The C Suite
The C Suite is the short-hand term used by certain members of Operation URIEL — most notably Mitch and Marshall — to describe the beings or forces that direct the action (or “narrative”) of the world. The name is an allusion to History C, a hypothetical third player in the ontological cold war between History A and History B:
Mitch:
“They … ” [Mitch] chuckles as a thought strikes him. “They’re History-C, you know that? Under our noses all along. I mean, they aren’t part of History-A, they aren’t allied with the Enemy … History-C. History-C decided we should visit the basement but only after Ozzie cleared it out. Just to see what would happen, how we’d react.” He frowns. Mitch is thinking out loud. “But no, that doesn’t hang together, because they’re outside time. They know how we react, they make us react that way, they see us doing it before and during and after … ”
Marshall:
“Outside of our time. But not outside of time. Things must change for them, or else they wouldn’t need to run the experiment. The nature of an experiment is that you don’t really know what will happen.”
Mitch’s current supposition is that the C Suite are a group of non-demonic alien entities from outside time that are watching our every move and make all of the choices that we make for us.
Not to put too fine a point on it, there is the question that the non-demonic alien entities from outside time that are watching our every move and making all of the choices that we make for us may just like Sophie and maybe they’re dragging her back into the narrative framework that they're stitching together out of our lives for their own amusement? As I say that out loud I realize it sounds … I mean … a little bit … You could rationalize anything that way, pretty much, but on the other hand, you could rationalize pretty much anything that way. So the simple matter of ‘it doesn’t make any sense that they would do this,’ if we’re talking about decisions made by people who are not in this room right now … I feel like there can be motivated reasoning that they don’t recognize as motivated reasoning, because they're being influenced by, uh, the non-demonic alien entities from outside time that are watching our every move and making all of the choices that we make for us. If that makes sense?
In his dealings with the Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett, Mitch has also referred to the C Suite as “Matt,” an apparently unwitting reference to “Ma’at,” the ancient Egyptian deity-conception of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice.
“You remember the second time we met, Rōshi. I had just realized that the world was a story the guy was telling with himself, and it freaked me out. You talked me down, pointed out that this was not exactly new information. The guy … I don’t like saying the guy, you know, let’s call him, shit, I don't know. Matt. Because he’s just me. And you. You’re Matt, and you’re Matt,” he says, indicating Mary-Lynn and Jiyu in turn. “And as you read this — hear this, they’re the words Matt is typing, shit, saying, I don’t know why I — they’re the words Matt is saying to himself. Matt speaks, Ma’at listens, Ma’at makes the mare go.”
Marshall takes Mitch’s instincts about the existence of the C Suite very seriously. Lacking Mitch’s peculiar understanding of reality, however, he does not know quite what to make of them; to the extent they are “detectable,” he believes they can only be identified by their absence — when things do not make sense, or seem contrived, he sees the hand of the C Suite.
The notion that there is an all-powerful conscious force or principle controlling everything aligns with his general paranoia and belief in the dharma. Currently his operating theory is that the C Suite are, like human consciousness, an emergent property of the complex systems that undergird the fundamentals of human behavior developed by the Anunnaki, and which form the basis of the art-science of esmology (which Marshall calls “the Math,” in contrast to neurolinguistic programming, which he calls “the Language”).
Roger doesn’t talk too much to the whole C Suite thing. His thoughts are mostly private, except if the others in the Club get too loud and need a check. He’s no theologian, but it feels sacrilegious. He’s fine with the idea of super-powerful entities, eternal beings, different uncanny agents, sure. But giving them control of the whole of history and creation? He’s sure they’d have to answer to God somehow, ultimately. And his main beef with the idea is that such beings usually follow rules which mean they have to strike covenants with the free-willed humans they work on. Where’s his chance to negotiate with these C Suite entities, he’d like to know?
Jocasta’s combination of a military-intelligence background, extreme paranoia, and Orthodox views on free will make her pretty distrustful of the C-Suite narrative. She’s obviously not extremely devout about her religious beliefs, having personally witnessed the existence of other spiritual realities, but nothing has yet swayed her away from a basic belief in free will as axiomatic. While her paranoia allows for the possibility — maybe even the certainty — of powerful entities manipulating reality for a whim, the idea of a group so high up that they’re manipulating all the other manipulators seems both hopeless and pointless: hopeless because how can you fight back about something so powerful, and pointless, because why play a game where you control all the pieces? And intelligence work involves using Occam’s Razor a lot. So if we really are being manipulated by extra-dimensional entities of infinite power, but we can’t see them, interact with them, or change their decisions, what difference does it make? Even if they exist, in practical terms, we might as well act as if they don’t.
That said, while she kind of zones out when Mitch talks about the non-demonic alien entities from outside time that are watching our every move and make all of the choices that we make for us, she doesn’t discount it entirely, because, well, Mitch is a magic man and he makes things happen. So what does she know?
