Two Women, Driving
Michael
So Patricia has just revealed that the reason she's been okay with this move to Los Angeles is that what she has planned requires the ability to get on television to the entire country. She's hemming and hawing about leaving Los Angeles with Jocasta—the first time, Jo thinks, that she's really put up any resistance to the strategies I've suggested. How badly does she want Ambrose, is she willing to just bail on the SLA while Cinque and Willie Wolfe are up in Watts at Mafundi meeting with the various Watts and Compton gangs? Will she take the opportunity? Patricia seems to think she needs the rest of the SLA to get on television, and moreover that she owes the SLA something as part of her... metamorphosis into what she's become. The psychology of the hostage who's come to love her captors, because they have made her into one of them. Hijacking victims, bank robbery hostages... in the literature, many of them have shown signs of it. But Jo realizes that Patricia thinks she has not just George Sterling's poetry to thank for her new-found abilities, but the SLA's torture of her as well. And Patricia realizes, memetically, that she needs the SLA for the endgame of... whatever this is, as well.
More than once, Patty has said that If she can be not noticed as having been gone, she'll go to "the ends of the Earth" with Jo meet with Ambrose. And that is where we left Jocasta, with the unenviable task of somehow maneuvering this.
Leonard
Before she does anything else, Jocasta's going to call in and inform Marshall and Archie about everything that's gone down since she returned from the meeting, most especially Elsie's feelings about why Patricia might have been selected and how her own husband was convinced of the power of blood sacrifice, as well as Bierce and London's attitudes about revolution and publicity, and about Patricia's ability to selectively cloud the minds of others, as well as her determination to televise the violence in L.A. with the aid of the other SLA members.
"I don't know if we can trust either of them, honestly. Regardless of their intentions, they're absolutely subsumed with the need for a blood sacrifice to trigger change, and I can't seem to shake them," she says. "This is the first pushback I've gotten from Hearst."
If either of them have any advice or want to change the plan, she's ready to discuss. Otherwise, she's going to do two things. First, she's going to scrounge around for some joss sticks in the shop and punch one through each of the tentacles of the hydra in a photo of the SLA logo. She'll light each one, meditate, and do a knissomantic reading: first to Interpret (thinking about all she has learned from Patricia and the rest of the Bohemians, living and dead) and second to Discover (synthesizing that information into an attempt to find clarity about how to move forward.).
Second, she'll return to the safehouse and, as planned, ingratiate herself as much as possible to Patricia, still trying to sway her into visiting Shasta with her but not pushing it too hard, more just trying to maintain her trust and be open to the possibility. She'll even hint that she (Jocasta) can reach out to the SLA members in L.A. while they're there, in the same way she found Patricia to start with. She'll stay as close to Patricia as she can, just being a strong supportive presence. But once Patricia is asleep, she'll dose and attempt a Mind Probe on the heiress.
Michael
(This is AWESOME. I want to get Management a chance to respond to grafs 1 through 3 before I move forward on knissomancy/mind probe.)
Brant
"We keep to the current mission plan. Stay close. Stay steady. Do what you can to strengthen the connection. Above all: be ready to go, with her, if you or Roger suspect something is about to go down. You have anything you need at your disposal.
Increasingly ... increasingly it feels like we are caught in the middle of something else. There's DeFreeze, and whoever is playing him using whatever experimental tech CWG put into him. There's Hearst, and whoever is guiding her, piloting her ... who knows? She says she has plans but those plans came from somewhere, someone. That, or she is someone else. Someone who has simply taken control of her mind, her body. Like a memetic infection, or a spirit. Or a ghost. Like Houdini.
It seems both 'players' want something of the same thing. They're using one another, at least, or think they are."
Leonard
"Understood. I may have more to report soon; I'm going in deep with Hearst. She may not know who's controlling her, if anyone is, but she knows what direction she's pointing, and I'm going to try and pin down the target."
Michael
(Will roll for Oracle tomorrow morning and give some interpretation but if Rob wants to chime in on the phone call before that, be my guest.)
Leonard
Before she does anything else, Jocasta's going to call in and inform Marshall and Archie about everything that's gone down since she returned from the meeting, most especially Elsie's feelings about why Patricia might have been selected and how her own husband was convinced of the power of blood sacrifice, as well as Bierce and London's attitudes about revolution and publicity, and about Patricia's ability to selectively cloud the minds of others, as well as her determination to televise the violence in L.A. with the aid of the other SLA members. "I don't know if we can trust either of them, honestly. Regardless of their intentions, they're absolutely subsumed with the need for a blood sacrifice to trigger change, and I can't seem to shake them," she says. "This is the first pushback I've gotten from Hearst." If either of them have any advice or want to change the plan, she's ready to discuss. Otherwise, she's going to do two things. First, she's going to scrounge around for some joss sticks in the shop and punch one through each of the tentacles of the hydra in a photo of the SLA logo. She'll light each one, meditate, and do a knissomantic reading: first to Interpret (thinking about all she has learned from Patricia and the rest of the Bohemians, living and dead) and second to Discover (synthesizing that information into an attempt to find clarity about how to move forward.). Second, she'll return to the safehouse and, as planned, ingratiate herself as much as possible to Patricia, still trying to sway her into visiting Shasta with her but not pushing it too hard, more just trying to maintain her trust and be open to the possibility. She'll even hint that she (Jocasta) can reach out to the SLA members in L.A. while they're there, in the same way she found Patricia to start with. She'll stay as close to Patricia as she can, just being a strong supportive presence. But once Patricia is asleep, she'll dose and attempt a Mind Probe on the heiress.
Michael
First, she's going to scrounge around for some joss sticks in the shop and punch one through each of the tentacles of the hydra in a photo of the SLA logo. She'll light each one, meditate, and do a knissomantic reading: first to Interpret (thinking about all she has learned from Patricia and the rest of the Bohemians, living and dead) and second to Discover (synthesizing that information into an attempt to find clarity about how to move forward.).
Umoja-La Unidad-Unity--To strive for and maintain unity in our household, our nation and in The Symbionese Federation.
The joss stick in the first head of the cobra is incredibly hard to light. When it finally gets going, it puts out a pathetically feeble trickle of smoke. This feels pretty obvious to Jo at first glance: the SLA's household is not unified in the slightest. But given she's looking for information about the Bohemians, this is also instructive. The inncer circle of Bohemians' unity of purpose, perhaps, was never strong—too many artists pulling in too many conceptual directions—and was eventually sunk by the Club Bohemians who themselves, we assume, were a faction of the artists (or their patrons?) before the reversal back to the San Francisco Earthquake.
Kujichagulia-La Libre Determinacion-Self Determination--To define ourselves, name ourselves, speak for ourselves and govern ourselves.
The second stick burns unevenly, strongly on one side. Jocasta thinks with some humor that she has to get a new incense supplier. The first goal of any movement, political or spiritual, is to define oneself, to set up precepts, meaning, laws. What this stick shows is that the braintrust behind the Bohemians' purpose was one-sided and that may have contributed to its collapse. Jo's instinct is that the idea of Bohemia, such as it was, existed in George Sterling's baroquely haunted mind. That "uneven burning" is not a solid foundation to a lasting movement; once the founder goes, it can be hard to hold the entire thing together. The light goes out after creeping about halfway down the stick but a single ember falls onto the paper, still going, still glowing. Is... is Sterling still present, here and now, and not simply in memetic form thanks to "A Wine of Wizardry"? Jocasta wonders.
Ujima-Trabajo Colectivo y Responsibilidad-Collective Work and Responsibility--To build and maintain our nation and the federation together by making our brothers’ and sisters’ and the Federation’s problems our problems and solving them together.
Ujamaa-Produccion Cooperativa-Cooperative Production--To build and maintain our own economy from our skills, and labor and resources and to insure ourselves and other nations that we all profit equally from our labor.
The third and fourth sticks burn strongly and brightly for about half their length! Whatever you want to say about the Bohemians, for a while they did succeed, and that would have taken concerted effort on the part of not just the steersmen like Sterling, London, Bierce, Martínez and others, but co-conspirators as well, millions of them brought to believe in Bohemia by Bill Hearst's memetics.
Patricia's plan, to use television, a singular event on television, to prime the American people for a Bohemian revolution: well, many revolutionaries have thought they can spark a light in America to get everyone thinking in a new way but none of them have worked. The Impeach Nixon march, however, does offer a fairly broad base for a revolutionary idea. Sure, the Old Man still has a solid base of support out there amongst the silent majority, but it's never been more fragile. Patricia hasn't shown evidence of an esmological mind per se but the collective knowledge Jo sees in Jack London's hyperrealm of nested imaginary histories sees the logic in using the Nixon march as a springboard, a mass movement dedicated to (at least at first "politely") overthrowing the status quo.
And then Jo remembers it was Cinque who wanted to come down here to LA, and realizes it would be just as powerful a memetic statement for a mass rebellion to be quashed in the international center of all forms of mass media, and that if the Bohemian Club is remote-controlling Cinque, throwing him into the maw of public defeat like that would esmologically lock up revolutionary potential in America for years, maybe decades.
Nia-Proposito-Purpose--To make as our collective vocation the development and liberation of our nation, and all oppressed people, in order to restore our people and all oppressed people to their traditional greatness and humanity.
Kuumba-Creativo-Creativity--To do all we can, as best we can, in order to free our nation and defend the federation and constantly make it and the earth that we all share more beautiful and beneficial.
Both these sticks burn strongly, steadily, and they produce a lot of sweet-smelling smoke. Patricia is sincere and so are all the SLA (sans Cinque, whose motives are questionable considering the chip in his head). There is an undertone of acrid sourness here—the danger of the Red memetics left inside "A Wine of Wizardry" perhaps—but the kids do believe in their final goal. As did the original Bohemians! Jocasta looks into the smoke and considers the fact that they were all dreamers, all comfortable or wealthy, but when they looked at the world, they thought it could be, should be different. Now that she knows that blood fed Bohemia's birth, Jocasta had been feeling less and less sympathy for the Bohemian crew, but at least they didn't seize power solely for their own aggrandizement. They sincerely believed a world dedicated to art and fantasy would be better than the world they left behind in 1906. The Club Bohemians eventually thought otherwise, of course. So it seems to Jo from this knissomancy that Bohemia was, at least, more pluralistic and tolerant than the America they left behind. The eugenicist fantasies in London's worlds and general cynicism of Bierce's life and work had also been giving Jo cautionary pause, but those are mostly from our History A, after the ցնցում.... er, Earthquake. Jo shakes her head at that weird alien word. Perhaps they're funhouse reflections of the fall of Bohemia, or the way History A refracts the Bohemians' quest for perfection (London's race science) and dedication to magic, mystery, and belief in the afterlife (Bierce's depressing twist endings and cynical nihilism).
Imani-Fe-Faith--To believe in our unity, our leaders, our teachers, our people, and in the righteousness and victory of our struggle and the struggle of all oppressed and exploited people.
Jocasta ends up looking at the last stick for a good long while, long after the faltering first through fourth sticks and the burning-brightly-and-quickly fifth and sixth sticks. It offers solace, succor, a peaceful haven from the jostling emotions of the first six sticks. Faith is what all this is all about. The power of belief to change reality. We know it works, we've seen it happen. URIEL's stumbling plans since ALLOCHTHON seem so similar to the Bohemians', Jocasta thinks. It's almost as if someone is trying to show us a cautionary tale of what not to do. Whether or not the Club Bohemians used History B as an excuse to overthrow the fantasy and equality of Bohemia, it's clear that ontological progress can be stopped if there is, at least, not a unity of faith. That doesn't necessarily mean everyone believing the same thing: that's the old rich bastards' bag, isn't it? It means that everyone has some kind of faith, the world Jo has been envisioning since ALLOCHTHON and, if she's being honest, talking to Leonard about the Ghost Dance.
The reading over, Jocasta sits back to synthesize and correlate and Discover.
If Patty's action at the march next weekend was designed to get people to believe the old power structures can be overthrown, that's one thing. If that Wine of Wizardry seedling of History B inside Patricia is lying in wait to take advantage of this hinge point, well, that is the nature of the scorpion, is it not? If the Club Bohemians want Patty and Cinque to fail and close off all hope of revolution in America while also closing off all the messiness of the Red Kings, that is another kind of universal faith: the faith that Nothing Ever Changes. Perhaps there will always be the danger of History B taking advantage of us, and we have to be forever vigilant. But that seems long-term untenable to Jo, and not at all a satisfying narrative conclusion; weirdly, when Jo thinks this, she thinks of Jack London, Robert Redford, and Mitch Hort looking over her shoulder at the smoldering incense sticks. If it's a binary choice between Patty and Cinque, Jo chooses Patty, but she can't be sure Patty's Bohemia won't just end up like Sterling's in another twenty years. 1994, Jo thinks.
Can you imagine if the perfect world just zipped back up to 1974 after you'd been living in it for twenty years and you could only barely remember it? You too might consider cyanide... or morphine.
Shit. Was that my internal monologue or Jack London's stories speaking through me? Jo sweats at how porous things got, identity-wise, during this oracle. This is the furthest she's felt from Patricia for a while—check out how Jo started calling her "Patty" to infantilize her just as the international press has—but oddly she thinks after seeing all the possibilities laid out like this, she respects Patricia even more. It's a heavy weight on her shoulders.
(Leonard, if you have any followup clarifications for this reading, let me know. Otherwise we can move on to returning to the safehouse and Mind Probing.)
Leonard
She's going to jot down a few notes and send them to Sophie with instructions to get to Marshall & Archie ASAP. Then she'll head back to the safehouse.
Just before going inside, she sings a song to herself, an old one by the Who, that springs into her mind for some reason, just before putting a good-sized blotter from Uncle Sam's private collection on the center of her tongue.
Michael
Jocasta returns to the SLA safehouse a little before 11 pm, after Cinque and Roger have headed up to Watts. Jo is bearing gifts (heh): groceries, bug spray (the safehouse was set up by SANDMAN LA but still very authentically scuzzy including roaches, what a drag), newspapers, popular magazines and tabloids (and any special reading material Jo might want to bring by from the bookshop). Patricia lets her in: the SLA minus Cinque and Willie are all hanging out in the living room, the air of which is heavy with incense and pot smoke. Patricia helps Jocasta with the packages and brings them into the kitchen, asking Jo to join her there.
Patricia wraps her arms around Jocasta's waist from behind while she's putting away groceries, and pops a joint in Jo's mouth. "I'm glad you're here." Patricia seems to have "forgotten" all about the tension that occurred during Jo's last visit earlier in the evening about the possibility of the two of them "running away together" and is very affectionate. "I know it's a tool of the filthy bourgeois oppressor, but I wish we had a goddam TV. I just want to get stoned with the rest of the family—and with you—and watch the tube tonight while Donald is away." Christ, Jo thinks to herself, she called Cinque Donald. She must really be feeling her oats tonight.
In fact, the vibe in the living room when Jo and Patricia return is more dorm-room bull session than high-stakes revolutionary strategizing. The SLA seem really much more relaxed with Cinque and Wolfe out of the picture; the six of them are all really stoned and there's a lot of very familiar body contact: Camilla and Patricia S. are cuddling on the couch and when Patricia H. returns to the living room, she settles in similarly with Bill and Emily Harris, almost as a teasing rebuke to Jocasta, as Jocasta sits alone on a chair across from the six SLA members, takes a hit and returns the joint to the rotation, passing it to Angela.
Jo suddenly reels from the realization of the gap in age and experience between herself and Patricia. And even the SLA members who are in their late 20s, like Bill Harris and Camilla Hall, suddenly seem like kids to Jocasta. Confused, scared, horny, stoned kids out of their depths.
"So." Patricia "Mizmoon" S. takes the joint from Jo. "Are we all gonna ball tonight or what?"
Bill Harris laughs uncomfortably, "While the cats are away, huh? I feel outnumbered!"
Patricia H. looks up at him over her shoulder from being enveloped in his arms and says, "Don't flatter yourself, General. We guerillas can handle ourselves, I think."
Camilla looks at Jo across the room, giving her a very cold, masculine, appraising stare, taking her all in. "You've got an amazing body, Jo. You were an athlete in school, I bet. There's no better way to build unit solidarity. The Spartans and Thebans did it, and they each conquered Greece." As come-ons go, even from awkward baby-butch college girls back at Berkeley, Jo's definitely heard smoother.
The acid kicks in. Roll HT-9.
Leonard
>> FAILURE by 5
Michael
It's hitting. Hallucinating for the next 5 hours.
Which is gonna make this default Sociology roll I'm about to calculate WAY more interesting
Okay, give me a Will-19 roll and then I'll figure out the Sociology roll.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 6
Michael
Okay, Sociology defaults to Psych minus 4, which for Jo is 11, we'll take away 2 more for the LSD, and add 2 back thanks to Jo's connection with Patricia, so Psychology-11.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 0
Michael
Right on. So obviously to Jo, even in the midst of all these hormones and chemicals swirling about, this proposition is a de facto SLA loyalty test. Not merely in the "we need you to prove you're not a cop by performing this very intimate, culturally- and politically-rebellious, countercultural act" sense, but in a sincere sense that Camilla (and from the looks of things Mizmoon and Nancy too) seem to really think that group sex actually adds to the SLA's loyalty and unit cohesion. Whether this is some sexist harem rap that Cinque has laid on them Manson-style or something sincerely held by the women of the SLA, Jo's not quite sure. From the dossiers Jo's checked out, Camilla and Mizmoon had a legitimate long-term monogamous homosexual relationship way back when the SLA weren't yet an Army and just students visiting prisoners at Vacaville and Soledad.
In any event, Patricia H. is watching Jo carefully for her reaction; the residual empathic/psychic connection between Jo and Patricia is still open, and Jo still feels the mutual connection/obsession they've shared these past few days, but it almost feels to Jo like Patty is judging her comrades in the SLA right now, despite her being outwardly flirty with Bill and Emily... and judging Jo in the bargain.
Leonard
Maybe it's that she was thrown by Patricia's pushback, or that she feels rushed to action, or just that she never fucking sleeps, maybe something else (definitely something else), but there is something on the edge of Jocasta's mind that thinks that if there's going to be a contest of wills, she's not going to be the one to lose. There's something else that tells her to be careful, but she doesn't listen.
First in a hiss and then loud enough for everyone in the squat to hear: "Discipline your people."
Not pushing with her mind, but throwing all she has of leadership and command, of years of being pushed into similar situations, and letting her duty of care for Patricia boil into her duty to her own, she snaps at the women of the SLA — not insignificantly ignoring the men as beneath contempt. "Get your fucking heads together. This is a war, not a goddamn encounter session. This time tomorrow you could be facing down a hail of bullets, a fucking inferno. I'm not going to die because you all act like you're back trying to pull the cutest co-eds back to your living rooms. Get serious or get the fuck out."
She turns back to Patricia. With her, instead of throwing ice-cold water on the tension, she pours the fuel of pure dominance into the glare she shoots her way, only hating herself enough to easily extinguish for doing to her the same thing everyone else has done: "You too. This is embarrassing. You have a responsibility to lead them and this is how you do it? Shape up," she barks, pausing to draw on the joint until her lips almost burn. "Show them the reason I joined you. Show that power, not this tawdry dorm room bullshit," she says, French-inhaling the rest of the weed smoke out between them.
Michael
Leadership-19. Corruption available.
Leonard
No corruption
>> SUCCESS by 7
Michael
These clinical, righteously angry, commanding words throw cold water on the entire SLA. Bodies shrink from each other, languid poses stiffen, limpid eyes grow wide and nervous. The entire mood of the room changes instantaneously. Angela Atwood actually visibly shivers.
Patricia Hearst looks at Jocasta, tears already welling in her eyes. But she doesn't weep, she doesn't gnash or moan, she doesn't shrink and become Patty. Instead she becomes Fancy in a flash. Not Tania. The squat's dingy walls start to waver in Jocasta's acid-tinged periphery and the crimson curtains of Bohemia start to undulate at the edges of things. Indeed, many of the SLA members start to fade from Jo's vision, Bill and Emily Harris last, behind the scarlet curtains.
Patricia Fancy stands up and walks, with ease and languor but also head up, eyes firmly on Jo in admiration and mystical respect, not mere lust.
"I really don't need them at all, do I?"
Leonard
Jocasta tries to keep the rest of the revolutionaries in the edges of her physical vision; she still needs them for her play. But she concentrates on Fancy, or on whatever concatenation of personalities is currently piloting the sad, forgotten vehicle that was Patty Hearst.
"You have to stop worrying about who and what you need. That's for after," she insists, the edge of cruelty in her voice — is she speaking? She's communicating, anyway — intentionally melding into a softer voice of guidance. "You're letting their needs get in the way of your mission. What you need to focus on right now is who you are. When you know that, know it without thinking or reacting, you'll know who you need, and what for," she says, not adding, even if it's a lie.
Michael
Fancy nods, feeling the connection, feeling the control that Jocasta exudes right now, even the slightest bit of internal doubt and Fancy accepts it all, all parts and all aspects of what This Job has done to Jocasta over the years. A wave of understanding comes as the psychic connection grows stronger between the two women again. And Jocasta can sense some amount of personality re-integration occurring currently in Patricia/Tania/Fancy, the place in the Venn diagram where all three of their missions coincide. Which leads Fancy to her question of Jo, since Fancy instinctively seems to understand that Jo is going to have a question of her own, soon.
"Is... is the offer to attend the 'place of power' that you made earlier tonight still open? I'm much less worried about what Cinque and the rest of them could do to me now."
[And Leonard, I know part 2 of your plan above was a Mind Probe once Patty was asleep, but with the LSD and Fancy's powers, you can assume that channel is open to ask your Mind Probe question any time.]
Leonard
“We can take my car and be there by morning,” Jo says with an indulgent smile.
[She will wait on the Mind Probe for the right moment.]
Michael
"All this driving," Patricia said. "I thought... I had this weird impression from a dream the other night that you are actually someone famous's daughter." Patricia laughs despite herself. "And that you were gonna fly us somewhere—a mountain—in a private jet: me, you, Elsie. The pilot looked like Robert Redford." A vulnerable smile.
Leonard
Jocasta doesn’t want to tip her hand about the extent and nature of SANDMAN just yet. “We can fly before too long. This might become routine for you,” she responds.
“My father isn’t famous,” she admits, throwing a few things in a cheap duffel bag. “He’s just useful. He always wanted to be one of them, you know. The new Bohemians. He only reads the Hearst papers,” she says with a sardonic laugh.
“But it’s the family I found that made me who I am. Who showed me that there were…so many more possibilities than I ever imagined. It’s funny you should mention Redford…maybe not so funny. He’s working on a treatment of one of Jack’s stories, did you know that? Imagine getting a message out through that face. Think of everything you imagined, Patricia. And then double it. Triple it. Make it bigger and wider and deeper.”
Michael
Open-mouthed, Patricia lets these possibilities into her consciousness. "Do we pick up Elsie? Poor old girl, getting dragged down to Los Angeles only to have to get back in a van 16 hours later."
With that, Patricia sighs, remembering how perfect the old plan felt, but Jocasta's taking control and leadership tonight sealed it; it's time to self-actualize, beyond what all the voices—her father, her fiancé, Cinque and Willie and the rest of them—have been shouting in her ear the past two decades of her life.
Leonard
“We can get Elsie if you like. This is still your play,” Jocasta says. Followed by a sting in the tail: “She doesn’t trust you.”
Michael
"She didn't like any of the men, you know. She was really just a girl when she married Marty. Intellectual, artist, and critic she might have been to herself, but back then a 'girl' is all she could be to most of them. Oh sure, Ambrose considered her precociously intelligent but it was a patronizing respect." "She sees me as George, I think. I'm not George. And I don't need to be George, even if I am still following in his footsteps."
"I still think it all happens in Los Angeles, eventually. But I don't know what that's going to look like anymore."
Leonard
"Knowing something big has to be done, but not knowing the shape or weight of it...that's been my life. We learn to fight in the process of fighting, like Comrade Rosa said," Jo responds. "Things are going to start happening, Patricia, and once they do, they're going to happen fast. You have it in you to shape those things. The thing is, you have a key, and there are a million doors. The easiest thing to do is to just open the ones that others have already tried. You have to find the new doors, the ones that are there for you."
She fixes Patricia with a steely look, the kind you give to someone who's about to go into a sketchy situation and thinks they're ready, but they aren't. "Those things are already happening. I think you can feel it too. Go in there and harness your people; tell them to be ready. If you really need them, then this will be a good test for them — that they can act for you even when they're not with you. Then come with me to get Elise and head north. One way or another, you'll see the next steps." Jo is in full tactical mode now; she's leaving nothing more to chance.
Michael
Patricia smiles and nods confidently; there's still quite a bit of Fancy in her right now, and it is that part of herself that Patricia evokes when she parts the Red curtains and brings the still-quite-shellshocked SLA rank and file into Fancy's and Jo's vision.
"The time has come," Fancy says portentously to the SLA, red silks waving behind her in a spiced, slightly mephitic breeze. Jo's senses are aflame looking at Fancy; Jo swears she can see, faintly hear, smell and taste Bohemia in the red-limned figure of Fancy. "I must fly, as is my wont, now. But you need not concern yourselves. Fancy's flight will always return Her to your side, to hold you close and lead you—and all of us—to new shores."
Fancy visits Angela Atwood first, demure quiet Angela, coming close to her and speaking verse while holding her gently.
So Fancy's carvel seeks an isle afar,
Led by 𒄈𒋰𒇽𒍇𒇻's rubescent star,
Until in templed zones she smiles to see
Black incense glow, and scarlet-bellied 𒈲𒊮𒉣𒇬
Sway to the tawny flutes of sorcery.
Angela's stare goes wide, a tear or two welling in her eyes, as the rest of the SLA looks on. Next Fancy stops before Mizmoon, Nancy, and Camilla, whom Jo can see are visibly trying to resist Fancy's enchantment—looking away, closing their eyes, scooting away on the couch—but ultimately are helpless to do so.
There,
Fancy says, putting her right hand's fingers on Mizmoon's chin, Nancy's cheek, and Camilla's lips in turn, as she recites, accentuating the next word
...priestesses in purple robes hold each
A sultry garnet to the sea-linkt sun,
Or, just before the colored morning shakes
A splendor on the ruby-sanded beach,
Cry unto 𒀭𒄑𒉋𒂵𒎌 a mystic word.
Then to Bill and Emily, whom Cinque had paired her with for operations in Los Angeles. Their (more-or-less) married familial stability hoping to inspire child-like trust in Patty. Trust now flipped and turned to obedience for and obsession with their "child."
But Fancy, amorous of evening, takes
Her flight to groves whence lustrous rivers run,
Thro' hyacinth, a minster wall to gird,
Where, in the hushed 𒅆𒂍𒉪's jeweled gloom,
Ere Faith return, and azure censers fume,
Fancy kneels before the married couple, enveloping them in the perfumes and incenses of Bohemia. Jo looks over quickly to note Angela and the other women are fast asleep.
She kneels, in solemn quietude, to mark
The suppliant day from gorgeous oriels float
And altar-lamps immure the deathless spark;
Finally, with the entire SLA (minus Willie and Cinque, of course) all seeing visions of their own versions of Utopia, Bohemia, the post-revolution America, whatever may be going on in their heads, Fancy comes to Jo, fractal, hypertemporal afterimages trailing behind her.
Till, all her dreams made rich with fervent hues,
She goes to watch, beside a lurid moat,
The kingdoms of the afterglow suffuse
A sentinel 𒆳 [Jocasta is able somehow to understand this word, "kur," means "mountain, portal to the underworld country" in Sumerian] stationed toward the night—
Whose broken tombs betray their ghastly trust,
Till bloodshot gems stare up like eyes of lust.
"I am ready to fly to the Holy Mountain, sister." Jo sees inside Patricia a little seedling of Sterling's Bohemia, but overlaid on it is Jocasta's own vision of America once URIEL has done what it seeks to do. Every spirit, every spiritual tradition, finding succor and acceptance, existing side-by-side in a spirit of infinite possibility, the Red Kings gone from the human mind, or maybe, just maybe, ruling over Their own country, leashing the unevolved souls who were unable to ascend and transform themselves into beings of love, light, and spirituality. It's a confusing image, but Jo senses the potentiality there, and it, on many levels, frightens her.
"I am ready to attend to the broken tombs of Carcosa."
Fright Check, rule of 14.
Leonard
>> FAILURE by 3
Yikes
Michael
Can you roll 3d6+4 for the result on the Fright Check table, please?
Leonard
>> 3d6 … 18
Michael
18 – Faint as above (Faint for 1d minutes, then roll vs. HT each minute to recover), and roll vs. HT immediately. On a failed roll, take 1 HP of injury as you collapse. So I guess the order here is:
roll 1d6 minutes
roll HT-11 (Fit) to avoid injury
And then we'll see how your recovery goes.
Leonard
>> 1d6 … 4
>> 3d6 … 3
Michael
Hahaha damn.
Well we'll say that HT crit gets you awake in a couple of minutes.
When Jocasta wakes from her acid freakout interlude in her own personal Bohemia, she finds herself in the passenger seat of her own ride, Patricia at the wheel. "I don't know the streets really well, so if you're feeling better, I need you to navigate me to your shop."
"I'm sorry about that. I've never tried to... recite to that many people before to that effect and I think you got caught up in it." Patricia is calm, steely, in control... everything Jo was trying to inculcate in her back at the safehouse. Her power allowed her to take control of the situation and she's done so, keeping Jo safe in the bargain.
Leonard
"You did great. Exactly what you should have done," Jocasta assured her. "Sorry to black out like that — I'm going to be honest, that was a far greater payload of power than I was expecting, even from you," she goes on. "I'm even more sure that you've got something special, and that...well, that whatever the future looks like, you're going to have a hand in it."
[I don't know if this requires RP or dice or anything, but basically, for the drive up, she's going to talk to Patricia about the SANDMAN lore and perspective without getting into specifics. Just talk her into the idea of parallel histories, competing factions within those histories, the toxic load of language, etc. Prepping her for what she might be about to learn, but not giving away anything you wouldn't tell a non-insider. Does that make sense?]
Michael
Totally makes sense! I feel like the members of URIEL all have some experience doing this very thing. I'm not sure what makes the most sense for a roll, this is basically Teaching but also Hidden Lore (History B)... Jocasta's got both so why don't we call it Hidden Lore (History B)-18.
Leonard
>> FAILURE BY 5
Michael
All right, we'll put that conversation on deck for the drive north. Picking up Elsie, etc. Also need to know if Jo is going to call all this in from the shop when we pick up Elsie. Just so I know when to drop the info on the rest of the team.
Leonard
She’s definitely calling in, away from the heiress’ hearing, mostly to see if she’s needed elsewhere, say they’re headed to Shasta, and note that the SLA regulars are crammed full of source code so exercise caution.
Also, at some point before they get there — maybe when they stop for food or gas or rest — she’s going to try Spirit Empathy with one goal: see if there are any hitchhikers other than Bierce in her and Fancy and Tania in Patricia. Basically, if there’s any other elements hanging around the three of them she can sense.
Michael
Okay, so before we get out on the road north to Shasta, Jocasta can get on the horn with... it's up to you, Leonard, Jo can call either Archie or Marshall or both, to inform them on what's going to happen next.
Leonard
Either one who’s available, or Sophie.
Michael
Okay. Do we want to do Mind Probe-16 first, Leonard? Or Spirit Empathy-16?
Leonard
Let's do Spirit Empathy first; Jo wants to get a sense of whether there's any spiritual hitchikers or the like on this drive with her. Mind Probe is gonna have to wait. It requires her to dose and touch, which she obviously can't do right now without it seeming super weird. She was hoping to do it earlier when Patricia was asleep but failing that Fright Check kinda fucked that plan. She can do it when we get to Shasta, probably.
So:
>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
It doesn't surprise Jocasta too much that driving at 60-some-odd miles per hour north on I-5 isn't conducive to feeling the spirit realm around her. But there is the bond between her and the sleeping Patricia that exudes spiritual energy, the private world the two of them have created the past six days that Jocasta can tap into and feel, even while concentrating on the dark highway in front of her.
The first thing Jocasta notes is that Patricia is not actively possessed or haunted by any spirits. The presence of Fancy, of "Bohemia" within her is part and parcel of the memetics of "A Wine of Wizardry," which Patricia still clutches to her chest in her sleep in the passenger seat. Whether this difference puts paid to the idea URIEL's been throwing out there that spirits are merely just more complex memes, Jocasta's not certain. Jocasta can sense a residual aura of Bohemia, still sticking to Patricia after she used her powers on the SLA, so Jocasta's current working theory is that Patricia's powers—Fancy's presence—allow her to briefly open the existing material realm to the idea of Bohemia that resides in Sterling's poetry.
Then Jocasta scans herself. She still feels the Jack London fictional universe sticking to her after her first encounter back on Friday; her access there is still open and available. Suddenly Jocasta remembers what she tried to teach "Professor Smith" a couple of days ago, that you can't change the world by overwriting it, you have to take every entity as they come, reject solipsism, understand the fundamental unity of reality and God-as-universe. The philosophical tension between Jocasta and the impulses of the London memeplex suddenly rise to Jocasta's mind, sending shivers down her spine and a flush of nervous tension up her neck into her jaw, like the London memeplex wants to speak through Jocasta's mouth.
(It would be effortless for Jocasta to resist this opportunistic moment created by her use of Spirit Empathy, a Will-19 roll would do it. But Jo also wonders why the London memeplex is rising to her throat right now, what it wants to say. Jo also knows innately she won't be able to do this as an internal monologue; "Jack" wants the ability to project his voice in the real world, to egotistically hear his own words echo in the car. As Patricia and Elsie slumber, Jo wonders if she can keep Jack's voice down enough to have this "conversation" quietly enough not to wake either of them.)
Leonard
Oh she’ll definitely give it a shot. Cutting off access to the spirit world is not her bag these days
Michael
Jo's able to keep her voice down enough while driving as the London memeplex glances out through Jocasta's eyes, sees the road ahead, and urges Jo to shoot little glances at Patricia in the passenger seat while driving. But regardless of whether it gets what it wants bodily out of Jocasta (which is entirely Jocasta's decision), it does speak—haltingly, quietly, but authoritatively—out loud at Jo.
"You're worried about... interference in what you plan for the Mountain. 'Hitchhikers.'" London can't help but chuckle breathily at that concept, given the current circumstances. "Foreign... ideas."
"The danger's there, but the danger's always there when people believe in something so fervently, right?" A faint cocky smile of London's plays over Jo's lips. "You're right to worry. Elsie worried about it too. Probably why she's still on this side of the sod."
Leonard
"I think people don't believe enough, Jack. At least not to the good ideas. Even you were afraid of the beasts from the East," she says, smiling wryly in the rear-view mirror. "But if you have something to tell me, better make it quick, before we get there. No guessing games. I'm your last link to this world, and if I go..." She lets it hang in the air, not a threat, just an appeal to his will to live. "No time to be clever when you're building a fire."
Michael
"I don't mean to be coy, but that's how I'm constructed," the London memeplex says through Jocasta's mouth. "Too many stories, too many protagonists, some of whom aren't human... no, you're correct, it won't do to be indirect."
"The Greek's poem, the poem she loves," London tries again to steal a peek at Patricia clutching the old issue of Cosmopolitan in the passenger seat, "the Scarlet in it... George couldn't help himself. What George saw in the mirror backwards had the residue of the Red Ones in it. They are inseparable, the Red is interred in the text."
"Thus, getting her away from a crowd was a very good idea. A crowd with guns and revolutionary ideas, no less. So simple for people to get killed in the bargain, and if they don't have the willpower to resist..." London sort of drifts off there, letting Jo's imagination fill in the blanks of an Impeach Nixon rally that turns into a bloodbath and how opportunistically the Kings could slide into having always been there.
"The question we should be asking ourselves, is therefore, 'Is the crowd she's to be around at the Mountain likely to be much safer?'"
Leonard
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Jo says, realizing that this is who she is now, a woman who has two-way conversations with the cultural echo of Jack London. Look at me now, dad. "Don't think it hasn't occurred to me that we're taking her right to a power center, a mystical nexus of realities...and the place where I got stuck living my worst possible future. Maybe I was counting on it, Jack."
She pauses. "We're making plans for the rally. We want something to happen there, just like we want something to happen at Shasta. We just want the thing that happens to be...our thing. We're in complete control! Unlike everyone else who came before us! Ha ha!"
The bitter laughter of Jocasta Menos, she thinks. What on Earth. Do I want him to believe what I'm saying? Or do I want me to believe it? It's the same thing. He's just something you pulled into your head. You're arguing with yourself.
"I don't know, Jack. I make death sacrifices to an ancient native spirit. I'm juggling FBI agents and Lakota terrorists to help my bosses make cartoons. The last time I slept was when I fainted from shock. All I have to hang all this on is a vague sense that it's going to work out, that we really can break an ancient machine that's bred into our bones. Maybe it shouldn't bother me; it doesn't bother them. The men. The men who put me on a railroad track and leave me to undo the ropes. It does, though. I'm not getting any younger or saner. Maybe what's left for me is where I found you: a ruined idealist scrabbling around in the wreckage of a world he made. Things are going to change, I can feel it. And I just want to see them change in a way that will make it so every soul born into this history don't have to spend their whole lives seeing nothing but their own reflections leading them off a cliff. I'm willing to die for that, Jack. That's why she and I aren't so different. Can you help me do that, Jack? Can you?"
Michael
At "ruined idealist scrabbling around in the wreckage of a world he made," Jo's Spirit Empathy can help her sense that she's scored a palpable hit on the London memeplex. Jo's eyes begin to water and tear up, unbidden, wholly controlled by whatever real emotional core of London still exists in his stories. "It's to my shame that every future I envisioned for the club was a doomed one." London puts into Jocasta's head the perfunctory mention of a far-future socialist "Brotherhood of Man" from the foreword to The Iron Heel, and the shame the London memeplex still feels in not envisioning what that utopian future might even look like, and instead dwelling on the historical American class war that helped deliver paradise... 400 years later.
"It is far easier to be a pessimist, to rejoice in blood and might and the will to power of class war and then neglect to imagine how the people will be fed, the children educated, the infirm taken care of." At this, the London memeplex seems to be recalling some crucial part of why the Bohemians failed in their twenty-year timeline: something to do with welfare, with health, with care for all of the people who were now their putative "subjects." The guilt managed to nag at London, even after his memories of Bohemia were stolen and he spent the next decade, like many of the other Bohemians, chasing shadows.
"We each held such an incomplete picture of what we wanted paradise to be. In the end, that was our downfall. Our experience... did not prepare us for the role we had petulantly demanded we were worthy of."
From the passenger seat, a half-asleep Patricia mumbles in the midst of a dream, "A vyper... lurketh in ye wine-cuppe redde."
Leonard
At some point, Jo will reach over and touch the sleeping heiress gently on the forehead. She'll concentrate and formulate her question — a question for Patricia, not for Tania or Fancy or George or whoever is taking this wild ride in her earthly vessel:
"What do you want?"
Michael
IQ-16, go for it. Corruption available.
Leonard
Yeah, fuck it, let's load some Corruption on there. Five on the floor.
>> SUCCESS by 8
Michael
Well that gets you to best-crit-possible range right away. Let me see if Patricia's Will can do anything about that.
There is a lot for Jocasta to wade through in her mind probe of Patricia: Sterling's memetics, the kernel of Red memetics deeper inside the poem, the weight of her family's history, her more recent traumas and programming at the hands of Cinque and Willie, the will to power she's felt as she has come into her own in the abilities bestowed upon her by "A Wine of Wizardry."
Jocasta's focus on Patricia rather than any of those other masks currently hanging in place in Patricia's mind palace makes it—necessary? advantageous?—for Jocasta to push through the labyrinth in there with extra effort, buoyed admittedly by those darker impulses the Anunnaki put inside humanity when the dormant psychic parts of the mind are awakened and alive.
Jo struggles, like someone trying to save a drowning victim in dark murky waters, to reach out her mind to Patricia's directly without seeing her clearly, to pull her into the light. All this happens in an instant, but it feels so long: maybe that's the acid trailing off, maybe that's the weird pleasure Jo takes in cutting through the layers of the onion to the core of Patricia's identity.
What do you want?
Patricia Hearst says, in a voluble psychic rush sent straight into Jocasta's third eye and heart chakra, a lot of things.
"I want people to stop hurting me."
"I want people to stop using me."
"I want them to stop using me as a symbol of what they want; I feel it all the time now since I was taken—from my, hmm, 'comrades,' from the media, from my parents and Steven, from... from George," she stutters and hesitates to speak Sterling's name, "from the... well, just from everybody in America now! I'm to be what they need, but I'm not a symbol! I'm a human being!" Jo senses a subtext that maybe Patricia felt this way before she was kidnapped too, with those mentions of her parents and Steven.
"And I want justice. Not for me, not for the kidnapping and the brainwashing. But for everybody the SLA thought they were going to help: the poor Black kids in Oakland, the Chicano kids in the barrio, the white kids in the suburbs who get their dreams and lives crushed and snuffed out by this system. We deserve better than this, Jo. All of us."
"Justice means... I don't know what price I'm going to pay for what I've done, for... for the lives I took. There are no excuses. No little dead voice speaking poetry in my ear, no Maximum Leader egging me on to pull the trigger on the fascist lackeys. I pulled that trigger, and I need to make it right and pay for what I've done. But if they died for nothing, if I suffered for nothing, if nothing changes and everything continues to be run by those horrible people like my father... like my grandfather, like his father before him! All the men that George and Jack tried to wrest control away from—Mammon—then this was all for nothing, wasn't it? A shadow play meant to make everyone scared of the specter of revolution. And we all played our parts to perfection, Jo."
"And I want you. I want you to save me, Jo. But also make sure I see justice." The contradiction here seems to be at the core of Patricia's brutal hidden anxieities. "But make sure my guilt, my horror, my sorrow means something. I couldn't stand the despair of any other ending than that."
Leonard
Jocasta will not speak, nor even Telesend — but she will count on her empathy and connection with Patricia to deliver the message. "I can't make you any promises, Patricia. But if you know me like I know you, you know that I want the same thing. That I have the same goals. The people who I work with...they're trying. We're all trying. I can't speak to the moral rightness of it all, but I can tell you that we have done things...Christ almighty, I have done things...that make what you did seem like nothing. All I can say is that you can't go down the path of spilling blood for that change, not in the way they're pulling you to do. You have to choose something different, for yourself and on your own. Not because of Cinque, not because of your family, not because of George or Fancy or...the things behind them that want you to never know who you are, to never make a decision on your own. It will be harder than you can imagine. But the one thing I truly believe is that we really can remake this world, to break the chains that were linked to our minds and souls before we even existed. You will have to leave your comfort, both the comfort of fame and wealth and the comfort of easy revolt. But if that is what you choose...I promise to be there for you, as much as I can. I know I am just one of many voices asking you to step through a new door, to a new world. They all promise you instant transformation, and I offer you struggle. But it is the struggle that makes us. From now on out you, Patricia, will have to decide for you. That is what I give you: the chance to be you, maybe for the first time."
She closes the connection, letting the acid's chemical transformation leak into the background of her thoughts. She looks to the road ahead. Jāti, she thinks, that's what Marshall would call it. My father and my grandmother would call it theosis. Whatever we call it, she needs to find it. She's counting on me to guide her, but as usual, it's the other way around.
North, they drive: into the sun, into the unknown, to Shasta.