6/1

Played: February 15, 2022.

Monday, July 30, 1973. A cool, cloudy day at Livermore, California. URIEL assembles for their usual Monday morning meeting. Before any discussion takes place, Roger shoos everyone out of the building and does a sweep of the office and common areas. He finds no listening or surveillance devices. With that done, Marshall ushers everyone to the Rooster House, explaining in ASL as they go that all future group meetings should take place there and that nothing that is said or takes place in the Rooster House can ever be written down (or if something is written down, it needs to be immediately destroyed).

No sooner has Roger locked the door on the Rooster House than Mitch speaks up:

Mitch: Viv. What's up? What happened to the — do you need to tell something to the rest of us?

Viv: Well, first of all, yes. But I need to back up and tell you about that in a moment. Second of all, I do want to know — obviously we're all safe from prying eyes here. Can someone tell me what's been happening while I've been gone?

Mitch: (starts making a throat-slitting gesture to Viv)

Marshall: Well it sounds — uh, I mean, you know, the usual rules of these things is that the first person who asks the question gets an answer first.

Archie: Right. Why don’t you go first, Viv? There have been some developments here, but why don’t you go first and tell us what you've been up to.

Viv: Well … I mean last week was entirely given over to making sure that all of my MRI clients have a safe landing. Someone to talk to. Someone to work with from here on out. I'm happy to report that all of those meetings went very well and very satisfactorily and letting MRI know that I was leaving was, you know, it was difficult. But everybody seemed to be very happy for me to concentrate — I told them I was just going to be working on writing from now on so — I would like to talk about the book tour in a second, but let's bring things back to Mitch and your question. Something happened to me. Well, I will say that, not this past weekend but the weekend before I was with a friend and we engaged in a little bit of, uh, we partook of some mushrooms. And in the aftermath of that trip — I mean, I'll be clinical about it, I had a pretty severe couple of days of depersonalization from it. It was a little surprising, the potency was maybe a little bit more than I had anticipated and the experience during the trip wasn't too bad. So that weekend was a little bit — it was a little bit intense. In the time since I definitely have felt a little bit of a (she chuckles) a little bit of an ontological hangover. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you were able to tell, Mitch. Given that you are the magic man and that you've got the proficiency with auras and and everything else.

Mitch: (pointedly not including Viv) I — I — I don’t want to spend like too much time on this because we have other things that we need to talk about, but it seems like something happened to you. I had thought that you were like Charley or Jocasta, but instead today you come in and you're like Sophie, and that seems … I don't know what to make of that.

Marshall: Um, she’s not like —

Mitch: That's what I'm saying, yes. That is what I'm saying. You don't need to finish that sentence. We all — we all know what we're talking about here.

Marshall: OK.

Viv: Well, I don’t, exactly.

Marshall: That can happen?

Mitch: I don’t know. I don’t know! I don’t know. I don’t know any more than you do. I feel kind of dumb for having brought it up because I thought that it was something that I understood and maybe I'm entirely mistaken about that and I don't understand the things that I thought that I understood. But, so … I don't know. So I don't know. I don't know.

Archie: Maybe we should bring this down to the realm of the concrete.

As he’s talking, Mitch scans Viv’s aura. It is a little different. It’s still structurally the same as the last few times Mitch looked at it — it’s still rhizomatic, it’s still a tree full of the positive life force energy that she brought to the St. Francis — but there’s something different. Her crown chakra is activated and wide open. If Mitch had to describe it, he’d say that her connection to her higher self has changed. If there’s a cosmic switchboard up there, it feels like there’s a different peg in a different hole.

Mitch: So what we're saying then is that Viv had some mushrooms and, you know, got something out of sync with herself in a way that is scanning weirdly to me. And maybe she'll get better and if not, then she's in the same boat as billions of other people.

Marshall: Well, this is interesting because over the weekend, I was reading Roger’s report of his encounter with that man you know, Mitch, from the mountain, and he — if I’m recalling correctly — said something along the lines of that there was a shift or a change on the next … on the next level of the game. Like, in the framework, there had been some sort of change and that it was unexpected even by him and his masters. Are we … are we reality shards? Like, was there an ontoclysm and we don’t — we are what remains? And like, Viv did not make it through the ontoclysm? Is that — I know this is pretty intense for a Monday at 8:45 but is that what happened?

Roger: I meant the St. Francis. But that was just me — I was pretty clueless even if I was there.

Marshall: Oh! So you thought the count was referring to what happened on the roof of the St. Francis!

Roger: Absolutely. Yes. At the time, I mean …

Marshall: Oh, maybe he was referring to that. Alright. OK.

Roger: I mean, stuff went down.

Jocasta: (in Danbe, to Mitch) Are we in danger? Can she still be in our presence?

Mitch: (in Danbe) I think we can trust her as much as we trust the Librarian.

Roger: (in Danbe, looking at Marshall) Good.

Viv: I’m not feeling a lot of trust at this table.

Marshall: Look, I'll just tell you what the deal is, Viv. While you were gone I adopted a new way of thinking and now I'm not doing what I used to think. I'm doing different, better things. The thing of it is, is that there's something in some of us that Mitch can identify that makes us — I don't want to use the word “special,” but something. Not special in the sense that we’re necessarily better but just there's something uniquely tied together among some of us. And Mitch can sense it. And when we met you he was sort of startled to see that you also have this thing, whatever it was, and it bound you to us in some way, but —

Viv: But I don't have it anymore.

Marshall: But you don’t have it anymore. And now we don't know what to do about that because we had a revelation over the weekend that is tied in a way to our specialness.

Viv: Alright.

Mitch: We don't necessarily need to do anything. I don't know that we need to do anything.

Marshall: Sure.

Viv: Well, I was going to follow up what I was talking about with respect to my clients with something that I feel like it taught me about how to approach my membership in URIEL. So let's see if these two things seem to match. The impression I've got — Marshall, you are a trained clinical psychiatrist, you are obviously well informed when it comes to all of the elements of this secret war — you've all been very well trained in how to resist all of these blandishments of those folks who tried to take over the hotel. I'm not. But I still want to be of some use to you. I spent my first week here just reading through books and getting myself acquainted with the enemy, as it were, and as I was working with my clients over the last week, I said to myself, am I really going to be the kind of person who, you know, totes a machine gun and goes in and tries to fight these things? No. I'm not. What can I do? Well, I can imagine. I can provide you with the knowledge that I have and that I have accumulated over the years. But primarily the role I feel like I was fated to play with the six of you is to be here as a healer. To be here as someone who can help you deal with the fallout of these terrible things you have to encounter. So I think to myself — I find out I'm not in the club anymore and if that's the case, I mean, that's fine. But I want to still offer my help as someone who can help you work through some of the emotional and psychological and ontological implications of the war that you're fighting. And what this means is that you don't have to divulge every single secret. When you get down to brass tacks and start talking about what's happening right now, I can go take a ride. I can get out of your hair. But what I'm offering are my services as a therapist and specifically as one who I think, given what I have encountered, you can speak freely in front of. I had some ideas on this — on what particular methodology I can use. But I'm going to take a step back now and I can leave the Rooster House if you'd like so that you can talk about this offer.

Roger: I think you're in SANDMAN, right? So I think you can help us to that degree. I think this is only about the crazy, weird, I-can't-explain URIEL stuff which I'm actually gonna have to ask Mitch or Archie about. Like, where those limits are? I don’t even know’em. But you’re already in SANDMAN.

Viv: I made that decision.

Roger: I’m cool with it, let’s do some head shrinking.

Viv: I made that decision at the barbecue and I stand by it. But I also know that if my role needs to be very specific, very limited, very narrow, that's fine with me. And it might actually be to all our benefit.

Archie: First of all, thank you, Genevieve. We appreciate that, and while I don't claim to understand much of what Mitch is concerned about at this moment —

Viv: Archie, I take Mitch's hunches and intuitions very, very seriously. I haven't known him very long but they've not pointed us wrong yet.

Archie: What we haven't said is that we are at a bit of a juncture right now, and maybe it would be best if you could just let us confer a little bit. But I think we do want to continue using your services in much the way that you describe.

Viv: Well, excellent. Tell you what, I will actually go wait in the office you can give me a call when you're done. But I would like to (she holds up a fresh notebook) … I had all these ideas over the past week, I really want to share them with you. But I'll take a step back now.

Viv leaves and Roger locks the door behind her.

Mitch: Well now I feel bad. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.

Archie: Oh, I never trusted her.

An awkward silence.

Archie: I’m kidding. I’m kidding!

Marshall: You know, if we look at it as a — I mean, I think it's fine. Because even if there is something about the now-six of us that is unique, that uniqueness doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else who's not unique is aligned to the interests of this cabal that we've learned about. Or to the Red Kings. I don't think we have anything really to worry about from her. I don't think. I mean, I think she has some kooky ideas. I don't really know where she gets the idea that the six of us need, like, “healing” —

Archie: Exactly!

Marshall: — but, you know, she's ultimately harmless.

Archie: On Friday night we all made a decision, or at least I asked everyone to think about this. The reason we're here and not over in the office, is that we're considering … that we don't know how much we can trust our superiors at SANDMAN. And that’s not a decision we can make for her.

Marshall: And I think, just from the perspective of … well, she has a family and everything. We don't necessarily want her getting roped into what we have found ourselves involved in. I know that you have a family, Archie, but you signed up for this a long time ago. So anyway! Apparently you can stop being a member of the club. That’s new. What else? What do people think? How was everyone’s weekends? Where are we going? What are we doing?

Archie: Roger, you didn’t find anything? By the way, thank you, Roger, for driving around all weekend …

Roger: (giving Marshall a side-eye) No, I didn’t find anything significant or that looked like it was from the … anything of the scarier sort.

Marshall: I mean, he found — I'm being wiretapped. I don't — not by, you know, the Soviets or as far as I tell anyone affiliated with the Red Kings. I think I know who it is. I may talk to you, Jocasta, about calling in a couple of favors. Or Charley, I might need you to come out to the Mission to try to triangulate a signal or something. I'm still weighing options. Basically there's this detective, he thinks that I killed a guy. I didn't kill a guy. It was all an accident. He's had it out for me ever since, he hates hippies, blah blah blah, I think he probably pulled a wiretap warrant on me or something. I'll deal with him. Anyway. So, yeah. Do we just … go about our week? Like is that the play now?

Archie: Well, we need more information on what we’re talking about and what we’re dealing with, and until we have it I think we do have to keep doing our jobs and keep living our lives and keep things as normal as possible. Both in appearance and in reality. But we also need to know a lot more about Puharich and his faction. Does he represent a majority? Is it a splinter group? So if anyone has any ideas — I've got a few — about how we discreetly make those investigations …

Marshall: So, one action item in that regard is — as we discussed on Friday — getting Houdini into Granite Peak. You know, we’ve talked about how to do that a thousand different ways but I think we need to make that happen somehow. He’s, you know — I was at Granite Peak fairly recently when we were doing the Mansa investigation and, I mean, that place just gets weirder and more paranoid and freakier every time I go. It's not a good scene over there. So, I say that because that should inform how we try to poke and prod at the beast and get information. Like, it's going to act irrationally and sending a ghost in is probably our best bet. Mitch?

Mitch: So, Houdini and I have not had the smoothest relationship. He's really rubbed me the wrong way a couple of times and if the way he probably feels about me extends to URIEL as a whole then he's probably not a very reliable asset. But, um, Charley — you get along with Houdini OK, right? I mean, do you feel that he's taking advantage of you or … I mean, because that's the thing that was really concerning me at the time. You were there. I don't need to — we don't need to rehash this.

Charley: No, I like him! He’s a grand magician! And he’s an agent! He knows a lot of cool stuff. So I don’t have a problem with him at all.

Archie: Charley, do you think if you approached him, he would be willing —

Charley: Oh, yeah!

Archie: Because we are asking him, or we might be asking him, to work against the present-day SANDMAN authorities. Would he be willing to do that for us? He would be on our side?

Roger: What are his motivations?

Charley: Well, he'll be working towards our goal which is to — which is not, I mean the … I don’t know. We’d have to ask him.

Archie: I can’t imagine he’d be enthusiastic about Puharich’s vision. But maybe that’s something we need you to do, to talk to him and feel him out. And also think about the technical side of it — how we would get him in there?

Charley: Right. And the other faction of SANDMAN, I mean … why are they are doing it? Are they, I mean, is it coming from — do we just have a disagreement on the best method to defeat the Red Kings? Or are they coming from a misguided, polluted … have they been corrupted? I wasn't really clear on that. Like, what their angle is. Because I think that might kind of answer the question as to how Houdini will … you know, whether or not he's going to want to help.

Archie nods and goes over his esmological findings in greater detail. The easiest explanation given the data — and given what the team knows about all these different programs that seem to have the accelerationist tendrils in them — is that the accelerationists have gleaned from projects like GRAIL TABLE that humanity is fated to fall under the Red Kings’ sway once more. It may happen in 50 years. It may happen in 100 years. But it's going to happen. The accelerationist logic is twofold: one, they need to make it happen quicker so the blister doesn't fester so that, two, they can create a strong, resilient, healthy society full of bionic and/or psychic-filled corporate-feudal survivalist states that will be able to protect themselves from the Kings. So it is essentially a fatalistic point of view: there's no point in fighting, so we should make everything as bad as possible throughout the world to get this all to happen more quickly. Rip off the band-aid, as it were. Marshall speaks up:

Marshall: I would say, Charley, that you can explain — the way I would package it for Houdini is to appeal to his vanity. He has always been, I mean from my reading of him and the limited extent that I dealt with him at the Stanley Hotel, you know, he likes to be a star. He thinks very highly of himself. And he's kind of an adventurer. So I think his loyalty — you know, the Project didn't exist when he was alive. There wasn't an official SANDMAN. So his loyalties I think — I wouldn’t trust, I don’t trust his loyalties, but I also don’t trust his loyalties to SANDMAN. So I think if you go to him and you try to pitch it as, oh, you know, we are so stumped, oh we need the great magician Houdini to infiltrate the most clandestine organization in the world, only you can do it — I think he’ll do it just to prove to you that he can.

Roger: But we don’t want him to turn over, right? He has secrets, right? So, we gotta make sure he’s motivated and — I mean, as a proto-Sandman, he probably has motivation not to have the Red Kings win, right? He’s still on the “go humanity” side. So that’s also what we gotta appeal to.

Charley: I’m sure I can convince him.

Marshall: And last thing I'll say about this and then we move on to the next action item — Roger does raise a very good point, Charley, so maybe without Houdini's knowledge, you might want to build in some kind of a kill switch or something so that, if we need to sever ties with him very quickly, or rein him back in, we have a way to do that.

Charley: Yeah. OK. I'll see what I can do.

Marshall: Also: over the weekend I gave a lot of thought to how we can gather information without actually having to put anything at risk or put any pieces in play and I think it's going to hinge on you, Archie. Because I think that, because we now know that this faction exists, and we know at least one or two of the pieces, we can esmologically track it out from there. So even though, yes, I did burn the Uri connection, he's a public figure. We can follow him, you know? And we can follow Puharich. And we can see who they socialize with, who they hang out with and who they know, and then we can draw the network out from there. I think we can do all that without anyone knowing because we won't need anyone. We can just sort of tease it out because with your esmology, aren't you — you were able to calculate the existence of this cabal. So from the knowledge of its existence I feel like if we just all spend time with our eyes and ears open and get Archie the data, Archie can piece together more of the picture for us. And I don't think we actually have to risk anything to make that happen.

Archie: Yes, to start I just want to sit down and go through our own files. There's a lot of stuff right here to read in light of this. And I can't help but think that URIEL is part of the answer to this riddle too. The question of how we each came to be here is part of it. So I'm going to be looking through your files. If anything comes to mind — the circumstances of how each of you came to join URIEL are, I think, relevant.

Marshall: My last action item about the, ah, OZYMANDIAS cabal — because I think that we can, between the Houdini insert and esmological analysis, and then this third thing, I think we can otherwise just go about what we need to do. As an operation. But that third thing is, uh, I — we — we need, all six of us … there can’t be any secrets. I know that I’m probably the worst or have been the worst at this up until now. But if we — if this is going to work, there can't be secrets. Things that happen to one of us happen to all of us and so we all need to be forthright about what is going on in our lives and, you know, at work and in our investigations. I'm not saying we have to meet weekly and have a giant like confession or anything like that. But we can't hold things too close to the vest. We have to be more open with each other because, if this is going to work, there needs to be real cohesion against them at least until we can figure out what's going on with the overall Project. How do people feel about that?

Silence.

Marshall: Great. OK!

Archie: That’s swell, Marshall. But we don’t keep secrets now, do we?

Marshall: No. I mean — the thing, the unspoken thing that I don't think all of you have fully processed is that I can always tell when people are lying. I can always tell people — it's why the Project recruited me. I know. I don't know what you're all lying about but I can tell with all of you that you're holding things back. So I'm not — so I'm not — I don't know what it is and I'm not telling you that you have to tell me or anything. But I know you're all hiding things and you need to think really carefully about opening that up to the group because we all have to trust each other going forward but this is all going to end really badly.

Mitch: What have I lied to you about?

Marshall: … I don’t know anything about your background! Like, where are you even from? You have — have you read your own file? It’s like you didn’t exist for 15 years. Like do you not know what’s going on? And then, also, you just — I mean, you just told us about all the Mount Shasta stuff on Friday!

Mitch: But I didn’t lie about it!

Marshall: But you were holding it back. I could tell when I would ask certain questions you would get quiet at certain times, you would blink too much, you would look into a corner — I can tell when people are lying.

Roger: … OK. Is it a lie of omission if we don’t even know?

Marshall: I mean (chuckles) there is a theory that you can — yes, that you can be lying even to yourself, and it’s betrayed through tics and cues …

Another silence. Then:

Archie: That's really — that's great, Marshall. I think that’s really important.

Roger: You’re going to have to help a grunt out here. What are the standing orders? How does this work? What the — sorry, so give me some like, old military general orders. General order number one is, what? We don’t lie to each other? How does that work? Is it, number two, I always have to be at my post, you know? Number three is, you tell Marshall everything every week? Just give us some standing orders.

Marshall: I guess … I guess if something is happening and you think that we should all know about it or that you feel like it might impact the group, you share it. Even if it is personal. Even if it's a little strange. Even if you're not 100 percent sure that it relates to something that we're investigating. I don't have a rule for it. It's just sort of an intuition thing.

Roger: Just think about it because you could just give us some like standard operating procedure, you know? Just —

Marshall: OK, let me ask you a question — let me ask you a question, Roger. Roger, what happened to the third loa that manifested at the St. Francis? What’s going on with him? You reported that you manifested a third loa? What happened? Is he still here?

Archie: Maybe this is something Viv can help us with.

Marshall: That's true! That is a good point. Yes, maybe she can be sort of the sounding board for these things.

Mitch: We used to have Sophie present at these kinds of meetings …

Marshall: Right. Right! That’s right. We did used to have Sophie at these kind of meetings and she wasn’t special …

Roger: (clears his throat) Full disclosure. Sitrep. The “Agent” is a new loa — well, new to me. We're working on a contract. He has violated a couple of rules but I think we've got it back under control. There were a couple times he went out for a ride without permission … um, there's something really seriously going on about what happened at the St. Francis, where now there’s like a whole movie and a channel for him — for his worship. It didn’t exist before, so he sort of is now further on our plane and I'm trying to figure out what that means. I'm also trying to figure out if he already had relationships with the two loa I know best. I — it's being worked out. But things seem to be under control and I would report to you if I had completely lost it. And, you know, I've had to apologize to a couple of women but it's — it's under control.

Marshall: OK. I mean, that’s — I wasn’t trying to be too much of a hard ass. It just — that’s what I’m talking about. It’s good that we know that. It’s good that you shared that because it’s — we all have to trust each other. It's why I told you guys about the detective because I don't think it's relevant — I can handle it — but you should all know about it. Those sort of things. I’ve talked enough. We should probably get Viv in here and talk about our actual jobs.

Jocasta: Before we bring … someone who I’m extremely concerned is a security risk back into the room — I didn't bring the materials in with me because we were instructed not to bring anything in writing in here. But, to be frank I'm fine with what you proposed, Marshall, because I just assumed that you were all spying on all of us anyway that it's functionally impossible for us to have any secrets. Regardless, this weekend I did a significant amount of research into cult publications from both the Bay Area and the rest of California. I spent all day on it Sunday. And I'm not an esmologist, meme-ology is not my area of expertise. But Archie, I would suggest that when you have some time today, you look over the materials that I went through because to me — to my read my admittedly inexpert read — there was a very clear paradigmatic, esmological shift in the content of these publications starting around 1970 and continuing to this day. To the level of even particular words and phrases being reused. That's a meme packet and if the patterns seem that obvious to me, I would suggest it's going to seem even more obvious to you. So I believe that this faction — which, secondarily, I would suggest it should be part of our mission ongoing to find out the extent of it, to what degree it's integrated into what we might call the SANDMAN that we know or to what degree it's a fringe operation. But they have clearly been deploying a meme for the last several years in this vicinity, amongst the people that it is our brief to investigate. Trying to sell them the idea that their beliefs in the occult and in mystic phenomenon are not traditional in the sense of being magical or spiritual but rather that they are quantifiable, they are measurable, they are accessible to everyone. That they can be controlled and quantified. So I believe this is a very important part of what they're doing because they put a lot of effort into it. Maybe I'm wrong. Again, I defer to your expertise on this. But you should look at this material because I don't think this is something that's just starting. I think that they're well on the road to planting the seeds of whatever they're trying to do.

Marshall: It sounds like you're describing the human potential movement.

Jocasta: I hate to say that because that’s something that I’ve believe very strongly in for many years. But that's exactly what I'm describing.

Marshall: You said you discerned this from reading certain publications. What types?

Jocasta: Generally occult magazines. Fate. Sunrise. Atlantis Speaks. New Aquarian. People who are inclined to believe in this phenomena but may have a disparate set of beliefs about what they mean.

Archie: That’s interesting.

Jocasta: It’s not just that they’re trying to develop ideas about human potential. It's — they're trying to quantify it and define it in a very specific way. It has a very technocratic feel to it. We can talk about this more but you're not wrong. It's just that's there's more to it than that. It's more than just the rise of human potential conversation in these areas.

Roger: Are there, like, words the rest of us can look for? Because, I mean, you know some of us are involved in some groups.

Jocasta: It’s all in my report.

Archie: That's terrific, Jocasta. Yes. I mean, it sounds like you are doing memetics or esmology. I'll certainly look at it. But that's the kind of thing we need. This is good. This is concrete. We need to to know our enemy. Then we can track them, figure out if they are actively manipulating the meme space. They will leave fingerprints and we can trace them upstream.

Jocasta: And as an aside — this is hardly a secret to any of you — but you certainly know that I have been developing the use of my power through the aid of psychedelics and as I have continued along that path. it has led me to the belief that building strong counter-memes — not just against the Red Kings but against this accelerationist faction's messaging — is the most important and critical work we should be doing right now.

Roger: Right on with that. I’m sick of the science creepin’ into my magic.

With that, the team buzzes Viv and lets her back into the Rooster House. She explains that she’s planning on being away on a book tour for most of August, primarily on the East Coast and at a few college towns in the Midwest. She inquires if there are any standing orders for her while she’s away, things she should be on the lookout for. Roger tells her to look out for certain occult symbols and phrases — especially anything that Archie flags as potentially relevant based on his continuing esmological analysis. Marshall also advises that Viv keep her eyes out for coincidences. Viv says that’s definitely on her mind lately, and Marshall tells her to double down on that. Viv asks about the plan to visit Roswell, New Mexico, in order to investigate what people there may remember about the Solarans and, possibly, Charley’s mother. Marshall says he still intends to take that trip, explaining that he thinks they can pose as cult deprogrammers hired by a wealthy client to find their daughter who was reputed to have moved through that area several years ago. He and Viv plan to make the trip sometime in the coming week, before Viv’s book tour. Then:

Viv: The third part of my agenda is probably the most important and it had to do with what I mentioned earlier about wanting to be here to help you all with interpersonal relations and the trauma of this job that is — it takes up your entire lives. I want to be here to kind of receive … sort of the emotions that are going to be kicked up by it. So I had a couple of ideas, one of which I wanted to suggest immediately and the other I thought would be more of a long-term possibility. What I'm very, very curious about — and I think it's coming from my own experiences since the St. Francis — is, do any of you have dreams that you would feel are symbolic to the extent that they extent out of the subconscious and into the super-conscious? In other words, have you received messages in dreams or in altered states that seem to you to be full of portent or in need of interpretation? That goes beyond the strictly Freudian or Jungian and into something a bit more … numinous, let's say.

Roger: You want unanimous assent?

Viv: I’m sorry, what was that?

Roger: Uh, yes. All of us. Yes.

Viv: Would the six of you be amenable — and I would do it along with you — to keeping dream journals going forward? And any that you've had since you've started working for SANDMAN that seem especially, as I said, freighted with meaning. I feel like these could be good. This could be a good first step to all of us on working together in a therapeutic sense but also, I think, it's a legitimate form of intelligence that should be analyzed and broken down and collected and kept secure and used to help us make decisions going forward. Marshall, this new way of doing things that you were talking about. Would this fall under that rubric, do you think?

Marshall: Well, I mean, I don’t know if dream journaling is necessarily doing things differently. I remember having to do a dream journal for a class I took at Stanford. But I have had those dreams. And … you know, I’ve met holy men in Cambodia and Vietnam who could see the future. I mean, I've seen some wild shit. So, yeah. I'll give it a shot.

Viv: All of you are free to participate or not participate as you wish but I'm here to help with interpreting them. If you need that. And the second element of that, that might come later on after we've built up a little bit of trust, after we've built up a little bit of rapport and gotten to know each other a little better, I would like to try psychodrama with this group. I think it could open up new possibilities and new vistas of understanding not just of each other but of the situations that you get into, the missions that you go on, thinking about embodying the enemy or embodying someone and learning how they are learning how to predict how they might behave, how they might react. Essentially just a layer of intensive role playing facilitated by me that would hopefully give us all an advantage when it comes to not just our interpersonal relationships with each other but how we interface with the world out there while on a mission. Again, that's something that we can bring in maybe once a little bit more comfort has been built up. But I want to offer my services there as well.

Roger: Now if we keep the dream journals, and you read them, they’re treated as confidential, as you said, right? Classified materials, right? So absolutely under control and absolutely — like, eyes only.

Viv: Yes. And again, only with your consent. Whatever you’re willing to share.

Roger: I also have to ask. In some cases the loa can see.

Viv: I understand. Of course.

Marshall: Archie, what do you think of these last two bullet points?

Archie: Well, I mean, it seems a little wacky but you know I’ve learned not to poo-poo things that are wacky. I don't actually dream but if the rest of you want to keep dream journals there, you know, of course.

Viv: Archie, of course you dream. Everyone dreams. Every human being who has ever lived on this planet dreams. You may not remember them. You may not understand them and they may fade away upon waking almost immediately. But you do dream. Trust me.

Archie: Well, I don't know how much you're going to get out of anything I dream about. I'm willing to try. I'm not saying we can't try. I just — I just wouldn't want you to get your hopes up. I think my dreams are going to be pretty tedious.

Viv: I’ll keep my hopes at a very reasonable level. That sounds right to me. And that’s all I had. That’s all I have to offer.

Marshall: I mean, I'm not gonna — you keep saying that but I'm looking at some faces. Charley! What do you make of Viv’s proposals? We all have to buy in if this is going to work.

Charley: Um … yeah, um. Yeah, I guess that’s OK.

Marshall: (laughing) OK, well, make sure you have Archie buy you like a new nice notebook or something. And like a good pen.

Viv: Actually, it doesn't have to be words either, Charley. It can be art. It can be music. It could be any expression you want it to be. Anything that accurately reflects the sort of landscape and the and the mood of the dream will be extremely valuable to me.

Marshall: And I don't think I need to ask you, Ms. Menos, because you probably have all your dreams cataloged in volumes going back to your childhood, but …

Jocasta: I've been using a dream journal since I was 11.

Marshall: OK. And you’re on board with this?

Jocasta: And I'm already obliged to visit a number of therapists under the terms of my loan to URIEL, so …

Viv: Is there anything we can do about these … military therapists that Jocasta has to see?

Jocasta: It’s not my call but if I were to be rid of them, that would be fine with me.

Viv: I mean, if the two of you can pull some strings, I think — I always think that unless the therapists are working together it's better for somebody to just be working with one voice, with one therapist.

Jocasta: I don’t give them anything that I think would interfere with our mission but I am quite convinced that they are already — before we knew anything else about accelerationist movements within SANDMAN — I am already quite convinced that they are a route to channel information about what we're doing back to them. The Army. But some people have said that I'm a bit paranoid so maybe not.

Marshall: Alright, I’m just going to beat this horse to death. Mitch! You in buddy?

Mitch: Yeah, sure. If I told you about the one dream that I had with, um … which is the only thing that springs to mind. But sure, yeah, fine. Fine. So, yeah, I came to the meeting with two agenda items and Shasta is one of them. What's our — what's our Shasta plan? It's not just me and Charley, right?

Archie: What is it you want to do there? Or you think will happen there? Mitch, you said it's important and I trust you when you say it's important but I don't really understand what — why we're going there. Or why you want to go there.

Mitch: Well, I want to go there because I have, like, one-and-a-half friends up there and it's always a good time and it's a pretty mountain and so forth.

Archie: OK, let me rephrase. Why do you want to take Charley there?

Mitch: Charley asked to go.

Jocasta: It’s a place of fairly —

Charley: I want to go camping!

Jocasta: — potent occult power.

Viv: And Charley wants to go camping. I've been there and it — yeah, it’s a profound experience. That mountain and the whole area around it. It's suffused with telluric power. What's the mystery of the mountain, though? That's the question. What is it? Is there something of the Red Kings there that we need to investigate?

Marshall: I mean, I'm not much — I'm not really one for camping (he gestures at his limp) and also I dress like this (gestures at his outfit). But you know, I don't — yeah, take the kid camping. You've never been camping, Charley?

Charley: No.

Mitch: I got a couple books you can read.

Marshall: Yeah. Take the kid camping, then.

Jocasta: Well, I would be happy to let you use some of my camping equipment from when I was a kid and whatever you don’t have, we can take you shopping to get.

Charley: Oh yeah! That'd be great. But … you're not going to go?

Jocasta: Oh, I’m going.

Charley: Oh, great!

Jocasta: I’ll use my grown-up camping equipment.

Marshall: (laughing) Say, a sniper rifle, and camouflage.

Jocasta: My grandfather used to take me camping at Mount Tam when I was a kid and I still have a lot of my equipment.

Mitch: Archie, how are we making this happen?

Archie: Well …

A long pause.

Marshall: Archie, when was the last time you and the wife got away? You could take Melanie! (laughing uproariously at his own joke) You can leave the kids with me and you could take Melanie!

Archie: Uh … I’m not sure that’s — Mel’s a great camper! — but I’m not sure that’s the … that’s the best idea at this precise moment. Am I needed on this trip? Maybe if you were there, with Charley, Jo, maybe I don't need to go. It's not that I don't want to …

Another pause.

Mitch: Yeah, so. I mean that kind of brings to the fore the other topic that I wanted to discuss with folks. Um. Which is Mary-Lynn. I mean, y'all have mostly met her. She seems nice enough, right?

Marshall: Yeah, she seems delightful.

Archie: She’s swell!

Mitch: So when she asks questions like, why are you bleeding like that? Or where did you go that weekend? Or, wow, what exactly does your job consist of because I never see you doing it? Or how exactly do you know the famous Dr. Red? And why were you in the other car? And you know, all these kinds of questions. Like, up to this point, I feel like I have largely skated by by changing the subject and talking about TV shows. I don’t feel like that’s sustainable. And, um — I, what should I be saying?

Viv: I know I haven't had to do this as long as the rest of you, but I had to get Charles and the kids out of the house so Roger could scan the other day. It was not something I was used to doing. If there is a how-to-work-around-your-spouses-and-families 101 to be offered — and significant others, I should say, Mitch — I’m all ears.

Marshall: Well, I mean the standard line at the company is you just tell them that you work for the government and it’s classified and you can't talk about it. I mean, people fill in the blanks.

Mitch: She’d probably buy that.

Marshall: Well, you do work for the government.

Mitch: Yeah. It’s — I’m not saying it’s a lie. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Archie, what do you do? You seem to have it all figured out.

Archie: Well … it is tricky, Mitch. So things are going well with this girl? You feel good about her?

Mitch nods.

Archie: I mean that's great, that's — that's just terrific, first of all. I guess it is about compartmentalization and you know, don't think of it like you're lying. Think of it like you're protecting her. You know, it's something that you do for her and it's a burden you have to carry. But that's part of the work we do, carrying this.

Archie falls silent and his mood darkens a bit. He seems to be struggling with something. Marshall and Viv shoot each other concerned glances. Roger fumbles for his cigarettes.

Archie: Now, Mary-Lynn, she can’t, ah, read your mind, can she?

Mitch: I honestly don’t know.

Archie: Because that might make it complicated. I'm not 100 percent — I'm not 100 percent on that. I kind of thought that I was gonna be at this point and I'm not. Which is fine. It's just something that I'm going to have to determine. I think the answer to your question is that it's okay, I think.

Archie: You know, Marshall's given me advice on these questions and he's probably the person to ask about the specifics of tradecraft and the like.

Mitch: But it's okay if she's aware that I do something that I can't talk to her about?

Marshall: Oh, absolutely. That’s the first rule. The first rule is, you can just tell people you can’t talk about it.

Mitch: That’s the first rule?

Marshall: Yeah. Well — that’s the first rule of managing interpersonal relationships when you do our type of work. The real first rule is don’t get caught. So, yeah, just tell her you work for the government.

Mitch: Yeah, I mean — I don't know. I feel like I'm getting kind of abstract here like, how bad is it to rouse suspicions? Is it like super bad? Or is it just bad?

Marshall: I mean, it's just … it's all context. Look at me! I look like this. You don't think I rouse suspicion? I drive around in a Rolls-Royce! I have a manservant. It’s suspicious. I’m suspicious.

Mitch: I feel like I’ve seen you wearing a lapel pin that says “CIA” on it.

Marshall: (laughing) That’s right! That’s the thing — most people are stupid. I’m not saying Mary-Lynn is stupid but most people are stupid. They just aren’t that interested in you. They’re wrapped up in their own little lives and they don’t really care about those things. As long as she’s not, like, a Soviet asset or whatever — and we’ve done our due diligence, we know she’s not — you can just kind of … lie. Or just don’t tell them things.

Mitch: Roger, what do you do? I wanted to talk to you about this and somehow we never got around to it. But you — you have friends?

Roger: Yeah and … yeah. They teach you to compartmentalize, right? I got friends that I can — that I would have a hard time explaining to you guys, right? You always have different social circles that don't always overlap and people can be cool with that. And then, you know, I have an FBI badge so like, if it really came down to it and some chick was really getting too close and it was going to cause problems, I'd be like, I can't tell you. Why? I'm FBI. Right? And let them hit that level. But not any further. I mean, you know, Marshall’s obviously CIA but that’s all you get. Surface.

Marshall: That was well put. Well put.

Mitch: And that’s not a problem that you’ve had?

Roger: (he sighs) It’s not really great for relationships. But, you know … maybe I just haven’t found the right girl.

Archie: It's a little bit like … remember the St. Francis? We talked about the picnic blanket — the levels, the layers. You have a story beneath the story. Things don't add up. Things seem a little hinky. But if Roger works with the FBI, that explains it. People won’t generally push past that. I mean, who's going to believe — who's going to jump to the conclusion of what's really going on here?

Mitch: I mean, once — I guess once you've seen me start fires with my mind, you just kind of accept other things.

Viv: And did she … take that OK?

Mitch: Oh, she liked it.

Marshall: We do have to figure out she does, though. Like, what she can do …

After another pause, Jocasta chimes in.

Jocasta: So, hey, boss. I saw you on TV for a second at the farmers’ market.

Archie: Oh, it was nothing. It was just … something between the farmworkers and the teamsters.

Jocasta: They didn’t … they didn’t hurt you, did they, boss?

Archie: No no no no no! I was fine. It was actually Jane, being right there, got up in the face of a couple of these teamsters …

Marshall: We’ve got to get you some security, boss.

Archie: It’s just a farmers’ market!

Marshall: Well, I know, but you're — we don’t have to go over this again but I just really feel like you’ve got to get with your wife on this and you've got to get you some security or something. I mean, what if something happened to you at the farmers’ market? You're the leader of the group.

Archie: Well, relevant to the conversation we were just having — my Melanie, I may have to have a conversation with her. Anyway, that's … nothing for any of you to worry about. These things continue to be tricky.

Viv: I'm sure both Marshall and myself will be at your disposal if you need to talk. Hey, that could be a great thing for us to maybe do some preliminary psychodrama on if you were interested. I'd be more than willing to work out a possible conversation that we could role play.

Archie assents politely but in a way that conveys that’s never going to happen. With that, Archie stands up, signaling the meeting is over. People shuffle out. As they go, Marshall leans over to Jocasta and asks, “So, this camping trip — you will go loaded for bear, right?” Jocasta glances at him and smirks. “I’m aching for bear.”