Viv’s Session with Archie

Mandy

"Archie! Come in, have a seat! Thanks for taking the time to meet with me today."

Viv waits for Archie to close the door before adding: "Can I just tell you, before we get started, parent to parent, I think you're doing an amazing job with an unfathomably difficult situation."

Rob

"Well, shucks, Genevieve. That's kind of you to say." Archie sits down, takes a stab at a joke. "Wait — which difficult situation are we talking about? Ha ha."

Mandy

She laughs earnestly. "Honestly, the intersection of several."

Rob

Archie laughs too. "No rest for the wicked, I suppose." There's probably a pregnant pause as Archie waits for Viv to begin. But if she doesn't, he will fill the silence.

"So: you wanted to talk about Charley." He beams. "Isn't she a wonder?"

"I don't have to tell you, she was awfully anxious about that doodad in her head … I mean, we all were. But now that's taken care of, it's going to be a huge relief for her."

Mandy

Viv is quick on her feet after Archie offers "no rest for the wicked."

"I think, Archie, there's plenty of rest for the wicked. That, perhaps, there's no rest for the very very good. For people like Charley. For people like you. A relief for her, and a relief for everyone who cares for her!" genuine warmth beams off her smile. She is also relieved by the resolution. “Although I do wonder who was most alarmed in the first place. What really concerns charley, what draws her. Can you tell me what that has been like for you Archie? Caring for a child like Charley.”

Rob

"Why, it's been swell, of course. I mean, she's a little angel. So clever, and so brave, and just as sweet as pie. You might expect a child who's been through so much to be more … I don't know … funny? But she's come right out of her shell, here at the office and at home too. Sometimes I think Charley adopted us, instead of the other way around!"

Mandy

"Archie," Viv puts down her pen and folder, "maybe what happens around here has become normalized for you, I don't know … But I don't think we have time for you to blow smoke up my ass like this." Viv clears he throat and takes a sip of water before continuing: "I know you have to be very guarded in this space and with these people, but let's be clear I'm not a superior and I'm not going to suggest anyone take Charley away from you, not ever and I'm not going to discern if you are doing a 'good job' or a 'bad job' … in fact I'm not here to judge at all! not even a little bit. I'm here to help this unit flow, to optimize safety and trust, to bring you all into cohesion. I can't do this if you're going to stone wall me like we're talking about a normal little girl, or heaven forbid a puppy, who came from an abusive home."

Rob

Archie blinks. Then speaks levelly. "I don't smoke, Genevieve. And I meant what I said. That little girl" — he holds Viv's gaze as he emphasizes 'little girl' — "has been an invaluable asset to URIEL, and a blessing to my family."

"But maybe you'd better tell me more precisely what you want to know. I thought we were talking about Charley and how you might help her. If you're interested in, ah, 'unit cohesion,' you should really talk to Marshall … though now I'm thinking you already have."

Mandy

"Archie, I've spent my whole career around men doing what you're doing right now. I'm trying to cut to the heart of it. Which requires you being honest with me and with yourself, not defensive, not protective."

"Charley is not just a 'sweet little girl’. She's a prodigy, she's Jack Parsons, she's a genius, she's an Arthurian knight, she's a machine whisperer, she communes with the dead, she has survived unspeakable conditions. And that's what I know from just the last two weeks. She has more composure than most of your agents, and a creative capacity that exceeded that of a fully embodied adult, and with that she is contacting other ways of being like she did with the dolphin and learning to recover more of her soul memories. She's perhaps more powerful and insightful and mature than anyone else here, including me. She hasn't been alive for many years but she is deflated and disempower and made invisible when she is pigeonholed into a way of being that one assumes is correct for her age. You don't have to protect Charley from me, I see her very clearly and I will help her integrate holding all of this in one bodymind."

"So you feel antagonism towards Marshall about this situation?"

Rob

"Yes. Yes. I know about Charley's gifts — the things she knows, the things she can do — I've seen it, I don't deny any of it. I bring her back here every day, back into this world, don't I? I brought her right in to the temblor at the St. Francis, God forgive me. Could I do that if I thought she was 'just' a little girl? I can't keep Charley out of all this, but I can try to give her some normalcy at least, some of what we took from her. Sure, she has 'memories' of Arthurian England, of medieval France, but four months ago, she said she'd never held a cat!"

Archie gets animated here. "Marshall called her 'a weapon.' There's a whole bureau of spooks back in Utah that think she's some kind of science project. Dear Lord, somebody cut open her brain! I know she's not just a child but shouldn't she have at least one person who can see her that way? Someone to tuck her into bed at night, make sure she eats her vegetables?" Archie sighs, deflates a bit. Holds out an olive branch. "I don't want us to get off on the wrong foot, Genevieve. I guess I am protective of Charley, but I don't mean to be defensive. If you want to talk about the King Arthur stuff, Houdini, the rocket fellow … by all means." Finally, speaking to himself as much as Viv: "How we treat Charley … it's a test of this whole project, in a moral sense. Of whether we really are on the side of the angels."

"As for Marshall … " He looks like he could say something, but then makes a sort of 'let's not get into all that' gesture. "I'm sure Marshall is just looking out for Charley — and for me — in his own way."

Mandy

Viv responds after a pause that gives enough space so if he was going to continue he could. "You know, Marshall has also called her a bodhisattva. I wonder how he holds both." Scratches on the note pad: "part of how we move safely in a dangerous world is being able to hold the full complexity of the things and people we are in community with …" She trails off.

"I'm actually relieved to have this much agreement with you, going into this Archie. I understand your reactivity. What it calls up as a parent, what it means to be a father. My concern for Charley originates from the same spaces as yours do. Ones about letting her experience love and be well cared for. I am trying to figure out how to open pathways for that to occur in a more holistic and less frenzied way. One that respects her and protects her power and energy and vulnerabilities. When energy flow is imbalanced inside a systems structure and reactivity rules … soldiers die.” Viv hand Arche a hardback journal with an article about unit cohesion and sociometry and psychodrama flagged. A quick skim and it's about the difference in casualties when the organizational power and the social power is a system are in the same person and when they are in different people.

"Let me ask you this: what do you think the experience was like for Charley the first time she held a cat?"

Rob

"Well, it was the first time she came to the house, for dinner. She was practically quaking as we walked up the front steps, but the instant we got inside she made a beeline for those cats. Nephi's usually standoffish with strangers but he took to her immediately. What was the experience like for Charley? Gosh, I don't know." But then his Special Rapport comes through and he says something quite specific and sentimental, something like, "Maybe holding this little creature let her feel for a moment that something was right with the world. The inside of her head … it's got to be like a labyrinth in there. But the warm weight of the cat, purring, grounded her in this life, in this reality. Just holding her- I mean his- little body, like an anchor in all the madness."

Mandy

Viv notes something down. "That's very, very good Archie. You're a wonderful father. So connected and observant. That's what she needs, isn't it? Calm. Heart opening. Sincerity. Contact. Connection." She fixes her glasses. “This complex, miraculous being is in a bundle of heart ache she doesn't even know how to feel. She can reason through it maybe, sometimes, but she can't metabolize it … Tell me, does she have night terrors? Bad dreams?"

Rob

"Bad dreams? Oh, sure! Real doozies. She won't usually talk about them but she definitely has them. I want to say they're getting better? But I don't know if that's true."

Mandy

Viv takes some more notes and asks some more questions that are more "getting the temperature of things" like that one was.

"It sounds like we're in agreement that one of the best things we can do is to help take the pressure off of Charley and help her work through everything that she has been through with a gentle, heart centered touch. That's great. That gives me lots of hope. I have an idea for this I want to float by you, kind of hippy, kind of new age, involves Roger … But I'd like to ask you a few questions and get into a theory that's been kicking around for me first."

"You're the esmologist, focused on the thought forms that populate and maybe even hold the integrity of our reality. After what I experienced in the temblor, and my research into the Anunnaki in the restricted archives I have some … concerns. It seems that energetic gravity is how they slip into our reality, and then they leverage that to claim more of the timeline. If that's the case, then I believe if they are capable of watching us, of targeting this unit of their direct adversaries, then vortexes of meaning, like the one that formed around Charley is an incredibly vulnerable moment, are an open door to Reality B.”

"I must add it feels risky to even talk about. I believe there is good evidence that by pondering things about them I create more meaning gravity for them to occupy. But I believe that making you aware of my perception of this risk is more important than keeping the gravity low." Her voice drops to a whisper even though she knows interdimensional beings aren't relying on normal senses to hear her. "What do you think about that? How would we fight it? How can we respond to emergencies without creating chaos? Just like everyone was trying to find a way around the chip in Charley recording everything, how can we keep our meaning properly obscured, move against them without creating more gravity?" A pause. "Is this making any sense? "

Rob

"I don't know if I followed all of that, but: you're not wrong about the danger. That's the insidious thing about our enemies: the more we think about them, the more power we give them. They don't seem to care much if humans love them, fear them, hate them … as long as we're thinking about them. For them, there's no such thing as bad publicity, ha ha." Archie looks momentarily distracted by something, then seems to shake it off.

"You ever get some dumb jingle stuck in your head? Of course you have. 'Plop, plop, fizz, fizz' — that one drives me up the street! But you can't say it's not an effective advertisement. It provokes a reaction in me, so now it's lodged in my brain. Because I can't stand it. Memetics is all about colonizing mental real estate, and the Competition works the same way."

"You asked the $64 question: how do we fight that? Well, we try and keep it so the only folks thinking about the Anunnaki are qualified to do so. We have training for that. Which you're going to need, come to think of it. SANDMAN can teach you how to think about things more safely. How to think about things without thinking about them, if you like." Archie smiles. "It's all about compartmentalization: a place for everything, and everything in its place."

"But I'm not sure I understand about the 'vortexes'. Why is it dangerous for us to worry about Char—" He's distracted again. "Did you hear that?"

He laughs, a little rattled. "I'm sorry. It's nothing. What was I saying?"

Michael

Genevieve did not hear anything.

Mandy

"Mmm, I certainly need this training, I may have … Well, compartmentalization may be something we want to come back to in a conversation later." More notes. "Think of it this way: meaning gravity is … exploitable when there is chaos in the system. If the wrong meme had taken root at the wrong moment then it would be very very easy to tell a story where everything that had ever happened to Charley had been them, their work. A foot in the door which could allow them to exploit the entire vortex. I bet if you think about it you have a sense of which points are the most vulnerable to this sort of memetic invasion."

Rob

Archie says, into the air: "That's ironic, coming from you." Then, to Genevieve: "I think I get it. I don't know if anyone's told you about this business in Oakland, this past spring? The opposition was trying to exploit the black folks there — their mistreatment, their militancy, tensions with the police — and of course, all the enemy wanted was for someone on either side to get hurt - that would have set it all off and thrown the door wide open. But the weak spot was there already, before the opposition got involved. All that prejudice and mistrust."

"What you're saying is, this also works on the smaller scale — say, an organization like ours. We have our own tensions and stress points and, ah, vortexes. And the way we react to a threat can make it worse. Paranoia, dissension — the Devil hunts among the hurting."