Revelations

Mission Nine

May 17

Michael

I'm gonna create a general thread here for the five of you to discuss next steps after the respective "Bohemia was a Republic of Sensation" and "Reagan is auditioning for the Bohemian Club" revelations from last night so you all can strike while the iron is hot while I'm away today. Sophie herself is kind of wired from the Esmology crit she made about Reagan and Nixon and the Bohemian Club and so forth so she will contribute on the conference call but obviously I ain't here for most of today.

Brant

OK, Marshall's really been puzzling this out. He doesn't have all the details pinned down yet but here's the outline.

We can zero "Patty Hearst," if she wants that, and bring her on board. Give her a new identity. The easiest and, I think, cleanest way to do that is by staging her murder. I think we: (1) brainwash the SLA members at the safe house with a false memory (maybe we could do this via meme) of DeFreeze and Hearst having an altercation, with DeFreeze eventually manhandling Hearst into a vehicle, which he used to speed off; (2) brainwash DeFreeze into believing he and Hearst had a fight, perhaps he attempted to rape her and she snapped, and he killed her then drove her body out into the desert to burn; (3) create a burn site using charred human remains out in the desert so that DeFreeze can lead the police there.

We're not really concerned with the rest of the SLA, so we just let regular law enforcement do its thing there. It's an easy enough crime to stage and appeals to the laziest possible narrative outcome (pretty rich girl gets kidnapped, pretty rich girl winds up dead), which is good, because lazy = broad appeal.

Now, for the protests and the meme that the Reagan people are pushing. We don't really know what exactly Reagan (or whoever's behind him, but let's say it's him) is planning to do beyond what we know so far, which was fucking with DeFreeze's head and using memes to destabilize the local scene, perhaps create some violence. But was that it? We have to be careful here because it's unclear how "connected" Reagan is with the Bohemians/Control, for whom he's auditioning. Like, is Reagan just a chess piece like the rest of us, a pawn auditioning to be a rook or whatever? Or is he also one of the chess players, and he's trying to beat an opponent to advance to the next round?

I can't remember the name of the guy at the Reagan office who was Donald's contact here ... but I feel like we could get away with a B&E at his home or office and see what we can turn up. He might have more information about what they were planning for the rallies, and perhaps even something that ties him to this whole SLA business, DeFreeze, etc. If we can take him down, and in so doing step on some toes, we can always just say we figured out what was going on after investigating the misuse of SANDMAN resources for domestic political ops, and figured, well, if this is an audition, sign us up.

OK, so, meanwhile, with Donald (that's his name, right?) and the other guy. I think with them, Marshall is gonna have to fly down to LA (ugh) to both brainwash them into believing the cover story about Hearst's death, etc., and forget this all ever happened. (Presumably Marshall could delegate this but in his opinion he's the only brainwasher skilled enough to ensure this is done correctly, because he also assumes someone will be "checking his work"). Maybe while he's down there, Roger can B&E Reagan's chief of staff's place for more evidence or intel? Sophie can have the desk at San Francisco while Marshall's gone. And we can have Dave fly down straight from Shasta, so Roger and Marshall will have backup muscle.

I have no opinions about what's going on at Shasta at the moment, I figure our best minds are up there planning for some new beautiful communist utopia. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Oh notwithstanding ALL of the above, if anyone else has any other ideas or don't like this plan please speak up

Leonard

We can zero "Patty Hearst," if she wants that, and bring her on board. Give her a new identity. The easiest and, I think, cleanest way to do that is by staging her murder. I think we: (1) brainwash the SLA members at the safe house with a false memory (maybe we could do this via meme) of DeFreeze and Hearst having an altercation, with DeFreeze eventually manhandling Hearst into a vehicle, which he used to speed off; (2) brainwash DeFreeze into believing he and Hearst had a fight, perhaps he attempted to rape her and she snapped, and he killed her then drove her body out into the desert to burn; (3) create a burn site using charred human remains out in the desert so that DeFreeze can lead the police there.

I have a mild concern that this will just reinforce the narrative the hippies/blacks/commies/youth are dangerous, thus doing the enemy's job for them, but I'm not quite sure what to do about it. Maybe — maybe, I'm not fully convinced this would work — we flip the script so that it's her who kills DeFreeze (or, if you think him staying alive is 100% important for whatever reason, one of the other men in the SLA), and then she just...disappears. It means we'd have to shake the media off the story, but it accomplishes several things: it lets the reactionaries read into it what they will (you can't trust those rapist black/commie/hippie youth), it gives a little something to the counterculture if they want it ('finally a woman who fought back!' for the feminists, 'this is all obviously a trick' for the lefties), and maybe most importantly, it creates a genuine cultural mystery, but not a real one — we know what really happened, and can use it to our advantage. The Legend of Patty Hearst has tons of memetic potential in the future, right? No way we couldn't manipulate that in our favor if we wanted to. And if Hearst won't let it go, well, he's a rich and powerful man, and this gives us leverage with him. I'm not married to the idea, just throwing it out as an alternative if we're worried waxing her would be slightly playing into their hands.

Brant

Yes, true, we can make her sort of a martyr — the woman who got away, the truly free woman, etc.

legends say she still walks these roads and helps lost and wayward young girls a la the deer lady in reservation dogs

Leonard

I can't remember the name of the guy at the Reagan office who was Donald's contact here ... but I feel like we could get away with a B&E at his home or office and see what we can turn up. He might have more information about what they were planning for the rallies, and perhaps even something that ties him to this whole SLA business, DeFreeze, etc. If we can take him down, and in so doing step on some toes, we can always just say we figured out what was going on after investigating the misuse of SANDMAN resources for domestic political ops, and figured, well, if this is an audition, sign us up.

I think this is right, and the only thing I think we can't really square is why Reagan is doing this. It can't just be a political play, right? That seems a little too simple for us to have to deal with. Like, this may seem cocky, but I feel like that level of thing is...beneath us, kind of? Like, who cares about one fixed election or another, knowing what we know. Even if it's something bigger, some Secret Honor-style long-term conspiracy to throw society into a rightward lean for the benefit of big capital, that's just a social tendency, isn't it? Or is it? There has to be some kind of Red King angle, even if it's just to manipulate human affairs in an authoritarian direction to restore their own prestige. If not, we could just subcontract the FBI to fake a sex scandal or some pedestrian shit. I think we should proceed along the path you've suggested, I just think there's got to be some clear connect to the capital-E Enemy that we're not sniffing out yet.

As our resident Actual Historian Doctor, I've spent this whole mission wondering what Rob thinks of the whole Hearst affair and how it played it out IRL, and how it could've played out differently.

Leonard

OK, so, meanwhile, with Donald (that's his name, right?) and the other guy. I think with them, Marshall is gonna have to fly down to LA (ugh) to both brainwash them into believing the cover story about Hearst's death, etc., and forget this all ever happened. (Presumably Marshall could delegate this but in his opinion he's the only brainwasher skilled enough to ensure this is done correctly, because he also assumes someone will be "checking his work"). Maybe while he's down there, Roger can B&E Reagan's chief of staff's place for more evidence or intel? Sophie can have the desk at San Francisco while Marshall's gone. And we can have Dave fly down straight from Shasta, so Roger and Marshall will have backup muscle.

My only comment here is that I am very sure this ties in to the hunt for Alpha Leonis somehow and as soon as we're out of the current entanglement with the SLA, we should probably prioritize that, because I feel like it'll involve those guys regardless.

legends say she still walks these roads and helps lost and wayward young girls a la the deer lady in reservation dogs

Yeah, that's part of it -- more broadly, we can make her whatever we want when the moment calls for it. Savior, martyr, secret avenger, cautionary tale, snake in the garden, whatever the situation calls for there'll already be a pre-loaded set of believers in it already.

Brant

I think this is right, and the only thing I think we can't really square is why Reagan is doing this. It can't just be a political play, right? That seems a little too simple for us to have to deal with. Like, this may seem cocky, but I feel like that level of thing is...beneath us, kind of? Like, who cares about one fixed election or another, knowing what we know. Even if it's something bigger, some Secret Honor-style long-term conspiracy to throw society into a rightward lean for the benefit of big capital, that's just a social tendency, isn't it? Or is it? There has to be some kind of Red King angle, even if it's just to manipulate human affairs in an authoritarian direction to restore their own prestige. If not, we could just subcontract the FBI to fake a sex scandal or some pedestrian shit. I think we should proceed along the path you've suggested, I just think there's got to be some clear connect to the capital-E Enemy that we're not sniffing out yet.

It has to be the monarch angle, the monarch meme. like bill said yesterday (i think it was bill). the '60s and '70s saw the reemergence of the unitary executive theory among right wing think tanks and legal weirdos, especially once they came for nixon.

ugh i completely forgot about alpha leonis, you're right

Jeff

It's all part of the general interconnectedness of all things

By my count right this second:

1) the Red Kings themselves, such as they can be even said to exist as an active force

1a) The Comte St-Germain, supposed loyal agent of the Kings

2) Alpha Leonis, supposed rogue agent of the Kings

3) Bohemian Grove

3a) Ronald Reagan

4) CONTROL There are not four factions arrayed against us. There might not be more than one, I dunno.

Brant

that is the same as my list except i think (and marshall thinks) that 3) and 4) are the same thing

the only "type" of enemy i can imagine that would know who mitch is, know he's connected with marshall, know how to find mitch, and know that they can just walk up to him and threaten him and not be incinerated is Control, to my mind

Jeff

I mean maybe they just have a super esper with Serendipity VII and ten levels of Anti-Psi

Brant

let's hope that isn't the case

Michael

I think this is right, and the only thing I think we can't really square is why Reagan is doing this. It can't just be a political play, right? That seems a little too simple for us to have to deal with. Like, this may seem cocky, but I feel like that level of thing is...beneath us, kind of? Like, who cares about one fixed election or another, knowing what we know. Even if it's something bigger, some Secret Honor-style long-term conspiracy to throw society into a rightward lean for the benefit of big capital, that's just a social tendency, isn't it? Or is it? There has to be some kind of Red King angle, even if it's just to manipulate human affairs in an authoritarian direction to restore their own prestige. If not, we could just subcontract the FBI to fake a sex scandal or some pedestrian shit. I think we should proceed along the path you've suggested, I just think there's got to be some clear connect to the capital-E Enemy that we're not sniffing out yet.

Sophie audibly shuffles some of the papers containing her recent esmological calculations into the conference phone at Livermore's now-empty meeting room when Jocasta asks about Reagan's angle.

"I may have placed outsized importance on the Owls when I fed the data into the esmological formulae, Jocasta, but knowing what we know now about their origins, I thought it wise."

"It seems to me that if Ambrose helped the Owls create a new ontology based on the meme of 'secret rulers who are able to place people on the throne of America based on blackmail,' based nominally on Bierce's inspiration as found in Chambers's 'The Repairer of Reputations,' it would make sense to assume that to ascend to the Presidency in America, you have to, 'play ball' with the Owls. The historical record shows that Nixon did so in 1967. He was committed to never running again for President after he lost the governor's race in '62. He changed his mind a few months after his Grove speech."

"Governor Reagan's schedule this weekend, while an Impeach Nixon rally is happening back in California, is to go to Iowa to reminisce with his old radio station and then go to Houston to hobnob with George Bush and John Connolly. Two signs he's anxious to run. If a riot breaks out at the march, he gets to come home suddenly and use some of these detention plans to act tough against Black insurgency. The esmology is clear. This event is Reagan's stepping-stone to the Presidency, his black offering upon the Bohemians' altar, his ticket to the Grove."

Brant

oh and also i had an idea about Andrew Krane in re: the SLA. Marshall's whole thing with Andy is that he's never understood his point, like, what is he good for? I think for this op we could have Andy "direct" the Hearst-Kills-DeFreeze-and-Becomes-the-Stuff-of-Legend memeplex that we deploy as cover. maybe he and merrick can work together to brainwash them. I feel like Andy would be good at creating this sort of memeplex -- something that has the weight of verisimilitude but feels mysterious and strange, those sorts of events are easier for people to "remember" than a boring ol' "i heard a fight and a gunshot"

Michael

"Recruiting Andy for a plot that will tickle the frontal cortexes of all the paranoids of all political stripes out there," Genevieve says across the table at Kearny Street now that Marshall has had his long soak at the nearby hotel, "why Marshall, that's so generous of you."

Brant

this is actually perfect because building off Leonard's idea if we make the death and liberation of Patty Hearst a sufficiently compelling and weird story, we can later option it into movies and popular legend and use that as the vector for going after the Man -- sort of like the JFK assassination conspiracy but as a beacon of hope rather than cynicism

Leonard

"Dueling Patty Hearst bio-pics at your local theater," Jocasta says. "A society-has-fallen narrative for the conservatives, a woman-avenged story for the liberals, a serious-faced dry biography for the snobs and a you-rubes-I'll-tell-you-the-REAL-story conspiracy theory for the slobs. I'd see 'em all." (edited)

Rob

(whoa I'm getting real Troy returns with the pizza vibes here - why are we killing Patty?)

Leonard

I think we've changed to the idea of not killing her.

Jeff

We fake her death, DB Cooper style

Leonard

(Publicly) disappearing her and (privately) recruiting her

Michael

that is the same as my list except i think (and marshall thinks) that 3) and 4) are the same thing

And for the record, after her Esmology crit, Sophie doesn't think that Control and the Owls are nominally the same entity. Sophie thinks the Testament of Carl Wheat was an accurate, if jumbled, reflection of how things work: SANDMAN's predecessors came about post-1906 quake as the Owls' "police force" for handling the Kings. Using the governor's catspaws and lending them SANDMAN tech to orchestrate a false-flag insurgency seems like too many steps to Sophie if Control and the Owls were the same thing.

"Let's theorize that the Owls are everyone's bosses. The President, Control, the military-industrial complex, the intelligence agencies. Christ, that makes me sound like a right loony. But yes, if you want a place of power in the Owls' hierarchy, you have to prove yourself. It all depends on what subsidiary organization you belong to. 'Go on,' they say to Reagan and Meese, 'show us you've got the balls to do what needs to be done to stop widespread social disorder, which you and we both abhor. Here's a sleeper agent and the remote control, leased from one of our other subsidiaries, to get him to do what you need to.'"

Jeff

I do feel like drawing the line between Control and the group that Sophie is so insistent on calling the Owls, that is almost certainly a distinction without a meaningful difference

Michael

"Well I just got tired of differentiating between 'old' and 'new' Bohemians, Mitchell." Sophie laughs jaggedly despite the paranoia she seems to have settling in.

Jeff

Sure sure. But Focus on the Family, the Federalist Society, and the GOP are three distinct organizations and yet it's not like they have a lot of policy difference.

Brant

(whoa I'm getting real Troy returns with the pizza vibes here - why are we killing Patty?)

yeah — we kill DeFreeze, invent a Weird story about how Patty did it, then “Patty” vanishes, is never caught, and becomes a sort of “free woman” symbol for everyone to project their ideas onto

Michael

It sounds like we have the Hearst/DeFreeze and SLA stuff decided upon and have some kind of consensus, unless Rob or Bill want to interject or disagree on it. To my mind (and feel free to put this meta-agenda-setting at least partially in Sophie's mouth if you want), the rest of our Mission 9 agenda involves the following loose ends:

how the Reagan-Owls axis might respond to the SLA project being rolled up by us (and this thread includes Jolly West's whereabouts, SANDMAN status and future disposition)
the activity around the Impeach Nixon march in LA (the meme now bubbling away in South Central LA)
further intel-gathering and possible conflict with the Owls beyond the parameters of the SLA affair (all the questions above posed by Sophie and you all about their power level, origins, agenda, control over Control, etc.)
the Sapphire Tablets and what they might mean (and by extension the power of the Illuminated, Ambrose's final days and his tales of the City of the Illuminated on the other side of the White Sands)
and maybe the Blue Star interest in Mitch/the unstable ontological ground in Los Angeles/the SLA affair/the Owls (if Mitch chooses to disclose)

Sophie (or Archie) are welcome to bring esmology to bear on any of these topics as we develop them in-character.

Brant

Let's see, where is Roger? He's good with the play of "Patty Hearst murdered her captor and fled to Mexico and parts south" as a legend.

He's good with further recon into Reagan's team-- plumber work sounds fine. He'd also suggest a "face" ploy-- why not push an appointment/meeting and then mind probe Reagan or Meese directly? If Marshall hinted he's coming from the Owls, I bet Reagan would give him a meeting out in Iowa or wherever.

He's worried that countering the riot meme isn't getting enough attention in all this talk. Getting a counter out there and fast enough to suppress the contagion of the already escaped meme is highest priority on his list. It's his neighborhoods. Plus whatever Reagan thinks he's doing, you know Red King opportunists, or Old Bohemia timeline stuff could fire off this-- stopping a riot that has the potential of an unplanned tremblor seems most important. Sophie and Archie should be on that source tape making a counter ASAP.

Roger's missed most of the fact that there's this opportunity happening in Shasta with all the Illuminated and major magic items due to distance/being on assignment a lot. So most of my suggestions during the session were just his higher self. But yeah, if anyone happens to brief him on that, Roger would have things to say.

Jeff

Roger has always been the guy who remembers the actual mission and task at hand rather than letting himself get distracted by Comte etc

Bill

Roger: "OK, so magic and wizards and the tablets from Mt. Sinai, gotcha. All for playing with that, you know, once we've averted mass murder."

(Oh, and Roger’s aware that there are other alternative esmologists this could be delegated to. He’d rather push for the Best.)

Leonard

Might be too soon, but if we can get Leonard Crow Dog involved I bet he could juice the memetic package deployed at the March

Brant

I've been punting the Meme and the Rally Problem (MRP) partly because I feel like we don't yet know enough about what the other side's plan was overall to effectively counter it and partly because, OOC, I lack the "meme juice" -- Rob, Bill, and Leonard have, to my mind, so far, been our best "let's make a meme" minds. So I guess we need to concretize:

(1) Mike, remind us all what the meme was, exactly, that Roger sussed out of Cinque, et al.? Was it just, "let's get a bunch of potentially violent Black gangs to commit violence at a rally"?

(2) If we are going to neuter or counter that meme, what does that look like? Since the initial vector for the meme was Cinque, can we use his coming death as a way to inject a counter-meme into the noosphere? Like, maybe leak to the press that he was a snitch? That would a be good foundation for our later attempt at bringing down Reagan & Co. by tracing this whole fucked up situation back to them, actually. So maybe we should do that? Fold it into the plan we've come up with for Patty, and execute that plan like, tomorrow or the next day so that we have time to disseminate the "Cinque was a snitch and a coward and a rapist and he died at Patty's hand" meme to counter the original meme?

(3) Could we fold Leonard Crow Dog into that somehow? Position him and his people somehow as like the legitimate, disciplined, Actual Leftist alternative to Cinque, et al.?

(4) Could we get Archie to develop such a meme? He's our best mind at this and we want it to be Super Effective.

(5) So if we go with that plan, sequence of events immediately would be: Marshall and David to join Roger and Merrick in LA; Marshall to brainwash Donald & The Other Guy; Merrick to work with Andy at developing a Weird screen-memory-meme that we can deploy among the SLA members we have in our safe house; Roger to do a little B&E at Meese's offices to get more intel; Archie to develop a counter-meme. Not sure what Mitch or Jo want to do —setting up the crime scene and killing Cinque, etc., seems like Jo and Marshall Work, but not sure if Jo wants to leave Patty at Shasta. (edited)

Michael

(1) Here's a quote from that scene at the social club:

Roger is no expert in memetic design of course; he can't sit here and analyze the precise balance of verbal rap and source code in Cinque's speech and what it's trying to instill in the Crips and Bloods. But given the subject matter it's being delivered wrapped up within—in a rap to rally these gangs for a march parallel to next weekend's Impeach Nixon march—Roger has a pretty good idea it's got to do with political/street action of some kind.

Brant

Roger declined to willingly get infected by the meme, reasoning to himself, Yeah, infection is one way to get the meme back to Archie for a counter, but way too risky. Screw that. We can pick up a Crip off the street. And of course now we have the meme cartridge from the two black-baggers' radio transmitter gun, so if we can get the memetic data off that, we won't even need to pick up a Crip off the street.

Would Sophie be able to get the data off the device? If not her, how do we get is extracted? I assume SANDMAN has people for this sort of thing.

We could have the device sent by private copter or military jet up to Livermore like, immediately, Sophie would have it in a few hours

Michael

I feel like Roger had a successful renched Electronics Operation (Psychotronics) roll during the session the other night examining the transmitter and the data cartridge, plus a successful Hidden Lore (Project SANDMAN Legends) roll, so let me expand upon that pair of successes a little bit:

SANDMAN tech is a tricky thing, of course. The more mundane TL 7 stuff (the bleeding-edge pharmaceuticals, for instance: mopers, Modafinils, etc.) can get more-or-less mass produced at friendly corporations who get to reap the benefits of releasing the drugs later to the general public. And then you have stuff that's "mass"-produced for standard use by field agents but at Granite Peak: gear like the ikoters and the computer-aided hi-vis Project glyphs.

But for stuff that isn't standard issue—much of the psychotronic gear we've seen the CWG use so far, Brain Hacking equipment, Charley's sonic disruptor that we used at the Mansa gig—this kind of gear needs to be custom-built. And Roger can tell this little beauty is a one-of-a-kind. Which means that reading the data off the cartridge will mean that either a custom reader will need to be reverse-engineered (this is the kind of work that would have kept Charley in her lab for days) or we'll need to find the original lab where this thing was programmed.

Merrick, of course, spent a good chunk of time black-bagging Jolly West's office. "If we're looking for an originating lab on the radio transmitter and data cartridge," Merrick says, "I'd bet we'd find it at that Nike missile base that West's Violence Center was using for their work." Merrick takes out the West dossier he's put together and shows Roger the article from Science For the People Vol. VI no.3, "Violence Center: Psychotechnology for Repression," specifically the letter from West to Dr. J.M. Stubblebine, director of the California Department of Health.

Merrick says to Roger (and to Marshall on the conference call), "I would imagine the programming work for the Vacaville subjects was done out there at the missile base. If Jolly was operating his Violence Center under the CWG's aegis, a quick call to the Peak could clear up if that base is still operational under the Project's direction, was handed back to the military, or was shut down when the CWG was broken up."

Brant

OK, nice work, John. Marshall will have Sophie put in a call, discreetly. We may need to long-term this part because we need to proceed somewhat cautiously — we don’t want to tip our hand right now before we can wipe Donald+’s minds and setup this whole thing with Hearst. Maybe we can tap Charley for a special assignment to decrypt it. Regardless we need a counter meme to sort of … ensure chill vibes or something at the rally? (edited)

this must be what it feels like to play a 15th level bard

Leonard

God this was so many campaigns in my latter days of D&D

ALL MY YOUNGER, LOWER-LEVEL TEAMMATES: We are going to fuck this dragon up

ME, A NEAR EPIC-LEVEL BARD, HUNDREDS OF MILES AWAY AT MY IMPENETRABLE KEEP: You guys will not believe the poem I'm going to write about this

Michael

OK, nice work, John. Marshall will have Sophie put in a call, discreetly. We may need to long-term this part because we need to proceed somewhat cautiously — we don’t want to tip our hand right now before we can wipe Donald+’s minds and setup this whole thing with Hearst. Maybe we can tap Charley for a special assignment to decrypt it. Regardless we need a counter meme to sort of … ensure chill vibes or something at the rally? (edited)

I think it's reasonable to retcon/backfill the fact that Control/Beth Cole giving URIEL carte blanche to dismantle the CWG post-ALLOCHTHON means that we have a line on the CWG records from Granite Peak, which Marshall (or any of his URIEL subordinates) can use for whatever CWG "cleanup" might be required. Seems like, for instance, this was the kind of intel Jo used to dispatch Uri/rescue the Space Kids/Gellerlings from Puharich's school in Ossining and bring (some of) them to Shasta.

So with that in mind, Sophie can check the CWG records that show that the Nike base in the Santa Monica Mountains was used by the CWG/Dr. West for part of 1972 into 1973 but since the CWG's losing favor with Control in November, Nike site LA78 has been decommissioned from Project use. It's currently in limbo, with some in the Project saying it should be used for a new SANDMAN operation and others saying it can revert to explicit U.S. government control: the other old Nike bases in the LA metro area have been/are being lined up to be turned into fire control stations, communications hubs for private broadcast enterprise, even parks. The Department of the Interior has been nosing around LA78: its central location in the Santa Monica Mountains would make it a great park ranger HQ. So for now it's probably being guarded by a very bored SANDMAN or private security team, awaiting decisions on how its equipment will be disposed of/recycled.

Rob

Hi all: sorry for missing the memetics discussion; was up at the lake for Queen Victoria's Birthday. Some of what I'm responding to here is back a ways in the thread - still catching back up to real time.

Archie can certainly work on a countermeme for the Anti-Nixon Rally. "Cinque was a snitch and a coward and a rapist" sounds good to me and has the virtue of being true but it would definitely be helpful to know what's on the meme cartridge / what's supposed to go down at the rally. (hey, maybe we'll save Nixon's bacon after all)

As for Patricia, Archie had originally been thinking about getting Hearst back to her family in a pageant of generational reconciliation, but I also dig this idea of letting Patty "die" to become a more mythic archetype. Maybe we leave room for doubt from the start about whether she's really alive or dead. A vanished Patty might be a kind of counterculture Tom Joad, everywhere and nowhere, a blank screen on which all manner of meanings can be projected.

Brant

OK so if we have THAT kind of pull Marshall will pull rank and ask to have all the contents of that installation related to Jolly’s work remanded to URIEL custody at Livermore.

Michael

Wanna hit me with a Savoir-Faire (SANDMAN)-23 roll? (That's your base skill of 16 + 3 for SANDMAN Statuses, +2 for Charisma and +2 for Voice. Corruption is also available.) Degree of success will basically determine how quickly the lab gets moved, i.e. how many resources the Project assigns to it.

Brant

>> SUCCESS by 12

Michael

So if you figure that inventorying, packing, airlifting, unpacking, and resettling the equipment in an underground Nike missile base full of equipment would take 10-14 days at a leisurely, normal work pace (which is just my spitball estimate but which sounds reasonable), Marshall's urgency and pull with the Project and succeeding by 12 would put that at something like 1-2 days. Figure we'll have it all onsite at Livermore by Tuesday morning.

So Marshall and Dave should be heading down to LA on Sunday sometime so Marshall can handle DeFreeze and Wolfe. The Nike lab will be disassembled over Sunday and Monday which means we should have the memetics info off the cartridge in our hands by Tuesday morning, giving Archie plenty of time to plan a countermeme for the meme spread by DeFreeze before Saturday. (edited)

After helping Marshall at Lookout Mountain with DeFreeze and Wolfe, Merrick can go and work with Andrew on a meme for the SLA rank and file prior to their being apprehended. Timing on this will be early in the week, presumably, since after DeFreeze, Wolfe, and Patty are missing for more than a day, Bill Harris will likely take his second-in-command "responsibilities" seriously, but again, we have 24/7 eyes on the safehouse so if anything starts bubbling up there we can hit them easily enough.

So that pretty much leaves us with the longer-term questions around the Owls, Reagan, etc., as well as the "Weird" stuff: the Illuminated being drawn to Shasta, the Tablets, and Blue Star.

This is also probably the moment (before I hit fast-forward on the clock to late Sunday/Monday/Tuesday) where I should ask, say, Jeff and Leonard if they want to have a scene with Dan Miller

(I only single them out since they're the couple of PCs with less to do at this very moment in the immedate aftermath of the Sunday morning "summit" with Ambrose and Elsie.)

(Sort of picturing the St.-Germain School campus right now as one of those point-and-click games where you have a bunch of NPCs you can walk around and talk to )

So that pretty much leaves us with the longer-term questions around the Owls, Reagan, etc., as well as the "Weird" stuff: the Illuminated being drawn to Shasta, the Tablets, and Blue Star.

Do we want to talk about any of this stuff in-character at this time? If not, we can table it until some of the messy wetwork down in LA is done. Like I said, the only thing remaining on my Shasta agenda is Dan and sorting through the aftermath of the Sterling-London-Bierce colloquium.

All right, with apologies to Jeff and Leonard and the Dan scene, here's what I have left for us to do leading up to the Nixon march on Saturday and Thursday night's live session.

deciding what to do about Ambrose's Illuminated machinations (resolution can be part of the live session)
deciding what to do about the Sapphire Tablets (this can be part of the live session)
deciding what to do about "Mickey" and "Donald" (this can be part of the live session)
Merrick and Andy designing the meme to send Wolfe back to the safehouse with (will narrate this briefly before live session)
law enforcement finding Cinque, Calvert, and Smith on Tuesday (will narrate this briefly before live session)
designing and deploying countermemetics for Cinque's meme (will resolve this before live session)
the ramifications of the SLA resolution, memetics, and what we observe as far as counter-moves by the Owls, Reagan, Jolly, etc. (resolution can be part of the live session)
the Nixon march on Saturday (resolution can be part of the live session)
Robert Redford coming to Karuņā for a pool party (remember this? this can be our coda for the live session)

Mission NineC SuiteMarshall RedgraveArchie RansomMitch HortRoger MartinJocasta MenosSophie EdelsteinJohn Merrick

Brant Casavant

Revelations

The Legend of Patty Hearst

9/6