3/1 - Colorado
Played: October 15, 2020.
Thursday, May 24, 1973. Marshall and Mitch are heading to Estes Park, Colorado for the Carnival of Knowledge! Marshall wants to be around famous people, promote his brand, and bond/party with Mitch. Mitch has no particular agenda. (“I could see bonding happening or not, it depends on factors perhaps best abstracted using Carousing rolls.”)
Mitch, Marshall, and Marshall’s bodyguard Dave fly to Denver in Marshall’s private jet and take a limousine from there, arriving at the Stanley Hotel late Thursday afternoon. They check in and check out the grand, if dilapidated, lobby. Nestled in the majestic Rocky Mountains, the Stanley is a stately relic of another time. It was built in 1909 by a tubercular Gilded Age steam-car magnate, and hasn’t been modernized much since then. It’s all dark wood and gaslight sconces, nooks and cubbyholes, mounted stag’s heads and topiary gardens. A perky young concierge offers to give our boys the nickel tour. Mitch is game; Marshall says thanks but no thanks and heads for the bar.
The bar is already filling up with Carnival of Knowledge attendees: a lot of young radio types, both long-haired FM programmers and squarer sales guys and engineers. Marshall orders a Mai Tai and spots a professional acquaintance: Eugene “Dr. HipPocrates” Schoenfeld, medical advice columnist for Bay Area heads and a sometime CIA asset in happy spots like Cambodia and the Belgian Congo. They greet each other as warmly as two (ex?) spooks can and start catching up. Dr. Hip says he’s looking for new opportunities, which Marshall takes to mean Schoenfeld’s gravy train has run out. He says the scene has changed a lot in the past five years. He says “the kids” (who aren’t kids anymore) are looking for what to do next. He says, “We need to tell them what to do next, Marshall.” Schoenfeld also says they’re doing interesting stuff at Esalen, inviting Marshall to come down there some time. They go out into the topiary garden to smoke a joint.
Mitch and a few other guests take the hotel history tour. Rebecca the concierge shows them the grand ballroom, the library, the main performance stage... She rattles off a list of famous people who performed there, including Harry Houdini, who had a trap door installed for one of his famous escapes. Mitch observes the trap door… and detects the faintest of History B influence coming up from beneath it, like a draft from a crack in the wall. The tour continues.
After the tour, Mitch finds Marshall in the bar, still having his ear bent by Dr. Hip. Mitch judges Schoenfeld to have a cop’s aura, and mouths to Marshall, “who’s this asshole?” Marshall uses Mitch’s arrival to make a graceful exit.
Mitch asks Marshall if he’s ever heard of Harry Houdini. Marshall has, of course; in fact, he knows that Houdini was a proto-SANDMAN, working with the Duncorne Foundation and John Wilkie’s SAO. Mitch says, “Well, he put a trap door in the main stage that conceals some kind of esoteric mystery. Does that ring any bells for you?” Marshall orders two more Mai Tais to go. “Let’s go check out this Houdini hole, man!”
They get a flashlight from Dave, go back into the grand theater, get up on stage, and open the trap door. It leads them down into a dark little crawl space beneath the stage, crowded with junk from sixty years of show business. While Marshall sips his Mai Tai, Mitch detects the “pinhole” from which faint History B energies are emanating. Concentrating on the pinhole, Mitch hears a voice whispering in his ear. It seems to be speaking in German.