Operation ALLOCHTHON
Saturday, October 6, 1973.
Michael
It's a more-or-less typical Saturday morning at the Ransoms'. The breakfast plates are being washed and dried by Eddie and Charley, Jane is reading the Saturday Examiner in the living room while the Saturday morning cartoons play (Bailey's Comets, the new DePatie-Freleng roller-skating cartoon, has just finished up on KPIX-5 in favor of one of the new hour-long New Scooby-Doo Movies) while Melanie helps the kids out in the kitchen (and does some prep for dinner tonight) and Archie has maybe moved into the den. That's when Archie hears it, a ringing from his office. Not the familiar ringing of his office phone but the much less frequently heard bell on his office Telex machine. From work.
Archie puts down whatever he was reading—maybe Life magazine or Time or something else more or less middle-of-the-road and current affairs-ish—and heads to his office with much trepidation. No good news has ever come over that wire, on a Saturday no less. And after Archie rips off the Telex paper and reads the Top Secret dispatch that's just come in from Granite Peak and read what's on it, that streak definitely stands.
Rob
Archie reads the telex, twice. Exhales.
He folds up the telex, puts it in his pocket. He'll burn it later. He steps out of his office, walks to where he can see the living room TV, just to confirm that it's still showing cartoons and not a horrified news report. Assuming he sees the Scooby gang and special guest star Don Adams, he'll make eye contact with Charley if he can; that plus Rapport should be enough to tell her something is up.
This probably tells Melanie something is up, too, but that's okay. Rather than cook up a story, Archie's just going to tell her straight that he and Charley have to go out of town for an emergency work thing, no further details. (We will cook up a story for Jane and Eddie.)
Archie goes back into his office and closes the door. He'll call whoever you call to get in touch with Marshall on the weekend, and give the coded message that tells Marshall to call him back, or Sophie, on a secure line. Then he'll call Sophie and tell her to contact the rest of the team, and to make travel arrangements to get the team (not her) to Huntsville. Do we fly commercial? Does SANDMAN (or Marshall) scramble a jet? Whatever SOP is, if there is one.
Michael
The TV is indeed still showing the Mystery Machine gang helping Don Adams handle bug extermination at the home of a creepy horror movie star; it seems there's nothing real-world horrifying in the news from Back East, at least quite yet. And Charley does indeed get the Bad Vibes from Archie while drying the last of the breakfast dishes. (As mentioned in the telex, SANDMAN can give agents whatever cover stories their day job identities might need, and that includes Archie and Charley. I'm not too concerned about the specifics.)
Getting Marshall on the phone next (I'm assuming as XO of URIEL, Marshall will have gotten either a telex or a courier by 9:30 am himself.) Archie also reaches Sophie at her number at the Livermore Holiday Inn; she says she'll drive down to the Labs and coordinate things, including contacting the rest of URIEL and arranging for transport to Alabama, most likely out of Travis Air Force Base on military transport. As mentioned, if field agents want any of their personal equipment, gadgets, or other materiel transported, including vehicles or anything Charley has been working on in her lab, that can be done in time for Monday morning.
(Getting top-of-the-line equipment during this all-hands field mission seems like it'll be child's play. If the Project are calling out literally all available hands, including able retirees, in Canada and the US, they're not going to leave anything on the table budget-wise, anyone with SANDMAN Rank can assume. If URIEL members want to bring any of their own personal equipment to Huntsville off the books in their personal baggage—that would include any of the glyphs or reality shards we have in storage—that is entirely up to you all.)
By the time the Saturday night editions of the papers are out and the network news is on, any member of URIEL will see that Egypt and Syria have perpetrated a surprise attack overnight US time on Israeli positions across the length of the Sinai and in the Golan Heights respectively during arguably the holiest day of the Jewish religious year. SANDMAN wouldn't start a massive Mideast war to act as a cover for a vast 1,500-mile-long subduction event stateside... would they?
Bill
(Roger’s bet would be no: that much trouble in the cradle of the Enemy would only be allowed to put military forces on site for something irrupting there, or if SANDMAN got seriously distracted and let some natural conflict erupt. Or it’s all Enemy action. But what does he know? He’s a little scared, to be honest. But not so scared as to forget to ask his car get airlifted. And no, he’ll drive it himself, thanks. Yes, he’s cleared to drive into airlift bays, sergeant.)
Michael
If there are pre-departure Rooster House talkins that need to happen before the live session Thursday night, or discussions on outfitting ourselves from the reality shard/captured glyph stash, we can have those here in this channel for the sake of ease.
Leonard
Rather than challenging Roger to a Cannonball-Run-style cross-country road trip, Jocasta shows up at the airfield right on time and dressed in suspiciously professional style. She's packed some outfits, shuffled through her IDs, had her regular panoply of gear (and a box full of mopers) forwarded to Huntsville, and placed a new requisition for some of Uncle Sam's finest Life-Saving Doses and other medications. After taking care of a few legal and professional issues — signing some papers here, moving some money there, closing on a property elsewhere — she heads out to Travis, in the back seat of an Army car, leaving her beloved Javelin in the garage. She does, however, bring the coin pendant that Viv gave her.
After getting the marching orders, she won't check in with anyone before departing; the rest of the team seems as in the dark as she is, and she can always get caught up later. She does bring her sketchbooks and spends a little while poring over her most recent vision, wondering when and how — or even if — she'll bring up what she saw to the team. Something feels...not wrong, but big about this one, like they'll all come home different people. If they come home.
Finally, sitting back in the big Army Lincoln and rooting around in her bag, she pulls out a familiar-looking paperback, cheap with a bright red cover, that she grabbed on a whim at an airport bookshop a couple of years ago. It's one of the only books she owns that most civilians would recognize; she remembers hearing it's one of the best-selling books of the decade. She's not sure why she bought it, and even less sure why she picked it up now, but she feels compelled to start flipping through it. Wasn't this one of his big things? That the 'end times' of Christian eschatology would somehow involve spaceships, and an apocalyptic war between Israel and the Arabs, sometime around...right now?
She returns to the text, wondering briefly: I wonder if this book is one of their memes, or one of ours.
Jeff
I don't think Mitch ever gave the Norton coin back after the last time he took it, which was in like the middle of mission seven (?)
He keeps it with his car keys, probably with a rubber band wrapped around it a few times so he doesn't mistake it for a regular coin (though as a silver dollar it's bigger than a quarter or even a half dollar by a fair bit
Michael
It definitely has been "checked out" of the vault since the end of Mission 7, yes. Mitch lent it to Archie so he could vibe with the loading dock guys using authentic frontier gibberish.
Rob
And yes, we should bring the GU.SHUB and SANGUSH glyphs.
Many of us could use an "I Belong Here" glyph to get by in Alabama
Brant
I mean isn’t SANDMAN going to supply us with everything we need when we get there? Like how thoroughly should I be thinking about what Marshall will need?
Michael
I would expect given the import of this mission that SANDMAN will be fairly liberal with provisions, at least the ones that are offered standard as part of a field op. But, you know, it's like that bit from the MD core book about reality shards: having access to stuff that's off the books might be an advantage.
Brant
Hm. You've triggered my paranoia. OK, so, a couple questions then: why is "operation uriel" in no-caps but the rest of the message is in all-caps? Is that SOP in Marshall's experience?
Michael
Yeah, that looks like it might be one of those situations where there was computer programming as part of this communique to "insert name of SANDMAN operation this Telex is being sent to here" and someone just entered Operation URIEL in all lower-case. It's not something that would necessarily be suspicious.
Brant
OK, next question: is the Librarian coming or staying at Livermore?
Michael
The entirety of ALLOCHTHON is a field op—even if there are going to be rear-echelon type folks staying at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville to coordinate everything, they're all technically being deployed in the field—so Sophie will be staying behind at Livermore. Likewise, Granite Peak isn't, like, about to be cleared out: all the clerical and support staff will be remaining and keeping the 'Peak going.
Brant
Does Marshall have a way to confirm that other units have also received the same missive? Like, could he call Jolly West in LA and see if he received one? Is that a big no-no within the org?
Michael
I wouldn't say that'd be a no-no, although it might pay to be tacit about such a thing... and while Jolly would be a fine person to confirm ALLOCHTHON with, I bet Donna at Granite Peak would be even better, given she's a Contact and is at the nerve center of North America personnel.
Brant
Oh, good, she was actually my first thought but I wasn't sure if this was outside her knowledge base. Can I make the roll for her?
Michael
Yeah, one roll for Saturday, one for Sunday, she appears on a 9 or less. Figure if you can't reach her it's because she's juggling giant boxes full of personnel punch cards or something like that.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 0
Ah, sweet.
Michael
Hey, all right. In the midst of all the sturm und drang of this mass subduction event, Marshall gets hold of Donna—at her desk at Granite Peak no less—at around 3 pm on Saturday. "Personnel, Montanari." Her tone of voice is clipped and curt, like she's in a hurry.
Brant
"Donna! Marshall, out in Sonoma. Listen: I am so sorry to bother you on a weekend but I received this Telex earlier today — about a mass mobilization down in, uh, Alabama? — and it's just so unusual, I was wondering if you knew anything about it?"
Michael
"Christ, Marshall, between this and the war in the Middle East, it's been a madhouse here today." Donna lights a cigarette audibly on the other end of the line. "They called up everybody—off-shift workers, the old retirees, anyone with clearance—to feed all this personnel data into the computers, to set up field teams for deployment out of Huntsville. Supposedly there's a dozen different subduction sites, the after-effects have been mucking up radio and microwave communications all along the Appalachians, basically everywhere east of the Mississippi. Some of the boys at NORAD thought it was the Russians doing some kind of electronic sabotage prior to a first strike at first; thank God no one at Cheyenne Mountain went off half-cocked. The Project scrambled the Lockheeds and stealth helicopters and got visual confirmation of the subductions. It's... it's really bad, Marshall. Those young kids from the memetics division coming out of conference rooms looking green around the gills..." Donna sighs. "No one knows how this happened, and along such a long area too. Anyway, there's going to be upwards of a thousand Sandmen in Huntsville within 40 hours, so they must think the situation demands extreme sanction."
Brant
"Damn," Marshall whistles. "Well, thanks for taking my call — I don't want to keep you. Call me next time you're thinking of a vacation; we'd love to have you out here. Good luck." He'll let her go.
Bill
In all the chaos of wrangling equipment and logistics in a rush, an oddly nervous (but much more presentable) Roger keeps trying to find Archie, and get him alone to talk.
“Archie, sir, please. I gotta talk to you. Alone.”
His quick explanation, given in deep sincerity: “I got a haircut. I got this haircut! This one!”
Rob
Archie, distracted, confused: "Ye-es? You look fine, Roger. Swell. Very, uh, presentable."
Bill
He looks around, makes sure no one else is in earshot. "OpSec, sir: your ears only. Your orders. I got my hair cut, for better maintenance of cover. I didn't even realize what I'd done until J.J. was finished. He's my barber. I just looked up, and there he was in the mirror. The same guy I saw in the glass darkly in my dream. That dream the loa gave me? The one I told you about? The one with you calling me, about UFOs and robots and all kinds of shit, from Huntsville. The one you then told me to tell no one about now."
"I'm not even sure I'm supposed to tell you, but you're you, right, so I should be able to tell you, I think. aiyee"
"It's this haircut! This one! I'm that guy now, or soon. The one you'll be trying to call."