Marshall Apologizes
Brant
Sometime after the Monday morning meeting, Marshall knocks on Archie’s office door.
Rob
"Marshall. Come on in." Archie has taken down most of the esmology crazy wall from last week.
Brant
Marshall comes in and takes a seat in a chair opposite Archie’s desk. He usually sits on the couch. He is very still. He clears his throat: “So, first, obviously, I want to apologize for earlier. That, uh, outburst … it was inappropriate. And uncalled for. Especially in front of the rest of the team. There’s a certain psychodynamic benefit in terms of unit cohesion to have an officer that everyone hates — you know this, groups can form bonds over a mutually disliked person as much as over their shared interests — but I pushed that too far. If we were still in ‘Nam,” he chuckles, “I’d probably be catching an accidental bullet in a couple of days.” He makes eye contact with Archie and looks very serious for a moment. “I just ask that if it goes that way with me, y’know, eventually, that you have Roger do it. I made a promise about that and, uh, well, anyway. I just wanted to say that.”
Archie can likely detect that Marshall has more to say, but he pauses there, in any event.
Rob
Archie starts to interrupt: "There's no apology necessary. That's what the Monday meeting is for: a frank exchange of opinions and ideas." But when Marshall gets to the part about Roger, Archie's horrified. "Oh my goodness! Nobody's taking any bullets!" He takes a breath, then speaks calmly and sincerely. "I should be apologizing to you. I was blue-skying and I spoke incautiously. I didn't mean to put you in an awkward position."
"This SRI thing: it's small, but it's big, you know? 'Building the future!'" He shakes his head at the portentousness of that slogan. "When you try to talk about something like that, it almost always turns into a dorm-room bull session. You reminded us to focus on our specific remit, and I appreciate that intervention."
Brant
Marshall nods and folds his legs on the chair, one atop the other, Burmese style. “That actually brings me to my second point. If you'll indulge me."
Rob
Archie makes a 'be my guest' gesture. "Please," he says.
Brant
“The second thing, what you were saying about Krane’s ending to his book. I think I just didn’t understand what you were talking about. I didn’t see the same connections you were seeing. Between SRI and this whole thing with the computer network and … well, I guess it makes sense — you’re the esmologist, after all. Maybe there is an accelerationist faction within SANDMAN. I don’t know. If there is, I guess … I mean, I stand by what I said, that’s not our remit. To investigate those things. But merely bringing it up, that’s not a reason to, uh, report anyone. I think.”
“Regardless, that whole thing in the meeting, it came from a place of fear. Fear and frustration. This operation we’re conducting, with SRI, it has felt like a … like a trap to me. This whole time. And that feeling only got worse after Mitch came to me on Friday, and told me that he’d, I don’t know, seen the future, with the computers and whatnot. How that'd be the end of us. I don’t know computers from shit, but I trust Mitch. He saved my life in Colorado. I don’t know if that made it into my report. But, uh, you know, in ‘Nam, not a lot of people would’ve done what he did for me, at the hotel.”
“Anyway, I can’t escape this feeling that we’re being, I guess the word would be herded. The more we investigate, the more we find out that we need to investigate even more, so we investigate more, track more people, monitor more organizations, and learn about more things we need to investigate — now this ARC program, now this professor at Stanford, now a secret cabal of traitors inside SANDMAN etc. etc. etc. — and the less we know. The less actionable it all becomes. It’s like we’re rats in an expanding maze. Or sheep being corralled to the slaughter. It has an intentionality to it. I can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching us. Watching us and just ... laughing it up.”
“But then, during the meeting, after my, y’know, outburst, I sort of had this realization. It occurred to me that maybe even this — me flipping my lid, all the acrimony and finger-pointing — maybe even that is part of the maze. Maybe someone has done the math on us, through Charley or through a mole, or the Librarian — I know you don’t share my concerns on the Librarian, which is fine, but bear with me — and that person or persons knows the algorithms that will influence our behavior. That is, whoever is in charge, they know — or predicted — how we will react to certain stimuli. Like Pavlov’s dog. And the Librarian — or whomever — knew that I would react to what you were saying the way that I did. That it would sow distrust in the unit. Cause a rift. Maybe that was the intent.”
“And that got me thinking about something I was told in Cambodia by this, uh … well, I guess you’d say holy man. A Shaivite. He told me that we are born as what we need to deal with. Karmically. In the dharma. Each life presents us with the things we need to address so that we can work through them and escape the Wheel of the World. And if you ignore those things, or try to defy them, then it’s got you. Like a fish thrashing in a net. So you have to break the pattern. You have to work with the things that challenge you. It’s the only way out.”
“I think that’s what I need to do. I think the pattern that — the pattern is me. My instincts. Whoever is orchestrating this, if anyone is orchestrating it, they knew how I would react to what you said about the Krane novel because they know my pattern. Probably anticipated I’d report you up. Cause more confusion, damage unit cohesion. So I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to thrash. I’m going to do it differently. Am I making sense?”
Rob
"I think so … What you were saying this morning, about a world of mirrors, managing everybody by showing them their own reflections? First of all, that reminded me of GRAIL TABLE's World of Tomorrow." (Of course he's also thinking about Alternate Archie in 1985.) "There were these TV screens everywhere, just blaring garbage, folks staring at them twenty-four hours a day. But TVs aren't mirrors. Or are they?"
"But you meant metaphorical mirrors: we find what we go looking for. That's true enough, I suppose. I was trying to run a bunch of projections last week, you know, esmological models? I got some insights, but I might have gotten too close to it. A lot of the, ah, output was about … well, it was just about myself. And that's not how esmology's supposed to work. You're supposed to take yourself out of it entirely, be vigilant about operator bias. But I don't know, that didn't feel right. Maybe your holy man would say: we find what we're intended to find."
Archie switches tack. "Look: nobody could have orchestrated us butting heads at this morning's meeting. It doesn't matter how well they know us. I mean, what: did they plant an idea in Krane's manuscript, which was sitting in a trunk for months before he even met us, so that he would tell me about it at a moment when I was uncharacteristically receptive to that idea, so that I would share it, and provoke a reaction in you?" He shakes his head. "Only God's schemes are that subtle."
"But: someone could be pulling our strings. I'm ready to believe there are players here we're not seeing. I didn't want to think it was Sophie and you don't want to talk about factions at Granite Peak. Fair enough. But I'm ready to believe there's a hidden hand here and to work with you in figuring out what we do about it."
"So you want to change your pattern, act in a way 'they' won't predict. What did you have in mind?"
Brant
Referring to Archie's statement about planting Krane's manuscript and only God being subtle, Marshall first says: "You don't know that, Arch. I mean that respectfully. The opposition doesn't perceive time like we do. Think in four dimensions. It's like Mitch said at the meeting, we might be at the start of a retro-creation. All of this may have happened before and we're just repeating the pattern, a pattern they started because they knew how to start it. Maybe it wasn't even Them. We have Menos, right? Possibly able to … project herself through time? Mess with causality? If she can do that, how do we know others can't? Or haven't?"
"On top of all that, I mean — Krane, Abeille, their very births were retro-created. They are retro-creations, in a sense. For all we know, Krane was sent here expressly with information that they knew would turn us against each other. Or against the Project. Maybe that's how he knows so much about us, even though he doesn't know how he knows. Maybe They gave him that knowledge so that it would get to us, knowing how we would react."
He sighs.
"But this is precisely my point. The more we think about this situation, the more we stare at it, the bigger the maze becomes. Or like that Seurat painting — the closer you get to it, the more it just becomes a blur of dots. Maybe this is what they want, for us to be wandering through hallways filled with mirrors while they build the infrastructure that will destroy us. If that's the case, then the only way to beat them is to … I don't know, to stop playing their game. To stop looking for the exit. To do something they couldn't have planned for."
"I don't know what that would be."
Rob
"Oh, retro creation." Archie sounds a little disappointed. "Well, I don't know how any of that works. But I can't wrap my head around a cabal of scheming kulullû or whatever, plotting out the future like a TV writers room. I thought it was more like: somehow there's a rupture in reality, like the temblor at the St. Francis or the rupture that didn't happen in Oakland, the one we stopped. And then cause and effect sort of ripple out from that, backwards as well as forwards. So that this violation, this rupture from outside, isn't a violation any more? History stitches together what it needs in order for the future event to have happened, in order to be, in retrospect, inevitable. But nobody plans it, it's just … water running downhill. "I said that only God was that subtle. To be honest, I don't know if I believe that everything happens by His will. I used to. I sure used to. But … whether we have free will or not, all we can do is act as if we do. And all we can do against the Red Kings is to act against them now, in the present. If there's going to be a reality rupture in the year Two-Thousand-Twenty-One that wipes out everything we've done — or if there already was, and everything we're doing now is just retro-created lead-up to the Ontoclysm in the year Two-Thousand-Twenty-One — I mean talk about what isn't our remit, that's it. Our grandchildren will have to deal with it."
"Also: Viv and Andy helped us. They're still helping us. If they were created by the Red Kings, didn't it backfire?" He throws up his hands. "See what I mean? Dorm room bull sessions. Not exactly actionable!"
Brant
"Well, we think they are helping us. They obviously think they are helping us. But how are we to know? Maybe it's all a double-blind. We can't know because we can't perceive the future. I feel like there's some Proverb about this … " he pauses a second and closes his eyes, then: "There is a pathway that seems right to a man, but in the end it’s a road to death." He stands up. "You're right, though: this isn't actionable. And it's not helpful. This will all end in fatalism if we keep going around and around like this. I'm going to go make some calls about this Mr. Green. We'll see what the Girl Genius can find using her computer systems. Follow the leads we can follow. But we should try to think creatively about this. Outside the box. Outside our minds, even. If they know our thoughts, then we must stop being our thoughts."
As he puts his hand on the doorknob he stops, and looks back. With a bit of a grin, he says: "By the way. You and Menos. You're not … there's not something happening there, is there?"
Rob
"Something … happening?" Archie's eyes go wide. "Oh my goodness gracious, no! No, that's … ha ha ha. No." He's 100% sincere but his reaction's strong enough for Marshall to intuit there's something he's not saying.
Brant
Marshall makes this face at Archie:
Then he turns to leave.
Rob
Archie makes eye contact with Marshall, just as he's about to go. "If the time comes that they tell you to put a bullet in my head, Marshall... I'd just as soon you have a stranger do it. I wouldn't want to put Roger through that."