Meet the New Boss
Michael
Brant and Jeff will also be at SRI on Wednesday. Surprise, motherfuckers! New boss, same as the old boss.
I figure Marshall will want to orchestrate his entrance into SCANATE on Wednesday morning so don't let me get in the way.
Brant
Marshall will play his introduction pretty straight. He will arrange to have word of Kit’s reassignment and his (Marshall’s) placement sent ahead of time through official channels, whatever those may be. Then he’ll just show up on Wednesday morning at a polite 10 a.m., hands in pockets, an air of quiet authority and expectation about him.
He’s going to insist they call him “Mr. Yellow,” though.
Michael
Targ and Puthoff arrive at the SCANATE bullpen/break room a little before 10 o'clock with the memos in hand. Ingo, Pat, and Mary-Lynn (and Mitch?) show up a little bit afterward. I'm assuming that means Russ and Hal will exchange greetings with Marshall first, then the SCANATE subjects. We can assume social niceties here until we sit down and Pat Price breaks the hellos with a blunt yet still amiable (he says it with a grin), "So, what happened to Kit? Sent off to an Arctic DEW line gulag or something?" Ingo honestly sort of lets his jaw drop at Pat speaking this way to the new CIA officer assigned to the team. Russell and Hal sort of squirm uncomfortably. No Psychology roll required for Marshall: Pat is (trying to) display alpha behavior here. His cop brain is active and engaged.
Jeff
Mitch is there, sure. He doesn't greet Marshall by name or explicitly reveal their connection, but he also doesn't attempt to feign confusion or surprise at this mysterious well-dressed CIA agent.
Brant
Marshall grins: "You must be Price. The psychic cop."
Michael
A cocky grin right back from Pat. "Ah, yeah, some have called me that, yeah. Overheated local newspaper reporters, mostly."
Brant
(Quick OOC question: how are Pat's "powers" summarized in the files? Like, would Marshall know from Kit's materials that Pat can "see the future"?)
Michael
(It would be assumed that Marshall would have had access to the 'locked file' Green mentioned yesterday and that's got the "demolished New Deal-era water purification plant" RV session in it. So that's viewing the past covered. I am not sure if I've ever made it canonical that Pat is able to view the future just solely from the work he's done at SCANATE so far, but probably at this point Hal and/or Russ have theorized in an internal memo that the vision goes both ways which might explain some of Pat's rare "misses" as showing things that don't exist at those particular coordinates.)
Jeff
(FWIW Mitch has filled Marshall in as completely as he could.)
Brant
(Yeah, I’m assuming Marshall knows everything or mostly everything Mitch told him — but our knowledge of Price might be more complete than SCANATE’s at this point and I don’t want to say something that Pat would register as, like, “Uh, how do you know that …?”)
Michael
(I think it is fair for Marshall to openly speculate about Pat being able to see the future, it won't seem like it came out of nowhere.)
Brant
"Ever use your 'special' abilities back in the day? Stop a bank robbery? ID a killer?" Marshall stares directly at Price, like a snake. Mitch can probably tell he's engaging some low-key NLP protocols. Whatever Price's answer, can I get a Detect Lies check?
Michael
Yeah, I will roll the Detect Lies secretly and Will for Pat etc. when my noon meeting is done.
Jeff
Mitch may as well aura-read Price while he's there.
>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS
>> DETECT … SUCCESS
>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS
Brant
(Also, you can just assume Marshall is, like, rolling Detect Lies about literally everything everyone says in this meeting going forward.)
Jeff
Heck, let's roll Detect while we're at it, see if the proto-Irruptor responds to Marshall's entry in some way.
>>>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS
>>>> DETECT … SUCCESS
>>>> ANALYZE … FAILURE
Ouch, no knowing
Though I think he gets a second shot
>>>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS
>>>> DETECT … SUCCESS
>>>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS
Brant
(Marshall's plan is to talk with everyone here, get a conversation flowing, so that he can establish a social matrix among everyone in his mind: figure out who likes whom, who is being deceptive / evasive, where the social tensions are, who responds to authority, etc.)
Michael
"I had my share of hits while on the job, sure. Mostly fraud, robbery, bunco type crimes. Never cracked a murder case or a major case, unfortunately." Marshall can tell Pat sounds regretful but not frozen or visibly shaken so much that he's reliving the La Cienega Strangler or anything like that. "Mostly it was just me wandering by a corkboard or a blackboard or looking at evidence and making a connection that the other detectives couldn't. Hunches, pretty much. Visions... occasionally." He seems forthcoming yet a bit blasé with Marshall, and if Marshall is really only subtly pushing the NLP (i.e., not using any specific Skill yet), he can tell that Price is getting into that groove, answering maybe a little more than he would have under normal circumstances. He's receptive to it, and evidently not supernaturally resistant. So far, Ingo and Mary-Lynn have been quiet, while Hal and Russell occasionally interject on behalf of Pat's fantastic performance so far at SCANATE. (I will abstract out a little of this ice-breaking by saying that Marshall can tell that Ingo is wary of this newcomer, Hal and Russ are doing a bit of "sing for your supper" trying to impress the new bigwig from Langley, while Mary-Lynn looks to Marshall's estimation, out-and-out frightened.) --- Mitch's aura sight goes up and Mitch can tell Pat is experiencing a little bit of fear of Marshall. It's not a color Mitch has seen very often in Pat's aura. That fear is coupled with a slowly-increasing involuntary openness to speaking to Marshall, which itself in turn is making the primitive centers of Pat's brain get gradually further into fight-or-flight mode. Also, Mary-Lynn is really scared of Marshall. She's been very quiet other than very cursory greetings when Marshall was introduced. Everyone else's aura, Hal, Russ, Ingo, show various shades of concern and surprise at Kit's replacement but nothing overwhelming or unusual. Mitch's Detect shows no unusual concentrations of History B energy here in the bullpen, but the ambient History B potential taint that Mitch has seen in the past week-plus here is still evident.
Jeff
Mitch attempts to nonverbaly and unobtrusively reassure Mary-Lynn.
Michael
She flashes Mitch an uneasy smile.
Brant
“What kind of visions?” Marshall is still grinning.
Michael
"Oh, you know, the usual sort of thing: being able to pick out the right suspect from a book of mugshots, stereo-sound hallucinations of the Virgin Mary, that sort of thing." Pat takes a sip of his coffee while looking at Marshall. Hal tries to smooth things over. "Pat's entirely too modest. He had the beginnings of remote viewing while he was with Burbank PD, seeing stolen merchandise, getting pictures of stash spots and car makes and models for suspects, all kinds of things."
"Water under the bridge, that was all small-time. Now, Ingo and I and the two new kids," Pat indicates Mitch and Mary-Lynn, "are peeking at all the commies' secret science, and that beats picking off the odd jewel thief or Hollywood con artist here and there. But hey, police work did teach me patience and observation and both of those traits have definitely made me a better remote viewer." Is Pat treating this like... a job interview? He's gradually become much more solicitous of Marshall, trying to make it clear he finds the intelligence work more important and rewarding. No irony in his voice anymore, and Mitch still sees the streak of fear in his aura.
Jeff
Mitch considers deliberately affecting the demeanor of someone who doesn't like cops and isn't thrilled with this talk, as a nonverbal cue for Price (et al) but he decides against it; his natural inclinations are pretty clear regardless. So instead he just looks uncomfortable, in a nondescript way.
Brant
“Well,” Marshall says, “I don’t want to make myself too much of a nuisance. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m just here to watch and take notes.” He smiles, leans back in his chair. OOC, I don’t have any specific beats to hit other than to just observe the going’s on.
Michael
Cool. Hey, maybe we'll finally have Pat and Ingo do some coordinate scanning on screen for the new guy today. (And by today I mean today in-game. Tomorrow in the real world. )
In fact, let's leave it here and you two can consider the implications of this narrative beat: Russell Targ says, "Well, we were going to try a new set of coordinate scanning today... uh, Doctor, would you care to adjourn to the map room with Dr. Puthoff and me and help us select some coordinates? Maybe somewhere you personally know well so you can confirm the success or failure of the scanning? It'd be a nice way for you to get started with us!"
Pat says, "Careful, though: nothing within 5 miles of a top secret installation, I don't want us to have to go through another security investigation like the last guy!" Pat laughs and Ingo smiles for the first time.
Russ and Hal take Marshall into the map room: a small side office with a bunch of bound U.S. geodetic survey maps as well as decently-detailed (likely CIA-supplied?) maps of all kinds of countries, NATO, Warsaw Pact, and unaligned. They give Marshall the lay of the land and then Puthoff says, "We'll leave you to it, just give us a set of coordinates preferably to the degree, minute, and second, longitude and latitude." They leave Marshall alone to find the location and scribble down the coordinates.
Brant
Marshall will light a cigarette and look at the maps for a moment. Then he'll close his eyes and just put his finger on a random location. Whatever he picks, he'll write down those coordinates.
(If it's, like, the middle of the ocean, he'll try again 'till he hits land.)
Michael
So you don't want a specific location so that you can confirm what's at it? There's a lot of empty uninteresting space on the planet, says the guy who plays way too many Google Map related online games
Jeff
(Can I use Serendipity to make it Long Meg or is that a no go for any of the several possible reasons I can think that would stop me from letting me do it?)
(Mitch is in the other room thinking Long Meg very loudly)
Michael
(If! If Brant is good with you exerting your Intersession Serendipity to make it Long Meg, I'd be fine with it. Probably would be one use out of two.)
Jeff
(You are faaar too generous with the Serendipity allowances and I appreciate that about you)
Michael
(Well, I mean, the description says that outrageous coincidences should be multiple uses but I tend to look at these things as far more specifically narrative-driven. If it's gonna have a bigger impact on the plot, I'll make it two uses. This is just, like, oh, look at this, I opened the UK map and there's where GRAIL TABLE was, why not, we know what's there.)
Brant
(I actually wanted to pick Long Meg but I didn't think, IC, Marshall had the knowledge to pick it -- he wasn't privy to the conversation with Charley. If he cough cough opens his eyes and it turns out it's Long Meg, he'll give them those coordinates! I think that's wicked cool. Otherwise I was picking a location at random b/c Marshall would know that's the only true way to test these dorks without providing them with any social cues. Marshall is, after all, a trained psychiatrist and doctor -- having read SCANATE's materials I'm assuming he can spot all the many, MANY flaws in their methodology.)
Michael
Let's do Long Meg. One use of Serendipity, and maybe even Marshall is like, "Ah. The mark of the Magic Man." when he opens up the Northern England map book.
Marshall is, after all, a trained psychiatrist and doctor -- having read SCANATE's materials I'm assuming he can spot all the many, MANY flaws in their methodology.
It's a fair cop.
Okay. I'm gonna set this up. The way a scan session is done is that one of the SCANATE team will go into a casual observation room, with calming prints on the walls, a couple of office potted plants, a few chairs and a couple of sofas, and a one-way mirror with soundproof observation room on the other side. Audio pickups are hidden near all the seating areas, and Ingo goes in first. Pat is outside the building now, having a cigarette break. Ingo takes one of the two sets of coordinates Marshall has scribbled (54° 43′ 40.6″ N, 2° 40′ 3.5″ W) and burns it with his lighter after reading. He reclines on the sofa with a sketchpad, fat charcoal pencil, and dims the lights using a remote control doohickey. He quickly slips into a trance state, lowers his eyelids, and mutters in a low voice while writing notes. His eyelids flutter as he recites what he sees. In the observation room (where Hal, Russ, and Marshall are), the audio recorder is switched on and picks up Ingo's observations. "Rolling hills. Grey skies. Some cliff edges. Northern England, obviously. Looking for... looking for structures. I see old bridges, old ruins. Medieval... perhaps some Roman. Walls. Presence of... villages close by. Waters, rivers. Lightly settled but also anciently so. Oh!" Ingo's face breaks out in a wide smile. "I see it! Its power is clear, it's apparent... I can feel the pulsing ley line under the hillsides... there's a stone circle, an ancient stone circle! It's large, about a hundred yards in diameter, lots of little stones laid out across a field, and a central monolith... uh... huh. Strange. That central stone doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like the others. It feels... newer."
"I'm getting pulled away from there." A pause. "There's also... a listening post. A military installation with radar domes, a few miles away. Heavy energy. Lots of power lines and electromagnetic interference. Big antennas." A peek through the one-way window at the sketch book sees Ingo doing largely sight-unaided sketches that are fairly accurate: there's Long Meg, there's some of the smaller stones, and there's the Great Dun Fell installation, radomes, antennas and all. Of course Marshall's not been there but he's seen the UK mission after-reports. This is all accurate and it seems Ingo might have felt he was getting too wishy-washy and New Agey with the stone circle viewing and decided to give Marshall a report on the listening post as well. Could Ingo know the coordinates of an ancient stone circle considering his whole spacey reputation? Sure. The base, well, it's not top secret but it's also not, like, a broadly-known landmark. All in all pretty inconclusive. The whole viewing takes about 10, 15 minutes total. Ingo leaves the room after a closing meditation and about 5 or 10 minutes later, Pat walks in.
Pat settles into a chair, not a couch, but does close his eyes and does keep a pad near him as well: a notepad, not a sketchpad, and he uses a ballpoint pen. He goes into a trance state just as Ingo did and Marshall can see, a few minutes into the trance, an occasional wince on Pat's face. Eyes are fluttering as Pat scribbles a few sparse notes; he has angled his notepad away from the observation window so no one in the booth can see what he's writing. After about 10 or 15 more minutes of very occasional notes and no speaking out loud, at all, his eyes fly open. He takes a sip from a glass of water he brought in with him, clears his throat, and then speaks to the observation window. "Uh, Hal, Russ? Can... uh, can I speak with the doctor alone... maybe somewhere a little more private? Nothing to worry about, it's just a possible security issue and I want to keep the circle of trust tight for you guys this time as opposed to what happened with the whole West Virginia thing." Marshall can tell that Pat is shaken. (Made both Psychology and Detect Lies rolls for you privately.)
Russ and Hal look to Marshall. "You all right with that?" Hal asks.
Brant
Marshall is sort of half-sitting, half-leaning against a desk, smoking. "Yeah. Bring him in."
Michael
Pat comes into the control booth and Hal and Russ leave them there. "Are we good to talk here?" Pat grabs his own pack of Winstons and looks for a light from Marshall, also torching the coordinates as per protocols.
Brant
Marshall hands Pat his lighter and nods "yes."
Michael
He's fine, just a little shaken up.
Brant
(Well, shit.)
"The people in lab coats. How many were there?"
Michael
Pat closes his eyes. "Six. Three men, three women." He then proceeds to describe David, Catherine, Elias, and the three computer and med techs that were part of the GRAIL TABLE team.
Brant
Marshall leans back a bit and looks at his nails for a second. "You say you can sometimes 'see' the 'most important' thing about a location?"
Michael
"Almost always."
"I know it sounds subjective and maybe it is, who knows how the fuck this all works, but... yeah."
Brant
"OK. Go back in. We'll be right with you."
Michael
"Okay." Pat is still a little shaken but he goes back into the viewing room.
Brant
Once he's gone, Marshall goes back into the map room and writes down the coordinates for (a) SRI HQ; (b) the St. Francis; and (c) Livermore.
Then he'll have Targ or Puthoff give them to him.
Michael
Is Marshall giving T&P any instructions on how the coordinates are to be given and how his results are to be reported?
Remember, they've said they try not to do more than two sessions in a day.
Brant
Hm. Yes. Marshall is going to tell them to put each set of coordinates in a different unmarked white envelope, and then have a random intern slide them under the door. He can open them in whatever order he wants. But we are definitely doing more than one session today.
Michael
Also, if Marshall wants to catch Mitch up at lunch, say he's casually wanting to chat with one of the newer trainees, that's fine.
That would probably be the earliest shot Marshall would have at speaking with Mitch one-on-one.
Brant
Marshall's going to avoid fraternizing on this first day. He's not going out of his way to avoid Mitch, that would be suspicious too, but he's not going to like chat with anyone at lunch. He's trying to be mysterious.
Michael
Okay. And I'm going to assume this is all JUST Pat being asked to scan these coordinates? Or will Marshall have Ingo work these as well? And do you want him/them to run all three sets and just take notes and then debrief Marshall personally?
Brant
Just Pat, and then I’d like Pat to debrief me personally.
Michael
So this process of three more scanning sessions will take much of the rest of the day. Sites will be coded A (SRI HQ), B (the St. Francis), and C (Livermore). And at around 4:30 in the afternoon, Pat will meet with Marshall again. (And feel free to expand upon any or all of these in further conversation/interrogation.) Of course Pat is able to tell all three sets of coordinates were in the Bay Area.
Site A: "I mean... you had me look at us here. The campus complex. It was hard to get out of my own head here; all I could see were the shapes of the buildings, there wasn't anything I could pick up on at what was going on inside. Maybe because I was viewing myself. The signal-to-noise ratio was way too low, there's too much going on here right now, all at once. But I did get a very good aerial view of the campus. (Detect Lies indicates he's telling the truth here, although there is a shakiness in his voice that indicates this maybe took a lot out of him?)
Site B: "Okay, this one was a little bit easier. I got an old-fashioned building with Victorian or maybe post-Victorian decorative touches. A museum or a bank or a hotel. There was a lot of... gravity drawing me to both the lobby and to the upper floors. The lobby just felt like a lot of important people had crossed its floors over the years, but it feels like something pretty heavy happened on the upper floors. A killing maybe, or a business meeting that ended up killing a lot of people. Gangsters? I don't know why but the feeling of that heavy shit is kind of associated with the 1920s for me. (Detect Lies indicates he's telling the truth.)
Site C: "This one I got much more specific information about. It looked kinda like SRI, but more spaced out, more spread out. The area around it was... kind of desolate. Suburban tract housing. Anyway, on the inside of the complex, near the center, was a big building filled with computers; that's where the precise coordinates led me. Uh... something real bad is going to happen in this building. And Hal and Russ are going to be involved with it. Something to do with..." and Pat clutches at his forehead here, wincing, "it was something to do with someone who died violently. A..." and at this he looks at Marshall. "A vengeful ghost, if you believe in such things. The minute Hal and Russ try to do a psychic experiment on that campus, it's going to wake the dead. The ghost will gain power thanks to something nearby, a big vault full of... failed experiments? I'm sorry if... if this all sounds simultaneously too vague and too goofy, like science fiction. But Hal and Russ are going to raise a ghost who's going to act out in the physical world. Not soon or imminently, but also not that far in the future." (Detect Lies indicates he's telling the truth and is finding it hard to explain what he sensed.)
Brant
OK. Marshall won't register that any of this hits for him. I think it's time he check out of SRI for the day and reconvene with URIEL, or at least Mitch.
Michael
I'd like Marshall to reconvene with Mitch first considering I need to finish the Harman scene before we can move along to Wednesday late afternoon/evening or Thursday.
Brant
Marshall arranges to meet Mitch at a restaurant a few miles north of Menlo Park, in the direction of San Francisco. When he arrives he grabs a seat and picks up the wine menu. Reading it over, he says: “Red? White? This Sauvignon Blanc looks decent.”
Jeff
"I'm not a wine guy... So now you've met the cop. What do you think? Should we recruit him, or...?"
Brant
Marshall puts the menu down. “I mean, he seems like the real deal. Some of what he said could be faked, or trickery — good guesswork. But not everything.” When the server approaches Marshall orders a glass of the Sauvignon and a salad. Then he tells Mitch what Price told him about the various sites he remote viewed. “So. Could some of it have been a clever deception? Yes. But the details about the UK trip … that’s inexplicable.” He sips his water. “We should probably bring him on board in an official capacity. Archie will have to be the one who makes the call on that. But what about you? Did you still sense contamination on site?”
Jeff
"No change there. It's still just...kind of there." Mitch takes a sip. "He's going to be mad I wasn't honest with him straightaway. I mean, I haven't lied to him about anything but still...He's probably going to be more upset about Jo, though."
Brant
When the wine arrives Marshall does that obnoxious thing where he tests it and then tells the server to go ahead and pour. “Well, there are degrees with these things. We don’t need to bring him on board fully — we could recruit him as a company asset, and leave the rest of what we, uh, do — did — out of it.”
“But the fact that there’s still no change in the contamination levels … I don’t know, man. I am stumped.” He says this with a truly resigned air. “When I was picking that first remote viewing site, and opened my eyes to find I’d picked Brougham, UK, I knew what was going on immediately. That was you. You. The rest of the afternoon, I was thinking about that — and how you said you think ARC is a red herring — and it made me realize: there are no red herrings. Everything is connected. Everything and everyone we meet, they are all part of something here. I think that’s because of you. Because you make things connect.”
“So now what?” Another gulp of wine. “We have contamination at a low level at this facility. It seems to me to be caused or impelled by a combination of several factors: the research Targ and Puthoff are doing; whatever is going on at the ARC; the intermingling of Price, etc.’s powers. Maybe Geller, too. Maybe this Harman guy Archie and Jocasta are meeting today.”
“If none of it is a red herring — if it’s all connected — then what do we do? We have no deadlines, there’s no immediate or obvious threat of irruption. Geller going on Carson? OK, but why would that matter? He performs whatever it is he does for 30 million people and what … the collective belief in his apparent psychic powers strengthens the contamination? Why? How?”
“It’s too obtuse. We need to slice through it all. We’re still just chasing shadows, wasting time. We need to start killing people.”
Jeff
Mitch looks sheepish at the mention of Brougham. "Heh, yeah, that was me. I did that."
"I said I thought ARC was a red herring?" Mitch sounds surprised. "I guess that's something I'd have said... but you're right, it's not that it's a red herring. It's that the whole thing is...amorphous. It's not that there's some piece of the puzzle we don't have, some bit of data that would make everything snap into place and we're smacking our foreheads and sending Roger to burgle a particular apartment in Berkeley. It's that what we're seeing is this big, loose thing that hasn't come together yet. Maybe it'll be one thing, maybe it'll be something else, maybe it'll look exactly like the GRAIL TABLE predictions or maybe it'll be like the phone company in the President's Analyst, you see that one? And if we make sure it's not little telephones surgically implanted in everybody's necks, then that just makes it more likely that it'll be Colossus shaking hands with Guardian. There's a lot of routes but they all end up at the same place, fifty years from now.
"I don't know how SCANATE connects to that, though. I don't know why the irruptor-that-isn't-yet is hanging out there waiting to be born. I don't know why Uri Geller, a man I've never met, fills me with... I just get a bad feeling whenever I say his name. It feels like something I'd call someone I don't like. A uri geller, like a quisling or a pecksniff. A shylock. A tartuffe. A uri geller.
"I may be tapped into stuff most people aren't, but I do know that I'm filtering it through a bunch of me-ness and what comes out the other side might not bear much resemblance to what's really there. I am a glass darkly."