh yeah, of course, Ms... Fry. Nicky, you've got her number, right? You worked most closely with them." "Yes," Nicky says, "I can go get her information from my Rolodex. If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I'll be back in a minute."

Brant

I don't think Marshall has anything else once we get the phone number or contact information, but that is not to say we need to be done if Archie / Rob has anything else they want to do / ask. Just assume Marshall is chilling in the conference room otherwise.

Rob

(Did Archie get anywhere when he asked about who designed the Tasty Acres packaging?)

Michael

(Well, it seems to be that it was Nicky's concept illustrators but Nicky conceded it was with a LOT of input from Fry and Butler from Beale/Agrigenics.)

It may seem that Nicky was doing what Jack has been doing—making clear they'll take orders from any (prospective) client—but Nicky's tone of voice talking about the experience also suggests that Nicky tries to inculcate in his artists and animators some sense of creativity and independence ("I think my illustrators did a very good job").

Rob

With Jack, Archie plays out the charade about the healthy eating PSAs. Without firmly committing to anything, he says he'd love to send them the details if they want to work up a pitch. At this point we've probably taken up enough of their time, but before the conversation ends, Archie will ask Nicky (not Jack) directly, "So what would your dream project be? If you didn't have to work to a client's specs, if you had all the time and budget in the world?"

Michael

Nicky comes back in with Bernadette's phone number and address (it's that damn PO Box in Dixon again) and after a little more chat about the PSA pitch, Archie drops his question to Nicky and Nicky, for the first time, smiles. "I am a great admirer of what is being done with animation artistically in other parts of the globe, Mr. Ransom. Tens of thousands of dollars for cereal commercials, but can you name one Best Animated Short Oscar winner from the past 10, 20 years? Well, maybe you can, but the average American cannot." Nicky looks at both Archie and Marshall right in the eyes as he builds up a head of steam. "Animation does not have to be this... uh, this ghetto we live in right now." Again, Jack gulps, but he doesn't stop Nicky; he just listens. "We have … we have the ability with our pens to draw anything our imagination can conceive of, to make any dream become a reality. I am all for positive messages to the youth, but where is the myth? The stirring visuals that would amaze and delight everyone from the infant to the elder? I am not an admirer of Walt Disney's work — far too bowdlerized for my taste — but the man had a sense of scale and grandeur that few working in animation in this country have anymore. I'd create … well, I'd create important stories, Mr. Ransom. Stories that inspire and speak to eternal truths, the things we're in denial about in our day-to-day. The realities of this business, though … they are what they are." He shrugs, finishes the last of his black coffee.

Rob

(Could I get anything out of a Psychology roll here?)

Michael

Go for it!

Rob

>>>> SUCCESS by 5

Michael

Okay, so there is definitely a quotient of grandiosity to Nicky's response here, but the entire meeting has given Archie a précis of Nicky's personality: a frustrated, closed-off, misfit artist whose talent, he believes, is being unjustly squandered. We've seen our share of those types over the years. Could he or more accurately this type be receptive to the blandishments the Enemy? Of course! The ideals that he wishes he could see take root in the world exist outside of his own ego scaffolding, but he still insists he'd be the one to make it real. There's a lot of E.L. Moore here: someone who's experienced prejudice, is an idealist, is stuck making art that can't change the world. Whether the ideals are political or somehow more spiritual, Archie can't tell yet but they're not solely about self-aggrandizement. Despite what it meant, he did knuckle under and work under a pseudonym for a decade for his and Jack's benefit. His big secret — sending Kelley-Nicholson's storyboards abroad to at least an unaligned socialist nation to be animated—suggests a personality that will cut corners to make things happen that will ensure his success … or a personality who has divided loyalties, politically and materially. But it's also clear from his words and actions that he has respect for other people, especially fellow artists: Jack, his protégés here at Venture, and, it seems, Archie himself. Just asking this question about ideals animated (excuse the pun) him like nothing else during this meeting, and it's clear he sees Archie as a fellow artist, in thrall to his imagination.

Rob

Yeah, Archie's not going to send him to the Barn just for wanting to do more with his life than Jacques of the Yukon. He takes this all in, nodding agreement. "'Important stories, stories that speak to eternal truths.' That's swell, Nicky, that is swell. I'm sure you'll get your chance someday. And please, do call me Archie." That's probably it here, unless Marshall has anything more to say or do? Pleasant goodbyes, exchange of business cards, promises to follow up.

Brant

Yeah, Marshall's good. Handshakes all around, head out to the car. But when they see a phone booth, Marshall will have David pull over so he can call Livermore. Any of the PCs can answer, I guess.

Michael

Anyone in the office Wednesday (that includes at least Charley and Jo) can pick up. It's from a payphone in Tarzana, California.

Leonard

"Black River Reclamations. How may I direct your call?"

Brant

“Jocasta, it’s Marshall. Have a name for you to run down, if possible — Bernadette Fry. Works for Beale Farms. She’s the contact person for this Venture Toons outfit. Her and another guy, Mr. Butler, who’s with Agrigenics. Probably won’t be able to do much with just a name but, well, you know. We’ll be at my place in Laurel Canyon tonight if you need us.”

Leonard

"Got it."

Brant

He hangs up. I’m done till you’re ready for Laurel Canyon “research,” Mike.

Michael

So I'm guessing Archie is going to stay in on Wednesday night? Is Archie staying at Karuṇā? And if so, do you want a scene with Stan or the Dragon Lady?

Rob

What happened to the promised dinner at Chasen's? But yeah, Archie will stay at Karuna, and no, I don't think schmoozing at the Jimmy Buffet show would be his scene. I'll try to think if there's a conversation to have with either of the puppets or anything else he might do in town. He might connect with Jack Ogilvie again (or some other L.A. friends) but they just talked on the phone, I don't know if there's a scene in that.

Have we discussed actually making contact with Sandman LA?

Michael

Have we discussed actually making contact with Sandman LA?

I felt like this was gonna be decided after Marshall does his Troubadour run and finds out the general human terrain of the fire. I also figured we'd be in LA for a good chunk of Thursday as well.

---

Michael

Wednesday, August 8, 1973: The Troubadour

Marshall at the Troubadour! (This picture is of Jimmy Buffett, not Marshall, sorry)

Marshall comes into the Troubadour at around 8:30, Dave at a tacit distance. Marshall doesn't hang out here a ton but he knows it's the best place to get scuttlebutt from the various musicians, two-bit film actors, and all the other various LA demimondaines who live in Laurel Canyon and might know something about the big fire over the weekend.

Brant

OK, I'm going to abstract this out as a strategy rather than attempting to play it out conversation by conversation, because I think as an information-gathering operation Marshall would need to spend most of the night doing this if he was trying to be discreet. First, though, his outfit.

So the plan will be, yes, David in tow but maintaining a discreet distance, Marshall will arrive at the Troubadour unfashionably early so that he can have some time at the bar to scope out the staff. He is looking, specifically, for the bartender who seems like he or she has been there a long time. A seasoned veteran. So maybe an Observation or Body Language roll?

Michael

(Just looked at the two skills: Observation seems more germane.)

Brant

Then, he'll work his way through the bartenders, starting with the most senior one and then following whatever leads that one drops, then going to those leads and talking to them, etc. In Marshall's mind, this is all an elaborate game — he is in his most natural element, working people on an individual basis and then using the information they provide to triangulate a story. So I dunno, I feel like there's a Carousing roll there but obviously Marshall has like, literally the entire toolbox of social skills to make every conversation go his way. He will never hesitate to use Hypnotism or Enthrallment or Mind Probe or the Voice to get what he wants all while seeming utterly charming.

At the end what I basically want to know is: whose house was it? are the police investigating? what are the rumors around the neighborhood about it?

Michael

Very cool. Start with the Observation-16 roll and we'll go from there.

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 6

(oh! and if that description of the plan is good enough in your opinion, we can say Marshall Visualized it for any bonuses that gets him)

Michael

(Yes, make an IQ-16 roll for Visualization.)

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 7

Michael

So, a +7 if things go precisely as you pictured them, +4 if they go mostly like you pictured them, and +2 if they go substantially different. I'll apply the +7 to the first Observation roll since you spent a lot of time preparing on how you're going to approach the bartender(s).

There's one dude behind the big long bars in the main room at the Troubadour that looks to Marshall's eye like a long-time veteran or at least a guy with his ear to the ground: big-time Hells Angels vibes, or maybe more accurately a guy who rode a bike six or seven years ago but maybe has settled down a little bit (maybe after a bit up at San Quentin). Tattoos on the arms, big meathook hands, a walrus mustache, medium-length black hair in a mix of greaser pompadour and hippie, big-ass sideburns. Oddly he also puts off a near-tangible vibe of peace and tranquility: his face is hard but his soul is untroubled. I'm going to guess Marshall hasn't hung out here a ton on his own over the years but he's been in once or twice. But the barkeep does seem to recognize Marshall from the teevee by the way he addresses him.

"Evening, doc," he says amiably as the cowboy-hatted Marshall steps up to the bar. "What can I get you?"

The latest single off of the sophomore album of the cerebral New York-bred quintet Steely Dan is on the jukebox before this country singer Buffett goes on; the jukebox's volume provides lots of cover for this conversation.

Brant

Marshall is going to play this out extremely slowly with the bartender. He's first just going to order a drink and dispose of it without drinking it; maybe give it to David. He'll chat with David a bit. Then he'll go back for another and this time he'll order something with ice so that the bartender needs to stand in place to shovel the ice out of the bin. That will give Marshall a chance to ask how long the guy's been in the area. And this will go on for at least 45 minutes, this process — Marshall will never seem especially interested or like his questions are out of place, he'll have full NLP going the whole time. But anyone paying attention would only ever see that Marshall is having a normal conversation about neighborhood stuff with a guy — not probing for information, just talking. He'll also want to know if this bartender might know anyone with better information, like a neighbor or someone who worked at the house.

Michael

(So I did a Reaction roll because that's generally the best way to model getting information. All I used for it were Marshall's "mundane" bonuses: Charisma, Voice, Fashion Sense, Reputation(s), etc. So I think this guy tending bar, whose name is Eddie, will be willing to shoot the breeze. Again, his vibe is very untroubled and mellow and honestly given most of the clientele here is either teenyboppers or burnouts (more of the latter than the former tonight), Marshall is at least more interesting than the rest.)

"Oh yeah, the cult. Fucking shame, really. Some of those girls were really hot pieces of ass. We got that leader guy in here every now and again. Acted like he owned the place. Bad vibes. He'd come in with five teenage girls and still be trawling for trim. The guy was insatiable. Let me tell you, I've seen it all on this job, and that guy took the cake. I guess the cops are looking for him now. Whole house burned down, a dozen or more kids dead. Biggest news around here since Manson, really. Not much about it in the papers or on TV, though. I guess there's enough weird bad shit out there to go around."

Brant

“Fucking idiot. See what happens when you say too much?” Marshall thinks to himself, dripping with disdain. Mind Probe, add 5 corruption to get him to Interrogate-22.

“Tell me everything you know about the cult and its leader.”

(OK to roll?)

Michael

Yeah, go for it. And then roll 1d6-2 for activating the Probe.

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 15

>>>> 1d6-2 = 0

Huh.

Oh! OH! Marshall’s drink of choice tonight is a margarita. That’s what he’ll keep ordering.

Michael

The NLP Mind Probe hits Eddie square between the eyes, and instead of merely blurting out what the source code is burrowing through his brain to extract, Eddie just sort of … gives himself over to it. Luxuriates in it.

"He looked like … Santa Claus. Big white beard, big belly, ivory robes with gold trim, even in here. The girls were crawling all over him. How did he do it? Big chain around his neck, a sun symbol. Said they knew the flying saucers were gonna come out of the sky. To save us all. To change us all. Or, I guess, to save and change them."

"He'd sing that Neil Young jam to the girls." And just as the last refrain of "Show Biz Kids" fades away and before the next song comes on, Eddie actually sings, a deep rich baritone, performing as much for Marshall as for the patrons nearby, like it's his party trick to sing a verse from a pop song when the jukebox is silent.

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flyin'
In the yellow haze of the sun
There were children cryin' and colors flyin'
All around the chosen ones
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loadin' had begun
Flying Mother Nature's silver seed
To a new home in the sun
Flying Mother Nature's silver seed
To a new home …

Some of the girls nearby applaud, Eddie bows politely as the Stone Poneys' "Different Drum" comes on the jukebox. Practically a golden oldie in '73.

Brant

Marshall will double back. He wants to know what the guy means by “oh yeah, that cult.” Do people think the cult did it? Or was it the cult’s house? Has this happened more than once recently? Again, he is going to try to get this information as discreetly as possible — maybe adopting the attitude of a resident who is like, “shit, is this something for me to worry about? is there an arsonist loose?”

Michael

"They did it themselves, man! The survivors said the chicks — the inner circle, the ones closest to that dude — pulled a burn. Poured gasoline. They lit the house and themselves on fire. I guess it was finally their doomsday. All that with no saucers showing up to pick them up."

As Marshall turns to the concerns that a Laurel Canyon homeowner might have, Eddie says, "Well, I know they weren't too popular with the neighbors, but there's houses like that scattered all around the Canyon, man. Just another bunch of freaks, you know?"

"The guy got away of course — the neighbors all heard his motorcycle roaring away right before the fire really broke out — so I can't imagine he's coming back here anytime soon."

Brant

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Marshall thinks to himself, “Mitch, what is going on?” Does the bartender know anyone formerly affiliated with the cult? A girl who got away?

That’s a reach.

Also, at an opportune time: “Wait — this cult, were they called the Solarans?”

Michael

"No. I never saw any of his girls solo here or even around the neighborhood at all. They were either with him, with the other girls, or doing shopping under the watchful eye of the few other guys he had hanging around. As far as people who hung out with them, I mean, ever since Manson and all that you don't have party houses like that getting visited by a lot of celebrities. Dennis Wilson taught everyone you can't trust someone who tries to buy you off with p___y." The opening band starts tuning up on stage. When Marshall asks if they were called the Solarans, Body Language-17.

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 6

Michael

Eddie hesitates just for a split second when he hears the name, Marshall can see. And then he says, "Yeah. Yeah, that was what they were called!" as if Marshall is confirming something Eddie had suspected but wasn't quite sure about. Which is weird, because he's seen their leader here at the Troubadour several times, enough to remember his quirks, and he's heard tons of neighborhood gossip over the past four days on how they all died.

Brant

“This is bad,” Marshall thinks. “Bad bad bad.” I think that’s everything Marshall wants to know. What time is it by the time Marshall learns that last bit of information?

Michael

Oh, 9:30 let's say.

Brant

OK. “Wipe him?” Marshall thinks. “No. Too much work to reconstruct a whole shift without getting noticed.” Marshall will have tipped very generously over the course of the night and will palm the bartender a $20 before he leaves. Then he gets the fuck out of there.

Rob

the stoner cowboy about to go on sees the guy who's been drinking margaritas all night leave and thinks "that guy was cool, I'm gonna try one of them fruity Mexican drinks he was drinking" and lo history is changed

("Jimmy! This is your cousin, Marvin Buffett. You know that new sound you're looking for? ...")

Michael

Fright Check, Rule of 14, succeed on a 13 or less

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 2

wheeeeewwwww

nothing a little cocaine won’t solve right lads?

Michael

No all-nite paranoid coke benders I guess

HAH

Brant

no no, the coke keeps the fright at bay mike

Michael

Cocaine: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems

Brant

now marshall has to take Archie out to Chasen’s

Michael

I wonder which celebrities would be there late-night on a Wednesday. Damn, it'd be funny to run into Johnny and Ed again

Reading about the clientele it really is the perfect Marshall/Archie hangout

Jack Lord, Milton Berle, Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett, Bob Hope? This is what the whole hep world would be doing if the Nazis had won the war.

Bill

Rupert Holmes is gonna be at the next bar when Marshall orders a piña colada.

---

Rob

Thursday, August 9, 1973: KTLA Studios

I don't have any obvious plans for Thursday: Archie could rustle up more ad industry or TV contacts, keep asking about Beale Farms and the Venture Toons deal. Less germane to the investigation: He could stroll down memory lane. (I guess we knew that Ransom Roundup and the first season of WKRP were both filmed in KTLA Studios, but TIL this is also (allegedly) where The Jazz Singer was filmed and today a production site for Netflix.) Archie generally visits Charlie's grave when in L.A. and often catches up with Jack Ogilvie. But that's all non-investigative and needn't be scenes.

This might be playing-before-we-play, but just as a heads up: When Archie hears the details of Marshall's investigations (about the fire, etc), he is going to want to make contact with SANDMAN L.A. Or at least will make the case for doing so.

We'd said we didn't want to do that because we have to assume they're OZYMANDIAS. But the Solaran fire is pretty clearly the sort of thing that a SANDMAN office should be paying attention to. If we're here looking into it and we don't make a courtesy call to the local office, would that not seem suspicious? (How would we react if, say, we found out some other SANDMAN chapter was poking around trying to figure out what really happened at the St. Francis?)

That said, how we approach them is tricky, especially considering it's Marshall and Archie, and how we present Marshall & Archie's relationship is I think part of our plan to triple Marshall into OZYMANDIAS... OK, stopping there so I'm not playing-before-we-play, but that's where my head is at.

Michael

Okay, so here was my suggestion, again, it involves both Venture Toons and (LA) SANDMAN so it's kind of congruent with what you were talking about here.

I just realized that maybe on Thursday Archie is watching TV. Like, he could go to a couple of the independent stations in town and see if he can get telecines of any of the Kelley/Nicholson or Venture cartoons. I mean, there's lots of ways he could dig deeper into them — tax records, employment records, Nicky's travel abroad—but a lot of these would require using SANDMAN Patron. Anything having to do with local TV wouldn't.

KTLA is just the kind of independent station that would have purchased cheapo cartoons secretly produced in Yugoslavia for airing at weird times of day. And hey, if he wanted, Archie could go back through some of the old kinescopes of Ransom Roundup.

Rob

Oh, perfect! Yes, so Archie will make a few calls and see if a) he can't get in to KTLA and root through their video archives and b) he can get hold of any Kelley/Nicholson work. And he'll bring along Hobo Stan and Dragon Lady, let them relive their glory days...

KTLA Studios are at the Old Warner Brothers Studio on Sunset Blvd, which in 1973 is owned (along with all of KTLA) by none other than Gene Autry. (Jesus, how many points for Archie to take Gene fucking Autry as a Contact/Patron?)

Michael

Hey, you do have points left over that we were wondering what to do with … !

And whoa, keeping with our animation theme, this is where the original Termite Terrace was.

So I'm guessing that there aren't very many folks left from when Archie was a young hungry puppeteer here at KTLA but at the very least I have to assume he kept in touch with the folks in management at the station during his ad-man years and there's going to be at least one or two sales guys or management types who can greet him at the studios' front desk and let him in.

The kids working in the KTLA Ampex and kinescope archives are an earnest bunch — they have the feel of UCLA "media" undergrads or grad students, all in their early 20s … the intrusive thought About the age Charlie would have been … flits through Archie's mind, and then he sort of shakes it off at the sight of the sheer quantity of old programs on file here. Indexing seems a bit haphazard but the student interns are friendly and helpful to the old man looking for mid-'60s cartoons. They do manage to find a few episodes of both The Challengers and Monster Planet for Archie to screen.

1966's The Challengers is a fairly obvious ripoff of stuff like Thunderbirds and Jonny Quest: a global team of do-gooder secret agent types with amazing vehicles and cool gadgets fight the forces of an evil SPECTRE-like organization dedicated to ruling the world. The animation is what sets this series apart, though. It's cheap, for sure, but the styling is so different than what Hanna-Barbera and others were doing at the time: the character designs are angular, even abstract in some parts; the vehicles go beyond the futurist jet-age visions prominent in these type of cartoons at the time. And the cast is truly international, with members of the Challengers hailing from South America, Asia, Africa, and every episode focuses on a new team with the skills and tech and vehicles — underwater, stratospheric, underground — to get the job done. There's no square-jawed American leading this group: the Challengers are explicitly posited as a near-future arm of some kind of United Nations.

1967's Monster Planet is far, far trippier. Again, on first glance it's clearly a ripoff of The Herculoids but Archie does some back-of-the-envelope calculation and realizes wait, this would have debuted the same September that Herculoids did on Saturday mornings in '67. Something in the zeitgeist, Archie guesses. The influence of those "cosmic" comic books Jocasta is always going on about (and which URIEL saw plenty of fans of at WesterCon) is clear here: Monster Planet features a Lost in Space-style family Robinson (here called the Chandlers) on a bizarre desert planet full of odd, unsettling physical features — mesas that float off the ground, weird crystalline rock formations — as well as what seem to be implacable beasts of all shapes and sizes who spend their days fighting each other, Godzilla-vs.-Monster of the Week style. Eventually, though, the Chandlers learn to communicate with Monster Planet's monsters and find out they have just the same range of thoughts, hopes, and feelings, good and ill, as any other sentient in the galaxy. The son makes friends with a little dinosaur creature, whom the son names Abel, who acts as their introduction to the complex social and ecosystem of Monster Planet. Again, the animation is cheap but intriguing, with some very original designs for both the monsters and the landscapes.

Archie makes notes of the names in the production credits for his own records; a lot of the names are first initials and very generic WASP last names which Archie guesses are pseudonyms for the Yugoslav animators hired by Kelley and Nicky, but there are also some full first names in common on each cartoon, and Archie underlines those to investigate later.

Also, an Expert Skill (Memetics)-18 roll would do well here, to look for anything in the subtext of either cartoon. (Also also, sadly, the actual Venture Toons house's sillier cartoons, Jacques of the Yukon and Squadron: Screwball, really did only air in South Korea and Peru so there are no examples here.)

Rob

Ah, this is so good. I am I fear going to be only sporadically online again today so I shouldn't embark on a complex scene where I'm talking to myself … BUT, assuming Archie has any level of privacy (I'm hoping the UCLA kids set him up with a TV or terminal somewhere and leave him be) he will take out the Dragon Lady and show her an episode or two, to see what she makes of it — she knows her Eastern Bloc mind control tricks, and gives Archie +3 to Brainwashing, Hypnotism, Interrogation, Propaganda, and Psychology. (And Singing).

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

What I may do here, Rob, as is as I do with any time you consult the puppets for their expertise, I'll do the talking for the Dragon Lady as "she" watches the last few bits of episodes of The Challengers and Monster Planet (and does a Propaganda roll ). I gotta find her voice, a voice which Charley/Mel did such a good job embodying in that first scene when Charley met the Gang. Who knows, maybe a little of Charley's portrayal will slip into the Dragon Lady and she'll sound a bit less of a stereotype.

Rob

(Absolutely — however you want to do it. Archie's Dragon Lady was of course a kiddie-TV version of the standard Orientalist stereotype [I didn't realize when I named her the term Dragon Lady literally comes from a character in Terry and the Pirates], but also blends his fascination with China and Chinese puppetry with a sublimated version of his treatment at the hands of the North Koreans and Chinese. Haughty, imperious, mysterious — Lady Elaine by way of Anna May Wong, or vice versa. But we don't have to belabor the stereotype part of it — I think the puppets are too weird to be kept entirely in those boxes. Mel is the only one who has actually played the Dragon Lady "on screen", but I think she nailed it.)

Michael

The Dragon Lady is a delicate piece of machinery, being a Chinese rod puppet — probably explains why Archie doesn't consult with her that often; well, that and her imperious attitude—so Archie takes her carefully out of the case and, looking both ways down the racks of videotapes and film canisters for any snooping interns, brings the Dragon Lady to life.

"Pfeh," she coughs as she finds her limbs and dandles on Archie's knee, "What is this terrible place you have unveiled me in, some dark library of your imperial bureaucrats?"

Before Archie can even try to get a word in edgewise (heh), she peers at the hooded telecine screen flickering away. "You woke me to show me … cartoons? Idle entertainments of your deluded, mystified masses?" But soon the Dragon Lady gets really into watching the episodes with a critical eye, making muttered comments about the use of color, imagery, song, narrative in each of the episodes.

"You've been subverted a bit here, haven't you, Archieeee," she says mockingly, in a voice that is at least 25% Charley's. "They put a spoonful of sugar in there — the jet fighter planes, the bold white colonizers touching down on an alien world — but you know all this messaging backwards and forwards, don't you? Your people's fears of what the wretched of the earth might do given the opportunity, yes? The rise of an international post-colonial order. The rejection of what you and you 鬼佬 have done to the 'lesser' peoples of the world for five centuries. These messages... oh, wouldn't it be terrible if your little cereal-gobbling brats actually started realizing that their forebears and their current-day heroes are, ahem, 'the bad guys.'" She cackles, loudly enough that Archie is a little worried that the interns will hear.

But honestly? Archie has to agree with her analysis. While there's no powered memetics or source code load in these cartoons and no visual subliminals as far as he can see, the message in the stories (and most importantly, Archie feels, in the artistic-aesthetic choices themselves) is a destabilizing one that takes the projects and products of the Western postwar order and … subverts them. Shows that there's more than one way to skin a cat, that a few brave bold white men aren't going to solve the problems of a chaotic world … and might actually make things worse. Whether this was something the Yugoslav animators slipped in ideologically or something someone at Kelley/Nicholson stateside slipped in … that's something that will need further research.

"And what is this at your feet. Recordings of the proceedings of my imperial court?" She gestures grandly to the few canisters Archie managed to find marked "RANSOM ROUNDUP."

Rob

"You're very astute, Your Ladyship — as always," Archie tells the puppet. "There is something wonky about these cartoons, isn't there? But I wouldn't go overboard. If the, ah, 'good guys' make a few mistakes along the way, it doesn't make them the 'bad guys.' … Does it?" He doesn't really expect an answer to that, but after watching a bit more Archie asks, both to the Dragon Lady and to himself, "So does this messaging - this 'post-colonial' business I guess Nickolich or his animators worked in here — seem to you like the Communist Party Line? Or could it be Our Real Adversaries? Or, is that a distinction without a difference?"

And when she notes the Ransom Roundup canisters: "Yes, they still have a few episodes of our old show. I don't believe I've seen any of these in — goodness gracious, it must be fifteen years, at least. Should we take a look?"

Michael

To the element of Archie's response that has to do with commies and the Anunnakku, the Dragon Lady lifts her head almost quizzically and speaks in a less shrill, more whispery voice. "Alliances of convenience are common. Master Sun says that you can demoralize and destroy the enemy by making use of his own spies. If They do this with your enemies in the East, why could They not do it with you as well? You act as if there is something about the Red Empires' philosophy that is uniquely suited to being subverted by Your Real Adversaries... but does not your nation have a worm in its own apple now, using your own philosophies as a honey trap, trying to make a collapse come faster, hmmmm? Could not your own myths and stories be feeding Their desire for belief, for passion, for blood? If this man is working for the East," the Dragon Lady says to the Monster Planet cartoon currently unspooling on the telecine projector, "he is being far too subtle. For Their purposes? Well, there is no subtext, no linguistic weaponry, no magic characters."

"And," the Dragon Lady continues, referring to the Ransom Roundup reels, "if I am to be reminded of the countless times I was upstaged by that tramp and the little boy and that crazy-eyed 龍, let us get it over with! At least I will get to see my grandeur again, even if you did always not give me enough time upon the stage!"

Archie mounts the Ransom Roundup film with something between giddiness and dread—to see him operating the Ransom Kid again after so long... Archie knows it's gonna hurt a little bit. Even just seeing all the puppets in their original setting might be hard to take. And given recent revelations, Archie isn't even sure what kind of … dissociation he might see or be reminded of back then. For some reason, the last thing Archie thinks of before the 5-4-3-2 film leader countdown isn't Charlie, but Stoney.

The telecine screen flashes to light and instead of the opening hand-painted credits of a vintage Ransom Roundup episode, Archie is confronted with footage of what looks like a nuclear explosion. No time codes, no introductory label, and the film was obviously haphazardly spliced together. Because after about 15 to 20 seconds of one nuclear test explosion, here comes another with no intro or title card or explanatory matter. This one is in fiery color. On the headphones Archie can hear a faint rumbling, and as the camera's POV changes, Archie can see a tiny island lying under the giant mushroom cloud like someone huddled under an umbrella. A Pacific island test. Another test in the desert: Nevada presumably. An observation tower is the only landmark, silhouetted against the slowly billowing hellfire in the distance. And the film just goes on like this, for the standard length of a Ransom Roundup kinescope. Archie pulls the other canister he was able to find, and it's more of the same. A film leader followed by 24 minutes or so of nuclear test footage. My goodness, there's a lot of it here.

Fright Check, 13 or less to pass.

Rob

Archie's got no real answer to Dragon Lady's riff about both sides of the Cold War being equally susceptible to the Red Kings. He's on more familiar ground when she complains about watching Ransom Roundup. Just before cueing it up, he says in a cajoling way: "Come on now, Your Ladyship, it'll be fun! I know deep down you've got a soft spot for —" But he's caught short when the mushroom clouds play.

>>>> SUCCESS by 4

Michael

The Dragon Lady … seems to leave Archie a little bit as the nuclear test footage unspools.

Rob

Archie packs up the Dragon Lady, stumbles out of KTLA in a daze. He had made a few appointments for the rest of the day, with various old friends and ad agency contacts, but he doesn't show up for any of them. Instead he visits Charlie's grave, spends a while there. He then visits his old house (I don't know L.A. neighborhoods, let alone what they were like in the 1960s, but maybe it was in Culver City?). He doesn't go in, doesn't knock, just stares at the place a little. He then takes a taxi east across the city, and gets dropped off at what seems to be a completely nondescript corner on West Jefferson Boulevard, not a great area by any means, just on the edge of what you'd call South L.A. Archie stands at that corner for a long time. If anyone happened to be surveilling him, he might appear to be a man on the edge of a breakdown. Then he finds his way back to the Hollywood Hills to meet up with Marshall for dinner.

---

Brant

Thursday, August 9, 1973: Laurel Canyon

The next day, basically what Marshall wants to do in re: Eddie is intercept him as he's coming into work and hypnotize him with the instruction that he call the Mission (Marshall will hypnotize him into remembering the number) and tell whoever answers to tell Marshall, "Just wanted to let Dr. Red know that the band is going on at 9:30 tonight" in the event that Mitch's double ever shows up at the Troubadour again. kind of like what he did with Sophie's building superintendent.

Michael

I love it. I think a straight Hypnotism-18 roll should do it, given you guys talked at great length the night before. No need to stun him or anything, you can just slip it into ordinary conversation.

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 10

well that oughta do it

Michael

I think so, yeah. So the rules of post-hypnotic suggestions are really cool: Eddie doesn't resist until the trigger happens and then at a bonus depending on how long it's been since he was hypnotized; the impact wears off after a time. So with the super and Eddie, if it's worth it to Marshall, he can re-hypnotize them after a couple of months.

Brant

I remembered a thing Marshall could do on Thursday, which is to take the "I BELONG HERE" glyph and see if he can get onto the property of the house that Mitch's doppelgänger burned down. both OOC and IC i doubt there's anything to find there that the police / fire investigators wouldn't have found but the fire did only happen a day or two prior, right, so maybe they haven't carted away all the good shit yet?

Michael

First things first, Marshall's use of the SANGUSH glyph incurs one point of Corruption. He pins it to a convenient lapel on his ensemble (of course I defer to you for Marshall's Thursday daytime "look") and has Dave drop him off an appropriate distance from the Solarans' mansion.

The Solarans' former home has burnt an entire hillside on the corner of Woodstock Road and Lulu Glen Drive, high up in the Hollywood Hills on the lip of Laurel Canyon. The sheer amount of land that surrounded the former eight-bedroom mansion seems to have protected the neighbors from the worst of the flames. The ground, however, is scorched as are the eucalyptus, pine, and palm trees that once secluded the compound from prying eyes. Today, though, those prying eyes have a clear view to the ruined manor.

A handful of groups of two or three lookie-loos, about half tourist types (older and squarer) and half locals (mostly younger hippie looking types) are peeping at the burnt grounds of the Solaran mansion; a couple of the tourist types even have brought binoculars. A single LAPD squad car with a couple of bored-looking patrolmen inside enjoying the car's air conditioning, is parked conspicuously on the corner; police tape has sealed off the single driveway that leads off of Woodstock up the hill to the ruins.

Brant

Marshall is dressed in a fairly conservative gray suit — but an obviously expensive one, like the kind big city police detectives wear. He’s going to walk up to the squad car, make sure the glyph is easily visible, and flash whatever fake government credentials SANDMAN doles out to agents. And he’ll say something completely banal and un-memorable, like: “Agent Smith, I’ll just be a minute.”

Michael

The cops nod at Marshall; the one in the passenger seat makes a little note in his notebook while the driver says, "Sure thing, sir. Just watch yourself up there; what's left of the structure is unstable. They're supposed to bring the wreckers in this weekend to tear the rest of it down."

As Marshall walks up the steep driveway he can see what the young patrolman meant. The house is basically a shell; a formerly mock-Tudor manor whose lone three-story tower is clearly where the fire broke out. As you get further away from the tower on the north side of the house, the fire damage gets less and less evident, so much so that the four-car garage is largely intact. Through the empty shell of the main part of the house, Marshall can see the manor's swimming pool downhill, the backyard done up Hefner grotto-style. The imitation-rock plastic grotto looks pretty well melted from the heat of the fire; the pool—from this distance, anyway—is a mix of dirty water and ash. The smell of burnt wood is still very strong, mostly coming from the blazes that broke out on the hillside, carried by the wind.

[Observation roll made secretly. Marshall considers it wise to stay on the southernmost, more stable side, of the house.]

Marshall can see inside the house, and it's clear law enforcement has been through here; on the less-damaged walls on the south side of the house, Marshall can see some wall hangings have been taken down, the ash on the walls having left silhouettes that betray the rectangular (and in one case, sun-shaped) objects that once hung there. Paintings? Objects of veneration? The rest of the common areas at the center of the house have retained their large furniture; chalk outlines show where at least three cultists burned to death in the large common room, ash and bone burned into scorched floor pillows and tapestries making for a grisly sight.

It's clear from the nooks and crannies, like the kitchen, where the damage is less serious, that every room in the house has, or had, a picture of Alpha Leonis in it. But none of these devotional objects feature his actual face: like the illustration provided to the UFO journal by the cult, the pencil sketch in the kitchen hanging over the giant industrial-sized stove and gorgeous wood countertop features "a big man, barrel chested, wearing a robe and solar breastplate, his features (except his long, bushy beard and flashing eyes) obscured by a stylized solar halo."

Marshall, though no forensics expert, gets the impression the tower was where Alpha Leonis dwelled and where the fire started. There's nothing left of it but the frame; the heat and flames must have been intense.

Brant

OK. Marshall looks at his Rolex. Then he looks for a fairly secluded spot that is not visible from the driveway or the road — behind a wall, or a tree stand, or something. There, he brushes the ground to clear it and takes a seat, legs crossed. From his inside jacket pocket he takes out a joint, lights it, and smokes it fairly rapidly. He rests his hands palm-up on his knees — a sign that he is open to receiving wisdom from the gods — and goes into meditation. From what he’s seen at the site, what he knows about Mitch, what he knows about cult psychology, he is going to try to radically empathize his way to a deeper understanding of what happened here. What did it mean? Why would he do this horrible thing? What was the point?

Michael

Love it. Meditation-20, give you a bonus for the joint, the description, and the undeniably very strong vibes here, even four days after the burn.

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 9

Michael

What would possess someone to do this, Marshall puts out to the universe, his thoughts and will sending a pleading for an answer out into the ether. Mitch, if I remember correctly, didn't give a ton of details about precisely what he saw at the summit of Mount Shasta, but from what Marshall has read and gleaned about the Solarans' last night here, plenty of the members of the group more or less willingly went to their deaths. Alpha Leonis, Mitch's "twin," is obviously as callous about human life as Mitch is protective of it. Whatever method Alpha Leonis used to build this cult, he obviously didn't worry much about trying to keep its core of committed believers intact going forward. They fulfilled their function for him. Maybe his abilities allow him to gather a new group around him fairly easily. That would explain all the mystery about his appearance; Alpha Leonis wants to be able to start a new life whenever necessary without a reputation sticking to him. But these followers? They're expendable. Alpha Leonis dragged his people all over the American southwest in the mid-1960s, living a peripatetic (and dangerous!) existence as a bunch of rootless "beatniks" at a time—seven or eight years ago—before cults like these became an everyday sight instead of an oddity. And remember, the first iteration of the Solarans disappeared after they went to White Sands. Maybe Alpha Leonis has a habit of doing this.

What does Alpha Leonis get out of these followers, then? He had a good life here. Why destroy it? Marshall realizes for him it was not about the comfort of multiple concubines, the luxury of a beautiful mansion, the animal thrill of being a cult leader and having absolute power over other people. All those young wives, all his credulous followers waiting for the saucers to descend... they are, like the wood in the walls of this house and the trees on the hillside, nothing but fuel. It occurs to Marshall that the suddenness of the burn could merely be because Alpha Leonis sensed that someone was onto him. But why try to kill everyone in that case; why not just ride your Indian Chief Roadmaster off into the night and leave the wives and followers behind? More likely the reason he did it this way was that he expressly wanted to trigger a subduction or a temblor through spilling blood and destroying the house; a powerful pair of actions to bring History B forward.

History admittedly still seems pretty solid around here though. Marshall opens his eyes, brushes the dirt and ash off his conservative slacks. On the eastern hillside above the property about eighty forty yards away, up on Woodrow Wilson Drive peering through a gap between houses, Marshall sees a lone spectator looking down at the property. The man is about six foot, skinny, wearing jeans and a loose white hippie shirt. He has long black hair, but Marshall cannot make out any of his features because he appears to be wearing... a gas mask. Not being able to see this figure's eyes, Marshall cannot tell if he's been specifically spotted. [Secretly made a Stealth roll for you with bonuses for taking the time to find a hidden spot.] The figure has something in its left hand: a pair of binoculars, maybe? Not sure how useful they would be with a full gas mask, goggles included, on.

Brant

"This fucking town," Marshall thinks. He's going to walk around the site for a couple more minutes, acting like he doesn't know he's being watched, while attempting to keep a surreptitious eye on the hippie with the dark hair. Assuming he doesn't spot anything interesting-looking amid the debris, he'll make his way back down the driveway and then to Dave. His plan is to have Dave drive him up to Woodrow Wilson Drive to see if he can spot this stranger, but let me know how the first half of the plan goes.

Michael

Marshall nonchalantly moseys back into the house proper from his "hiding" spot out in the backyard behind the pool shed, inspecting the surroundings and then the interior of the house as he goes. He takes a final last scan of the interior, looking for anything interesting that the LAPD and the FBI might have missed since Sunday morning. Beneath a peeling, burnt scrap of tapestry stuck to the north wall of the common area, Marshall can spy some words, scrawled as graffiti on the pale white wall. Brushing away the ash and soot and burnt fabric, Marshall is able to reveal the entirety of the black-marker writing:

(Marshall can give me a Current Affairs (Popular Culture) defaulting from Celeb Culture at a 12)

Brant

>>>> SUCCESS by 3

Michael

Not sure how often Marshall got to the artsy foreign movie theater in the years before he left for Vietnam, but this quote rings a faint bell as one of the lines from the impressionistic, sensual opening sequence of the famed 1959 Alain Resnais film Hiroshima Mon Amour. "You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing. [I saw everything.]" says the Japanese "Him" to his lover, the Frenchwoman "Her." Probably some Solaran's over-educated joke. Maybe Alpha Leonis taught them to be anti-nukes; would tie in with the White Sands thing.

Brant

Marshall nods. He'll make his way nonchalantly back to his car. Is the strange man with the gas mask still watching?

Michael

No, he seems to have disappeared from the crest, at least from this vantage point.

But getting up to that spot on Wilson in the car shouldn't take more than a minute.

Brant

Then that's what we're doing. "Dave, bring me up to Wilson," he points to the street sign up ahead, "quickly but discreetly. Be ready to stop."

Michael

Dave takes the wheel and hooks up with Woodrow Wilson where it crosses Woodstock. Cruising down Wilson, Marshall can see his mystery man's back to him, walking east. He's taken off his mask and carries it on hand by the straps (along with the binocs). He mounts the front stairs of a nice-looking house—another mock Tudor job, in fact—and as he turns around to look out at the road before he opens the front door, Marshall gets a good look at his face.

Brant

Marshall recognizes him, right? He recognizes Frank Zappa?

Michael

Oh yeah.

Brant

"Dave, pull over here." He gestures at the sidewalk.

Michael

He does, about a house and a half's length down Wilson from the new (well, maybe not "new," Frank, Gail, and their kids have not lived in the infamous "log cabin" since 1968) Zappa residence.

Brant

Marshall is going to knock on Frank Zappa's door.

Michael

After a wait of a few seconds, Frank answers the door. He does a little double-take, and says, "Hey. Hey, doc!" Frank must know Doc Red by reputation. "You goin' door to door now?" He smiles and extends his hand. Marshall can see the gas mask and binocs on the little doorside table, along with his keys.

Brant

Big, warm smile. Marshall's best smile. "I go where I'm needed! Ha ha. This is such a weird coincidence. Mind if I come in for a second?"

Michael

"Not at all, man, come in, I think Gail's fixing some lunch." He brings Marshall into the warm, wood living room, much neater and cleaner than Marshall would have assumed after what he heard about the old Log Cabin. Frank's come up in the world. Gail pops her head into the living room where she's taking care of the two kids, a five-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, who are a little less than perfectly-behaved. "Oh, is that Marshall Redgrave?" Gail Zappa says. "So nice to meet you!" she says from the kitchen, while trying to serve the kids some lunch. "So... what brings you up to our side of the canyon, doc?" Frank asks Marshall. "What's this 'weird coincidence' all about?"

Brant

"Well, I'm here for a client. His daughter got wrapped up in a — well, let's say fringe religious movement — and the last letter he had from her was postmarked from LA. Anyway, it's a long story. But I spotted you up on the hill, Frank, when I was down there." He says the last part like a statement, not a question.

Michael

"Speaking of, uh, 'fringe religious movements,' yeah. The 'neighbors' the next street over. I've been keeping an eye on the grounds since the fire. Spooky shit, man." He says this like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Brant

"Oooooh," Marshall thinks, "the fire. Right." But he betrays none of that. "I'm sure — from what I've heard, that group was pretty wild. May I?" He gestures at a nearby chair.

Michael

"Of course man, help yourself. I mean, you knew they were in the neighborhood, you know? But they didn't throw any wild parties or anything. They were practically austere. The girls would head down to the store on foot, you know? You'd see them two-by-two in the road, like... little space nuns." Frank lights up a Winston, offers one to Marshall.

Brant

Marshall takes one and accepts a light. He's eyeing the place subtly, making calculations. "Huh. I'd heard that the leader kept them as concubines? Sort of a harem? Did you ever see one such girl?" And here he describes a fictitious 19 year-old girl who does not exist.

Michael

He points his cig at Marshall, "So you were up here checking them out. Can't say the girl sounds familiar. Besides, doc... my eyes don't wander. I'm a married man!" He says this with a broad smile as Gail brings him a baloney sandwich and some chips. "Those poor girls," Gail says. "Another dirty old man with delusions of grandeur. That... fucking Manson trip." She lowers her voice so Moon-Unit and Dweezil can't hear.

Brant

Marshall throws his hands up like, "you got me." "Ha ha, yes, afraid so," he says, "the dharma leads me to some strange places." Marshall is going to turn on the NLP: "So, weird question I know, if you'd just indulge me, ha ha, but were you two home the night of the fire? Did you notice anything unusual that night? You know, besides the house next door burning down."

Michael

"I was down at Ike's studio in Inglewood, working on some mixes for the new album on Saturday night, but Gail was home," Frank says. Gail says, "Well, I slept through it until the fire engines came up, and by that point half the house had already burned down. I didn't notice anything too unusual, Frank got home around, what, 2? 3 in the morning?" "Something like that," Frank says, as Moon-Unit and Dweezil come bouncing into the living room, "Heyyyy, hey partners," Frank says to his kids in a fake-cowboy voice, "wanna say hi to Doctor Red?" Moon-Unit looks at Marshall levelly while Dweezil hops up onto his mother's lap. "Is your name really Doctor Red?" Moon-Unit says to Marshall.

Brant

Marshall makes a peace sign at Moon-Unit and smiles warmly. “It’s actually Stanley, can you believe that?” He winks and stands. Addressing them both: “Well — I should get out of your hair! Ha ha.” He heads for the door. “But listen — we might be having a bit of a thing up at the Mission this fall, some friends of mine and me. I’ll make sure you both get an invitation, yeah? Sonoma in autumn, right?”

Michael

"We got the tour coming up, doc, but maybe we can make the dates work out, huh? And hey, if any more lost Solaran lambs come wandering our way matching that description, I'll give you a call up there in Sonoma." Frank stands up, brushing chip crumbs off his pants, and shakes hands again.

Brant

Firm handshake, big smile. Back in the car with David, Marshall takes a bump of coke and puts on his sunglasses. “Back to my place, bud. Gotta get ready for tonight. Dress nice.”

---

Brant

Thursday, August 9, 1973: Chasen's

Marshall's fit for the evening.

Marshall has David drive him and Archie to Chasen's in the convertible. Along the way he tells Archie all about how he bumped into Frank Zappa in the Canyon. "Frank Zappa, can you believe it? He just lived next door to the guy. The whole time! Didn't notice anything unusual, though." It is clear Marshall is on a mix of drugs. He is animated, but not frenzied, and in seemingly good spirits.

At Chasen's, he'll make sure they get a good seat, wielding his fame and money and NLP as necessary to do so. David can wait at the bar and order whatever he wants for dinner. Once he and Archie are seated, Marshall peruses the oversized wine menu for a moment and then, breaking the silence, says: "You seem a bit out of sorts, Arch. Haven't said practically a word since we left the house."

Rob

In the car, Archie acts like someone who doesn't know who Frank Zappa is, but is pretending to and to be impressed. Even though he actually does know who Frank Zappa is (Current Affairs: Pop Culture 18). There's no real point to this charade; wheels within wheels.

At Chasen's, Archie does seem a bit washed out, failing to notice whatever celebrities or bigwigs might be there tonight. "No, I'm ... I'm fine," he says without conviction. "Do you think we can talk here?" Meaning, are we likely to be bugged or overheard? Regardless of the answer, he immediately asks, "So, how did you make out? Any information on, ah, our bearded friend?"

Brant

Marshall glances up from the menu and makes eye contact with Archie. Then he looks down again.

“Some,” he says, referring to Mitch’s doppelgänger. “Some. He’s old — older than Mitch. By at least twenty years, but probably more. A source told me he looked like Santa Claus: white beard, red robe, et cetera. Not sure how that squares with him being MJ’s … twin. Anyway, he — ”

Marshall suddenly stops as a server arrives. He orders a Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon and listens politely to the specials. Once the server has departed, he resumes.

“He is the leader of the Solarans. You recall the Solarans? Another coincidence. He had his followers at that place in the Canyon immolate themselves and the whole house. At a guess, he seemed intent on enacting some … blood ritual at the site of the mansion. But I don’t know why, or what he sought to do. History felt stable there — of course I don’t have MJ’s or even Menos’ nose for that sort of thing. Still, no plaques identifying dogs that never existed or what-have-you.”

When the server returns with the drinks, Marshall orders the fresh fruit and vichyssoise. Then he unspools everything he learned from the Troubadour and from his visit to the burnt out mansion, culminating in the strange quote from Hiroshima Mon Amour.

“So what does it all mean?” he asks rhetorically, glancing around as he does, sipping his wine. “No idea. The man seems to be doing work that the opposition would endorse — fueling lunatic ideas, unsettling the ontological landscape, using Their tools liberally — but MJ is pretty insistent that his friend the Comte truly wants him dealt with. I thought it might be a causal loop for a moment: that MJ must deal with our Bearded Friend and therefore become the Bearded Friend? Anyway.” Marshall pauses for a solid 30 seconds. Then: “Of course, you realize what this means about Charley. About who her biological father is.”

Rob

Archie orders a "Bill Grady (Square Deal) Salad" and wonders why Chasen's famous chili isn't on the menu.

He listens to the whole debrief with rising horror; he's most visibly shaken when Marshall gets to the Solaran girls immolating themselves, but the line from Hiroshima Mon Amour also seems to rattle him.

When Marshall drops that bomb about Charley's biological father, Archie chokes on his ginger ale. "No. No. No, that doesn't necessarily follow..." But you can see he's shooting down his own rationalizations without even waiting for Marshall to do it. "It could be a different outfit with the same name... Even if Raven did go native, it doesn't mean... Granite Peak must have known about this, why would they keep us in the dark..."

"My god, Marshall." He sits with the truth of it for a while. "My god."

Brant

When Marshall drops that bomb about Charley's biological father, Archie chokes on his ginger ale. "No. No. No, that doesn't necessarily follow … " But you can see he's shooting down his own rationalizations without even waiting for Marshall to do it.

"Well, it's not certain," Marshall says with some amusement, like he's conceding that Nixon had a better electoral strategy in '68 than Humphrey. He flags down the server for another glass of wine. "But it tracks. Exhibit A: the intel suggests that our Bearded Friend operates as a sort of ... well, alpha male, I guess. All the women in the pack belong to him. Now, that is not to say there have not been male members of the group who could be the father. But all signs point to 'no' based on the evidence."

He pauses while the server tables his second glass of wine. "Exhibit B: Charley's abilities. Now, we don't even know what we don't know about the things people like our colleagues back at Livermore can do, but wouldn't it make sense that Charley would have all these ... powers? if she was the daughter of … " He lowers his voice: "A daughter of a History B version of Mitch?"

"And we know from the file that RAVEN, the mother, she was not pregnant when she disappeared with our Bearded Friend's group. Exhibit C: she came back three months pregnant. That means she became pregnant in — well, let's see, Charley's mother returned Stateside on November 3, 1965, she was 90 days in … so, she became pregnant on or about August 3 or August 5, 1965. I would imagine that coincides with something. Some event. Perhaps one even related to our boy MJ. Were there any fires down here in August '65?" Marshall laughs, like this is the most fun game he's played in a long time. He chews some food, drinks his wine. Then:

It could be a different outfit with the same name … Even if Raven did go native, it doesn't mean … Granite Peak must have known about this, why would they keep us in the dark …

"Of course Granite Peak would know! Come on, man. Keep up. Hell, they may have even arranged all this. Like — just spitballing here — maybe the Comte needs our Bearded Friend dealt with because our Bearded Friend has turned on the other side? Maybe he's a spy come in from the cold — long-time double agent, cover blown, needs extraction, tale as old as time. He's got this kid, now, though, and fuck if he wants to deal with a kid. So we take her off his hands for him. Turns out she's special. Funny coincidence, that."

Rob

When Marshall says "were there any fires down here in August '65?" and then laughs, Archie looks like he just slapped him across the face.

"This is fun to you, Marshall? This is a game? 'Spitballing'? Doing the math?" He sounds a little shaky, then starts talking louder, becoming angry as a way of steadying himself. "We're talking about Charley here. Our Charley. Her life. And who knows how many other children!" It's not at all clear he's talking about Alpha Leonis.

"Melanie asked me if she'd married a monster. 'We're not monsters.' Do you remember? That's what I said, to Mitch, when Charley first came on board. When he, at least, had the good sense to question what we were doing, using children in this way. 'We're not monsters, and therefore what we're doing must be right.' But that's exactly backwards!" He shouts this last, loud enough for adjacent tables to hear.

He catches himself, calms his breathing. Speaks more quietly, but still intense, kind of accusatory. "How do you live with it, Marshall? I honestly want to know. How do you live... with the things we know... and the things you've been called upon to do?"

Brant

Marshall’s demeanor and mannerisms change entirely; Archie has NLP training (Enthrallment, Memetics) and knows this is him adopting a new NLP frame. He starts channeling a whole, “it’s all cool, folks” vibe and will put the tables around them at ease using Enthrallment (Sway Emotion).

“That’s the problem with you, Arch. You’re such a dualist. Everything has to be either good or bad, holy or evil. You’re so blinded by your own mind that you don’t see the world for what it really is. You go about ascribing all this meaning to things when, in fact, nothing has any meaning other than the meaning we give it.” Though he says the words, the NLP makes it sound like he’s talking about property values.

“So you believe in dualism — fine. Even you Christians get shit right occasionally.” For some reason this quip makes a passing server smile, like he overheard a benign funny joke. “Apply some of that thinking to the reality of the situation. What’s the reality? Not the one you believe, that there’s this life, and a god, and you earn your way into some paradise. No, the reality is that it’s this or it’s History B. It’s this or the literal return of actual, literal god-monsters who will rule us like cattle. It’s this or it’s North Korea.”

“So, yeah, how do I live with the things we know, and the things I’ve been ‘called’ upon to do? I just don’t really even think about it. It bores me. I have to do it because the alternative is death or actual enslavement by science fiction Sumerian gods. I don’t need to make peace with anything because everything we do quite literally saves the fucking world.”

Rob

Archie, still wound up, actively resists any "it's all cool" framing that is pointed his way. "'It's this or North Korea?'" he repeats, gesturing as if "this" refers specifically to Chasen's. "That's good. That's swell. You should meet my friend the Dragon Lady. You'd have a lot to talk about."

He's still speaking louder than he ought to. "There's nothing like an enemy to give us license, is there? To sin for the sake of heaven. The worse the enemy, the greater the license."

"Now, the Soviets are a serviceable enemy, memetically I mean: Brand X in a red box. The Chicoms are really better: it's child's play to trigger all those Yellow Peril associations." He's almost slipping into a manic version of his pitch mode. "But oh how useful to find yourself an inhuman enemy: something totally heinous, something implacably opposed to everything on Earth, that nobody even knows exists, that nobody but you can see! Credit where it's due, Marshall, that's genius. I mean, that's a blank check. Because what crimes won't an enemy like that excuse?"

And then he's quiet again. "If the Red Kings didn't exist … fellows just like you and me would've had to invent them. Tell me we wouldn't have. Tell me we didn't."

Brant

Marshall says nothing for a moment as the server brings their entrees. Once he’s gone: “You esmologists — you spend so much time with your calculations and projections and models, you start thinking we must be responsible for everything. Everyone is so convinced that evil is real and that it exists in the world but then when confronted with genuine evil — real comic book monsters from outside space and time — suddenly it must be our fault. Suddenly we’re to blame. But whether we created them or not — and I don’t think we did — they are real, Archie. You’ve seen them. MJ’s talked to them. One of them shattered my fucking tibia.”

A sigh. “You ever read the Bhagavad Gita? There’s this passage. About duty. About karma. The great prince Arjuna, he and Krishna — the god Krishna, who serves as Arjuna’s charioteer, so powerful is Arjuna — watch two armies amass on a battlefield. There’s this dynastic dispute, you see — the family of demigods who rule India, they’ve gone to war. Arjuna’s loyalty lies with Yudhishthira, his eldest brother and rightful heir to the throne. But he is reluctant to go into battle for doing so would require him to kill his kinsmen, the rival faction to Yudhishthira’s reign. He pouts and weeps and says he’d sooner die than kill his cousins and brothers.”

“And what does Krishna tell him?” Marshall closes his eyes and recites: “He tells him, ‘You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.’”

He opens his eyes and is quiet for a moment. Diners around them chatter. There’s a momentary hush as Mayor Tom Bradley is escorted with his date to a nearby table. “You have a duty, Arch. To humanity. And to URIEL. Above all to URIEL. The club. So what are you going do with this little existential crisis? Will you do your duty?”

Rob

Archie takes this all in. I don't think he has read the Bhagavad Gita, but "duty" is a word he knows. "That's just it, isn't it? Where does our duty lie? To humanity, yes. To the team at URIEL, absolutely. And as for me, I also have a duty to my family, a duty to my God."

Pause. Then, coldly: "But. Not. To. SANDMAN. Not to the monsters who murdered my boy."

He takes a deep breath, seems to come to a decision. Leans forward, speaking in an urgent whisper. "We can hurt them, Marshall! With what we know!" The next part comes out in a rush. "I've been collecting evidence. Copying documents. Squirreling things away, for months now. Sophie helped, or at least didn't stop me. I have a big, big file now. Solid evidence. Explosive stuff. About SANDMAN, Granite Peak, the Indigo Program, torture, mind control, the Barn, you name it. Not the Annunnaki, we can't go to the press with that, but SANDMAN's dirty laundry, all the blood on our hands."

"You remember Lester Kinsolving, at the Examiner? I've kept in touch, cultivating him for this. He'll run with it. He's got a bee in his bonnet about cults and brainwashing and children. And he has good contacts at the Times and the Post."

"Is it enough to bring the whole thing down? Maybe not. I've run the esmology more times than I want to tell you. But they'll spend the rest of the 1970s putting out fires."

Whether it's getting this off his chest, or the NLP kicking in, for the first time tonight, Archie looks at peace. "Because … you're absolutely right, Marshall. You and Krishna. We're not entitled to — what was it? — to the fruits of our actions. We just have to do our duty, and let the chips fall where they may."

Brant

Marshall rolls his eyes. “So you finally put it together, huh? The thing with your boy? If it’s any consolation, I doubt they actually killed him – I’m sure it was just predicted by some analyst at the Peak. An analyst like you. Could’ve stopped it, in any case. But they needed you. The brilliant, eccentric Archibald Enoch Ransom. Frank Stanton’s protégé. The future of the Project.”

“What you’re talking about: that’s treason, Arch. You know I can’t let you do that. You know I won’t help you. I’ll have to run this up the ladder. Think about how you want to proceed now. Think carefully. Your betrayal may satisfy some deep weakness in you, some need for revenge, however misplaced. But the fallout from that weakness will destroy not just you, but your family. And the club. Are you prepared for what will come next?”

Rob

"'The future of the Project,'" Archie repeats, dismissively, like he can't believe that ever mattered to him. "The future of the Project... is ashes. That's all. Ashes."

But then he smiles. "It's not weakness to do right, Marshall. It's not weakness and it's not betrayal. In the Book of Mormon, Alma says, 'Seeing that I know these things' — meaning, the difference between good and evil — 'why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called?' That's not so different from your Krishna, is it?"

"I'd rather have you with me than against me, but I'm going to do my duty either way. And if anything happens to me? Well, Stoney and Hobo Stan already know everything. You do what you have to do."

Archie looks more than calm. He looks serene.

Brant

Marshall finishes his wine and flags the server down for the check, politely declining to look at the dessert menu.

Then he looks to Archie, a certain sadness in his expression. (Real? Fake? NLP?) He says: "Jaratkarava Artbhaga asked Yajnavalkya, 'When a man dies, what does not leave him?' And Yajnavalkya responded, 'The name. Endless, verily, is the name. Endless are the gods. And an endless world he wins, thereby.' It's unfortunate that it had to end this way, Arch. Enjoy how you feel now. You will feel differently about how this all went. Later."

Then he winks.

Once the bill arrives Marshall insists on paying. They head out, Marshall signaling to Dave to fetch the convertible. Outside, he walks Archie down a ways from the front door and stands them discreetly in a shadow cast by a looming palm tree. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, taps one out, and lights it. As the convertible comes around the corner, Marshall looks at Archie and says: "So I will file the report on Monday. After that, you must assume you are being watched at all times ... you're ... you and Stone, you're sure that this will work, yes?"

Rob

Archie grins from ear to ear. Not the serene smile he was putting on at Chasen's, a real cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. "Yes! It's going to work! I know when the memes are good."

He shakes his head, laughs a little. "That was swell, Marshall, that was really swell. The Bhagavad Gita. Your NLP. 'Were there any fires here in '65?' Boy oh boy."

"Now, remember what Stoney said: When you go up the ladder, don't be shy about making me look foolish, naive, cracking up. The more you twist the knife, the more credibility it will buy you with OZYMANDIAS."

He claps Marshall on the shoulder, says with genuine warmth: "That ought to get you in the door, my friend. I know you'll make it worthwhile."