Natural Sugars
Michael
On Thursday morning, after Uri Geller's spectacular collapse at the end of the Johnny Carson show (I'm assuming Archie stayed up for it), the Ransoms are sitting around the breakfast table. Jane has commandeered the news section of the Chronicle, is picking at some cottage cheese and occasionally sipping orange juice, and making exasperated "pfeh" sounds as she reads about the Nixon administration's latest obfuscations re: Watergate. Melanie's mood seems lighter than it has been in a while—with her worries about her marriage starting to recede into the background and the recent revelations about Archie's job and Charley's origins normalized to a great degree, she seems relieved of the internal burden of the past few months.
Eddie is wolfing down cereal, and it's a brand Archie's never seen before. TASTY ACRES, screams the neon-yellow, sort of traditionalist/sort of psychedelic lettering on the front of the box. From a small California-based company called Beale Farms, it seems; not one of the big Battle Creek boys or General Mills up in Minnesota. A cartoon of a beneficent, straw-hatted farmer looking down and petting an equally doe-eyed piggy on the head amidst a lush sunny farm full of fruit trees and tall, plump cornstalks dominates the front of the box, with two explosive text insets:
"FORTIFIED WITH MORE VITAMINS AND MINERALS. WITH A NEW SWEET TASTE YOU WON'T FORGET. Our patented process of extracting sweetness from vegetables means NO ADDED SUGAR!"
"Watch this fall on CBS Saturday Mornings for our Tasty Acres commercials and the further adventures of Terry, Farmer Roy, and all your Tasty Acres pals!"
The cereal features pink marshmallow pigs, sweet yellow corn cobs, and green puffy trees, plus "healthy whole-grain" barns, windmills, and tractors. Ah, an off-brand Lucky Charms rip-off with a health-food gimmick, Archie thinks to himself slipping back into his old ad-man mode. A little player in "health" food from northern California getting not just an ad but a series of ads on CBS this fall? The times are indeed changing. Regardless of its "healthy" ingredients, boy, Eddie sure does like it. He picks up the box to pour another bowl and reaches for more milk.
"Whoa, whoa there partner," Melanie says, "You know we don't have two bowls of cereal at breakfast, especially the sugary kind!"
"But mom, it says it's all healthy with less sugar! Even the marshmallows are made from vegetables!" As Eddie has put the cereal box back down on the table with the back of the box facing Archie and Charley, they can see a maze puzzle for the cereal-eating kids at the breakfast table: help Grammy Pig wend her way through the orchards and corn rows of Tasty Acres to find her mischievous grandson Terry. There are hints if you look at the maze through the cereal's gimmick toy, a pair of cardboard spectacles with clear red plastic lenses—classic secret decoder glasses—which right now sit in front of Eddie's cereal bowl. Can both Rob and Mel give me 3d6 rolls with the following target numbers: Archie: 13 or less Charley: 9 or less
Mel
>>>> 3d6 … 10
Rob
>>>> 3d6 … 8
Michael
Of course this maze, although dense, is not really all that challenging; it's for little kids, after all. So as Archie sort of lightly visually traces the journey of Grammy Pig through the winding cornstalks and rows of fruit trees, he finds himself chasing the path back to the start a few times and before he knows it, Archie feels the weirdest gnawing at the center of himself, almost like a hunger pang. But as his eyes return to the maze in another split-second, he realizes that elements of the geometry of the cartoon maze are locking into his unconscious and doing something to him on an instinctual, subconscious level. There's glyphic information here. And it's not a glyph Archie recognizes from SANDMAN training at all.
Rob
Archie picks up the box, flipping it over to look at the front (and stop anyone else from looking at the back much longer). "Marshmallows made from vegetables?? What a time to be alive," he chuckles. He taps the text about the commercials on CBS. "Ads for ads," he says, largely to himself. "I wonder who's doing their spots?" It's not unusual for Archie to get interested in products, packaging, ad campaigns, etc. He makes eye contact with Charley and flicks his eyes to the secret decoder glasses, willing her to examine them maybe or make a claim on them.
Michael
Special Rapport can cover that kind of non-verbal communication
Mel
Charley starts humming “Old MacDonald” as she picks up the decoder glasses. She looks them over before trying them on.
Michael
Cardboard frames, red plastic lenses, kind of like 3-D glasses but instead of red and blue it's just red. Charley tries them on and look at the maze. Hidden in the inks of the maze's outlines are a few simple hints at tricky vertices of the maze — an arrow here, a sign saying "To The Pigpen" there. But as Charley traces the hidden-ink accents on the map, she begins to see more clearly that the geometry of one particular path through the maze produces a reaction much like an Anunnaki glyph. Want to roll against Will-20, Mel?
Mel
>>>> SUCCESS by 9
Michael
There's definitely a glyph buried in the graphic somewhere in there, on a more-or-less subliminal level. Charley's not quite sure what it's meant to do but given Eddie's behavior and Charley's own sudden desire to try some of the cereal — a desire she is able to let pass from her mind thanks to her SANDMAN training and Danbe and ASL reconfiguring the linguistic centers of her brain — Charley assumes it probably has something to do with making people want to eat the cereal.
Mel
Standing close to Archie as she makes her discovery she covertly signs the words, glyph and hungry.
Rob
Archie gives Charley a meaningful nod and offers her something different for breakfast. "Hey, who wants one of my famous waffles?" (They're Eggos.) Light chit chat through the rest of breakfast, talk of weekend plans.
(I think the cover story was that Archie is going on a work trip, and Charley has some different alibi. Don't know if we decided to send Melanie to the Mission this weekend.)
He makes a point of tidying up afterwards, and will discreetly take the cereal box with him to Livermore.