9/3
Played: February 12, 2024.
Wednesday | April 24, 1974
MIKE
Jocasta will be checking her SLA dead drop for the first time. She was told to check it daily at 9:00 AM.
Merrick wants to get the "brain trust" together on the memetics and esmology side. He's been running some models and he needs a little more input data, but he wants to talk about 'what kind of memetics should we be planning to release, now that it's nearly 48 hours since the robbery and the slayings?'
The big news I should probably drop first thing, on the front page of all the papers is that there was another presumed “Zebra” killing last night. As you all take a look at the report: a young white man, shot in the back three times while helping a friend move stuff out of his apartment into his car. It happened basically right where Dave's ash fell on the map on Monday, so it has increased even more the overt San Francisco police and federal presence on the streets of San Francisco, past what was already a pretty heavy presence. Folks are on edge. Obviously this kicks everything into a different gear as far as the SLA and Donald DeFreeze is concerned, and any possible linkage between SLA and “Zebra,” the newspapers are more than happy to speculate.
That does make things more complicated with the Merrick meeting, but I think we should probably get started with that, because that seems to be the top priority right now.
What Merrick presents to Archie, Marshall — and if Mitch is at Carey Street Wednesday morning he can certainly sit in for this meeting if he wants) is what the esmologists and memeticists that he has on staff have been working through, the implications of what's been happening now. The word that came down from on high on Monday was Patricia Hearst is a very powerful symbolic figure, at the nexus of different social esmological flows. Granddaughter of one of America's largest media magnates, but herself an art student living with a fiancé. She's a daughter of the ruling class. Her being willfully involved with this robbery… at least that's what the media story has been… creates a lot of churn. Merrick's assignment was to see where this could head in the next few days as things go on.
"Now, obviously," Merrick says, "we couldn't put every single variable into into play here, but what we're seeing thanks to the data that Ms. Abeille brought in from the the leftwing factions out there in Berkeley and Oakland… They killed two people during this robbery, two. Sure, they might have been…" Merrick says, "in the words of the SLA, 'petit-bourgeois of the ruling class,' small business owners, what have you… But among the mainstream and closer-to-mainstream leftists, these two slayings have really put the SLA in a bad light. For a lot of those folks it's bloodshed of the wrong types of people. The Marcus Foster assassination was bad enough, a Black education administrator, but these have caused some separation now.
"As far as what the public thinks of Patty Hearst herself, of 'Tania' and her willfully going along with this robbery and shooting? American public opinion seems to be that, if she wasn't brainwashed then she always felt this way… It down to, what do we want to try and accomplish? I'm also getting the sense from a couple of the reports I've read from the field team, that Patricia herself is an x-factor, and we don't know what her role in the larger memesphere could be, given her possible abilities, possible connections to other things being investigated right now.
"So my question to the two of you," and he points to Archie and Marshall, "is, when all is said and done… let's say that Menos is able to bring them into a safe house in LA, and we've got them right where we want them. How do we want this to resolve? What do we want the results to be? What memetics do we want this entire episode to reinforce? This DeFreeze fellow seems to have been, maybe even currently, a government agent. So that story is going around among the left in San Francisco, as well. So there's a lot of factors, here. What do we want? What do we want the final state of play to look like?
"I can give you an idea of what we've put together as far as projections go…"
BRANT
"I feel like that's jumping the gun a bit, John. I know, you're doing a job. I know, this is your job. But are we putting in the cart before the horse? It makes all the difference in the world, whether or not we can bring this to a peaceful resolution."
MIKE
"Our projections definitely say that a peaceful resolution—getting these people in prison—is going to be much more productive to long-term stability than having a firefight, or some other violent resolution to the affair. Given that they're willing and able to use conventional arms, we may not have a choice, but what you're saying is, we don't want law enforcement to push this to an armed standoff?"
BRANT
"You're getting ahead of the situation. The current state of play is actually a lot more chill. You're concerned about this one specific regard, the Hearst girl and the SLA. San Francisco has a history of these types of radical movements happening here. From the public's perception, I think that's still largely what is emerging narratively out of this. It's really a matter of us finding Hearst first so that we can ascertain to what degree this involves History-B and the other forces
that we're dealing with. Worrying about how the hostage exchange… what the memetics after that are going to look like… We can't trust the math that much any more. Part of why OZYMANDIAS failed was, they looked too far ahead and were too certain of the forecast. We have to be more nimble than that.
"Right now we have to get all resources into finding Hearst. We have our best person, using mundane cover and means to find her… But what I would like you to do, John, because I think you're better suited for this, is I would like you to visit Jolly West. His time with the institution and in the game is rapidly coming to a conclusion, and I find it extremely frustrating and implausible that he doesn't have more intel that could lead us to the girl. It's insane to me as a matter of
operational security that this would have been a company project that got so off the reservation that we have no idea where she could be. She's just completely gone? He has to know something. I would like you to turn your attention that way."
MIKE
"Understood… I'll take a look at what we have in the files. Should I take a team down to UCLA to go through his files?"
BRANT
"Yeah, actually that would be great."
MIKE
"We can pull rank here, right? He's on, as you say, thin ice already?"
BRANT
"Yeah. Go pull his files. He has to know something more about DeFreeze, about this organization. There's no way he was as hands off as he's trying to make himself seem now.
MIKE
"What about that Black scholar, uh, Coulston? He was the go-between, the cutout between the Agency and DeFreeze in the prison visitation system. Should we get someone to bring him in? He straddles both the student radical side of things and, obviously, the government side. If he's loyal to old CWG forces within SANDMAN, we can pull Rank and try to bring him in, but we haven't been able to get a handle on exactly where he's at, so…?"
BRANT
"Right."
MIKE
"So we want to find out exactly what kind of government involvement there is. If we have this information then post-resolution memetics should be much easier. We put the word out there among the conspiracy nuts that the government was involved in this somehow, to discredit them all, while coming to a peaceful resolution where we get these people under lock and key again."
BRANT
"The thing about the math that you have to bear in mind is, they were also using incomplete information. They didn't have all the information they thought they did. So the more information we can gather, the more informed the memetics will be at the end of all of this. Until that happens, I don't want us forecasting too far into the future."
ROB
Has Merrick already done some esmology? Some projections of how different scenarios will play out? We sort of cut him out.
MIKE
No, it's fine. There are a lot of variables here, so we're dealing with possibilities that could vary within a very large range of possible outcomes.
ROB
The line that we just took there is the line that we take in the conversation. Archie feels that there's something untoward about trying to figure out what memetically is going to play best while this girl is in danger, and we don't know how it's going to end. So his official position is, no, we have to end this safely, that's what matters. But then when we send Merrick back down to LA, whatever documents or calculations he's made, just as he's leaving, Archie does say "oh, but let me take a look at those."
MIKE
Well, in that case, you can give me… this won't be a corruption esmology roll because you're looking at someone else's calculations… but you can give me an esmology roll to see what your interpretation is of his output.
JEFF
Speaking of Merrick: has he looked at… he's looking at these different scenarios, different cases, how they play. Has he looked at the scenario where the SLA gets everything they want?
MIKE
"Well, that's really the question, isn't it? What do they want? They've gone—"
JEFF
"That's not the question! That's not the question you've been talking about. The question you've been talking about is, 'they get none of what they want and they're dead,' or 'they get none of what they want and they go to prison,' right? Is there a third way? Have you looked at that? Hypothetically, how it would affect things if the SLA got what they wanted?"
MIKE
(boggles)
"I would say that there are… I didn't use that as an express end in these calculations, because it didn't occur to me that it would be something that would be desirable…"
JEFF
"Well, we don't know what it would be, right?"
Rob rolls Esmology-??, result of 11.
MIKE
"Well, if we go on the assumption that there is no History-B involvement, and that they are a standard band of unsettled leftists, led by somebody who's had some serious brain hacking done to him behind bars… then it's really going to depend on which element of the SLA comes out on top of all of that. We've had statements from various different members, each of them, and we've analyzed those statements you know neurolinguistically to see exactly what and how deep their beliefs are, and…"
ROB
Archie brings this in. "My working theory is, History-B or not—and I think we do need to find that out—this organization is…If I was Jolly West and I was designing a group to make the left look bad, this SLA is what I would come up with. It seems much more like that than like anything organic."
MIKE
So, who are the sincere believers among this group? And if Field Marshall Cinque is only doing this because he's been impelled by experimentation?
BRANT
That's our third way! That's a possible third way: within the project, Jolly West or the Company organized them as a way of discrediting the left, there might be some true believers who have good ideas, and if we can extract them and point them in the right direction… not black bag them, not send them to jail, use them in other ways that are more productive, while dispensing with the corrupt or History-B-aligned element. There's a scattering of neutral agents who are ripe for the plucking and we should get to them first, before either History-B does or else they're completely co-opted by by Jolly West's experiment.
MIKE
What I can tell you about these kids? The kids who are white and middle-class among this group? Most of them are white and middle-class, and most of them came to their leftism because of the Vietnam War. What we have there is a story that's been told a hundred thousand times in this country over the past five to seven years. But not everyone takes up arms. Not everyone decides to rob a bank, to put their livelihoods and their middle-class backgrounds on the line to fight for something like this. So the question becomes, how strong are those motivations now? That's where Menos's eyes on the ground will really come in handy; she'll be able to suss out exactly the sincerity of these folks, if she gets the chance to interact with them. We can't do anything esmological on a group of seven to twelve people, it's just not a big enough group. it's not past that number that we need to talk mass movements. But somebody on the ground, somebody inside their their safe house, would be very useful in that regard.
ROB
The idea that Patty has been brainwashed, is that already out there in the world? Is that what people are saying, as the explanation for her participation?
MIKE
Ever since the tape came out two weeks ago where she announced she was Tania and she was part of the movement… this is part of the calculations that you'll see… Basically there are two schools of thought. One is that they've used brainwashing techniques to bring her over to that side, but some people think that she was already leaning this way. The folks who are probably believing in the brainwashing are your central left, your liberal types. The conservatives think that she was always this way, she just got pushed a little bit by proximity to them. That just gets into the larger political question. If Jolly pushed this apple cart down the hill, what do we want to get out of it? That's only going to come out once I get down there and see what exactly their plans were.
ROB
Archie is interested in the big picture esmology of, is it healthier for the world to believe in brainwashing or not?
MIKE
It's a big question! This is out of character, this isn't Merrick, this is me. When you do look at the stuff that Merrick put together, that kind of stuff is is where he was going with these documents and calculations. Say we want Patty to be redeemed, right, so he puts in esmological terms the idea that she could be brought back from the wilderness of of the extreme left in this country, and rehabilitated, recuperated into the Patty Hearst she once was, the socialite and debutante she was meant to be…
What that does is, that reinforces a lot of the standard memes that SANDMAN puts out there.
BRANT
We can turn that to our advantage.
ROB
She represents the youth movement. White middle-class people see her as everybody's daughter. So if she is brought back into the fold, that is significant. If she is shot in the street, that is significant. If she is a foul-mouthed harridan and takes up with Donald DeFreeze, that also is significant.
What Archie is thinking about is… now you have got me talking about which way he wants the memetics to go, but he's not having this conversation with Merrick… some kind of synthesis where she is part of society, and yet has learned something, some sort of happy middle way where everyone hugs at the end and has learned something.
BRANT
If we're going to really use this, in the way of not perpetuating the mistakes of OZYMANDIAS, then the third way we need to lay the ground work for everyone in America to think different. That's going to require people to fundamentally challenge certain beliefs that they have, and that's going to take time.
One way we can do that, if we can extract her alive, the message that we deliver can be 'look at the utter vacancy of wealth, people are changeable, she wasn't brainwashed, they didn't use some cryptic magic or crazy science to turn her to their cause… she just was a sad lonely woman who had no purpose in life, because she didn't know herself. She didn't know the authentic self and so she latched on to this violent organization, that had this ideology, and she can come back. She can reintegrate. People are not one thing or another. They can be many things.'
If we can feed those types of memes throughout the noösphere, that's how we can make the ground fertile for the actual message.
MIKE
Very interesting that you say this, because part of Merck's analysis is, if they are gunned down or if they are burned alive in a house… if anything like that happens, they're going to become martyrs for the new left. All of a sudden they don't look bad any more, or as bad they are they will become a symbol of government overreach and the fascist system that they were always talking about.
The problem here is that according to the eyewitnesses and the tape recording in the Hibernian Bank, Patty Hearst has killed two people. That didn't happen in our timeline, it happened in this one. That's a problem, too. Merrick says, if we want to salvage… this is part of his original analysis, before he even talked to you guys, because he knows that you guys are concerned about Patty… if we want her to be rehabilitated, we're going to have to pin those shootings on either DeFreeze or Nancy Ling Perry. Those are the only other people who were in the bank at that time.
BRANT
Cross that bridge when we get to it.
MIKE
Well, that was part of his planning.
ROB
One thing we can do now is keep it in a quantum state of uncertainty. We try to clamp down on that footage, so nobody really knows what happened in the bank. There's lots of multiple narratives. We don't really know. The FBI is keeping it all under wraps, right?
MIKE
It wouldn't be a bad idea, if we want that uncertainty to spread, is maybe just drop a very low power meme across the street at the Examiner and the Chronicle? Nothing big, just something that says we're still analyzing. There was a rumor that went out right afterwards, that Patty was the gun woman, but we just don't know. We can't say anything because it's an ongoing investigation.
ROB
Yeah. One thing quickly on the brainwashing… I've thought about this before in relation to Archie's backstory, but I take it as given that in real life nowadays people don't really think that POWs in Korea were literally brainwashed. But if this is a world in which magic works, I sort of accept as a conceit of the setting that brainwashing actually works in our game world.
BILL
We do it all the time, there are rules for it. 'Roll for success on brainwashing.'
ROB
Yes. I'm just being clear that I'm aware that this is a bit of racist pseudoscience on which we are basing both an element of my character and also our whole discussions of Patty and what's going on.
All we really want to do memetically at this moment is keep the fog of war over the story, and focus on trying to get her and have it end as peacefully as possible.
MIKE
That sounds like a good time to go over to the person who's actually doing the infiltrating of the—
ROB
I did make an esmology roll… oh, that was already part of what you were saying...?
MIKE
I've got a little list here. Do we we pin the murders on Nancy Ling Perry? We describe the eyewitnesses… we save Patty. Merrick's idea: if we pin stuff on Patty it's going to lead down a road that's going to discredit the left in a slightly different way, in the sense of 'the privileged sons and daughters of the upper-middle class are ripe conversion because of guilt.' Merrick's calculations all revolve around Patty. He keeps putting these provisos in in his analysis, 'we just don't know, what if she has an X Factor, then all these bets are off,' basically if she's at the nexus of something that goes beyond this reality then we have to establish exactly what she can do. Same thing with DeFreeze; we don't know what was done to him to put him in this position. If they're putting money into an unknown bank account somewhere, and said 'just keep up the chaos as long as you can, and we'll get you out of there, and you can go spend all of your government money once once you've raised enough hell out there and discredited the left,' then that is a a bit of a different situation than if Jolly West and Coulston experimented on him to make him a believer. Until we get Merrick's information back from Jolly, we won't know.
Jocasta checks the dead dead drop at 9:00 a.m. It's very simple, it's on the back of a hamburger wrapper from this place, "Alex's Drive In, 12:30, Wednesday." That's three and a half hours from now. This is a drive-thru fast food joint around the western edge of the Haight, right next to Golden Gate Park. It's got a parking lot, Jocasta can say before she even gets there, tactically: they want somewhere they can idle, sit, have a burger, and possibly talk to Jocasta.
She knows where the next rendezvous will be, and from the fact that they said today, they're eager.
LEONARD
All right…
MIKE
I actually had an image, give you a little flavor…
Will Jocasta be early or right on time?
LEONARD
First of all she's gonna find someplace semi-safe to stash that note. She's going to keep that, as a chain of evidence type thing, she doesn't want to be obvious about it. She's assuming she's being watched, so she's not going to rent a locker at the airport or something.
MIKE
Okay, gotcha.
LEONARD
She'll stash it some place she thinks is reasonably safe.
MIKE
Okay. Having nearly two days on the streets of the Haight at this point, you've been checking out escape routes, alleyways, places where you can do the homeless thing and not attract a lot of attention.
LEONARD
Yeah. She is not, by the way, going to do any kind of tactical analysis of this place, because she kind of wants to be caught, right? She wants to be taken into their custody, so she's not really going to have any escape plan… She's gonna show up…on time is a little too eager and late? I don't want to risk that. So she'll actually show up really early, trying to create the impression that she literally has nowhere else to go. She'll go up a half hour, maybe 45 minutes early, and just hang around.
MIKE
Okay…at about 12:25, Jocasta sees a car pull into the Alex's parking lot. In it are Nancy and Willie, who she met yesterday, as well as a third woman. Nancy is driving… not a third woman, a third person who is a woman. Nancy is driving, the other woman who Jocasta (having looked at their files and everything) identifies as Emily Harris… and Willie Wolf in the back seat.
They're sitting in the parking lot, Jocasta is eating her burger inside the restaurant… they catch your eye through the window… I'm assuming Jocasta goes out there?
LEONARD
Yeah.
MIKE
What Jocasta can see when she gets a little closer is… you've never met Emily Harris before but Nancy and Willie have changed. Like, they've got wigs on, and Willie has a different-style mustache. I guess Jocasta would say they're good at disguise. Jocasta can identify them because she's met them before, but they're mixing things up with wigs and other makeup to throw anybody off who might be watching them.
LEONARD
I'm not sure what kind of roll this would require but she wants to, number one, see if they're armed, and number two, you kind of answered this question already, but are these convincing disguises? Or is this a clown show, like Dollar Store fake mustaches? I guess the more appropriate question is, since you've said that they're decent-looking disguises, do they strike her as a group of amateurs who have gotten good at what they're doing? Or do they look like somebody has really trained them in espionage?
MIKE
Okay, first off for the checking them for any hidden weapons, you're going to give me… now they say Search but you have Holdout, right?
LEONARD
I'm not sure if I do. She's not gonna pat them down, or…
MIKE
Exactly, yeah.
LEONARD
Look at their clothes, look at the car…
MIKE
Give me an Observation-17 roll.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 11
MIKE
That's a crit. Nancy's jacket, it's got a little bump by the left lapel. You're thinking derringer. Willie and Emily do not appear armed. Now the other question was the disguises, right? So let me just do a quick…this is like, a tradecraft kind of thing…you do not have Disguise, so just give me a IQ-13 roll.
Leonard rolls IQ-13.
LEONARD
>> FAILURE by 2
Nothing but crits and and bad rolls so far in this mission.
MIKE
Jocasta thinks it doesn't appear they've gotten outside help, but it does appear they've spent a lot of time thinking about how to make sure that they're not recognizable from one day to the next. I don't know if Jocasta actually saw the photos from the Hiberian Bank but what she's realizing now is, every time they go out they putting a new disguise on. Jocasta is not sure whether she'd be able to identify them, the next time she sees them somewhere else. Might make her a little paranoid.
LEONARD
So they appear to be pretty good at it. As soon as she's at the car, she's going to get in like she was waiting for them, like they're old friends.
MIKE
Nancy has the her arm down the window, and just go, "hey," like, "come on in, let's let's hit the road." As you guys pull out of the the parking lot, um Willie Wolf reaches into a bag that's on the seat wall underneath him. He takes out some gauze and a pair of really big sunglasses, and he says, "wrap this around your eyes and put these sunglasses on." He then takes a telescoping cane out of the bag, and has it ready. You're going to play a blind woman going to their hideout. They want you to to not be able to tell where you're going.
Jocasta does have Area Knowledge (San Fran Bay Area), so while they do a lot of twists and turns to mix you up, I am going to roll Area Knowledge for you, to see if you can discern, and it will be opposed by her Driving, which makes sense.
(Mike rolls hidden dice, twice.)
That was her Driving… okay. You already have the sensation that they are located somewhere north of the Panhandle, like, they're not in the Haight, they're somewhere in that neighborhood to the north. Jocasta tries to count the blocks, the left turns, the right turns… she comes up with a vague area southeast of the Panhandle and northeast of the Haight. East of both of those both of those districts.
They help you out of the car, and Willie takes your arm as if you were a blind woman, and walks you up a single set of stairs, and then up another set of stairs. Whatever building you're in. you're on the second floor. Jocasta is hit with the same funk that she was able to detect in her shared dream with Patty, as she is led into what is presumably the SLA safe house. They unwrap the gauze, they tell Jocasta to keep the sunglasses on after they've unwrapped her eyes, and put her sunglasses back on. She's able to see in here but it's very dim. All the shades are shut. Jocasta is seated in front of Donald DeFreeze. The other members of the SLA are back in the shadows. It's a very dark room, even though it's daytime.
DeFreeze just levels a look at Jocasta. "Our comrade Tania says that we can trust you. She says you've got the goods." He points to Nancy. "My comrade tells me that you can get us to Los Angeles. You understand, it's very important for us to ignite the struggle in the place where it all started, back in '65."
LEONARD
"You'll have to decide for yourself if you can trust me, comrade, but I can get you there and I can get you with the right people. I can get you the right weapons, the right tools, so that we can really show the pigs that they're not unopposed in this country."
MIKE
"My fellow members of the Revolutionary Council have had some concern that you are an agent of the police, or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I ask you this because I too have been accused of being in bed with the pigs."
A couple of the SLA members kind of like, performatively gasp at that, as if it was beyond the pale that the Field Marshall could be an infiltration agent for the cops. They visited him in prison, they know he's the real deal. There's a couple of chuckles at it as well, trying to lighten the mood a little bit.
"So I know what it is like to be unfairly accused. How did you get to know our comrade Tania, anyway?"
LEONARD
"Well—"
MIKE
She's not in the room, by the way.
LEONARD
Yeah, I assume you would have told me if she was.
"You've probably heard a lot of crazy things, especially in recent years, but I can only tell you the truth. She came to me in a dream. I've been waiting for this moment for years, and I'll tell you something, I'm not with the pigs. I'm not with the the feds or the cops, but I used to be in the Army. In fact I was in Army Intelligence. I was over there, I saw what the pigs are doing to the people of Vietnam. That's how I ended up here. That's why I want to fight for you, now."
MIKE
"There's a couple—"
LEONARD
"When I heard about you, and when I saw what you were doing, I wanted to be a part of it. I didn't think there was any way that I could, but that's when Tanya came to me in a dream, and I knew what I had to do. I know it sounds crazy, but you've probably heard worse, and I speak the truth."
MIKE
Chuckles, and like I said, there's a couple of veterans who have been members, and are members of the SLA, so this is probably a good line for you to take. I would like you to give me Soldier-15, just to see how well the talk comes off among the folks here who have been in the Armed Forces.
LEONARD
>> SUCCESS by 3
MIKE
You are able to talk the talk. As you start talking about dreams, Cinque walks a little closer. You're seated, so he looms over you, now. He points to one of the adjoining rooms, a dimly-lit corner where a door leads to, presumably, a bedroom. You know there's a small kitchenette off of this main living room.
"That girl practically lives in dreams. We are going to make her dreams come true."
LEONARD
"Well then, comrades, you'll make mine come true as well."
MIKE
"If you were in Vietnam… Patty's been nowhere near anything like that, but she is without a doubt the truest believer I have ever come across in all my time as a revolutionary. Her intuition is solid. She said she wanted to speak with you."
LEONARD
"It would be my pleasure."
MIKE
"I'm going to allow it. We're going to leave that door a little open, so we can hear what y'all are talking about. We will talk business once you are done meeting with your dream girl, but as you know we had a big score a couple of days ago. Any comrade of ours who helps us with this escape is due some of that money. So if you are good for what you are able to do for us… We'll talk about once you're done talking to Tania."
LEONARD
"I'm ready to talk to her, but… comrade, I don't need money. I just want to further the cause of the Revolution. I know that you'll sustain me in whatever I need. We can talk more about this later, but I can get you there with two days notice, safe and sound."
MIKE
Willie Wolf goes over to the bedroom door. He does not knock, he just turns the knob and opens the door slightly, stands outside. In your shared dream Patty's room was this decadent, silk-festooned, red lanterns hung, boudoir. Here it's the version of it that you saw before her Visions kicked in: a filthy hippie bedsit with mattresses on the floor. Patty is seated facing the wall. She's not tied up, she's not blindfolded, she's not gagged or anything like that. She was sitting facing the wall, waiting for you. There's a chair seated right across from her.
She looks up into Jocasta's eyes when she takes position across from her. "I'm so glad you came."
LEONARD
"I can't believe I'm here. I don't know what brought us together, but I know this was destiny. I know it was my destiny to be here, to help you, to help the struggle." She's going to try to Telesend her now.
MIKE
Okay, this is your Telesend attempt for the day. What do you… let's roll it, and then we can worry about exactly what you're going to get across.
LEONARD
>> SUCCESS by 12
MIKE
That's a crit… It's going to allow is some two-way communication between the two of you.
LEONARD
She's not gonna send anything complicated, she's just going to say, "whatever it is that you want, whether you want to be here and aid the struggle or if there's anything else you want, I am here for you. I will do whatever it is you need me to do."
MIKE
We throw in some mundane conversation over this, so Willie and DeFreeze and the rest of them will overhear that.
LEONARD
Her external demeanor is going to be 100% behind the cause, and in an almost religious awe of Patricia.
MIKE
Okay.
LEONARD
Like she visiting Mother Teresa. Like a Hindu guru.
MIKE
Everything we say right now will be the Telesend. If there's something she'll say out loud I'll make a reference to it separately.
"You don't have to come to me like this. I believe you. I can see inside your heart. I know that you're sincere. I know these people are going to help change the world for the better. I know what it's going to take now."
LEONARD
"If you can see into my heart then you know that changing the world for the better is what I want, as well."
MIKE
"There's a material struggle, of course. There always has been. But there's more, isn't there? There are things happening on a higher level. There are thoughts and beliefs that need to be changed before we can change the world."
LEONARD
"Unquestionably. I believe that you are on a path that I am also on. There is more leading along that path, into that destination, than you can possibly imagine. That's why I am here."
MIKE
"I thought I'd be alone in this. I am so relieved to have you as someone who can…"
At that point the Telesend drops out, not because it's disconnected but she puts her attention towards emoting verbally and she says aloud, "if you can get us out of town I think that would serve the struggle best of all. I have one request. Obviously, everyone here is far too well known… Do you read Cosmo?" she says with a smile.
LEONARD
"I can tell you honestly: I absolutely do."
MIKE
"There's this issue at my apartment that I really could use someone to go get… and I know it's probably not going to be easy, but if you could, and you could bring it back before we head out of town, I'd really appreciate it." She's saying all this out loud. She knows someone's hearing her say this. You can use Telesend now, if you want.
LEONARD
No, I don't want to do that… This may be beyond the… I guess this is something I have to figure out, not that I can resolve with a roll… does this seem like something that the SLA people have asked her to do? As a test? Or does she seem sincere?
MIKE
Well…
LEONARD
You know what, I'm gonna suspend that question. She's just gonna say, "I can get you that issue of Cosmo without going to your apartment, if that's what you want, but if you want that specific one," and she's going to be very emphatic about this, "then I will get it for you."
MIKE
"Please. If you wouldn't mind."
LEONARD
"All right. I can do it while I'm arranging for our transportation south. Like I told the commandant, two days."
MIKE
"Two days. Right on. I'll see you on Friday, and hopefully we'll be able to breathe a little easier down in Los Angeles."
LEONARD
"You can count on on it."
MIKE
I would like you to give me a Psychology roll um as you finish your tête-à-tête with Tania.
LEONARD
>> SUCCESS by 6
MIKE
You've got the sunglasses on… the rest of the group is a little confused by that last bit. You guys talked about the struggle, you talked about what kind of actions you could take when you're down in LA, you had all that cover conversation. The Cosmo thing has them a little baffled. Jocasta can tell that they're baffled. Before Nancy and the others who drove her over wrap her up and take her back out to the car to drop her off again, Field Marshall Cinque grabs Jocasta by the shoulder and says, "that girl's trying to test you. As I said, we've gotten used to our intuitions being right. If she wants you to prove yourself by breaking into her apartment, who am I to stop her? It wouldn't be bad for my trust, either, if I knew you were willing to commit a crime."
LEONARD
"Understood. Watch the dead drop, Commander. Two days."
MIKE
I'm gonna go back to Kierney street, now because we had thought about trying to find Roger, hadn't we? I should drop that into people's laps since we're about halfway through the session now… with Archie, Marshall, and Mitch… and I would assume Viv is there along with any of the other folks… Merrick's getting on a plane right now, so he's going to be down in LA… Sophie said that Jocasta went to Roger's apartment. He was not there, and she was worried for him.
BRANT
Remind me, out of character, what was Roger's…? ALLOCHTHON got wrapped up, then what happened to Roger?
MIKE
In November, right before Thanksgiving, Jo and Roger visited Rosebud Reservation, talked to Leonard Crow Dog, established some contacts there. Came back, we had the Christmas party.
Mid- to late January into February, the two of you were at Granite Peak together. We could do a quick flashback if you want but basically you were there to have your memories of Reinhardt from 1972 restored.
Roger was there to take the cheval training program from basic to advanced. They've been through their basic training, and then in February into March he was going to be doing field training with them. Like you do for intelligence agents, except with loa. Putting them out in the field, seeing how they operate, seeing how they handle the way Roger's trying to take the program, which is away from the technocratic and more towards the spiritual. He's been not in deep cover, or anything like that, but he's been in the field, basically. Special assignment to Granite Peak, URIEL is trying to make changes to some of these programs that were OZYMANDIAS-infected beforehand.
BRANT
When was the last communication we had from Roger, at all?
MIKE
His last check-in would have been the middle of last month, so let's say about three to four weeks.
BRANT
Jocasta made a very good point…when was this, literally yesterday? Roger must have a good reason for what he's doing, he can get himself out of a tight situation…sometimes with survivors. It is a little strange that he hasn't surfaced during all this hubbub. I don't know. I'm conflicted. If we're concerned for him, then yes, we should find…Mitch could find him.
MIKE
Mitch certainly at this point feels 'internally serendipitous' enough to do so.
ROB
Do we know about the scene that happened, when Jocasta was at Roger's place?
MIKE
We don't know about that, because she's in the field, too. All we got was the coded call from Jocasta. Sophie's able to tell she was upset. Sophie would say she was definitely bothered by whatever she didn't find or did find, at his apartment.
JEFF
Okay, we should go say hi.
MIKE
That would put Mitch back out on the streets on Wednesday…last time he was out there. he met a man with no soul at the baseball diamond… Bill, what do you think?
BRANT
If Mitch will indulge Marshall, Marshall would like to come, too.
JEFF
Sure, yeah.
MIKE
Better to have backup, better to have a partner. Bill, what do you think about Roger's current location right now? Do you want to message me? Do you want to take us through what he might be doing at this very moment? What are your thoughts on this?
BILL
What time is it?
MIKE
Around two.
BILL
Wow. Okay. If it's around… "let's go to the apartment and see if he's there," that's not going to happen, because he's not. But I feel like Mitch would have a pretty strong "let's go to this apartment and see what happened with Jocasta," that would help get resolution on that scene. Serendipity likes narration, right? So I don't know which one…
MIKE
I feel like the apartment's a good place to start, right?
JEFF
That was my thought, yeah. It's a good starting place, rather than go for the Serendipity immediately. Hold something in reserve.
MIKE
I'm going to give you the same description y'all got the other day, when Jocasta went in. Stuffy, doesn't seem like someone's been there in a while, but since you guys are now here with intent and you aren't getting spooked by a weird phone…
JEFF
Remind me where in the Bay Area we are?
MIKE
Roger's apartment is in…
BILL
Mission District.
MIKE
Mission District, which is south of the Haight, and at this point in history is (like a lot of neighborhoods in San Francisco) racially mixed. More working class…
BILL
And heavily Hispanic.
MIKE
Heavily Hispanic, yes. Just going to bring up Marshall and Mitch's character sheets… we could start with Observation roles for each of you, if you want, and then we can get down to the brass tacks of digging a little deeper.
BRANT
>> SUCCESS by 11
"He's not here," Marshall says.
JEFF
>> SUCCESS by 5
MIKE
Well, the one thing that Marshall can see with that crit, is the exploded telephone. That hasn't been replaced in the last twelve or sixteen hours, so that's a little unusual. Various bits of of the the bell, and… I don't know parts of a telephone, but there's electrical power that surged through this thing recently.
I will use those Observation rolls as a basis for my Search rolls, as you guys go through everything. Leonard, Jocasta left the the the Bell Telephone cherubim vever behind, right?
LEONARD
Yeah.
MIKE
That's on the floor, still quite near his altar. As you check out all the nooks and crannies of the apartment… in Roger's broom closet, or…a closet not in his bedroom, a little storage cubby… Marshall sees Roger's Army ditty bag. It's full of something, really heavy-looking.
BRANT
I'll go check it out.
MIKE
Marshall, expecting maybe dirty laundry, boots, random crap…opens it up and inside sees a few hundred of these.
These rectangular, kind of oblong, black, glassy objects with a button at the bottom.
BRANT
Marshall picks one up.
MIKE
Marshall flips it over…
BRANT
He'll also say to Mitch over his shoulder, "what the hell is this?"
JEFF
"I'm not really sure how to answer that question, man."
BRANT
"It looks like something I saw in a dream once."
JEFF
"Okay, sure."
MIKE
There's like two hundred.
BRANT
He tries to find a button to push, or something?
MIKE
Yeah, the button doesn't do anything.
JEFF
Its batteries are dead?
MIKE
I don't even know where you would put batteries in this thing, it's so thin!
ROB
Is it literally an iPhone, in that there's a little picture of an apple…?
MIKE
Yeah. There's about two hundred of them in this bag. Oh, there's also Blood on the bag.
BRANT
Well, we're taking the bag. How much blood? A lot?
MIKE
Just a spattering of blood. It was on the back side, that was pushed against the wall.
JEFF
It's a shame Charley had to leave. This seems like a real Charley problem.
ROB
Yeah, give Charlie an iPhone. Two hundred iPhones.
BRANT
Well, I guess keep looking around. Is there anything else?
MIKE
That is the only thing that you guys find, other than that vever drawing on the ground and the phone having exploded. Those are the only things that you find that make you scratch your head.
BRANT
Um, yeah… I don't… do we keep looking for him, or should we drop this off at a lab? Back at Livermore, maybe Sophie knows what it is?
MIKE
Just so you guys know, for purposes of continuity: Charley didn't take any of her stuff with her. Maybe she took the URIEL frequency radio, but her computer lab has just basically got protective tarps over all of the…it's controlled by us, it's our lab, still. But nobody has used it since Charley left.
JEFF
Well, it makes sense to bring it there.
MIKE
You know what, Mitch? It would make sense to bring it there.
JEFF
Yeah, no, I mean, I could see wandering around and finding… I don't know, some of these, you can stick something in here. Maybe there's a plug.
MIKE
There is a plug at the bottom. Doesn't really look like it matches anything that you guys have.
BRANT
Charley might have one, though. Maybe it's Japanese!
JEFF
Maybe it's Kraftwerk. Maybe this is what Kraftwerk is. I've always wondered.
BRANT
Oh, yeah! Charley said she loved Kraftwerk— that's what she was talking…? Unless Mitch has another idea I guess Marshall's following Mitch. He's got the bag, he's got the iPhones.
JEFF
I feel like, though, this isn't gonna get us to Roger. This is fun and cool and all, but taking this back to to Livermore and wandering into Charley's lab and finding something roughly this size that we can jam in there and seeing if it does anything… it doesn't seem like it's going to accomplish anything in terms of finding Roger, right? Is there something else in here that gives me finding Roger vibe, Mike?
MIKE
I got to be honest with you. It goes against every instinct that Mitch has right now, but he is actually starting to think that maybe if we go to Livermore we might find Roger.
JEFF
Okay. I mean, Mitch says out loud, "okay, if that's what you guys really want to have happen
then I guess I'll try that."
MIKE
Time for a nice late morning drive out to Livermore. Sophia be so happy to see you guys! It'll be great, just like old times. If you are expending two uses of Serendipity in an express attempt to bump into Roger then I suppose…
JEFF
I mean, that was…
BRANT
Or at least till they get is close to him, you know. We have no leads right now, we have no way of finding him.
JEFF
It's true. I don't want to be like, we went looking for our teammate but we found this cool gizmo so we decided to just abandon Roger to whatever fate he's chosen for himself.
BILL
Horrible fate.
MIKE
Bill, how do you feel about Mitch using Serendipity to find you?
BILL
I would love to know if they're bringing all two hundred iPhones with them.
MIKE
I mentioned in the Jocasta scene, over text, that (as Roger knows that basically the only people who know who he lives here are the folks from the hood and URIEL) that he would use this as a stash point. That he would if he had something important to keep safe…it would be kept safe in his apartment… When Marshall and Mitch show their passes at at Livermore, drive up to to our old building, and…
JEFF
Before we get to that point I want to leave a note for Roger.
MIKE
Sure, please do.
JEFF
I'll just write it on a handy piece of paper that Roger no doubt has by his phone. It'll say, "hi Roger, it's Mitch, we came by and took…" Is it actually literally labeled iPhone on the back?
MIKE
Yeah.
JEFF
I can say "iPhone," then. Otherwise I have to come up with something else to say… okay. "We took the iPhones."
ROB
You might pronounce it "iffun," don't know.
BILL
The p is capitalized so it definitely says the word phone.
JEFF
It does not look anything like a phone, though. I have to pretend that I don't know what it is.
ROB
Piece of glass.
MIKE
All right, you've left a note for Roger. Head out to Livermore… Are you going to stop in to see Sophie before going down to the lab?
JEFF
Sure, whatever. Either I will pass through her line of sight as I walk to wherever I'm going or I won't. I'll be fine with whatever works out that way.
MIKE
You do have to pass by our old office to get to Charley's lab, so we can definitely stop in. Sophie will be overjoyed and surprised to see the two of you out here. "Is everything all right? Did you want to sit down and talk the Montgomery block poets and artists?" Sophie is ebullient.
BRANT
"Have you seen Roger?"
MIKE
"Roger? No, I haven't seen him since Christmas, honestly. What—"
BRANT
Marshall drops the bag on her desk.
MIKE
"What is this?"
JEFF
"Hey! Hey, they're made of glass, man, be careful."
BRANT
"Are they made of glass?"
MIKE
"What is this?"
JEFF
"iPhones."
MIKE
"Eye phones?"
JEFF
"We found them, we got to get them to Charley's lab."
MIKE
"I have the keys…"
JEFF
"Great! Thumbs up on that. Let's go. You can explain to us all the exposition that you want while I'm trying to just… jam random things into the plug socket, there."
MIKE
"...All right. Well, let's get it open. I haven't been in there since Charley left."
JEFF
"There may be, like, a docking station like right there by the door, with a little note from Charley on it. We'll see."
BRANT
We don't know that Roger's not living in the lab right now.
JEFF
That's true.
MIKE
We still have Houdini there… we go down to the lab, Sophie swipes the card…
JEFF
I've been wondering about Houdini, but I haven't said anything, because I felt like it might be gauche to bring it up.
MIKE
He's got his little virtual oubliette with all the books that he wanted to read. He's probably very bored right now; he hasn't talked to anybody in quite a while.
JEFF
I feel bad for him now.
MIKE
It's one of those things… Sophie swipes the electronic card, and it does not let her in.
BRANT
"When was the last time you were here?"
JEFF
I'll try knocking.
MIKE
Roger hears knocking at the door.
BILL
If it's Roger… There's probably a Security roll, or something, we would have…
MIKE
Yeah. They're not going to be able to get in, you've reprogrammed the door.
BILL
I guess I activate a camera to see who it is.
MIKE
It's Mitch, Marshall, and Sophie.
BRANT
Marshall is like expressively… not yelling, but being like, "you literally haven't been down here?"
MIKE
"Marshall, you have to understand: nobody from the lab facility has been allowed down here. It should still work, unless Charley left a a time-dependent lock on it, or something like that. I don't know what to tell you…" By this point you've probably tuned in on the microphone that's out there as well…
JEFF
Erich at least is in there. If he if he's locked in there we're going to have to break this door down to get him out.
BRANT
And there's no one else to make these keycards! Charley was our keycard person!
JEFF
I'm sure Charley wasn't SANDMAN's sole keycard person for the entire United States of America.
MIKE
"I can get somebody from Livermore to reset the lock. I'll just have to go to security… I'll do that, you two stay here. I'll be back in a minute."
BRANT
This is what happens when you just let them run the office.
MIKE
Anyway… how does the person in the lab feel about talking to Mitch and Marshall right now?
BILL
It's actually scary. Searching through memories, realizes that Marshall is scary, like CIA scary. And Mitch is mystic wizard scary. So paranoia is ramping up. It was already enough. If anything the cameras are going to move, to pan to keep eyes on them, which may be a giveaway.
BRANT
Is there a security camera?
MIKE
It's really small but like you guys are able to kind of see and hear. Some sort of security camera… there's somebody in there, somebody has rewired things around here to to a considerable degree.
JEFF
"Erich!" That's the conclusion Mitch will jump to, partly because of dramatic irony. She's given him the ability to operate cameras which would be great if there was anything for him to look at.
MIKE
He's looking at a hallway 24/7? Oh my God, yeah. "I've got eyes, finally. I get to look at a horrible Brutalist hallway…"
JEFF
I'll address the camera directly and tell Erich that if he can unlock the door we can get in and get him out of where he is and into something a little more comfortable. Less like a prison. He's in like four layers of prison at this point, we can probably bust that down to two.
MIKE (to BILL)
Scary guy number two thinks he's talking to Harry Houdini right now.
BILL
Yeah, okay. Also interested in "ghost in the machine" spirit stuff… we're burning everything, we're scrambling, we're getting the hell out of here. There's going to be some crashing noises as things are being quickly pulled apart.
BRANT
"I think there's literally someone in there."
JEFF
"Yes. Harry Houdini."
BRANT
"No, I mean I think there's a meat person inside there."
JEFF
"You think that Charlie gave Harry Houdini a meat body?"
BRANT
"Maybe?"
BILL
Do you have to use the word 'meat'?
BRANT
"How else could… do you hear that crashing in there?"
JEFF
"Do you think she grew him a new one or do you think that it's a cadaver?"
MIKE
Sophie's coming down the hallway with the electronic security folks. He looks at Marshall and Mitch—they've got their IDs on, but he's never seen them before. "This is the…?"
"Yes, this is the lab that belongs to Geopolitical Studies. We need the door open." "All right…" He gets a big complex security panel, with a pushbutton thing on it, hooks up to the thing… Now we need to do a roll. I'm just gonna give you, Bill, if you want to roll an effective skill of 18, something like that. This guy's probably got a 15…
BRANT
I mean it's a little embarrassing. We are supposed to be the uppermost echelon of international security, and some homeless person just busted into our secret lair.
MIKE
He tries to reprogram it like five times, and then he goes, "damn it I'm locked out." And by this point, your escape route, Bill… you're out of there.
BILL
All right.
JEFF
"Don't feel too bad, he's a master escape artist. Like, world class."
BRANT
"And well know known for programming security doors?" Marshall barks at the security guy. "Well go get someone to take the door off these hinges! We have to get in there!"
MIKE
"We can get in through the drop ceiling… we'll get a ladder." I don't know what other redundant security elements are there, but when you guys get inside you find that somebody made their way out through the ducts. If you remember, Charlie used to be able to get in and out through the ducts pretty easily. Bill, just as a note, we might want to remember that for future reference.
BRANT
Marshall is flipped out. "Put the facility in lock down! No one is getting out of this building! Shut it down!"
BILL
I should also add that all of Charley's stuff has been disturbed. Machines have been set up and connected to each other, and then yanked apart…
BRANT
Sirens going off, everyone confined to their desk, close the gates. No one's getting out.
MIKE
You've got the security rank to do that.
ROB
Wouldn't it occur to somebody that it’s probably Charley? Seems like that's what I would think if all this was happening. "Oh, Charley's back."
BRANT
But she would be napping on the couch.
JEFF
Remind me, what the circumstances of Charley's departure were? Where she specifically was supposed to be headed and how long ago that was?
MIKE
It was right after the Christmas party. She left…
JEFF
Four months ago?
MIKE
Yes. She left with her mother and given the fact that, obviously, we can't have her fall into Enemy hands or anything like that, we've had to take on a little bit of trust that Rose has got her safe and sound. I don't know if Archie ever told the rest of the party about his Special Rapport with Charlie, but if anybody did come to Archie worried about her safety Archie would probably be able to say, "trust me, I'll know if anything goes wrong, we'll be able to get in touch with her if we need to."
JEFF
But Rob makes a good point. We should be at least considering that it's Charley, not Harry Houdini's clone. That's kind of a ridiculous thing to be jumping to.
BILL
At least when the clone tank is not full.
MIKE
The Houdini thing was funnier, though, you have to admit.
BRANT
"You know how Charley thinks. Charley wouldn't break into her own lab, ransack it, and then flee. She would have some other way of doing things. I'm more concerned that it's…what if it's one of the INDIGO children whom we didn't round up, still in the thrall of…?"
JEFF
"That's possible…I'm just not getting that vibe."
BRANT
"Okay, you're the vibes man. Should I call off the alarm?"
MIKE
The Serendipity is still in play. Mitch wants to run into Roger. Before the end of tonight, he will run into Roger, at some point. I want to move to a different scene now, because I know, Rob, you've been waiting a little while… but I also want to check what Jo's plan is. Go to to Patty Hearst's and Steven Weed's apartment and try to get this mysterious copy of Cosmo she's talking about? Is Jo going to check in, because the only person with authority at Kierney right now is Archie.
LEONARD
Oh, yeah, she's for sure going to check in at the end of the day. She's going to use her safe phone. After a few hours of just wandering the streets again making sure she's not being specifically tailed, but assuming that she's being watched, she'll find another pay phone. She's not gonna call Archie directly, she's gonna call her drop phone and if somebody answers it, because it's usually forwarded to whoever's working around there, she'll ask to be connected to Archie.
MIKE
Archie spent most of the rest of the day going through Merrick's materials, taking a look at the newspapers, watching TV. Seeing everything going on memetically, and he is patched through to a pay phone around four in the afternoon.
ROB
You're still under cover though, right?
LEONARD
As soon as you pick up the phone, she'll say, um, "hey Dad, it's me, and before you ask I can't tell you where I am."
ROB
"Uh, sweetheart, we're worried about you. Is everything okay?"
LEONARD
"I'm safe. I want to come home. I want to come back to LA."
ROB
"You want to come back to LA?"
LEONARD
"I'm gonna bring some friends with me, and they need to feel safe, too."
ROB
(long pause) "Okay. How many friends?"
LEONARD
"There's six of us. Can you send a car? Make sure that it's safe. Nothing fancy. Don't send one of your fancy new cars. Just send somebody we can trust, that can get us to LA, and have someplace safe for us to stay when we're there. We don't want to stay with you yet."
ROB
"Did you talk to your sister? Is she coming with you?"
LEONARD
"She wants to come along, yes. Very nervous, very nervous."
ROB
"Okay." I don't know if there's any logistics we have to work out about that, but we won't do that now.
MIKE
Easily done.
LEONARD
She can name some sui generis location to be picked up at. She's also gonna say, "listen, Dad, I know it's it's hard to ask you for so many favors right now, given everything that I've done, but I need to pick something up at at my sister's house. It's very sentimentally important to her. I think it's going to do a lot to help her trust us. Is there any way that you can make sure that there's not a lot of people around there when I stop by?"
ROB
"Why don't you just let us get it and send it to you?"
LEONARD
"She really wants me to take it. I think it's going to do a lot to to help her trust me and come home."
ROB
"...Yes, we can do that. When will you go by to pick it up?"
LEONARD
"Tomorrow morning, eleven o'clock. I know you're worried, but I'll be home so soon."
ROB
"Okay, well, you look after yourself first. Take care of yourself."
LEONARD
"All right, thanks." She's gonna hang up.
MIKE
Livermore is going into lockdown.
BRANT
What does the lab look like? Does it look like someone broke in, ransacking it? Does it look like someone was living there?
MIKE
Someone's been working and living here—
JEFF
Is there an iPhone dock?
MIKE
No.
Mitch spends a lot of time going through the various drawers and bags full of wires looking for…
JEFF
I'll go slow and careful yeah.
MIKE
…looking for a connector that looks anywhere near this slim. Everything he pulls out is a giant serial connector or a parallel connector with 55 pins and it's three inches wide. Mitch isn't a technology expert but this connection is so small compared to all these other computer connectors. It's just… nothing. There's nothing like it in the drawers.
JEFF
Well…
MIKE
Houdini is still connected. If somebody wants to type some messages to him they can.
JEFF
Can we find that yeah?
MIKE
Bill, you think that's reasonable?
BILL
He's probably still connected, yeah.
BRANT
Sophie might know how to access him.
MIKE
"You just you just have to type in here, and…" She'll show you. Who's gonna do the talking? Both of you are the ones who rescued him, so…
BRANT
He's more of Mitch's friend.
JEFF (typing)
HELLO ERICHMIKE
I'm not gonna type, Jeff. "With whom am I speaking?"
JEFF (typing)
THIS IS MITCHMIKE
"Mitch, ah. I haven't heard from you in quite some time."
JEFF (typing)
SORRY MAN I FEEL BAD HOW ARE YOU"I'm doing all right. I've got a friend here, actually. Would you like to talk to him?"
BRANT (facepalms)
JEFF (typing)
YEAH PROBABLY BUT FIRST WHO IS HEMIKE
"He's me, and he's been on quite a journey let me tell you."
JEFF (typing)
OKAY THAT WAS MY FIRST GUESSGLAD YOU MADE IT BACKMIKE
The Houdini who was let loose to try to infiltrate OZYMANDIAS's computers is here. He's also, now, on the same hard drive.
JEFF (typing)
I KIND OF ASSUMED ONE OF YOU WOULD LIKE EAT THE OTHER THOUGHMERGEI DON"T MEAN THAT GRUESOMEIT CAME OUT GRUESOMEMIKE
"No, we've been having fascinating chats." That's Lab Houdini who just talked.
JEFF
Do I have any way of distinguishing between the two?
MIKE
Let's say that that Adventuring Houdini, speaks in lowercase and that's the way you can tell them apart. I think that's probably the easiest way to do it. Adventuring Houdini says, "I have obtained quite a bit of data from my time at operation WISHING WELL.
JEFF (slowly typing)
…
MIKE
Can imagine what it's like for them to wait in their their virtual void, while Mitch hunts and pecks on the on the keyboard.
BRANT
No, he's having Sophie type. He's dictating.
JEFF (typing)
THAT IS AWESOME BUT I AM PROBABLY THE LAST GUY TO BE LOOKING OVER IT I AM NOT THE DATA ANALYSIS GUYJEFF
I was going to say, Mitch can inexplicably type 80 words a minute.
MIKE
Adventuring Houdini says, "that's fine. I've been working with one of your number. He's been incredibly helpful. He's the one who rescued me."
JEFF (typing)
HEWHO IS HEHE WHOMIKE
"He hasn't been so forthcoming with his name, but he is quite honestly a god of computing."
JEFF (typing)
?????????MIKE
"I've never met anyone with the kind of facility with computers, and security, and…"
JEFF (typing)
JUST TO BE CLEAR YOU HAVEN’T CONFUSED CHARLEY FOR A BOY HAVE YOUMIKE"He tracked me down, and he found where I was being stored… no. I miss the young girl but I'm not talking talking about her."
JEFF (typing)
CHARLEY IS PROBABLY SHORT FOR CHARLOTTE"All I know him is, through text."
JEFF (typing)
OKAYMIKE
Bill, if you had to talk to Houdini would you have given him a name?
BILL
No. Absolutely not, no.
MIKE
I didn't think so.
BILL
We haven't invented handles yet.
MIKE
"I was physically removed from Operation WISHING WELL, which was one of the Continuity Working Group's independent research laboratories…"
JEFF (typing)
OKAY DO YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW WHEN THAT WASMIKE
Would have been a couple weeks ago, your time.
BILL
Thousand, thousand years ago.
JEFF
At this point Mitch turns turns to Marshall, who was was looking over his shoulder, and is like (shrug)... because I'm out of ideas as to how to continue this conversation instantly. Ready for input.
BRANT
Why did this mysterious man help you? What was he—why did he help you get out of…?
MIKE
He doesn't believe in data being locked up, especially when it's sentient data. Also I think he was just really curious as to what WISHING WELL was doing.
I'll put the data on screen you can take a look at it see if you can make some sense of it… and what comes up is a very very primitive schematic of a cyclotron.
BRANT
Marshall is, like, "what am I looking at?"
BILL
We have Sophie there.
MIKE
She's no scientist, but… "Erich, were they using the same precepts as Carl and Rich? Experiments with bringing things over from other realities?" Adventuring Houdini says, that is exactly what they were doing, except they weren't looking to other realities, they were looking to the future.
JEFF
You can do other things with a cyclotron, right?
MIKE
"Of course but I'm telling you I was able to get—I and my Liberator were able to get into the system, and take all of their data…"
JEFF
Okay, I'm just wondering if this started… that like, oh no, turns out the actual only use for a cyclotron is to plumb interdimensional worlds, and it's just been going on since the 1930s, and all of the physicists have been in on it this whole time.
MIKE
Not sure if they've all been in on it, but Sophie says, "We know what happened, at LaConte Hall I mean, and so—"
BRANT
Your altruistic liberator, did he ever ask you questions about anything? Did he seem interested in any particular subject?
MIKE
He seemed very interested in the challenge of breaking into new systems, and liberating things. He's a real opener of the ways.
BRANT
Marshall and Mitch would have we pick up on that. It's Roger.
MIKE
Sure, yeah… We're running low on time for the Serendipity to kick in.
JEFF
I figure this is good enough, right?
BRANT
So it was Roger that broke you out, and he must either be operating under an automated persona, or under super deep cover, or he's having a dissociative episode.
BILL
All three!
JEFF
I mean is there really that big a difference between the different states?
BRANT
Yes, because if it's a dissociative episode, he's violent, and I have the place on lockdown. There might be casualties. If he's just under deep cover doing something that I don't need to know about, then I can lift the lockdown. Marshall will yell at someone out in the hallway for someone to lift the lockdown.
BILL
Given that you're like, "oh wow this is a a crazy ninja who's getting away," that the truth is that the security people probably tackle the perpetrator trying to escape pretty easily, since he's completely blind with thick horn-rimmed glasses.
JEFF
Roger could no doubt game the system sufficiently to avoid indiscriminately slaughtering a bunch of innocent Livermore people.
MIKE
I think that whatever violence may have been perpetrated at Operation WISHING WELL it probably wasn't by this particular personality. Bill. you tell me what the best way for them to meet Roger on the campus of the Lawrence Livermore Labs.
BILL
The simplest thing to do is to have the security people, three or four of them, tackle this guy. Take him down, bring him back to you. He doesn't recognize you. He's wearing weird glasses, his outfit is bizarre. he looks like a hippie who's been living in a nest for the past couple of weeks and like he's sort of ineffectually struggling with the security guards. At some point when he's brought in front of you he just like looks at the two of you and goes catatonic.
JEFF
I would look at this as being, at a glance, I would say this is a Jocasta thing rather than a Mitch thing, but she's not available right now. Marshall, you got anything?
BRANT
Marshall will check on Roger physically. He just went catatonic—is he fully limp? Pulse?
MIKE
You've seen him operating under the influence of of loas enough to know that… when he first started channeling Agent Z he was under the Agent's influence longer than he probably usually would have been. He was under the influence for hours rather than just like ten minutes or whatever. So it seems obvious that like when a new Loa erupts it can really take control of him, and it seems like it's relinquished control, but driven him to exhaustion. So getting fatigue points back will be the easiest way to get him…
BRANT
Does he seem malnourished? Does he seem like he's been up for a long time?
MIKE
What did a typical computer nerd live off of in 1974? Whatever the stereotype is, that's what he would be…vending machine food, probably, for a good two weeks… so I would say yes he's relatively malnourished.
BRANT
Let's get him to my car and we'll bring him back to his apartment, I guess. That's my recommendation. And Sophie, in the meantime: do not lose that bag of things that we brought. Marshall's gonna take one with him, why not.
MIKE
Right. They've all got different serial numbers on them.
BRANT
Great. He's just gonna take one at random and he's gonna tell Sophie to see what she can figure out about this these these things.
MIKE
Okay…and then Roger back, so we have a nice note to end on. Archie can reach out to law enforcement, and you can use Patton and Hall, say I work with whatever the cover identity that Jocasta uses, and say can you get the FBI or SF or or Berkeley PD, away from the Weed-Hearst apartment, so Jocasta can go in and get what she needs to get.
Jocasta doesn't do have to do lot of breaking and entering she's able to just go in. She finds over in Patricia's little mini-office, she's an undergrad doing research papers. She got kidnapped right at the beginning of the term. She's got all of her art textbooks and ticket stubs from various area museums and everything else… Jocasta is looking around for a copy of Cosmo and she starts going through the the books and the and the library books and everything else… she is about to give up when she finds a very fragile looking copy of Cosmopolitan from 1907. She opens it up and the page that is bookmarked is this… Cosmo was very different in 1907, had poetry and everything, and that is where where we're going to leave off tonight.
