Mitch Watches TV
Michael
"Hey," Anna says from home on a Saturday. "How've you been, MJ?"
Jeff
"Hey, Anna. I'm doing okay, got a sort of a gig getting tested for ESP at Stanford.
"You related to Mary-Lynn Turner, the lounge singer? Also, do you know Ingo Swann? I met him at Stanford, thought you might know him … Oh, sorry. How're you? I mean, I didn't call just to advance my own agendas, I should take an interest in your doings as well. I've been distracted. Lot on my mind."
Michael
Anna laughs at the psychic testing thing. "That's amazing! I'd heard vague rumors floating around the scene in Berkeley, y'know … so they're really doing it, huh?"
"No, I don't know anyone by the name of Mary-Lynn, related or otherwise. And Ingo Swann … yeeeeah, vaguely, in the, you know, 'literature' of the paranormal and such, space artist, self-proclaimed psychic … so he's in the program too, huh?"
"And I'm fine, just puttering along at Pacifica and 'QED since Westercon … things are a little slow 'cause of summer of course, but we might be setting up a new show on KPFA in the fall, a music series, something you might be interested in actually … I'll keep you in the loop, let you know once I know more and my 'PFA partner Stephen get a green light."
Jeff
"Sure, let me know … yeah, he's there. Hangs out. I don't know, I just started. Hard to get a bead on the guy, you know? So far it's been a lot of not-a-lot. Maybe this week they'll break out the Zener cards."
Michael
Anna chuckles. "Why do you reckon they want to do psychic research there? I thought they were into lasers and banking computers and all other kinds of horrible … oh." It finally occurs to Anna why Stanford/SRI might be into psychic research. "Oh jeez, take care, Matthew. I … I mean, you're not going to do anything for them, right? It's not some kind of a Pentagon bag, is it?"
Jeff
"Heh, uh, well … somebody was telling me CIA at one point, kind of in passing," Mitch admits. "But it all seems pretty harmless. They asked me, this is a question. They asked me, if you could travel back in time to anyplace for twenty-four hours and change history, where would you go and what would you do? And I thought, that's a hard one. I don't see how it relates to reading peoples' thoughts, but it's a hard one. You don't want to step on the wrong butterfly and, whoops, the cold war went hot, right?"
Michael
"Weeeeeird." Anna says, from the sound of things, taking out a Zippo and lighting up on the other end of the phone. "Really weird. Damn, now time travel, that'd be something to smuggle news of out of there."
Jeff
"Heh, yeah. That'd be hard to keep secret. I mean, they asked me one question and I'm blabbing it to you already... Anyway, that's what I've mostly seen so far. Anybody tries to make me kill Brezhnev with my mind, I don't think that'll be a thing."
Michael
Anna laughs, coughs. "Turnabout's fair play, maybe right now in Leningrad some grad student is concentrating on making Tricky Dick piss his pants at an important Cabinet meeting. I hear they're heavy into the psychic research over there too." Ah, the Beehives' book has penetrated the occult counterculture apparently enough for Anna to have heard about it.
Anna's opinion of Ingo is "maybe he's a real psychic, but mostly from what I've heard he's just a spacey guy who likes to paint pictures of galaxies and planets."
Mitch has a powerful urge, after his phone call with Anna Turner, to turn on the television and watch some good old-fashioned lazy summer Saturday afternoon programming. It's the kind of urge he's gotten before to pull out the Tarot cards, or perhaps allow the fries in his McDonald's or diner meal to fall about to interpret. He's never done … "TV-mancy" before but with the VHF and UHF dials at his fingertips, he begins flipping through all the Bay Area stations he gets out here in the Valley and feels the flow of the universe in the waves and radiation beaming into his set from the antennas on Loma Prieta …
A commercial for the Magnavox Odyssey TV computer game system (first 51 secs).
A snippet of an educational program on KQED about bullying (Mitch watches from this point for about 20 secs).
An ad for that ABC movie of the week from a couple years back about the maniac truck driver with a grudge against Dennis Weaver.
An ad for AT&T that talks about how much they do for us, every day.
And another ad, this time for an ARCO promotion featuring the animals on Noah's "ARC.”
Mitch can't make heads or tails of it on first look, but he definitely feels this series of channel flips is an omen, an Oracle. This sequence of five "cards" must mean something. The computer game of course gets Mitch thinking about the computer network that's going to eat us all, right? As does that slightly sinister Ma Bell ad.
How about an educational program on bullying and/or a maniac truck? Well, both of those have at least something to do with conflict, of a bully beating up on an underdog. The oil company giving out toys based on a bad pun? Well, one can say the Flood was a kind of apocalypse, but Mitch doesn't feel like that's the specific clue the universe is trying to provide here. The Magnavox doohickey also mentioned education for the kiddies as well: that seems at least a common thread; the toys for ARCO are also obviously for kids. Of course, it's Saturday afternoon, there's a lot of kids' programming that just ended.
Ultimately, Mitch feels all five of these have something to do with what's going on at SRI, in the psychic program, in their computer research departments, and maybe elsewhere, but he can't put it all together. Might be something to bring to the group on Monday to brainstorm, anyway.