4/5

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention

— Talking Heads, “(Nothing But) Flowers”

Played: April 9, 2021.

Friday, June 29, 1973. Mid-morning. Mitch heads up to the URIEL bivouac suite, carrying Rich’s note to Andy. He tells Roger and Jocasta that someone should read it — someone who hasn’t read Krane’s works to avoid potential memetic contamination. Mitch proposes that Jocasta maybe use her psychometry to see what she can see. Jocasta assents. She takes a seat on the bed, touches the note, and gets an instant sense of panic. The writer was clearly writing feverishly; she gets the feeling of, “Oh no, everything has gone wrong. We need to improvise.” This isn’t the gut fear of someone who has interacted with the Anunnaki for the first time. This is the reaction of someone who has been planning something for a while, and now it might all unravel. Probing deeper, Jocasta senses that the writer also felt drained at the end of writing the note, an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and resignation. Whatever is going to happen, it’s out of his hands now.

Jocasta eyes flutter open. She informs Mitch and Roger about her findings. She then unfolds the note. Immediately she is confronted with a potent Anunnaki glyph: UKU (“sleep”), plus a little something else she does not recognize. Jocasta feels a sudden punch of exhaustion, but draws upon her SANDMAN training and clears her head. Jocasta reads the note aloud to Mitch and Roger, skipping over the glyph as she does. Mitch apologizes for making Jocasta read the note — had he known about the glyph, or even suspected it, he wouldn’t have done that. Jocasta shrugs and says it’s no big deal. She tells Mitch and Roger that the glyph was meant to induce sleep and that the additional scribbling is intended to have given the target a dream or post-hypnotic suggestion. Presumably, this is what Rich was referencing in the note about Andy now “understand[ing]” what needs to happen.

Mitch worries that this glyph may have unleashed a memetic demon similar to the one that possessed Frank DiGiuseppe’s father, Armando. He attempts to detect the presence of History B, but does not sense any memetic demons. The glyph has done nothing to Jocasta besides make her marginally drowsy for a moment. But Mitch does discern that this glyph was taught to Rich by someone else — that there was some sort of Faustian bargain struck between him (and presumably Carl) and an agent of the Red Kings. He shares this revelation with Roger and Jocasta. Roger remarks that this is all “good,” in a sense, because it suggests the presence of History B — a known quantity — rather than not-History B, which is what they had been struggling with up ‘till now. The field team determines that they need to locate Rich and Carl. As they discuss how best to go about doing this, Mitch remembers that he confiscated Rich’s con badge. He places it on the hotel room desk, and Jocasta takes it in her hands. She is immediately overwhelmed with a vision.

Jocasta-as-Rich and Carl are sitting in a hotel room. It’s night time. There’s a crude map of the ballroom where the con’s opening ceremony will take place. Carl is saying to her: “You hit the crowd. I’ll hit Krane. They won’t know what hit’em.” He gestures over to the bed where there are two black rod-looking devices. Upon seeing these items, Jocasta-as-Rich is overcome with trepidation. Carl says: “You don’t have to worry about anything. Everybody in the room will lose consciousness. It’ll be fine. We’ve not used them yet in any kind of field test, I know, but trust me. They came from the good place. We’re going to be just fine.” Jocasta-as-Rich asks: “Are you sure we can do this?” Carl says:

Not only are we going to do it. We’ve already done it. As soon as the narrative changes, we take him to the accelerator and we complete the project. Rich, you can’t have any doubts now. This is happening tomorrow. Everything has been arranged. We’re going to be at MARPA headquarters by this time tomorrow. It’s going to be incredible. We're going to be sitting there with all of them! We’re going to … we’re going to teach President Kennedy American magic. It’s going to be … I need you to get your shit together!

Rich-Jocasta feels incredible shame. Reluctance and shame. Jocasta comes to and shakes off the spooky vibes of what she just saw, which she conveys to Mitch and Roger. She suggests that before they call Livermore, they call hotel security to inform them that they think a couple of attendees are armed. Roger says an even more simple approach would be to tell the con organizers to kick Carl (and Rich, if he’s still there) out.

In Archie’s car on the way into Livermore with Charley, Archie attempts to comfort Charley about her nightmare. “Dreams aren’t real in any straightforward sense,” he explains, “but we could talk to Mitch and get Sophie to look up what some of these names mean.” Charley agrees and says she’ll talk to Mitch about it when he’s not busy. And maybe Sophie. But she doesn’t have much more to say. They pull into Livermore and enter the URIEL offices as the field team calls in. With Archie, Charley, Marshall, and Sophie huddled around the speakerphone, the field team explains what’s transpired: they have detached the Atlantean plaque from the hotel foundation and stored in the van; Mitch confronted Rich over breakfast, got the note, confiscated Rich’s con badge; Jocasta analyzed the note, found that it contained a potent version of an UKU glyph, and her psychometry revealed that Carl and Rich plan on using some sort of weapon against the con-goers and Andy during the opening ceremony. The purpose of this plan, it seems to the field team, is to enable Carl and Rich to abduct Andy, bring him to the particle accelerator at the Berkeley campus, and somehow create an ontological event that Carl and Rich believe will make the world of Andy’s Atlantis novels the consensus reality.

Archie asks where Rich and Carl, and their weapons, are right now. Roger says they need to go find them. Archie says yes, that is priority one: Rich and Carl are now likely rattled, and that may cause them to escalate their plan, or act even more irrationally. Marshall interrupts and tells Roger to go find them. Roger says there’s two other things the office team needs to know: first, that Rich and Carl are catspaws for someone else, based on a “message” he received from Papa Legba; and two, that they may not know that URIEL has stolen the real Magneta Clock. Marshall says that they’ll worry about all that later: “Go. Find the students. Bring them to the Barn.” Archie interjects: “And Krane! I mean, he doesn’t need to go to the Barn, but he needs to be kept safe.” Marshall shakes his head, noting that they only have three people on the ground and that there are two potentially armed students to handle. He says that Mitch has a way of finding people, maybe Mitch can locate Rich and Carl. Archie says that’s right, Marshall’s right, the field team needs to go get the two Berkeley students immediately and leave it to the field team to get ahold of Krane. “Maybe we can reach out to him, tell him he’s in danger from his fans.” Marshall says yes, leave Andy to the office team, go find Carl and Rich. The field team hangs up.

The office team debates how to proceed. Marshall queries how they can lure Andy away from the convention. He also posits having Charley go to Berkeley to inspect this alleged particle accelerator. Sophie volunteers to take Charley there; she says she’ll prep some fake IDs and that should get them inside. The two of them head off. Marshall and Archie weigh their options. After a little discussion, Marshall picks up the phone and calls the URIEL bivouac suite. Jocasta picks up. Archie, Jocasta, and Marshall confab and ultimately decide that Archie will call Andy’s room to tell him that he is in danger and that they are sending someone to retrieve him, for his own safety. Jocasta will go to Andy’s suite under the pretense of law enforcement to escort him to the URIEL van in the parking garage and, from there, drive him to Livermore.

Archie calls Andy’s suite.

Archie: Hello? Mr. Krane?

Andy: Yes?

Archie: This is Archie Ransom. We spoke at the party last night.

Andy: Oh. Yeah. Hi. What, um, I didn’t expect to hear from you … what — what can I do for you?

Archie: Look, I know this is very unusual. But, when we talked, I made what probably seemed like a not-that-funny joke about being a character from one of your novels. But it wasn’t entirely a joke, Mr. Krane. I do, uh — well, I do work in a kind of law enforcement, and I know how crazy this sounds, but I think that you are in some danger at the convention.

Andy: You think I’m in some danger? You’re an ad man who works for the government? And you think I’m … in some danger?

Archie: You’ve got some fans, I guess you’d call them, that are having a little trouble telling fiction from reality.

Andy: This is supposed to be news to me? I deal with them every day, Mr. Ransom. What — so, let me get this straight. You’re saying I’m in imminent danger?

Archie: Well, there's a couple of kids from Berkeley and it sounds like they have some sort of, I don't know, crude explosive device or something like that —

Andy: What?!

Archie: There’s a colleague of mine, she’s on her way to your room now, she’s at the hotel —

Andy hangs up. In the hallway, Jocasta sees Andy emerge from his hotel room. He spots her and breaks out into a dead run in the opposite direction. Jocasta takes off after him. She catches up with the out-of-shape author fairly quickly, grabs him by the shoulder, and surreptitiously shows him both her fake ID and the handgun in her shoulder holster. Andy looks at both, then looks into Jocasta’s eyes, and says in a panicked voice, “Please — please don’t hurt anyone. I’ll do whatever you want. Please don’t hurt anyone.” Jocasta calmly and patiently responds, in the most professional voice she can muster: “Sir, I can assure you — examine my identification, you’ve already heard from my colleague. We are here only to protect your life. We have credible information about a threat not only to you but to other people in this hotel. My colleagues are already working to vacate the premises until we can isolate and disarm the threat. But you are our number one priority right now because you are the target of these suspects, so we need to get you out of here immediately. I promise if you cooperate, no harm will come to you or to anyone else.”

Roger and Mitch get in the elevator. Mitch closes his eyes and hits a button at random; when he opens his eyes he sees he’s selected floor two, the mezzanine. As they emerge on that floor, Mitch looks out the window to the new Brutalist extension to the St. Francis, and realizes that Rich and Carl are not in the old, original St. Francis Hotel, but in the new adjoining wing. Roger and Mitch race to the new wing. They get in an elevator and Mitch pushes a button at random: the ninth floor.

On the drive to Berkeley, Sophie starts crying. Charley asks her what’s wrong. Sophie says, “I can’t believe we’re putting you in danger.” Charley says she doesn’t really think they’re going to be in danger. They’re going to a college campus, there will be a lot of people there. Sophie cries a bit more, but is able to collect herself after a little while. Charley turns on the radio to help lighten the mood, sensing that Sophie is under a tremendous amount of stress.

Back upstairs, Andy looks Jocasta up and down and asks if they are really going to evacuate the entire hotel, shut down the con, for him? Jocasta says well, no, not just him — her team has evidence that his potential assailants might be trying to detonate a bomb in the building. Andy says she needs to go tell this to hotel security. Jocasta says she has people on that, and insists again that Andy come with her. Andy pauses and then says, “OK. But if you’re going to take me to safety, I want you to find Viv, and I want you to take her to safety as well.” Jocasta asks where Viv is located. Andy tell her Viv’s room number. Jocasta pointedly takes out of her walkie-talkie and radios Roger. Introducing herself as “Agent Messi,” Jocasta asks Roger to go fetch Viv, giving him her room number. Roger responds, “roger wilco, give me five minutes to get in location,” and signs off. Jocasta escorts Andy down to the URIEL van.

Roger and Mitch emerge from the elevator on the ninth floor of the new wing. Mitch is instantly hit with an overwhelming sense of History B taint emanating from three entities — two that feel like “batteries,” deep wells of Anunnaki juju — in a nearby room. The number 913 flashes in his mind’s eye. They dash off in that direction, soon finding themselves standing outside the door. Mitch senses that whatever is behind that door is a weapon, an incredibly dangerous one at that. Roger and Mitch whisper:

Mitch: So I guess we … knock?

Roger: No. We do not knock. We do not knock.

Mitch: I’ve actually never been in this situation before.

Roger: Great. I’m gonna unlock the door —

Mitch: Usually it’s not me that — that does this.

Roger: I'm gonna unlock the door. Very quietly. And then we're going to go in there. When you hear me say, “Freeze, FBI,” try to make sure you go for one of these … weapons. Try to make sure he doesn’t get one.

Mitch nods. Roger takes out his lockpicking tools. He briefly contemplates conjuring Papa Legba to assist, but decides against it. He finagles the lock … and just as he hears a “click,” both he and Mitch are bombarded with linguistic white noise. It is similar to what is unleashed from an ikoter, but much more powerful. They both black out.

Meanwhile, in the con organizers’ suite, Viv is sipping a mimosa and having croissants with the other VIPs. It’s now about 10 am, and no sign of Andy. Slightly worried, Viv calls the front desk to ask them to call his room. The receptionist attempts to reach him but reports back that no one is answering. Viv heads out to find Andy, thinking he might be having a panic attack. Her knocks on his door go unanswered. She jots a quick note on a piece of hotel stationary, slips it under the door, and goes to check out a few of the hotel’s common areas. Again, she finds neither hide nor hair of Andy. Eventually she gives up and returns to the con suite for more mimosas.

In the basement garage, Jocasta hastens Andy to URIEL’s van. As they enter the van, Andy asks where is she taking him. Jocasta says she is simply moving him out of the immediate area, and will eventually take him to see her supervisors at FBI headquarters for a further debrief. To lay the lie on a little thicker, she offers to connect Andy with Special Agents Padden and Hall to corroborate her credentials. But Andy is satisfied, and agrees to get in the vehicle. As they drive away, Andy grumbles about being in the wrong line of work. Jocasta asks if this sort of thing has happened to him before. Andy says, “More than I’d care to admit.” As she drives out of the city, Jocasta attempts to assuage Andy’s paranoia with assurances that he’ll have access to a phone and that everything will be explained once they arrive at HQ.

Back on the ninth floor of the new tower, Roger and Mitch awaken on the floor with slight headaches. Roger immediately draws his weapon. Mitch closes his eyes to sense History B, but detects none. They quickly check the room and find that Carl has left everything inside except the two weapons identified by Jocasta in her vision. They race off to a stairwell, pushing their way through people. As they go, Mitch continues seeking out indicia of History B, and finds none. They reach the third floor and do not find Carl. Roger peels off to find an elevator that will take him to Viv’s floor. Mitch heads to the lobby and scans the growing crowd of nerds and geeks and con-goers. Roger flags Jocasta on the walkie-talkie and apprises her of the fact that he has been unable to locate “the target,” i.e. Viv. Jocasta says to keep looking, then, in Danbe, says, “Not important.” In English, she continues: “Taking Mr. Krane back to Livermore. Get her here as soon as you can.” Roger confirms and in Danbe says, “Suspect more important?” Jocasta says, “Confirmed.” They sign off.

Viv arrives at the opening ceremony ballroom with the con organizers. Everyone is starting to get a bit nervous about Andy’s unexplained absence. They decide that if Andy does not show up by 11 am, they’ll have Viv deliver to the opening address. As this is going on, Mitch enters the ballroom and sees both the con committee and Viv walking toward the stage. None of them radiate History B energy. Mitch takes a seat near the back as the room fills with loud, enthusiastic con-goers. Roger, racing downstairs, walkie-talkies Mitch and says he needs to call in an ABP on Carl. Mitch agrees, sounding a little nervous. Roger asks if Mitch has eyes on the “scene,” and Mitch says he does. Roger tells Mitch that if he spots Carl, to radio him immediately. Mitch says he will.

In the URIEL van, Jocasta merges onto the highway as Andy says to Jocasta in a sullen manner: “I’d feel a lot better about my situation right now if you weren’t talking code on your walkie-talkie with your companion there. And now we’re out of range, so you can’t talk to him at all. So why don’t you talk turkey with me and tell me what this is really about.”

Jocasta: Well, sir, I'm sure you can understand I'm not authorized to go into the exact details. But I will tell you that I'm not lying about your life being in danger. I am not lying about people at the convention being in danger. And I am not lying about our trying to reunite you with your friend as soon as we can find her.

Andy: You're not lying about anything, but you're taking me to a government facility an hour outside of San Francisco, and somehow the guy who used to do promotions for Star Trek is involved with this? So, again, I would like you to tell me what's going on here. And if it is about some crazy fans of mine, why do you care?

Jocasta: Well … that's what my superiors are going to explain to you, sir. And the quicker we get there the quicker you’ll understand. I’m sure that, uh, we’ll have a much more pleasant drive if you —

Andy: What’s in the box back there? (he points to the box containing the Atlantean plaque)

Jocasta: What makes you think there’s something in the box back there?

Andy: This can’t be happening. My sanity has finally broken. This is it. I’m crazy. So it doesn’t matter if I do this!

Andy lunges for the steering wheel. Jocasta manages to fight him off and pulls over to the shoulder. She smacks him across the face. “Mr. Krane,” she says, “respectfully, I'm taking you to Livermore and I'm done answering your questions. You can either go there quietly and peacefully or you can go thrown in the back of the van in cuffs. It's your choice.” Andy sneers, “I think I’ll take the third option,” and attempts to unlock the door to escape. Jocasta grapples him, forcing him into a submission posture, and slaps the cuffs on him. After getting him safely into the back of the van, Jocasta offers him a cigarette. Fighting back tears, Andy says, “How the fuck am I supposed to smoke with my hands in cuffs?!” Jocasta offers to light it for him, since he’s been so cooperative. Andy starts muttering to himself how he can’t believe this is how it ends, that he’s going to be “disappeared,” finally, after all these years. Jocasta rolls her eyes. “Take it easy,” she sneers as she shuts the van doors, “we’ll be there soon enough. You can ask all the questions you want to the Star Trek man.”

After putting out an ABP, Roger runs back to the ballroom to reconvene with Mitch and try to prevent whatever violence Carl is about to unleash. He arrives just in time to see Chelsea Quinn Yarborough walk up to the microphone. She thanks everyone for coming and says she is sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that it would seem Andrew H. Krane has taken ill and will not be “joining us.” Groans from the audience. Chelsea says that Genevieve Abeille will be delivering the keynote address in his stead. After a few more remarks, Viv stands up and heads to the podium to light, somewhat confused applause. Mitch takes the opportunity to read Viv’s aura, finding it radiating her usual beneficent calm though now it is also suffused with a sense of worry and uncertainty. Viv checks the mic, thanks everyone for attending, and reads a passage from one of her works, 2158:

I meditate upon the face of god and it looks like one of those snake fireworks where it gradually amasses material over meaning, but it’s also a rhizome, a wobbly turkey tail mushroom in its own spacetime accordion differentiating out from itself and reentering itself to catalyze change. Every split to the fabric of being is a monad, every monad dividing and reentering itself endlessly in a ballet of spacetime, all of it perfecting itself across a potentiation of being which is never-ending; the kaleidoscopic heartbeat of the entire cosmos, thrumming together in chaotic uncertainty.

It’s the diffraction, the differentiation, the creation, the splitting of timelines, the birthing of more of itself that is of primary interest to it, or, at least, as near as I can tell, to the monad which I am connected to which, though it has split and merged in magnitudes unfathomable my belonging to it stretches all the way back to the cosmic soup at the beginning of the universe and that? Is god, that apprehension of the total system in one piercing moment of clarity that is god. And from there was flung out purpose, each with yearning, with perception, with desire and appetite, exploring the queering intent of the mysterious velvet folds of its own archetypal purpose.

This is the thing that’s hard for human souls to grasp on to, that our Samsarah, the earth game, this repetition of karmic cycles to gradually heal the soul and escape maya? That’s just what the monad you are attached to is doing with you, it’s not even the total portion of their objective in the earth game, as that is all the parts of you, entering and reentering yourselves and each other, to achieve some sort of end. And that total earth game is a tiny way this cosmic larva makes its way across the universe, its spirit trails etched in matter across galaxies.

This is what touching yourself feels like on VS-315b.

They found it on venus (VS), which wasn’t surprising considering the chemical makeup of the planet. When the Mars colonization scheme fell through (due to a lack of corporate oversight and a conquistador’s ethic to the exploration of other worlds) the Venusian proposal took a completely different tact, rather than attempt to colonize and terraform the surface, people would create symbiotic pods designed to amplify the successful exchange of energy and resources between Venus and the Earth. This had brought with it a boon in not only medical technologies as access to rare gases allowed for long unexplored avenues of treatment to emerge but a whole new crop of consciousness experiences that had not taken time to root on earth.

An entity is found at the intersection of these ethics, of taking something that was never meant for you and making it sacred, giving it a home in the earth, a home in you, and integrating that with your own evolution. How do you help them? What do they need?

Venusian engineers understood that their work was more like bees to flowers than settlers to the long-inhabited indigenous lands, a gentle pollination which would let something develop in the womb of the world, an exchange of minerals and microbes more than complex organisms, who rely on the context that birth them to sustain them meaningfully.

When she concludes, she is met with raucous applause from the audience. Mitch, still scanning the crowd, watches Roger duck out of sight into the one of the service hallways. As Roger re-emerges by the entrance, Mitch suddenly spots Carl and Rich standing outside the ballroom amid a crowd of about a dozen people. Roger also gets eyes on them and attempts to stealthily move in their direction. He manages to get within a couple feet and hears Rich saying to Carl, “He’s not here. What do we do now?” Carl begins to cry, muttering, “I can’t believe they did this. I can’t believe they did this.” Mitch contemplates his options and decides, fuck it: he unleashes his pyrokinesis in an attempt to give Carl heatstroke. Carl breaks out into a sweat and his eyes go suddenly wide. He says to Rich: “Something is happening.” A second later, Carl collapses to the ground in a faint. As Roger lunges for them, Rich takes out the black rod device, points it toward the ballroom, and pulls the trigger. Nearly 400 people collapse to the ground, splayed out like they’ve all just had a seizure. Mitch is among them. From her vantage point at the podium, Viv sees an entire ballroom of people pass out in near unison.

Roger grapples Rich as Rich attempts to pull the trigger on the rod again. Roger gets him into a hold, twists his arm, and forces him to drop the weapon. Viv looks around, startled and panicked, and sees a Black man wearing overalls wrestling with a young, clean-cut man who is dressed … like a MARPA agent. Roger scoops up the two weapons and Rich bolts for it, Roger in hot pursuit. Viv starts to put it all together: wait a second, Andy’s missing and there’s a man dressed as a MARPA agent and holy shit he wasn’t crazy, what the fuck is happening right now?!

At Livermore, Jocasta pulls up to a nondescript building, Building 451. Jocasta drags Andy into a secure conference room, where Archie is waiting. Andy growls at Archie that he better have a good story for all this, because he cannot believe it is happening. Archie responds that “events are still unfolding. I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a little bit longer. But I’m glad you’re safe. And our agents are trying to make sure everyone else is safe, too.” Andy asks about Viv. Archie asks Jocasta about Viv’s status, and Jocasta tells him that she sent one of their people to retrieve her, but that she hasn’t heard anything yet. She tells Andy not to worry, though, because Viv wasn’t the primary target and she hasn’t heard any bad news yet.

Roger catches up with Rich, who is panicked and freaking out, screaming about how there’s “nothing out there,” and how they can’t “get out.” Roger kicks open the door. He looks outside, and the world is out there — the world of History A San Francisco. Roger grabs Rich by the collar and starts pushing him outside, intent on getting him to a vehicle. Once through the door, however, Rich’s mind snaps. He goes completely catatonic, limp, a zombie, eyes dilated and mouth drooping. Roger’s eyes go wide but he holds it together in the face of this horror.

Mitch wakes up on the floor of the ballroom. As he does, he senses History B everywhere — everywhere and on everyone. He instinctively knows that this is all Rich and Carl’s doing. They have not translocated the St. Francis to History B. Instead, they have contaminated the entire site with History B energy. He gathers himself and scrambles for Carl’s unconscious body. Viv watches his go, noting to herself that the air … the air now feels humid? Hotter? In the distance, she hears bells chiming. Something feels different. The atmosphere is laden, strange. Something has gone wrong.