1/3

Played: July 3, 2020.

Wednesday, February 14, 1973. Roger, Mitch, and Sophie arrive back at Livermore, having left Jocasta behind in Pittsburg to surveil the DiGiuseppe household. An anxious Archie awaits. Everyone exchanges intel and Sophie debriefs everyone on the nature of the êkimmu irruptor type, which is that they are memetic sub-routines consisting of semi-sentient information designed to fulfill a single corruptive purpose. The historical evidence SANDMAN has on êkimmu is that each one is unique, a sort of living program, and that they can only possess one person at a time. Sophie’s explanation does little to calm Mitch down. Lighting a cigarette, he says:

It just seems really — it seems like They would want them to be able to self-replicate. Maybe they don't want us to know that they can self-replicate. Maybe they want us to think that they can't self-replicate and that rolls us into a false sense of security and maybe that false sense of security is valuable enough that they don't self-replicate in situations where it would be tactically advantageous to do so, in favor of maintaining the strategic edge of keeping the ability to self-replicate being secret. In other words, I'm skeptical anytime you tell me there's something these things can't do, that we know that they can't do that. That it's hard to prove a negative.

Roger says it is true that the “greater spirits” are able to “ride” multiple people, but he has no idea if the êkimmu would fall into that category. Archie explains that they have to help the old man, and that the only way to help him is to “bring him in.” At that, Sophie says she shares Archie’s thinking.

My feeling is that if this thing can be captured, isolated and studied, we could find out more about what is happening with his son and what his final goal is, because obviously there's a connection here. I don't know what the connection is. If we go by what Jocasta saw in her vision, our suspect contracted this knowledge when he was over in Vietnam. So one possible trajectory here would be that he picked up the êkimmu there, brought it back here, and for some reason it jumped bodies at one point. Again, Jocasta said that Frank heard a voice talking to him in that memory.

The First Mention of the Barn

Rob: The other question I have, because I remember last time there was some discussion of like … okay do we bring this guy in, what do we do? And just, I guess, I mean, has this come up before? And like, are we set up to, you know, arrest people or bring them in for questioning? Like, can we bring people to Livermore? Does it have cells or does it not have that sort of thing?

Michael: Yeah, we would definitely have to have somewhere black site-like to be able to take people. I haven't detailed it yet but that's something we can do in-game. But we definitely have at least a couple buildings on the campus that are basically buildings with no windows that we just — that only we have the keys to. If anybody's going to be kept any longer than that, usually they're going to get put on a black flight to Granite Peak, Utah, to be fully debriefed. But given that this is a permanent SANDMAN duty station, yeah, we've definitely got some detention areas that we can use. But again they're probably labeled something like “Dangerous. Radioactive Waste. Do Not Enter.”

Rob: Yeah, I mean, well, the ethical slippery slope like starts right on the first step, but I think like, if these guys are — you know, they're dangerous, they're memetically dangerous. We can't just have the old man out there walking around.

Marshall arrives. Everyone catches him up on the sitrep. Marshall seems more suspicious of Sophie and why she was so quick to volunteer to travel to Pittsburg despite hardly ever leaving Livermore for field work. But he mentally tables that and says he agrees they have no choice but to send the team back to Pittsburg to apprehend Armando. Archie asks if it is best if everyone go, but Marshall says that he should remain behind with Sophie in a sort of command post position. Roger insists that the field team needs one of the “big brains” to come with them, because the nature of the creature they are dealing with is something that requires a degree of expertise in memetics. What if the thing jumps between bodies? Roger has some protections against that, but has no idea if they’ll work. Mitch nods along, saying he doesn’t think Marshall understands what he’s asking — black-bagging Armando is going to be trickier than he thinks.

Archie: Well, I mean …

Marshall: I just don’t know what can be done in the field, in an uncontrolled environment, with an entity that we don't have a full understanding of, whereas if we can get him into safer conditions …

Archie: Yes, I mean, you say he wasn't hostile when you spoke to him, right?

Mitch: No, but he's — he's super frail.

Archie: Well, it should be straightforward then?

Mitch: Well, OK. No. No. Because — because here's the thing. What if, right, what if we talked to the guy, when we say, “Hey Frank Senior!” and he responds by going, “Oh, I have a heart attack and I'm dead!” What's gonna — what's the parasite gonna do? It's gonna jump into one of us, right? If that happens? Okay? You didn't see it! You weren't there, with it mirroring you! It was weird and creepy.

Marshall: I understand.

Mitch: I don’t like weird and creepy things.

Marshall: I completely understand. But what I’m suggesting is that I don't think there's anything Archie and I can bring to the fore that would prevent that from happening, if that's a thing that's going to happen.

Roger: You guys got the better brain-training stuff. I mean, I’ll happily black-bag a guy if you need me to but I don’t want it to be in a dangerous situation —

Mitch: Well —

Archie: OK, what I’m hearing is that the elder DiGiuseppe — it doesn't sound like he poses much of a physical threat. That obviously the danger is memetic and informational. So is there a way — truly a way to bring him is to avoid the risk of contamination? It’s unpleasant, of course. But it has to be done without speaking with him, interacting with him …

Roger: Yeah, you don't have to be gentle. We'll bag him. We just need to know how we don’t get whammied. I mean, I'm not going in blindfolded. That's crazy. I need someone to be able to maybe talk one of us down if we get, you know, juju’d.

Archie: No, I think it makes sense for the whole team to go but I think that the most the important thing is to inoculate ourselves and follow protocols that are going to reduce the the risk of contamination.

Sophie says there are ways to do that equipment-wise. There are also ways to knock him unconscious that are not permanently debilitating. To that, Marshall opines that they don’t have enough of an understanding of Armando’s physiology to use any sort of chemical agents on him — administering a mild incapacitating agent is fraught even with healthy individuals, let alone a frail old man with breathing issues. But, he says, there are ways of knocking him out without using chemicals, like an ikoter blast. Sophie nods. He might not survive that either, she explains, but an ikoter would also likely incapacitate the êkimmu. Mitch says the ikoter solution sounds promising, but the team quickly realizes a problem there: no one except Archie has any training in the use of SANDMAN’s still-experimental ikoter technology. Archie says he can give the field team some rudimentary training before they leave and explains a bit about how the device works. “So it’s like when you slap the side of the TV?” Roger asks. Archie chuckles and says, “Sort of.”

Sophie suggests that a reasonable way of removing Armando from his home would be to requisition one of Livermore’s private ambulances from its infirmary department. Armando’s neighbors presumably are aware that he is an old man in poor physical health, so seeing him getting wheeled into an ambulance would not raise any eyebrows. Once he’s safely stowed away at URIEL’s black site (or elsewhere), Marshall, Archie, and Sophie should be able to develop a means of isolating the êkimmu. The team agrees with this idea and make preparations to leave, with Sophie staying behind at Livermore. Archie checks a couple of ikoters out of the armory and also grabs one of his puppets, the goat-cockroach-lizard Enki. He also calls his wife, Melanie, at home to apologize for missing Valentine’s Day, explaining that an emergency has come up at work. Melanie says that’s too bad but that she understands, of course. Mitch, meanwhile, sulks a bit. He seems hugely unenthusiastic about this whole op. His vibe is that he’s only going along because he may be needed and he doesn’t want, like, Roger to die while Mitch is getting drunk at a flophouse to assuage his guilt.

Later, as the team assembles around the ambulance to go over the plan one more time, Sophie explains the tools they will have at their disposal, including physical restraints and a full array of medical equipment.

Sophie: You’ll have everything you need to kind of keep him secure — remember, the ikoter doesn't really last that long so we'll have to get him … again, we know that the only way that this thing can actually start to affect another human being's central nervous system is to be able to physically mirror it and put the whammy on the person, like it did to Mitch.

Mitch: (peevishly) Do we know that, though? Do we know that? Do we know for a fact that that's the only thing? We know that, huh? We know that?

Sophie: (sighing) The only evidence we have had in these records of the êkimmu actually being able to either drain the vitality, like it did to you. The other thing that it can do is cause neurological glitches for hours afterwards. Have you noticed any of those, Mitch?

Mitch: I’m sorry, what?

Sophie: Have you noticed any neurological problems? Stumbling, slurring words, anything like that?

Mitch: No. I’ve noticed no such thing.

Sophie: OK. To answer your question, Mitch, I'm not sure if we know any — you are right, we do not know anything for certain about every single power that every irruptor has. But given the documented history and the folkloric history of these kind of entities, unless this thing is able to look you in the eyes and mirror your central nervous system, it is not going to be able to affect you in any way.

Roger: Can I get a pair of mirrored shades, just in case?

The team arrives in Pittsburg around 6:30 pm. They rendezvous with Jocasta several blocks from Armando’s house. Once they are within sight, she signals them in ASL to warn about the glyph on Armando’s back. Roger turns on the ambulance lights, but not the sirens, picks up Jocasta, and gives everyone inside the vehicle an explanation as to the lay of the land — the size of the house, the proximity of the neighbors, known entryways and exits, etc. A few minutes later, the ambulance pulls up outside Armando’s home. Roger gets out, dressed in EMT attire, and instructs Jocasta to make her way around the back of the house. Mitch pops open the back of the van and he and Roger push out a wheeled stretcher. Marshall and Archie follow, dressed like doctors. As they go, Marshall asks if anyone has an actual black bag with them, just in case: “I just have minimal faith in our ability to actually incapacitate him with these devices (he nods at the ikoters), so I would like, as a backup plan, to have sort of the infallible technology of a bag over the head.” The team argues for a moment about whether a literal black-bag is a good idea, with Archie and Mitch pointing out that they have heavy-duty wool blankets on the stretcher that they can use in lieu of a sinister and attention-getting black bag. Marshall then throws another spanner in the works: who is going to be the getaway driver, because they will need to floor it the moment Armando is in the back of the van. More whispered arguing. Things get weird:

Jocasta: I almost certainly can knock this guy out with a flashlight in the time that it's taken us all to to have this conversation.

Mitch: You might kill him you mean.

Marshall: Exactly. I was — I wanted to just send you three to knock him out and bring him to Livermore but I'm told that he's (air quotes) very frail. So I guess we'll have Roger, myself, and Archie go for the front door.

Mitch: The parts of him that aren't made out of eggshell are made out of paper mâché.

Marshall: But is also imbued with a hostile alien memetic spirit that might be animating a corpse for all we know. He might be stronger than all of us. We have no idea. Remember that conversation you were having with Sophie about known knowns and known unknowns?

Mitch: I was gonna say it seemed unlikely to me that the parasite had the ability to animate the dead but you're right, you're right, Marshall. You’re right! You’re right. You’re right.

Marshall: Anyway. Let’s just get this guy out of there.

With Mitch staying in the back of the van, Roger wheels the stretcher up to the front door with Archie and Marshall following. Jocasta sneaks her way around back, carrying her giant flashlight and some restraints. She peers through a back window and spots Armando in a reclining chair. Roger knocks on the front door and Jocasta watches as Armando lurches himself out of the chair. Again she is able to avert her eyes just in time as he turns his back to her — he is still wearing the shirt with the glyph. Armando walks slowly to the front door, towing his oxygen tank, and opens it. When he sees Roger, Marshall, and Archie, he blinks a few time and says, “Can I help you?” Marshall starts fast-talking with neurolinguistic programming to keep Armando distracted while Archie aims the ikoter at his head. Archie says: “Mr. DiGuiseppe, I’m very sorry to do this.” He pulls the trigger. Armando crumples to the ground. No one moves to catch him. Marshall looks at Roger. Roger: “I hate that that happened to him but I wasn’t touching him.”

Roger quickly pulls out a pair of emergency scissors and cuts Armando’s shirt off, being careful to avoid looking at it in case he catches a glance at the handwritten glyph. With Jocasta’s assistance, he secures Armando on the stretcher, tosses a blanket over him, and wheels him to the ambulance. Everyone hops inside except Jocasta and Marshall, who elect to stay at Armando’s house so that they can search it for evidence. The rest of the team burns rubber. Inside the house, Marshall and Jocasta comb through Armando’s belongings looking for anything relevant to URIEL’s investigation. They find that Armando has likely lived alone for quite a time. They also find what appears to have been Frank’s childhood bedroom. There are photos of the family throughout the home, including of Armando and his now-deceased wife and Frank and his brother. On the fireplace mantle, Marshall picks up a framed copy of one of Frank’s official military photos. Jocasta finds a few photos of Frank in Vietnam, including a couple in front of an airplane. Marshall goes through the medicine cabinet and concludes that, yes, Armando has cancer and it is certainly terminal. Jocasta checks the kitchen and finds it nearly barren: the fridge is basically empty, the cabinets have nothing in them. On the dining room table is a huge stack of unopened mail. The aura of the space feels like it’s been lived in by an alien. They find no glyphs or other evidence of History B. Marshall instructs Jocasta to find a box and the two set about packing up all the photographs, the mail, the family Rolodex, Armando’s medication, and the family Bible.

During their search, Jocasta spends a bit more time than is strictly necessary looking for odd symbols or recurring patterns. When Marshall hands her the family Bible — “It was in the bedside table,” he remarks — she flips through it. Immediately her attention is drawn to the story of Jesus casting out the Gerasene swine (“My name is Legion, for we are many”). That parable has been underlined numerous times. Jocasta surmises that this may be evidence that Armando, on some level, knew what was happening to him. She is also reminded that some scholars think that the Legion parable is early evidence of a person suffering from multiple personality disorder (though out of insecurity about her psychological bona fides, she does not share this with Marshall). Jocasta hands the Bible to Marshall when he returns to the living room and points out the underlined passage. Marshall similarly concludes that Armando knew he was being possessed by something. He muses aloud: “Interesting. Well, you know, psychologists used to believe that this parable was about a man with multiple personality disorder but of course that was debunked years ago as junk science. I think what it demonstrates is that he really feels that he has something inside of him that isn't supposed to be there and he wants it out of him somehow. He needs to get rid of it, but he doesn't know how. Anyway, interesting discovery, Ms. Menos.”

In the ambulance, Roger is the man at the wheel. Once he’s on the highway, he turns off the lights and siren. Archie and Mitch are in back with Armando who is yelling for help and thrashing against his restraints. Mitch reads Armando’s aura and finds that it is not much different from their earlier encounter except that the staticky alien core at the heart of his aura seems more subdued than before. Mitch discerns that the anger Armando is manifesting is coming from the êkimmu, who is compelling Armando to do everything in his limited power to free himself. But the host is too sickly to break the restraints. Mitch believes, and says aloud, that Armando can’t take much more of this. He is too sick to keep up the struggle. Archie nods and reaches into his bag, drawing out Enki. “Mr. DiGiuseppe,” he explains in a calm and authoritative voice, “we’re here to help you. I want you to calm down. We know you’ve been through a lot and we want to make you feel better. I have a friend who’d like to talk to you.” With that, he puts Enki on his hand. Enki starts speaking to Armando in Sumerian, lulling him into a state of calm. From Mitch’s perspective, the fury in Armando’s aura diminishes a bit. Unnervingly, however, the êkimmu seems to be bubbling to the surface.

Armando shouts through the muffled blanket: “Don’t fucking patronize me! Who are you?! Where are you taking me?!” Undeterred, Archie-Enki continues speaking Sumerian, attempting to sedate Armando. After a few seconds, the êkimmu speaks through Armando, also in Sumerian: “You mock our masters with that form!” Enki responds by demanding that the êkimmu release the man or face destruction. After a contest of wills, puppet and irruptor going back and forth in heated Sumerian, the êkimmu asks Enki if its purpose is complete. Enki responds: “Yes, your work is done.” The êkimmu responds: “Then the pyramid shall fall. The children shall bleed into the ground. And your empty buildings shall be for naught.” Mitch watches, then, as the êkimmu shrinks within Armando’s aura, ultimately vanishing. As it does, Armando’s aura grows dimmer and dimmer until, finally, it is extinguished. Armando is dead. Mitch conveys to Archie and Roger that Armando has passed, and that it seems, to him, that it was the êkimmu keeping him alive.

Archie contemplates what happened. He pieces together a theory: the êkimmu knew it was facing its masters’ enemies, but was desperate for a way out of Armando. It was, in not so many words, begging to be released. The only way that could happen, though, was by someone telling it, in Sumerian, that it had fulfilled its purpose — completed its programming, in other words. Faced with being stuck for another who-knows-how-long inside Armando’s decrepit body, it elected to exploit the technical loophole presented by Archie-Enki’s command. Archie explains this to Mitch and Roger before turning to face Enki. He asks Enki in a friendly tone, “What did the man say?” And Enki responds, in English, “He said the pyramids will fall and the children will bleed! And that our buildings will mean nothing! A final curse!” Archie shakes his head: “Oh my goodness! That doesn’t sound very good.” Mitch watches all this a little unsettled. He attempts to read Archie’s aura.

Marshall’s driver arrives at Armando’s house at around 8 pm. He and Jocasta hop in with a couple of packed boxes and had back to Livermore, where they reconvene with the ambulance team. Everyone discusses how best to dispose of Armando’s corpse. Jocasta proposes that they just process his body through the usual channels, using their legitimate law enforcement powers. Marshall, who took a hit of coke on the drive, says that’s a great idea — and, he notes, they could pay for extensive obituaries in all the local papers, stage a huge Italian wake and funeral, and set that up as a trap when Frank attends. “He’s a good Catholic boy, he might be a little screwed up in the head right now due to meds, but I bet the death of his father will still incentivize him to come to a wake or funeral. And we will be there, waiting for him, rather than us going to him.” Sophie asks how they can be sure he’ll read the obituaries, and Marshall says that they can, in addition to the publication, get word out to Frank’s family. After all, they now have his family’s Rolodex and Bible — Sophie can start calling people to get word out that way. Someone in the family must have a way of reaching Frank. Sophie says she can get to work on going through the DiGiuseppes’ belongings. Jocasta volunteers to help (she’s hoped up on a fair amount of Modafinil).

Fast forward to 10:00 pm. Sophie and Jocasta sort out of the boxes containing Frank and Armando’s stuff. Mitch grabs a cup of coffee. Roger steps outside to have a smoke. Marshall and Archie start going through the Rolodex and other papers to see if they can find any useful addresses for Frank. Sophie turns on Pacifica Radio; it’s in the late-night call-in hour. The first voice everyone hears is a man ranting about the Nixon administration. He seems to have been at it for a while, because the DJ — Grace — cuts him off after a minute or so, thanking him for his call. “Next caller,” Grace says. “Hi caller, you’re on air. What’s on your mind?” A male voice responds:

Grace, I listen to you almost every night. I’m the man who planted the bombs at the Transamerica Pyramid.

Mitch jumps from his chair, shouting, “Everybody shut up! SHUT UP! This is the guy! THIS IS THE GUY!” and cranks the volume up. (No one had been talking). He instinctively knows that the caller is not bullshitting. This is the guy. Frank D. DiGuiseppe. Grace at first attempts to end the call but the voice on the line cuts her off: “Four blocks of C4 remotely detonated. It is only the beginning.” Grace pauses for a beat and then responds in a somewhat mechanical tone: “Well, if you are that person, I’m sure everybody has read what you had to say in the paper.” The team can tell that Frank’s voice has done something to Grace, prompting her to answer in that way. Frank goes on:

I have much else to say. This was only the beginning. As I said in my letter, there are more things that need to be done to make all of you able to see. You need to be able to see the truth behind the lies. That Pyramid stands on old, hallowed ground. It is an abomination. It does not need to be removed. It needed merely to be cracked. The next crack will happen very soon. Your children will fuel the gateway again.

Grace says nothing. The team can faintly hear the sound of banging glass live, on-air, and the muffled shouts of a man saying, “Get this guy off air! Grace! Grace!” Grace sounds hypnotized, however. “Hold on,” she says, “hold on. Caller, what are you trying to say to us right now?” Frank:

I’m not threatening anyone. I’m doing what needs to be done. Do you know how many Vietnamese died in the last 10 years? Some estimates say over a million. Your listeners will be very interested to hear why those people had to die.

“Why did they have to die, caller?” Grace asks.

They had to die to keep all of these secrets safe. To keep this world from being ripped apart. I say those sacrifices are not going to happen anymore. To fuel these lies. I said it in my letter: your children will not be safe. It really amused me to see them print that retraction tonight in the Examiner. So I said to myself, I have to call Grace. She’ll let me say my piece. You see, they got to them. They got to the Examiner people. I made sure that they would print that letter and the next day, they just call it a fake. They call it a hoax. It was no hoax, Grace.

Archie asks if they have any way of terminating the call but Sophie says no. Marshall speaks up. They do not want to end the call right now, he says. “We don’t want him — I mean, the broadcast is terrible blah blah blah but we want to keep him talking on the phone because as long as he’s on the phone he’s in one place. So it’s a matter of figuring out where he’s making this call from. We don’t have tracing capabilities, obviously, but he’s probably either at his apartment — his flophouse apartment — on the phone or at a pay phone near there, or near the radio station. He might be looking at the radio station as we are speaking right now. So I think we should dispatch to locations where he might physically be while he's still on the radio, in one place, because even if he hangs up he'll — it'll take a little while to get away. We might have a better chance of actually intercepting him.”

Everyone except Mitch starts talking at once. Roger suggests calling in, but Archie says they have no way of convincing the station to patch them through. Sophie says they might patch Doctor Red through. He’s famous, right? Marshall says good, yes, he’ll call in, try to convince the station to put him on air to talk to Frank. In the next breath he proposes they can dispatch Roger, Jocasta, and Mitch to Frank’s flophouse. Roger says that won’t work: it’ll take too long to get into town, even at speed. Archie proposes that they call the flophouse and ask whoever answers if there’s someone named Frank DiGiuseppe on site right now. Jocasta suggests that they call the police and clue them into Frank’s possible location. Archie says that’s a great idea, and goes one step further: couldn’t Jocasta contact her friends at the FBI? As everyone shouts over one another, Marshall picks up the phone and tries dialing the phone number for Frank’s flophouse. The line is busy. He hangs up. “His line is busy.” Jocasta darts to another phone and dials into the FBI field office. Someone patches her through to Padden and Hall, to whom she rapidly explains the situation. They tell her that they can trace the call, but it will take at least 10 minutes to do so.

Marshall dials into Pacifica Radio. He convinces the engineer to put him on the air. The engineer asks if they should cut the broadcast, but Marshall says no. If Frank determines he’s no longer on live radio, Marshall says, he may hang up and their chances of locating him will be lost. The engineer patches him through.

Grace: Uh, caller I have Dr. Marshall Redgrave — the famed psychiatrist and human potential — um, well, educator who, uh … says he, uh, he wanted to talk to you about your problems.

Frank: I don’t have any problems. The United States has problems.

Marshall: Good evening, caller. Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Frank: I’ve heard of you. I’ve heard of the work that you do.

Marshall: I’ve heard of you. I’ve heard of the work that you do. We both do very interesting work, don’t we?

Frank: Interesting. Important. Absolutely —

Marshall: Is there something I should be calling you? You can call me Marshall, or Doc. But, you know, it’s a little impersonal just calling you ‘caller’.

Frank: Just call me Dee.

Marshall: OK. OK, Dee. Well, I read your letter in the Examiner yesterday, and I thought it had a lot of interesting things to say. I was just listening to your call and, you know, your reference to Vietnam, it made me wonder, did you — did you do your time over there? Did you do your time in the shit?

Frank: (pause) I saw a lot of things over there, Doc.

Marshall: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we all did. I was over there too. I spent eight years there. How long were you there?

Frank: You spent eight years there?

Marshall: Yeah, yeah. From ‘63 ‘till they pulled me out in ‘70.

Frank: What were you doing there?

Marshall: What were any of us doing there? What were you doing there?

Frank: (pause) Doc, I used to love to fly. It was my passion. It was the only thing I loved to do. And they took it from me. I haven’t been able to get in a plane since.

Marshall: I hear about that a lot. I see a lot of that at the Mission. I’ve worked with a lot of veterans who had, you know, the best of themselves taken by what happened over there. It was really — it’s really a tragedy. Do you feel like you’ll get any of that back with what you’re doing? Do you feel like what you’re doing is going to help you get some of that back?

Frank: (hastily) I’m trying to help other people at this point. I’m trying to help them see. So when you read my letter, you understood what I was trying to do?

Marshall: Well, it was a really deep letter. I’m not sure that I understood all of it because you may have been, you know, you might talking about concepts that are even bigger than what I can — what I deal with. So that’s why I’m interested in talking to you. To see if you can walk me through any of these concepts I’m having trouble with. But before you do that, I just wanted to touch on one thing, which is, you say you want to help other people now. I personally am of the opinion that you really can’t help other people until you’ve helped yourself and realized what you’re capable of and repair the damage that this country has done to you. And I’m wondering, how open you would be that opportunity?

Frank: I’ve had the head shrinkers. Both in Vietnam and at the hospital here. Probe and prod and drug me. And it did nothing to stop the nightmares. It did nothing to stop — do you see the ziggurats, Doc?

Marshall: I’m sorry?

Frank: Do you see the ziggurats?

Marshall: Oh everywhere. On the money. I see them downtown. You can’t just —

Frank: No. No! The pyramids are on the money. The ziggurats are in the streets behind the buildings.

Marshall: OK. OK. Like Sumerian ziggurats?

Frank: What? (pause) You’re one of them, aren’t you?

Marshall: One of who?

Frank: You — you put that Transamerica Pyramid there, sure as shit.

Marshall looks at his watch. It’s been five minutes. He has five minutes to kill. He redirects the conversation back to Frank’s potential, to concepts of well-being and esoteric medicine, explaining that he’s not talking about psychology in any clinical sense and is interested in the metaphorical meaning of what Frank is seeing. As this transpires, Jocasta shuffles through some of the DiGiuseppes’ belongings, looking for something that may be of use or which may be a fitting object for her psychometric reading abilities. She finds a photo of Armando and Frank, with Frank in his Civil Air Patrol uniform. She grabs the photo, removes a glove, and touches it. Instantly she is awash in a potent memory. She is in the DiGuiseppe living room in Pittsburg. Frank, with long hair, is arguing with his father, Armando. Armando is a little younger, middle-aged, but in strapping health. Frank appears only a few years younger than his most recent photo. Armando is shouting: “You’ve disgraced yourself! You’ve disgraced the uniform! Telling me all this — you’re telling me you burned people alive?! Do I want to hear that?!” Frank shouts back: “Do you think I care if you want to hear it!? It’s what they made me do!” With that, Jocasta watches as Frank starts to mirror Armando’s gestures and motions. As the argument reaches its crescendo, the two are practically miming one another until Frank says: “It needs to be me to do this. I want to do it.” Instantly, the two stop mimicking one another. Armando collapses into his chair. Frank smiles and says: “I will do you proud. I will do what needs to be done.” He turns and leaves the house.

Jocasta, emerging to her normal perceptions, hastily writes everything down and attempts to sketch out a picture of what she saw. She runs to the area where everyone is assembled around the radio and whispers her findings to the assembled group. Marshall remains on the phone, listening:

Frank: I’ve already done almost everything I need to do. I just need to do one last thing. The children … I need to do it.

Marshall: Right. And when you say what you need to do with regards to ‘the children,’ can you just expand on that a little bit? Because is that a metaphor for something? Is the children the ignorance of our society or is it literal children?

Frank: It’s killing a couple dozen literal children, Doc.

Marshall: And, uh, you’re not at all concerned about the impact that will have on you now that you see what everything we did to the Vietnamese has done to you? Not at all worried about just repeating the damaging cycles, the habits in our lives that hold us back? Make us less of what we really are?

Frank: No. You don’t understand, Doc. When I do this, everything will be different. Every single person will see the truth. It’s gonna — it’s gonna solve everything.

Marshall: Interesting.

With that, Marshall attempts to deploy neurolinguistic programming to hypnotize Frank into a sedated state, hoping he can keep Frank on the line until he hears a door break down and someone shout, “FBI! Freeze!” It half works. Marshall talks about human potential and chakras and a bunch of technical nonsense, lulling Frank into a trance state, until suddenly everyone listening on the radio hears a commotion followed by three gunshots. Marshall says, “Hello? Hello?” into an empty line.