Saving Bernie’s Life
Brant
So let’s say that David, Marshall, Archie, and Charley all take one of the vans, with Bernadette in back wrapped in wet blankets, to get Bernadette’s car. David can pick up her car, Marshall will give him like $500 cash, and tell him to drive it back to the Barn and deposit it in the same building where we keep our clandestine vehicle “fleet” (probably the other vans we own). Then he can take the Cadillac back to the Mission.
Meanwhile, Archie can drive Marshall, Charley, and Bernadette to the Mission. On the way, Marshall will write out the list of things he needs — IV fluid stands, a metric ton of IV fluid, heart rate monitor, ventilator, medications, etc. I don’t know how Rob wants to handle that — maybe a Patron roll? Rob, are you cool with this plan? And I’d like to do a little scene with Charley while the two of them are getting Bernadette set up and Archie is off making arrangements.
Michael
(The Mission can accept a helicopter landing, right?)
Brant
(Yeah, I mean, not ideal from a being-discreet standpoint but needs must and Marshall can always pass it off as an uber-VIP who flew in. I forgot before this session that Marshall is, like, an actual doctor with a medical degree, so this will be a fun new role for him / me while we figure out how to heal Bernie.)
Michael
(Just what I was thinking. Fastest way to get the supplies from whatever the closest DoD facility is to the Mission is by heli. You know what I really need for this game? A map of the US from 1973 with all contemporaneously-existing military bases on it.)
Marshall, you should have your requested supplies, at SANDMAN's TL 7+1 (that means cutting-edge antibiotics, IV fluids, etc. and generally-speaking +4 equipment bonuses) by around 11 pm.
Leonard
[Whenever you're ready, Brant, I'll have Jocasta ring through on Marshall's private line.]
Brant
(somewhat muffled) “… yeah, put it right, no, yeah there. OK. (clearly) Marshall speaking.”
Leonard
"Jocasta here. I won't keep you long — been in session with the boys, and got some good intel, but I'm not sure if it's actionable. I can go deeper but the vibes are bad here. I recorded the session and can bring it to you to to discuss further. What should I do with them? Two are workable, but two are pretty resistant. I can bring them up, or wipe them, or dump them."
Brant
Marshall goes silent for about 30 seconds. Then: “Keep the most useful one. Terminate the rest. Will you have time to clear their house tonight?”
Leonard
"It'll be tight, but I'll head over there now. See you in the morning."
Brant
(click)
Once Marshall hangs up with Jocasta, he signs something on a clipboard being held by one of the military-esque men who delivered all the equipment. He turns to Charley: “Alright, wonder kid, ready to learn how to set up a trauma ward?” Marshall cracks open a box and draws out an IV bag full of clear fluid.
Mel
“Yes.” Charley quickly replies.
Brant
Marshall guides Charley through setting up the med equipment. He tells her what should go where and why; at the same time, he straps on a surgical robe, mask, and gloves and sets about removing whatever clothing and jewelry he can from Bernadette’s body. “So,” he says during a lull while Charley is working, “seems like Mitch can heal people with his mind.” It’s not entirely clear from his tone if he’s talking to Charley or just to the room. “What do we make of that, kiddo?”
(Mike, the point of this scene, mechanically, is for Marshall to get Bernadette set up and stable as if she were receiving the equivalent medical care that she’d get at a normal hospital. Not sure how you wanna structure that — I have Physician and First Aid, plus whatever bonuses you’ll give me for Charley’s assistance. Also: did Bernadette’s clothing burn and jewelry melt? Like did she erupt into flames?)
Michael
Not to get into too much gruesome detail but there definitely would have been some scorched clothing and melted jewelry to, uh, extract and skin areas to cleanse in the immediate aftermath of the burning and part of that would fall under Dr. Redgrave's follow-up burn unit care. The rest of your questions about Marshall's long-term care of Bernadette are coming in a very long post I am working on now.
Brant: So there are multiple things here we need to track and take into consideration. Most importantly I need to find out from Jeff what HP level Bernadette is currently at (if she was only stabilized and no HP were actually healed, which is what I think I ruled on the fly last week, she is at -13 HP). I know for sure that Mitch did use Cure to stabilize Bernadette from the danger of Mortal Wounds, so we can put those worries (and manifold confusing rolls) out of our head for the time being. After we find out what HP Bernadette is at, here is the order of operations.
First Aid from Shock. Marshall has the opportunity to do a First Aid check to help with the shock damage. Given you have medical equipment at TL 7+1, you can restore 1d6 HP of shock in this scene with a First Aid-17 check. This will more than likely get Bernadette into territory between 0 and -11 HP, and thus, quoting B423, "At 0 HP or worse, but above -1xHP, make a HT roll to awaken every hour. Once you succeed, you can act normally." Again, I'm sure Bernadette might be in GM-fiat temporary Disadvantage territory from the terrible pain/disorientation/how damaged her vocal cords might be from fire affecting her ability to communicate.
Bernadette qualifies for "natural recovery." 1 HP/day healed on a successful HT roll from Bernadette with a successful attending Physician-16 roll from Marshall and an hour of medical attention each day. Those will start on Wednesday.
Additional medical care. And also daily, starting on Wednesday, Marshall's "additional medical care" will provide healing on a successful Physician-16 roll: 1 HP on a success, 2 HP on a crit, -1 HP on a crit fail.
Infection prevention. This is folded into Marshall's Physician rolls above; I would also argue that Mitch's stabilization and Marshall's First Aid (if successful) forestalled any initial opportunity for infection. But! If Marshall crit fails a Physician roll above, either for Bernadette's natural recovery or additional care, we will have to have Bernadette roll HT minus 1 (10, -5 from burn damage, +4 from hi-tech SANDMAN super-antibiotics) to avoid losing an HP per day to a secondary infection. Once she succeeds once, she's beaten it but a new crit fail from Marshall will trigger a tertiary infection.
The "disease" of being horribly burned. This will apply to Mitch's Cure ability only. Yes, we have decided to use a -12 penalty to reflect the difficulty of healing Bernadette from -13 HP. But as Marshall uses mundane techniques to get Bernadette back up to more positive HP territory, I would argue that Mitch's penalty should reduce as well. See below for revision. A combination of high-tech trauma care and messianic healing ability could get her "up and about" much more quickly. But GURPS says I am within my rights as GM to assess permanent damage since she was in Mortal Wound territory; here is where scarring, Appearance loss, etc. come in. It will depend, as many things in this healing process, on a successful HT roll from Bernadette.
Mel: Charley doesn't really have any skills on her sheet that can help Marshall out with these rolls but if one of Charley's past lives were a doctor or a nurse she could definitely pull some Physician out with her past lives Wild Talent. Also, according to Wild Talent "Tech level is irrelevant: a TL3 monk could make an IQ roll to use Computer Programming/TL12!" So, like, it wouldn't even have to be like, a modern doctor/nurse past life.
(Sadly, Charley is not very good yet at extending her Second Chance quantum timeline reroll ability to actions by other people—she only has the Transference (Second Chance) technique at the Default of 4 and that could come in handy with crucial First Aid/Physician rolls. But she can Second Chance her own rolls: Wild Talent or otherwise. And it's worth a roll on Transference (Second Chance) if things go south, nothing bad will happen if you crit-fail it. Unfortunately it doesn't qualify for Extra Time modifiers; you need to use it in the split second after Marshall fails a roll.)
(And of course if Bernadette does die from a cascading set of terrible rolls, we have Charley's Post-Mortem Electroencephalogy but I think Marshall's getting Bernadette the equivalent of a 1990s trauma ward with SANDMAN equipment is gonna save the day here.)
Brant
(sounds like a good plan. to the clear: Marshall is sincerely hoping Mitch can figure out his healing powers and restore Bernadette with his mind because tending to a third-degree burn victim for the next X number of months isn’t an ideal situation for him or anyone.)
Michael
(sounds like a good plan. to the clear: Marshall is sincerely hoping Mitch can figure out his healing powers and restore Bernadette with his mind because tending to a third-degree burn victim for the next X number of months isn’t an ideal situation for him or anyone.)
(Cool. That makes total sense. I want to wait to hear if @Raven_Hare wants to use Wild Talent to help Marshall with treating Bernadette or not before you roll First Aid, fyi.)
(Sadly, Charley is not very good yet at extending her Second Chance quantum timeline reroll ability to actions by other people—she only has the Transference (Second Chance) technique at the Default of 4 and that could come in handy with crucial First Aid/Physician rolls. But she can Second Chance her own rolls: Wild Talent or otherwise. And it's worth a roll on Transference (Second Chance) if things go south, nothing bad will happen if you crit-fail it. Unfortunately it doesn't qualify for Extra Time modifiers; you need to use it in the split second after Marshall fails a roll.
Oh! I forgot. You could use Corruption to boost Transference (Second Chance) if you wanted to give your reroll to someone else!
Jeff
Without going back and looking through the text logs (which I assume you've already done) I can clarify that Mitch's intent was to heal Bernie as much as possible, because that would make it easier to interrogate her. At the same time iirc Mitch was on fumes, FP-wise, after healing Roger. I have a vague recollection of thinking that Mitch should be able to heal her more or less completely from the HP loss but the "burned" status effect was a separate thing.
Mitch used however much FP he had available to treat Bernie, and his plan was and is to treat her more in the future however that works out.
Michael
Okay, for dramatic purposes I am going to say that Mitch only got her stabilized and out of the Mortal Wound danger zone for transportation to the Mission if that's all right. But yeah, if Mitch wanted to come up to Sonoma on Wednesday to try and lay on hands after a full night's sleep/FP recovery and after Marshall's gotten Bernadette onto a burn victim protocol, I am more than down.
Jeff
I continue to not be 100% in love with the "burned status is a disease" paradigm because it seems to me equally plausible to declare "shot in the chest" a disease, or "been in a car wreck" a disease, or "got mauled by a kusarikku" and so on
On the other hand I don't have a better idea
At the time I was pitching The English Patient as a paradigm where the guy was able to speak and respond despite horrible burns, and maybe some middle ground between "skin entirely replaced with scar tissue" and "magically healthy new pink unblemished flesh everywhere"
Michael
I think you're probably right about the penalties for repeated Cure-ing being sufficient to reflect the difficulty of treating burns and before I had the Bio-Tech burn damage/healing rules, I'd defaulted to the disease penalty paradigm... on the other hand! Knowing now that burn victims can't heal in GURPS mundanely without special treatment, extra doctor time, fluids, and antibiotics... that feels like a "disease" in everything but official definition. So let's just say once Bernadette is stabilized and getting TL 7+1 regular care, Mitch's job becomes way easier and merely apply the standard suite of Cure penalties if/when he comes up to Sonoma to finish the Bernadette healing job. Hell, if Mitch is in the mood to do an all-nighter, he could drive up there after taking Roger home and arrive around 1 am or so.
The scarring/permanent Disadvantages I will leave up to an HT roll on Bernadette's part.
Jeff
Ennnnh I guess. Pop a modafinil.
Mel
Does it seem to Charley that Marshall need her help? Because it seems to me Marshall is presenting himself as an authority and teacher. So, I don’t think Charley would feel the need to do more then follow his instructions.
And answer his questions
Michael
Marshall seems very much in control of the medical situation, especially with the Army men who delivered all the equipment. What Charley thinks of the CCRME is probably the more interesting application of her Curiosity. Like, all these TV screens are hooked up to different U-Matic video players! And there's a control panel! Charley can tell with a touch that the panel could be so much more expertly designed, but the controls let Marshall queue up any number of images and sounds and play them in concert or by themselves, rewind them or freeze-frame them to … well, I guess that's the question Charley really wants to know, that she's Curious about. What is all this A/V equipment in here aid of?
Brant
Can I make a Body Language roll to tell if Charley's Curiosity has been triggered vis-a-vis the CCRME?
Michael
Yeah, absolutely.
Brant
>>>> SUCCESS by 7
Michael
(btw Mel I did roll Self-Control for Curiosity secretly and Charley did fail … sometimes I wonder if they actually engineered Charley's Curiosity into her at Granite Peak …)
Brant
Marshall glances up at Charley as he removes the last of Bernadette's clothing. "The screens help with reprogramming. They must've used something similar with you at the Peak. I don't quite know how it all works on the technical side — I just now what buttons to push. Anyway, look, we may be here all night, depending on Mitch's whole … thing. There's a record player in the booth," he nods his head toward the one-way glass on the observation wall, "why don't you go pull something for us to listen to while I work. My copy of Judy at Carnegie Hall is upstairs, on the record player in the living room. Let's start with that."
Mel
Marshall's mention of programming at the Peak peels away the thin, safe, sterile medical veneer as he simultaneously peels away the last of who Bernadette was. Charley turns white, forgetting to breathe as she looks at the bare body. Everything slows down, and it's all melting. The monitors and skin become foreign landscapes. Yet, the sadness of the situation is still not welcome, and it quietly sits alone in some visitor waiting room unknown to her. There is a ringing in her ear, and when it reaches a pitch, she can no longer hear; she comes through the moment to regain some equilibrium. Then words come to the surface, and she asks, "Does my dad have the same powers as Mitch?"
Brant
Marshall looks up again and raises an eyebrow. Can I make another Body Language or similar roll to see if I can suss out vaguely what Charley's experiencing?
Michael
It's covered under your previous roll. Marshall thinks the gestalt effect of the atmosphere/vibes in here is getting to her.
Brant
A second passes with Charley's question hanging in the air. "No. I think he has ... different 'powers'." Charley can hear the air quotes around "powers." He walks away from Bernadette, pulls off one of the surgical gloves, and rests his hand on the back of her neck in a gentle, calming way. "Hey. Hey. Stay with me here, OK? I need you to focus. I know this is hard." He glances over at Bernadette's charred body. "I know. But you're an agent of the Project. Stay with me."
Michael
Fright Check, Rule of 14.
>>>> SUCCESS by 7
(No failed Fright Check for Charley, fyi)
Mel
"Ok. I'm OK. I'll go play your record." In the observation room, when she pulls out what should be the Judy Garland album she finds it's a Franz Schubert recording featuring Erlkonig. She plays it instead and heads back to Marshall.
Brant
When Charley returns Marshall she sees Marshall through the one-way glass wiping his nose with his fingers in a pinching manner. He snaps on another glove and returns to Bernadette where he starts to perform certain emergency triage procedures, starting with hooking her up to an IV drip of sedatives and painkillers. When the music comes on she sees him glance over his shoulder at the window before looking back down at the body. “Schubert?” he says; she can hear his voice crackle through the speakers in the control booth. “Hm. I must’ve … well, he was never quite my thing but I think that’s the recording with my sister on piano. She’s in the New York Philharmonic, you know. Ever listen to this one before, Charley?”
(Should I make the first First Aid roll, Mike?)
Michael
(Yeah, go for it)
Brant
>>>> SUCCESS by 4
Michael
Heal 1d6 HP.
Brant
>>>> 1d6 … 4
Michael
HT-11 to wake up.
>>>> FAILURE by 1
As of midnight, Bernadette is at -9 HP. Bernadette is still unconscious but once Marshall has done rudimentary bandaging, disinfection, painkiller administration, and IV work, Bernadette's vitals get reassuringly stronger: heartrate, respiration, and pupil dilation all are getting to a point where Marshall believes she'll likely be up and generally aware in a few hours.
(I'll continue making HT rolls each hour as the hours go by, of course.)
Mel
“I’ve never heard this piece by Schubert. I like his Trio op. 100 best.”
“Is Bernadette going to be ok?”
Brant
Marshall nods as Charley re-enters the room. “Unless your uncle Mitch has more tricks up his sleeve, I’d say no — she’ll live, but these are serious burns, no one could survive them and be ‘OK’. Of course, even if Mitch can work some miracle on her, she won’t be OK even then. Not when we’re done with her.” He pauses and then glances at Charley. “It’s best you don’t worry too much about Bernadette Fry, Charley. Here, bring me those bandages from that box. We need to start wrapping her up. I’ll show you how.” He nods toward an open Army medical supply crate.
“Now watch carefully,” Marshall says, once Charley had the bandages. He spends a moment showing her what to do as Schubert plays over the speaker system. Then: “You’re very quiet for someone your age, you know that? Not that I have extensive experience with children — but my nieces, they’re about your age and are always chatting chatting chatting.” He looks at Charley and winks before returning to the work. “But I suspect you’re just quiet around me. You and Roger seem to get along great. You know Roger and I know each other from … way back.”
Mel
Not meaning to be quiet Charley tries, “Oh, really? You worked together before?” Then she quickly adds, “I do like Roger and his magic.”
Brant
“Yes,” he says, wrapping Bernadette’s arms. “We served in the jungle together. An early op — for the Project, you see. That one went south. Like this one. Not fit for children, probably — although I disagree with everyone else about you, Charley. I think they needn’t treat you like such a child. But that’s neither here nor there. Yes, Roger is a hard one to kill. I’m not sure he realizes how hard.” He chuckles. “This one night, it was just him and me. We’d lost the rest of the team and it was, well, it was a bad vibe, let’s say that. One can get sort of confessional in those moments, you know? Perhaps you don’t know. You’re so young. Anyway, we got to talking about music, sort of idle reminiscing so as to disassociate a bit from our … situation. He asked me what a ‘white fucker like you listens to’ and I laughed and told him, well, I saw Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall in ‘61. And do you know what he said to me, Charley?”
Mel
“Hmmm?” Charley is envisioning Roger starting to tear up as “Over the Rainbow” plays and it just seems funny. “Did he say, ‘That lady can sing but it’s not my jam man’?
Brant
“Ha! No! He said, ‘Huh, my abuela loves Judy Garland. Never would’ve thought she’d have something in common with you.’” Marshall smiles to himself. “It was funnier in the moment. Anyway, the next day he — or some part of him, he’d say the loa — saved our lives.” Marshall finishes bandaging Bernadette and then hooks her up to an oxygen mask. “Well, she should be all set for a little while.” He looks at his watch. “Not sure when we should expect Mitch. Or your dad.”
Mel
“You don’t believe in the loa?”
Brant
"Well, that's — " he stops as the record stops. "Hold on." Marshall goes into the control booth and replaces the Schubert with The Beatles (The White Album). He returns to the CCRME as "Back in the U.S.S.R." comes on over the speakers. "Like I was saying, that's a complicated question. Do I believe Roger — and, I guess, now, you — have special abilities that allow you to commune with seemingly-autonomous entities that some cultural traditions might call the loa? Sure. Of course. I saw stranger things in Vietnam. And I've seen Roger at work. Hell, I talked with that Devil persona of his long before any of you did. But are they 'spirits'? Are they Jungian archetypes made manifest in the minds of certain individuals who are able to channel them? Are they semi-conscious memetic projections like Archie's puppets — êkimmu, in other words, who do not work for the Red Kings? Creations of the Illuminated, people like Andrew Krane or Mitch Hort, who can visit our History under the right circumstances? Is it all just multiple personality disorder?" He shrugs as he sort of paces around Bernadette, checking her vitals and adjusting machines. "Who can say?"
After a pause, he glances up at Charley and says: "The thing with magical thinking, Charley, is that it's unstable. It is within that liminal space of instability that danger dwells — the dangers of the Red Kings, and who knows what else. I believe real power lies in ourselves. The atman. It is better, I'd say, to be uncertain about what one believes than to be certain about one's beliefs based on nothing more than one's own perceptions."
Mel
“Magic is our power. And I think it was magic that saved humanity from the Red Kings and will again.”
“Seems like everything we do is dangerous and unstable especially done thoughtlessly. But our organization is nothing but the ‘thought police’ as Jane would say (if she knew what we did.). I don’t think our method is sustainable.”
Brant
Marshall shrugs. “Ob La Di, Ob La Da” comes on. “But what is magic, Charley? Is magic out there,” he gestures vaguely around the room, “or is it in here?” He reaches forward and taps her forehead gently. “Saying magic exists and that it is humanity’s power only gets you so far. Is magic real? Of course! Look at all the wonders we have encountered in the course of our work! But is that really magic? Or is what you call magic just a heuristic?” When Charley says the thing about the organization Marshall at first raises an eyebrow. “Jane? Archie’s daughter?” Then he laughs. “Ahah! There you are! There’s that übermensch the Project craves! Yes, Charley — yes we are the thought police. But that just proves my point: if magic existed out there, rather than in here,” he taps his temple, “we wouldn’t need to police people’s thoughts.”
“Our method isn’t sustainable. That’s the secret. That's what you learn when you've done this work as long as I have. How can any system so complex as ours be sustainable? Fiddle with one piece and the whole thing breaks. It's too intricate! That’s why we do what we do: we keep people from fiddling with the system, thinking they can fix it, because when they try to, worse things happen.” He gestures at Bernadette's charred body.
Mel
Feeling tired Charley simply says, “Okay.” Then looks at Bernadette and says, “Are we almost done?”
Brant
"Well, she's stable. And she's not going anywhere. So, yes, I'd say we are done for now. I should stay here with her. But you don't need to -- if you'd like to wait upstairs for Mitch or Archie, feel free."
Mel
“Okay, bye Marshall.”
Brant
Marshall watches her leave, shaking his head as she goes.
Michael
HT-11 to wake up at 1 am.
>>>> FAILURE by 4
HT-11 to wake up at 2 am.
>>>> SUCCESS by 1
2 am.
Brant
(Quick timing question: was Mitch [@Dr. Cronk] coming to the Mission after dropping Roger off, etc.? I thought I'd seen that somewhere but maybe I was mistaken. Basically wondering who is planning on joining Marshall and Charley this evening.)
Michael
Well, it's up to you guys. Jocasta has the cover story as the one bringing Charley home but if Mitch wanted to come up to Sonoma after dropping Roger off, I'm fine with it.
Leonard
[Jocasta will arrive at around 5-6 AM and will want to debrief with her van full of treats. She can take Charley home after.]
Jeff
Mitch is going to where Bernie is, which I thought was the Barn, not the Mission, because unlike Ray I do not pay good attention
Michael
Okay, Mitch should Serendipitously (no charge) arrive right before Bernadette starts waking up around 2 am in that case.
Jeff
Mitch's only greeting is a half-nod. "Okay, so. I'm probably not the first person to think of this but we don't know what kind of psychic whammy Fry might be able to lay out. None of the intel we've seen suggests she can kill people by wishing them dead but I don't know if I would want to bet cash money on her being totally defanged even in her current state. You're smart, though, you probably thought of that already and you have some kind of plan. Second thought I had though is, I feel like maybe I'm being too passive. Remember a few weeks ago, I was all, time to stop letting the world push me around like I'm tubing downstream? I wonder if I've been too much tubing along looking at the scenery. Maybe I should be making a list of people who the world would be better off without, and taking them out of this world. What I'm saying is I kind of regret not killing Elizabeth Clare Prophet when we met her. And man I know there are other people that we would all benefit from seeing gone. Like, Tom Parker maybe. I dunno. Modinafil always gets me thinking past my limits."
"It would be suspicious if Kissinger just caught fire. But he flies on a lot of airplanes. I could head up to the top of Shasta...?"
Brant
Marshall initial reaction is something akin to, "How the hell did you get in here? Or even past the front gate? I thought I locked the door." But then he realizes who he is dealing with. "OK, well, first, I feel like I just had this conversation with Charley. Did you see Charley when you came in? Anyway, you may find this hard to believe," Marshall is talking very fast, as he sometimes does. "But I don't actually have a plan for Bernadette. I've never seen anyone survive third-degree burns before so ... well, I guess it's just a risk we need to take. I mean, if she had the ability to wish someone dead she would've done it at the abduction site, right? No way someone who could stop you would just let you incinerate them to death. Near-death. Whatever."
Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction" comes on over the loud speaker.
"The, uh, thing about being ... passive. That's," Marshall looks at Mitch a little worriedly, a little ... scared? Perhaps? "That's heavy shit. Dangerous. But you're not concerned with danger anymore, are you, Mitch? I just ... well, I'm reminded of something a friend of mine once said: It’s a real problem. People get a whiff of reality, they throw out all their preconceptions, well, some of them, and then they just get a bunch of new ones that account for what they’ve experienced. Sometimes not even well, like, if you’re gonna get a new belief system it should at least hang together, but ... It’s an occupational hazard: thinking you have things figured out. Mitch notices Marshall hasn't moved from the other side of Bernadette
Jeff
Mitch starts a little at Marshall's surprise, then glances around guiltily, like he messed up and should have known better. "Uh. Yeah." He sags into a chair and rubs his temples. "I shouldn't have taken the modafinil. Screwing around with my basic biological processes like that, it just, 'oh yeah this is all fake' you know? But at the same time I don't want to be a passive observer, or just swing at whatever they throw over the plate. Probably I shouldn't have mentioned Kissinger. Tom Parker, it'd be a change for the better but maybe nothing big. We've already done a couple of things like that. Right now probably isn't a good time to shift focus but who knows when the chance will come? If we're ever in Vegas..."
Brant
Marshall moves around Bernadette's body and approaches Mitch. He drags a seat over and takes it. "This is all fake? Do you ... think this is all ... fake, Mitch?"
Jeff
"Uh...yeah? We're not really sitting in chairs, there's no real SANDMAN or Enemy, you're not you, I'm not me...it's all illusion. I thought you were--this is in Buddhism, right?"
Brant
"I mean, no, not really." He sighs. "But we don't need to get into all that. Look, there's illusion -- maya -- the notion that the phenomenal world that we see and interact with exists, when in fact it is just the way we perceive the world that is an illusion because we are limited in our capacities to see and understand. But that's not what I think you mean. I think you mean that you believe this world is fake. I mean, that's the word you used, fake. And if you really believe it's fake, Mitch ... where does that leave you?" Mitch is channeling all the empathy he can muster, despite the cocaine.
Jeff
"I feel like you're getting sidetracked, like, if I said the world is a story that we're telling ourselves slash each other, would that be better? Nobody wants to think about the existential crisis of the... of anybody, really. It's been done, it's trite, it's boring. We got other stuff to deal with."
Mitch gestures pointedly at Bernie.
"Stupid modafinil."
Brant
"And I feel like you're diverting, Mitch. What you're processing now -- these feelings of passivity, needing to take some kind of action -- those feelings are related to what you did to her." He puts his hands up. "I'm not saying what you did was wrong! I would've done the same thing if I could. But you almost killed a woman with your mind, Mitch. And we never discussed what you did to Frank DiGiuseppe. And now you're sitting here, high as hell on medical-grade amphetamine, telling me you're wondering if you should do more because it's all fake. Besides," he follows Mitch's gesture to Bernadette, "she's not going anywhere and Lord knows when she'll wake up, I have enough pain killers and sedatives in her to put a horse to sleep."
Jeff
"Okay, I mean, I guess you're not wrong. I have a lot of power, a lot of agency, a lot of capacity-to-affect-the-narrative, a lot of spotlight-hogging habits and mannerisms. I did a thing... I incapacitated Bernie without a lot of concern as to whether she'd survive it or what would happen to her next. It's too early for me to be cheering myself and saying it went great, and I should do more stuff because it's always so fucking riveting when I do..." He curls his lip. "I don't like feeling powerless any more than the next guy and the whole war over reality we're involved with, it's too big for any one of us to wrap our arms around completely. If I want to affect things and feel like I'm making the world better, it'd be easy to pick out some bad actors. Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Tom Parker, Henry Kissinger, uh...
"I don't know, man. There are people the world would better without them in it. Hardly anybody tries to play God and turn thought to deed, and the people who do are mostly bad and crazy. I just don't like being so reactive in the face of evil all the time."
Brant
"If I could venture a piece of advice, Mitch."
He pauses; he genuinely wants to know if Mitch wants the advice.
Jeff
Mitch looks expectant.
Brnt
"If I were you — and sometimes," he leans forward conspiratorially, and winks, "I do wish I was — if I were you, or I had your abilities, I would feel the same way. And I would be tempted to use them to … eliminate, I guess, certain pieces on the board. But I wonder if it's better for you to think about how you can use your powers to change the board, rather than just the pieces at play. If that makes any sense." He stands and walks over to Bernadette to check her vitals and so on.
Jeff
"When you have a hammer, you see nails."