Seat of the Gods

Michael

Following the narrative neutralization of Carl Fletcher and the subsequent reversal of the twelfth floor to History A, both teams — MARPA and Atlantis — find themselves on the now completely-reverted stairwell. The stairwell terminates in heavy concrete-set style bulkhead door, leading to the roof, marked "NO ADMITTANCE," the sign tattered and foxed from its sojourn between Histories. As the Majestic Twelve ascend onto the roof, the first thing they notice is the cityscape. It is not San Francisco. The St. Francis's new tower is not there; in its place is a large building that looks a bit like a termite mound with crystals embedded in it. Very few Sumerian motifs mark its surfaces. The rest of the buildings populating this San Francisco-B skyline are made of clay like the ziggurat roof you all are now standing upon. Flying vehicles, looking like iridescent beetle carapaces with gossamer-thin wings, flit to and from the more well-lit towers. The sky is purple: a night-time sky lit by eerie crystalline lights and occasional flashes of lightning darting from the low clouds to the majestic clay towers. This is a storm. And it feels to everyone on the roof like one occasioned by what is happening in History A. Around the roof at a distance of about 30 feet at its highest point is a barely-visible bubble.

Upon the roof of the ziggurat are two objects gleaming with a sinister ultraviolet gleam in the light of the lightning and skyline. One, fairly far from the bulkhead door that exists as the sole promontory of History A in this scene, about 40 yards away, is a 6-foot tall golden spike. It looks a bit like a farming tool, a bit like a scepter, and a bit like a medieval mace. A long solid golden staff ends in a spade-looking tool on one end and in a multi-spiked "business" end. The entire object looks to be made of solid gold; it must weigh near a ton. The second object on this ziggurat roof is also made of seemingly solid gold. It is a chair, or more properly a couch. Bent at the knee with a platform for lying down, with another angled place for the seated's head, it looks like a lawn chair made out of solid gold in a vague Sumerian/Greek/Persian design motif. Other than these two golden objects there is no one or nothing on this roof.

LEONARD: Jocasta will, as Maurdunn, give a brief speech: “Friends, comrades, fellow jewels of bright Atlantis: We stand on the very precipice of peril. Do not be tempted by these visions of a sparkling future; they are meant to lull you and weaken you into temptation towards the bloodshed we have seen before.” She will pause and modulate her voice into a DI’s rhythms from her basic training. “But the enemy is weak and his war is nearly lost. Do not look with wonder on these phantom scenes, but remember the sight below of our own reality reasserting itself from our unity of vision. And we are —“ and her she will ostentatiously take an ikoter rifle out of the weapons bag — “not without power of our own.”

MANDY: Viv shakes the stardust from her eyes, steeling herself for the mission despite somewhat obvious wonderment.

I think Terence should have Charley on piggy back if everyone is OK with that, with so many stairs and her getting possessed earlier she would probably like the break and at least for now she is safely with an adult, she can always hop off her mount if she wants to act independently.

MIKE: When Merrick, Marshall, and Andy get to the snipers' nest on the roof of the new tower, they find themselves looking nearly directly down on the vacant, multi-bulkhead studded E-shaped roof surface of the old St. Francis. The same de facto GU.SHUB effect that once covered the entirety of the top three floors is now localized to the roof. And in this context, Marshall can see a filmy vague bubble-like membrane enveloping the entire roof of the old tower. There is no evidence of any movement or people on the roof. 

Merrick hands Marshall a pair of high-quality binocs. "Nothing yet. But there does seem to be a semi-permeable barrier down there." 

MIKE: The solid gold pole-like object is a mattock, one of humanity's oldest agricultural tools. The mattock was ostensibly one of Enlil the Storm God's gifts to mankind to make them able to initiate agriculture and gather in big, priest-led cities full of people fueled on grain and bread and beer. This solid-gold mattock is, of course, useless as a tool. Mitch eyes it and realizes this is the reality shard he detected on the roof. The couch or chair or throne is another traditional item from Sumerian-and-after temple building. It was a place for the God to reside when he or she came down to earth, a vessel and symbol of rulership and Heaven's kingship on earth. (Both of these by mass would probably be worth 6-8 times what they would have before Nixon took the world off the gold standard by the way. They're probably both easily worth millions if not tens of millions of dollars in June 1973).

The skyline of this city is as tightly packed in spots as our San Francisco, but there are dark glades and orchards (and rivers!) interspersed and flowing right through the streets. There is only one sore-thumb barren spot in the cityscape, an almost crater-looking, poisoned block where the ground lies fallow with no great tower upon it. 

It is the spot in History A where the Transamerica Pyramid stands.

All six civilians seem dazzled, entranced, but ultimately responsive to stimuli from the Sandmen in the group. All respond attentively to Jocasta's pep/warning talk and keep their eyes on Jo for the time being; her Atlantean war-like countenance seems to be the right and ready metaphysical response to these amazing scenes surrounding the team. Wariness. Strength. Wisdom.

ROB: First question: any living inhabitants of History B here on the roof with us? Human or otherwise? Second: Any sign that entities outside the roof bubble (like the flying beetle vehicles) notice our presence? Third: Yes, I think the two groups ought to unite and figure out a plan. Could History-B or Occultism rolls (all round) give us any hints as to what steps might be useful here?

MIKE: First of all, no, you twelve are the only living entities on this roof. Second, Archie searches nearby rooftops and balconies for evidence of inhabitants of this cityscape: the float-cars/beetles/UFO are too distant to scan for pilots, et al., the nearby buildings tall enough to be able to be seen from this vantage show no signs of inhabitants. If someone wanted to go to the edge of the roof of this massive structure and look down, they can! As far as Hidden Lore and Occultism rolls, I'd like to get an in-character object of investigation: examining the golden objects, using psi powers, etc. But generally speaking from Archie's perspective this scene puts paid to the idea of "History B not being a place you can go" he's said many many times before. Mid-temblor situation of ontological uncertainty aside, I would have to imagine that this situation might have Archie a little unsettled personally, psychologically and mystically?

In any event, understanding how the temporary might have crested this scenario is a decent opportunity for a Hidden Lore roll for Archie.

BILL: Roger, and likely Jo, will pull out weapons (ikoter in Roger’s case) and do a sweep of the roof, maybe examining that roof edge/barrier. Still nothing that says a giant beetle car or lamassu or something else flying couldn’t come in.

LEONARD: Jocasta is down for joining Roger on an ikoter sweep of the roof. She'll likely want to examine and sketch the maul and throne, as well, but she'll wait for Archie's direction before she tries to use Psychometry or anything else.

MIKE: Kim has taken a step away from the group, marveling at the architecture, feeling his role as Girand deep inside as he looks at the various towers, termite mounds, bug-ships and ziggurats on the skyline. "Almost like home," he says almost to himself, "but not quite." Not sure if he means San Francisco or Yerba Buena by "home" there.

Roger and Jocasta find nobody hiding in the nooks and crannies of the roof level here, behind pillars or porticos or any of the architectural features that frame the roof level. From the perspective of this roof, the building below gets slowly wider until at its base it takes up almost all of what would be Union Square in this universe. And at the base of this temple, Jocasta and Roger can see some History B humans clustered around: temple guards, maybe? The Annunakku version of the FBI? They seem to be holding weapons of some kind in hand and also seem to be ... searching for someone or something in the small orange grove at the base of the ziggurat. They are within rifle range.

ROB: I do think this would shake Archie up. His take on the changed architecture of the other floors would've been that that was all an illusion, and he could still rationalize things that way, but it's harder here. You said we didn't need to make Fright Checks, but I could if appropriate. I think the way he'd deal with it might be to drop deeper in to the Stone persona so that "Archie" doesn't directly experience any of this. But I will make that Hidden Lore roll.

MIKE: So even in a temblor zone, Archie finds the way the building has disappeared/reappeared is a bit too orderly. Why, it'd be just like a science fiction story where a man goes back in time and prevents his parents from meeting and his siblings for some reason disappear, piece by piece, one by one. It doesn't make any sense for Archie to be able to see this gorgeous 360-degree cityscape! History B isn't a place! So ultimately Archie can't quite fit this alien vista within his belief system of how History B operates. But maybe Sebastian Stone could.

ROB: The only reason Archie wouldn't want to let Stone drive is wanting to look after Charley – he did catch Jocasta's reference on the radio to the dolphin ambassador taking a shock. But if the two teams have met in the stairwell and Charley seems OK (that Berkeley botany student giving her a piggy-back ride is obviously an upstanding young man), Archie will dissociate a little (or a lot) into the Stone role. What would Stone do in this situation? I don't know if that's another History B roll or if Archie can access some ersatz magickal knowledge through Stone, but I think Stone's line of thinking would be, "We are the Irruptors here, so how can we best wreak havoc on History B? Some kind of History A restoring ritual? Seize and destroy (or use) the Reality Shard? Sic Mitch on something? All of the above?"

MIKE: So this new set of thoughts as Archie slides into Director Stone's shoes again gives Archie a fresh perspective on the problem. Tying in a little bit of Archie's own earlier conversation with Mitch — "sending our Jackson Pollocks to History B," etc. — Stone figures "raising hell" would be an amazing idea. That chair and that mattock, they're crucial, Stone thinks. But he doesn't know quite how, at first.

He mulls it over. The chair/lounge is obviously a royal, holy throne. One fit for a god. And in that sense Stone remembers the tales of godly visitations at the tops of ziggurats, where the human priests could become closer to the gods, where they could engage in ... commerce with them. Whether that was the humans' presentation of worship or sacrifice (animal or human) to make the god stronger and more able to handle the stress of being on our plane, the god would need a vessel. Whichever human sat in that chair, well, they'd be filled with the spirit of the god. And depending on the portfolio of said deity, they might fight (Marduk) or fuck (Inanna) or give forth "rain" (Enlil). Whatever the case, it would be an ecstatic experience for the human vessel, one that would release him or her from all constraints of human law and morality, one that could make them into an indiscriminate god-on-earth. 

This is the real deal, Stone thinks: unfettered, direct god-magic. Just think what could be done with this. Stone doesn't seem to care about the mattock anymore, he's just thinking of what possession of an artifact like this could do for MARPA! Somewhere deep down inside Director Stone, though, Archie watches this train of thought. Archie remembers two things: the golden plates of Joseph Smith (of course), and Armando, Frank's dad, and the "exorcism" Archie did in the ambulance back in February. The tiny, trapped-in-a-box voice of Archie shouts internally to Sebastian, "It's a machine, an instrument! It's designed for a human to receive an ekimmû! The final Irruptor is an ekimmû and we have no idea where it might be!"

I should also probably note from Stone's/Archie's Hidden Lore roll that both of them realize that despite the frightening vistas beyond the roofline, we are still very much bodily at least partially in History A. The filmy bubble around us is like a bubble of air on a sinking luxury cruise liner. This mattock and that throne are here in San Francisco, because the throne would have to be in History A in order to channel that final Irruptor.

MIKE: Andrew sidles up to Marshall and Merrick, keeping a wary eye on the lamp-blacked SANDMAN commandoes with state-of-the-art-for-1973 rifles and low-light gear. "What do you mean, 'nothing yet'? I see them all. Genevieve and Archie and a bunch of other people. And a little girl? Right near that bulkhead ..." he points down and, as he looks more closely at the roof, Andrew pauses. "Oh my God." Marshall sees all the color drain from Andrew's face. 

BRANT: Marshall looks at Andy, then Merrick, then Andy, and says: “Well? Don’t leave us in suspense.” 

MIKE: Andrew gulps. "In his hand ... it's hard to see and keep my eyes on, but in that man's hand, it looks like ... a hole in existence. A singularity. It's vibrating. It feels ... it feels like the entire world could be sucked through that void." Andrew clears his throat, hits his own thigh with real frustration. "Goddam it. I'm sorry. This doesn't make any sense, my words aren't making any sense. I can't understand what I'm seeing or the feelings I'm feeling from seeing it. But it just fills me with dread to look at."

Merrick asks, "Who is the man, Mr. Krane. Describe him to us." Andrew then proceeds to perfectly describe, with an author's flourish, Mitchell Jefferson Hort. "I saw him before. In a car, in Berkeley, a couple of days ago. There was something ... ineffable about him. I saw him and felt he was somehow important. And now he's on that roof, with your people, holding a hole in existence in his hand."

JEFF: Mitch stands near the stairwell, scowling and fingering the reality shard coin in his pocket. He doesn't want a demon to materialize on that sofa, but he isn't trying to melt anything immediately.

BRANT: Marshall sighs. "You people can never make these things easy, can you?" Marshall will try to hail the team on the walkie-talkie.

MIKE: Nothing but static.

BRANT: "Cool. Groovy, in fact. Well – I don't see anything we can do right now. Archie's plan has worked so far, so I guess we should see how this, uh, plays out." He looks to Andy. "No secrets, now. No games. Don't try to get smart. If you see more weird shit you tell us immediately." 

MIKE: Andrew nods. "I'll keep watching them. I don't understand why I can see them and you all can't." Andrew then proceeds to give the full description of who's on the ziggurat roof including the mattock and chair.

MEL: Charley would just wonder what normally goes on, on this roof. And if another knowledge roll of say Archaeology would be helpful let me know. But she is definitely looking for signs of trouble. Another thought how about tactics? Rolled as an unlearned skill?

MIKE: Actually, if Charley is thinking "what is this used for" and "what is the situation," I have a couple of skills that would work. Archeology is good for a start, and can you also give me an I/O Tap roll as well. 

So the result of the Archeology roll for Charley is very similar to what Stone/Archie just realized: the throne is a seat by which the gods might visit from the heavens. This is standard Sumerians-and-successors' religious practice, using the ziggurat as a liminal space within which to meet the god. And the mattock, as far as Charley's SANDMAN archeological training is really just a symbol of Enlil, and a ceremonial one at that. The gold, though ... that seems important. And with Charley's own technopathic powers boosted a bit by the proximity to History B, she can sense something important about the fact that both of these objects (and the historical holy vessels of Mesopotamian religion) are gold. Gold is an excellent conductor. And as Charley very idly reaches out with her ability to see data and flows of energy, what Charley realizes is that there is an active, high-bandwidth flow of data being received by the mattock. The mattock isn't a mere ceremonial symbol of Enlil, a farming tool made essentially useless by being made of a non-functional, ductile metal. This mattock is an antenna. A receiving dish. A channel by which data is being gathered and ... grounded, fed into History A. The data's source is out there, in the History B cityscape. What's more, the data is completely incomprehensible to Charley. It's not a History A-style radio transmission, it's not a flow of telecommunications data like on a telephone line or within a computer mainframe. It's something completely alien and encrypted. Of course Charley does have her basic ability to decrypt transmissions but given that she doesn't know what the nature of the data is, she will have to roll against Curiosity.

>>>> FAILURE.

MIKE: Okay. So that does mean that Charley is going to turn her attention to trying to interpret the data. It's going to likely require time and concentration considering your Binary Translation technique is an 8. But I will roll that secretly so I can determine exactly how long it will take to crack.

MEL: Can she break from trying for a moment to ask Terence to walk carry her over to Mitch? (She could walk but likes being carried around). She wants to tell him something. But if she is too involved in what she is doing that's fine.

MIKE: Given the Curious roll failure, she'll need to be working mentally on the decryption problem the whole time she's having Terence take her over to Mitch (and while she's talking to him) but it's not like Curious makes you completely insensate to the situation or your surroundings, so yes, you can multi-task. Considering the constant flow of data, it's not like you're going to have any lack of material to decrypt.

ROB: Stone/Archie approaches the Bad Vibes Couch, and, importantly, tries to keep himself between it and anyone on the team who might be approaching it. "Keep your distance from the throne, everyone: this is god magic!" he orders, ikoter still in hand. Stone may be tempted by the artifact but he and Archie at least agree we don't want any star struck Atlanteans (Hilda, Terence, Kim, Viv?) rushing forward to trigger it and channel an ekimmu/god. (Now, we do have one MARPA agent who is experienced at channeling, but Stone probably doesn't think that's the right play here?) He shouts to be heard over the sound of the storm. "The ship is still sinking, people, but we're not in Sumeria yet! If anyone has any bright ideas on how to banish a rain god, or flush out an ekimmu, the roof is open to suggestions."

MANDY: I did want to get a psych check on Hilda ... does she seem like she might be at risk of doing something rash? Viv feels a weird pull inside herself but she also has her practice and self mastery, she's confident she can keep it in check, but what about Hilda?

MIKE: In Hilda's eyes, Genevieve sees an unvarnished lust, a desire, a power-hunger upon seeing the throne that Viv has rarely seen before. The altered state of this experience might be heightening everyone's emotional responses but instead of being taken aback by the wonder of the alien cityscape all around them, Hilda cannot seem to get over the reality of this solid gold chair. Whether Hilda knows more about its nature, Viv can't say. But she seems riveted by the reality of its existence and is absolutely drawn to it. Since Archie's words she has cooled off a little bit but she can't stop stealing glances at it.

MEL: Once they have reached Mitch, Charley says to Terence, "Thank you, dear Endendros, may the seas of life be ever kind to you." Then she looks at Mitch, "Agent Hort. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Francus Ovidius Noctis (but you can call me Ovid). I have heard of your powers with fire. May I suggest you melt that instrument over there momentarily." She points to the mattock before closing her eyes and continues, "I am sensing messages being transmitted through that like an antenna. But I haven't been able to make out what the message is yet ... It is so difficult to decipher ... "

JEFF: "You think?" Mitch looks from Charley to the mattock and back again. "I feel like I been getting some guff today for destroying potentially valuable, uh, miscellaneous magical items." He pulls out the coin, offers it to her. "This do anything for you?"

"I mean, odds are that thing's going to have to go. Look at it. My only other idea was to try sitting in their chair, see how they like that, but I get the sense that, uh, Silas wouldn't like that from the way he's shouting at us to keep away from it."

Everybody is well back from the mattock, right?

"Probably I should warn people before I do something that could set the building on fire."

MEL: Charley takes the coin from Mitch as she considers it while simultaneously pushing back the endless flow of code she is picking up from the mattock

MIKE: "He's handed it to the girl. She's holding the void now ... but now it's ... it's just a coin."

BRANT: Marshall sighs again, takes a toke off the joint. "Let's try something." He walks off a bit to find a piece of roof debris -- a broken piece of concrete, a random nail, a soda can, whatever. He picks it up and brings it over to Andy. "Throw this down to them. See if you can land it relatively near someone. 

MIKE: Marshall finds a crushed can of Coors — hotel guests or construction workers must have been enjoying themselves up here at some point — and hands it to Andy. "They ... they put me in right field on my Little League team. I dunno how on-target I'm gonna be. Who am I aiming for here? And if we're doing this, shouldn't we put a message in the bottle?" 

BRANT: "Whoever you think you have the best shot of getting near. This is just an experiment. If it works, we'll do the message next. But no point dropping a message-in-a-bottle on a roof if it's just going to land on the roof. We'd have to send one of the boys to get fetch it if it doesn't, uh, work – and the boys hate being sent on fetch missions, you know?" Marshall nods his head over at one of the snipers.

MIKE: Andrew breathes, tries some of the visualization techniques that Genevieve has taught him. Marshall hears Andrew murmur to himself. "I'm going to land this right at the feet of the man who was holding the coin a moment ago. It's going to make it through this barrier between worlds, and land there, and he'll know that someone from our side is here, watching him." With that, he tosses the crushed Coors can with some force to try and land it right at Mitch's feet. 

The Coors can skitters off the edge of the old St. Francis tower and tumbles down to the pavement.

"Fuck! Goddamn it!" Andrew cries out in anguish. "Piece of shit. I'm fucking everything up!"

MIKE: Houdini looks down at the coin through Charley's eyes. "Charley," he says, "that coin and that mattock ... they're both reality shards. I'm ... fearful of what they might do together, and in turn to my presence within you."

MEL: Charley drops the coin.

JEFF: Mitch will move to Roger and Jo and consult with them regarding melting the mattock. Melting the mattock is def his best guess as to what he should be doing, but he doesn't want to ring that bell until everybody is down with it (everybody = Charley, Roger, Jo, Anna I guess; Archie seems to have his own thing going on and Viv isn't on the trolley per se).

MIKE: The silver Norton dollar clatters to the ground.

MEL: After dropping the coin, Charley says: “Please melt the Mattock.”

BRANT: Marshall will go fetch another piece of 100 percent History-A debris, and hand it to Andy. "Again." 

MIKE: Andy takes the cap and throws it. This time it actually lands on the roof, just nowhere near Mitch in particular. I think this time I'm going to have the object be a Coke bottle top, and it lands near Terence. "It's landed near a hippie kid. He's bringing it over to Viv."

MIKE: "The ... the young woman who abducted me earlier today? She's walking towards the throne."

BRANT: Marshall is writing a message out in Danbe on a piece of paper. Without stopping he says, “OK, so, first of all — it wasn’t an ‘abduction,’ it was a ‘voluntary detainment.’ Second of all, get your shit together Andy, because this throw is going to matter.”

MIKE: "Why don't we have one of these two throw it?" Andrew points at the commandos. "It doesn't matter where it lands, and they're probably far more capable than me."

BRANT: Marshall pauses and looks at Merrick, then Andy. “Will it work, Andy? Will the object we throw make it to them?”

“Because — you know — we can’t see them, Andy. Only you can see them because you’re so fucking special. So maybe only you can throw across the boundary.”

MIKE: Andrew sighs. "All right. Only I can do it. That means I can do it. I will do it." Andrew puts out his hand for the message. 

BRANT: Marshall writes in Danbe: “THIS IS CONTROL. WE ARE ON NEW BUILDING ROOF. CANNOT SEE YOU BUT THE WRITER CAN. HE SEEMS ABLE TO SEND THINGS ACROSS. MAYBE MJ TOO? AUTHOR SAYS OBJECT LOOKS LIKE COIN IS ACTUALLY VORTEX, PORTAL, HOLE IN FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME. BUT ONLY WHEN MJ HOLDS IT. OTHERWISE A COIN. BE SAFE. I BROUGHT SPARKLING WHITE LIQUOR CHAMPAGNE.”

He wraps it around a brick and hands it to Andy. Then he grabs Andy’s shoulders and says: “Krane. Look me in the eyes and repeat after me.” He will start to lead Andy in chanting om while attempting to hypnotize him into believing he can throw really, really well this one time — like it’s his destiny to make this throw.

MIKE: Andy tosses the brick wrapped in the note.

BILL: Roger, having just done a paired sweep with Jo, is still aware of her movements, in that way you have to know where your partner is. He’ll shout “Wait, warrior!”

LEONARD: Jocasta has complete trust in Roger as a partner and she knows that he will do everything in his power to protect her if this goes sideways. She is also very convinced that the stakes are high and we need all the information we can get, so she will not stop reaching for the throne unless he physically tackles her. Jocasta touches the Golden Throne.

MIKE: Jocasta's hand recoils from the throne as if she'd touched a hot stovetop. But she doesn't look at it; she stares raptly at the golden mattock, her eyes and nose wrinkling with intensity, as if she's trying to figure out some sort of optical illusion.

JEFF: OK that’s quorum. Mitch turns his attention to the mattock and starts the process of making it melt. No good sense of what will happen here, how long he needs to focus to combust it, but if I understand the rules correctly (and I might well not) then in a few minutes he can do hundreds of damage points of damage to it.

I’m also unsure if, given it’s size, it’s going to melt before it bursts into flame. Or if it won’t set the roof on fire.

We’re all on a journey of discovery together!

MIKE: "It landed," Andy says. "It looks like a few of them heard it hit, but it's pretty far away from them all. Uh, the woman yanked her hand away from the golden chair... oh no, the man with the coin is walking towards that golden pole-axe."

JEFF: This mattock is giving Mitch some vibes, he's going to try getting closer to it before he pulls anything. He is not paying attention to Jocasta and Roger, or to Archie/Stone and his ikoter, or to any note-laden bricks, he's got bigger things on his mind. When he gets close enough to touch it, he does, why not. 

LEONARD: Jocasta spends nine seconds just staring intently at the mattock. But if she comes out of her Matrix-vision before Mitch touches it, she will do anything up to and including doing a judo tackle to stop him from doing so. She'll definitely yell, "No! Burn it!" But only after the nine seconds.

MANDY: It makes sense for Viv's team to get the brick since we've got the bottle cap, but once she has it in hand she'll call out "Agent Stone ... We can't ... We can't read this. Except, uh, champagne?"

BILL: Roger will get to Jo, pull her further away from the throne, and will get between it and her. If she’s flat-footed, all the better, so she doesn’t judo him off the roof. Then he just holds there, defending the throne and waiting to see if she snaps out of it.

MEL: Charley will go over to Viv to look at the brick.

LEONARD: "Roger, stop him! Stop Mitch! That thing is the key, he can't, can't touch ... it's all flowing through it ... it has to burn!" Jocasta says hazily.

MIKE: Jo has touched the throne and is now staring into space with Roger aiding her. Viv and Charley and the rest of the Atlanteans bar Jocasta have been finding these History A objects falling out of the sky onto the roof. And Mitch, after having chatted with Charley and exchanged the Norton coin back and forth with each other (Mitch now has it in hand again) is making his way toward the mattock.

JEFF: Somehow it's always Archie and Mitch who are at odds. The dungarees versus the suits, I suppose.

ROB: But why are we at odds exactly? I mean in this moment? Can Archie (or Stone) read Mitch's intentions at all? Is he possessed or just being sullen and Mitch-y? Would it kill him to take three seconds to explain his motivation as he walks towards Artifact B with Artifact C Archie is awfully fond of Mitch, by the way.

JEFF: Folks said Mitch should destroy the mattock, he's just going to try to do it a slightly different way. If Archie said, "whoa Mitch hold up what're you doing there," he'd certainly pause long enough to say, "I wanna try a thing real quick."

ROB: OK, so Archie hasn't read the brick-note or heard Jocasta's warning. But he knows the mattock is significant, he knows the coin is significant, and he made the Perception roll. Does that give him any reason to think Mitch is possessed or under external influence? If not, he's just going to drop out of character as Stone and say - actually, he's not going to say anything, he just gives Mitch a quizzical look that is meant to say "Do you know what you're doing, Mitch?" And also, "We are on the side of the angels, Mitch. You know that." And if Mitch looks like he does know what he's doing, then Archie trusts him and lets him do his thing.

JEFF: Mitch is not mind-controlled and he's acting in good faith! He just got an idea for a thing to try that maybe will be better than merely melting the mattock. If it vindicates all his History-C theorizing in the process, so much the better.

ROB: In that case, and especially if the Psychology crit hints this relates at all to the History C / Sugar Smacks conversation, Archie lets Mitch do whatever he's planning. He gives him a nod and turns slightly in a 'be my guest' gesture. And if anybody else tries to intervene, say in like five or six seconds, he'll even run interference if he can.

MIKE: All right Mitch. Do whatcha gonna do.

JEFF: All right! Let's see what happens. Mitch brings the Norton coin into contact with the Mattock of Enlil.

Michael

To everyone else on the roof for the next few seconds — except to Charley, Jocasta, Mitch, and Andrew (on the other roof, of course) — nothing much seems to change. 

For Charley, her I/O Tap power shows clearly that the flow of data from History B -> History A has been shut off and interrupted and a new flow of data, from the coin to the mattock and into the roof of the St. Francis, begins. For the next six seconds the data flows, uninterrupted and unencrypted, from the coin into the hotel. 

The remainder of Jocasta's seconds with her vision of the world as described in DMs are spent with her viewing those dual flows of energy, the cool blue of History A and the cherry red of History B, seemingly disrupted by a completely new color coming from the coin. Data in a rich forest green begins flowing out of the coin, through the mattock, and into the hotel. Jocasta can see the cool blue of home being slowly suffused, not under the ziggurat's crimson energy but under this new green energy that is neither red nor blue, neither A nor B.

Mitch feels himself shut off the flow of History B energy into the hotel. 

The roof should be reverting; Mitch has seen this happen before in multiple scenarios. And lo and behold, it starts to do that very thing in the first five or six seconds of the coin's influence. But then, Mitch can sense that the good old roof of the St. Francis isn't the only layer, isn't the bottom layer to things. Underneath his feet near the mattock, Mitch can feel another St. Francis Hotel (or maybe a completely different building?) begin to assert itself. It doesn't register with Detect History B, and it doesn't resemble the roof of the St. Francis, although there are some similarities. It's just a faint afterimage blurring out the boundaries between the ziggurat roof and the good old St. Francis Hotel, but Mitch could swear he's able to see the baroque filigrees and neo-Victorian gargoyles of a completely different building floating to the surface of reality, like iridescent swirls on a soap bubble.

"Christ," Andy says, "the void ... the void's getting bigger. It's not stopping. He's not stopping. There's ..." Andrew is screaming now. "There's an entire world. There's an entire world in there!" A yelp and a cry from Andrew as he digs his nails into his legs in fear. 

For Andrew, his vision of the coin-as-void widens, growing larger, turning into a convex lens about 15 feet across centered right on the mattock. And through the lens Andrew can see a different world. Not the Yerba Buena of his novels, he's almost heartbroken to realize, but some other world, California Republic flags on the wildly-towered baroque skyscrapers on the skyline, sleek airships on the horizon, and a glorious (neo-?)Victorian bridge stretching across the bay. Andrew says, "He's opened up the gate! He's creating a new world!" to Marshall and Merrick. 

As I said, to literally everybody else it just appears like nothing is happening, the skyscape of History B past the crenellations of the ziggurat roof persists, as does the single bulkhead leading back down to the St. Francis.

MEL: Charley yells, “Mitch! The new world you’re about to create is ruled by an Emperor!”

JEFF: "Could be honey, Charley!"

MEL: “It could be piss, Mitch!”

JEFF: Mitch laughs out loud at that.

MIKE: I would say that the Atlanteans — Chelsea, Terence, and Kim — are looking to Genevieve with concern, like, "What is happening here?"

BILL: Roger glances at Archie letting this happen. Then he shouts, “Mitch, stop! What are you doing? You can’t mess with our freedom! Don’t put us back in chains, whoever’s!" Roger turns the gun slightly, and fires it the mattock. Maybe white noise can’t do anything to gold, but maybe chaos in the signal will change something. He shouts, “We can’t have an emperor! Any emperor!” Roger will just hold down the trigger or keep pulling it, again and again.

MANDY: With Jo and Roger shouting, it makes it abundantly clear there is no consensus amongst the agents, the thing she had been relying on with Archie letting Mitch go toward this powerful object. Viv gently slips her hand around Hilda's wrist, kind of a soft restraint. "Agent Double Zero is right! Have you American magicians gone mad with power? Stone! Stone get your man under control!"

ROB: So my vision of the situation is that Archie is standing pretty close to Mitch, between the throne and the mattock. As everyone else is shouting, he'll step towards Mitch and try to speak calmly, earnestly. 

"Are you sure you know what you're doing, Mitch? There are a lot of innocent people down there in the hotel. In History A. My boy is down there. They're all counting on us to get them home."

JEFF: Mitch turns to Archie and waggles his eyebrows in a can you believe that? way. "It'll be fine." He laughs again.

Loud and long.

Also, the temperature starts to drop.

"You think the Kings are feeling this one, Archie?" In the heat of the moment he's forgotten Archie is supposed to be Stone. "You think they can sense it? They're the ones getting picked last for the kickball team, for once. That's what they're so scared of. That we'll realize they're just a bunch of corporate logos." 

Oh, also Mitch is very mildly perturbed at what Roger's doing.

LEONARD: Her eyes clearing and narrowing into a new kind of focus, Jocasta does the only thing she can count on: lets her training take over. She very plainly takes her sidearm out of its holster and lets it rest at her side. It’s not pointing, she has no aggressive demeanor, her finger isn’t on the trigger; but she’s holding it lightly, in a fast-draw grip. 

“Mitch,” she say with as much quiet authority as she can muster. “You’re doing what they want you to do. You know we can’t have that.” She takes a deep focusing breath and very lightly twitches her fingers alongside the pistol. “I’ve trusted you. Now you have to trust me. Only two choices now.”

JEFF: Mitch is nonplussed, and sobers up quickly. "What do you mean? You think they want this? I been getting the opposite sense." He glances at his hand, where he presses the coin onto the mattock. "I take this away, it goes back to Red King signal."

LEONARD: “Yes. And then we destroy it. You’re making a new world, Mitch, but nobody worked for it. Nobody asked for it. It’s just something you made and we’ll all have to live in, like it or not.” She raises the gun to her hip. “We’ve got two worlds like that already, forever battling for control, causing more misery in that fight. You’re just opening a new front. Trust me, Mitch. Drop the coin. Please.” She swallows hard. “Don’t leave us.”

JEFF: "I don't think you get what's happening here. Or maybe I don't." It's noticeably chilly here now. Temperature's dropped about twenty degrees, abruptly.

"I think I do. Which means you're wrong. You don't think you're wrong. So we're at an impasse." Mitch looks at the mattock again, which Roger is still shooting white noise at. "I guess I've made my point."

ROB: Archie steps back a little from Mitch and the mattock, towards Viv. He's putting away his ikoter in a "see, I mean no harm," way. Archie (or Stone? he's trying to split the difference right now) and Viv speak together for just a few seconds. They look back to Mitch, together. Archie calls out, "Mitch? We need to ask you one question!"

MANDY: Viv breathes into the full presence of her Council character and reaches out across the roof to Mitch with that quality of presence in eye contact and the steady bigness of her aura, trying to connect with the person there. "Mitch Hort," she shouts, "do you believe human nature trends inevitably toward fascism?"

JEFF: "Can we talk about this in about three minutes?" Mitch shouts back. "I'm trying to do a thing!"

MANDY: "Not really, Mitch. Your superior could order you to stop, I could 'order' you to stop," an inflection there implying supernatural means, "but is that less totalitarian than what you're doing to all of us right now? Well, that's a trolley problem isn't it? But if we could find consensus? With an inquiry into whose consent truly matters in a crashing of world-lines and ontologies wrestling for meaning? Well ... maybe we could get to the heart of this question you've been so keen on answering. Maybe the answer could be no."

JEFF: Mitch emits a frustrated bellow. "Everybody's gotta put their oar in!" He draws the coin back with one hand, puts the other on the mattock, and tries to melt it with his brain.

MIKE: Andy shouts, "The coin's been released! The lens is closing!"

The Mattock of Enlil slowly begins to run and puddle and become ... er, less erect. The skyscape of History B disappears. Andrew, Merrick, Marshall, and the snipers see the roof of the St. Francis return to normal and 12 humans pop back into place. A rapidly spreading pool of liquid gold, ably sidestepped by Mitch, is forming on the roof. That damn solid gold chair is still there, though. 

The reality temblor has now stabilized. The St. Francis Hotel's old tower is now wholly within History A. A History A that now has Joshua Norton in its history, and everyone, not just Mitch, can vaguely remember his story.

JEFF: "Yeah, I'm releasing the damn thing, give me a second dude!"

LEONARD: Jocasta will lean heavily against a wall and try to hail Marshall on the walkie.

MIKE: He's coming through loud and clear.

Andrew sort of waves to Viv on the other roof.

MANDY: Viv waves back, hopping up and down and smiling broadly.

LEONARD: Jocasta speaks into the walkie loud enough for the whole group, including the civilians, to hear. "Princess Maurdunn reporting from the Atlantean mission to Yerba Buena, command. Thanks to the work of our delegation and its ambassador of peace and unity, and with the brave assistance of the heroic men and women of America, the true oneness of reality has been restored. The demonic forces have been vanquished. Sacrifices of true and good compatriots have been made but we have prevailed. [In Danbe: 'We're good. Situation stable. Get us out of here.'] Hail Atlantis! Hail the alliance of our empires!" She lets go the send key and looks at Kim and Terence. "Bold soldiers of the orichalcum wall; heroes of the temple of Poseidon: meet me at I. Magnin."

She pockets the walkie and lights a cigarette.

BRANT: Marshall will radio Jocasta back, in Danbe: "Control here. We have transport ready outside and a reservation at Tommy's Mexican on Geary. Welcome home." He'll pop the champagne bottle and pour drinks for himself, Merrick, Andy and the commandos.