Monday, May 7, 1973.
One day in early May, during a weekly check-in meeting with all of URIEL, Sophie shows off a letter she's received from the UK.
Sophie
I’ve received a letter from an old friend of mine from university. His name is David Wolf, he’s also a Sandman, working out of the Duncorne Foundation at Cambridge. He’s been working in esmology and historical prediction since our university days, and he says he’s made a breakthrough on this front and he'd like some other Sandmen experienced in ... fringe studies to come up to a site in Cumbria to consult on and witness his work. Here, I'll just read you the relevant parts of the letter.
As you know, after completing my degree I stayed on at Cambridge and found myself gravitating to the work the Foundation was working in. I looked at the madness of nuclear terror and mutually-assured destruction — let alone the ongoing destruction of the natural environment and the horrors of overpopulation—and saw that human history was headed in a very ominous direction. All our wonders, all our technological glories would be eclipsed by a society bent on consumption, exploitation, and greed. I was young and inexperienced in the precepts of esmology then, but I saw the great advances being made in computer modeling as an opportunity to bring SANDMAN’s expertise to bear on this existential problem. After all, if we cannot promise global stability, the Red Kings have an opportunity to offer their own version of history as an alternative. And if we hand them epistemological ammunition, they will use it.
Computer modeling proved inadequate, though. I requested all kinds of aid from Granite Peak — advances in software and processing power—but the models were too basic. They only gave generalities—the particular year that petroleum would run out, that famine would strike this nation, that pestilence would strike that one. There was no detail, none of the specifics needed to be able to say how we could escape a universally-apocalyptic end. But then, a couple of years ago, while doing research on seers from the period since the Ontoclysm whose prophecies were uncannily correct, I found what my method was missing. Sophie, I know your team in California has had experience and found success with theories that some in SANDMAN might find ... unorthodox. So I thought of you, and them, when it comes to my current project, which the Foundation has unimaginatively code named ‘GRAIL TABLE.’
Would you and some of your team like to travel to Cumbria and meet with me and my team of researchers and observe and consult on my work? Any of your team who might have esmological expertise, or psi abilities, or abilities that help with navigating time and probability, would be welcome observers.
Mitch has also gotten a letter! It’s from Michael Nesmith, formerly of The Monkees. It includes a note and a flyer.
Hey Matty:
Hope all is going well for you by the weird and wonderful Bay. Don’s office (cursed be his name) sent me your work address, and finding out where you were at felt like synchronicity. We’ve got this big festival of ideas happening in late May in Colorado and we’d love to invite you. Lots of folks from the biz we call show, but also from the sciences, psychology, computers, and research out on the fringe. Let your coworkers know, if any of them are doing psychic research or something ha ha ha. Hope to see you there; RSVP by telephone or letter.
Yours,
Mike
Cumbria, England.
Estes Park, Colorado.
URIEL discusses their first impressions of David and his GRAIL TABLE project.