Purple Cows
Michael
New thread for reporting in.
Okay, I figured given our predilection for conference calls, we can just hold another one in here. I don't feel like anybody needs to do a full in-character report, just the salient bits of information from the three field ops that will require a response/next steps from Management. Archie and/or Marshall can feel free to field these depending on player availability.
Leonard
Jocasta will rattle off her sitrep quickly. "Heading to Shasta by car with Hearst and Martinez. Will hold them there until we have a clear path of action. Not clear on what might happen with them there; I'll keep on top, but could use some backup ASAP. Other SLA members ready to be picked up, but exercise caution: Hearst has exercised mental control over them with lots of source code, may make them more dangerous than expected. Hearst's level of power has increased; controlling her and shaping her is mission-critical. Let me know if you have anything that needs doing; otherwise I'm on my way."
Bill
Roger's pretty terse as well. "Have DeFreeze and Wolfe isolated and in delaying action. DeFreeze is transmitter of unknown memetic contagion through implanted chip, for agents unknown. Strongly recommend quarantine with prejudice and effecting an immediate sweep up of infected gang members for sampling for developing counter. No point taking him back to the safe house, amigos. He's not likely worth it for bait anymore, either. I don't think his handlers will come for him with infection spreading. But we can't let him out spreading it wider. Need a rendezvous on road to be able to overpower him and Wolfe to make sure they get to quarantine. We're in Downey, but need to head back towards safe house location to allay suspicion. Recommend you make it close to safe house, and take us all down, hard. Black bag me too, for possible inside play."
Jeff
"Oh, we got the guys who were transmitting to the chip. They're here at Lookout Mountain. Don't care for the vibes here. The broadcasting equipment itself is probably cooked... I set an elementary school on fire. I don't think anybody was hurt, except the guys we caught."
"There's another thing but it can sit. Everything's cool. Probably."
Bill
Yeah, Roger finding out he's back in Lookout Mountain by them taking a black bag off his head is gonna be a real fun party time. Some of us haven't bought down our Flashbacks.
Michael
(I figure we wait for both members of Management to check in on these reports, see if there's any input from the top of URIEL.)
Brant
One thing I’d propose is that I’d like to hear thoughts on how to cleverly resolve this situation. Part of thinking differently is that we gotta take ideas wherever we find them. So currently we:
1) have Hearst in custody, more closely aligned with us, and en route with Jocasta to Shasta.
2) Roger and Mitch in LA at Lookout Mountain with Cinque and a black bagger whose identity and loyalty is not yet known but we suspect they’re with the non-SANDMAN deep state.
3) know that we’re sort of in the midst of a dispute between two ontological factions, and the moves that are happening and counter-happening right now are part of that conflict.
I guess one way to frame this is: what do we want to have happen? what do we consider our best case outcome here? and also: are we trying to prevent something from happening, or trying to help something happen but with our influence?
Jeff
The conservative, SANDMAN-traditionalist play is to tamp down on everything. No riot, no threat of riot, minimal protests, the SLA thrown in a hole and Patty Hearst returned to her family after some mindwiping. So obviously we're going to do none of that.
Brant
One question I have: am I correct that Hearst seems to be possessed at times by different personalities or spirits?
And had anyone posited that she may be serving as a ritual vessel or phylactery for WR Hearst?
Jeff
Related: I don't know what being ready to confront the Bohemians looks like (especially if they're in cahoots with Control) but I'm pretty sure we're not there yet.
Michael
(I will just briefly poke my head in here and say that our new evidence/macguffins include the Two Dudes at Lookout Mountain and Whatever Is In Their Bag and I'm ready to do that pair of investigative/interrogation scenes whenever)
But obviously who conducts these—and the SLA safehouse raid/rollup—depend upon Who URIEL Trusts to do them.
Jeff
And had anyone posited that she may be serving as a ritual vessel or phylactery for WR Hearst?
I don't think this has been discussed, at least not in-character
Michael
(I will just briefly poke my head in here and say that our new evidence/macguffins include the Two Dudes at Lookout Mountain and Whatever Is In Their Bag and I'm ready to do that pair of investigative/interrogation scenes whenever)
I don't think this has been discussed, at least not in-character
It has not. We know of Hearst in History A as the Guy Who Helped John Wilkie Disseminate SAO Memetics, but of course it's been intimated from various contacts with the original Bohemians—Bierce, Fancy, Elsie, and/or the London Memeplex—that Hearst from History-Bohemia probably helped the Artsy Bohemians get the memetics out to create Bohemia, which according to Elsie may or may not have included inciting bloodletting a la "you furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war."
Leonard
I think we clearly want to stop whatever blood sacrifice might happen. I'm guessing that one faction is trying to put on a revival show for the old pre-quake Bohemian Utopia, but more to their liking (this is likely Patricia, tainted by her own bloodline), and the other is just trying to wreck any kind of utopian or even leftist movement (this is likely some rump group of the CWG). Neither of those are likely to work out to our benefit, and they're clearly both trying it at the big anti-Nixon rally. We might want to consider, if there's time, not just short-circuiting their plans, but developing our own memetic payload to release at that rally — something Arch has been working on, or something with the natives and the Ghost Dance, or something.
Jo still feels like Patricia should be recruited into SANDMAN because she's obviously quite powerful and generally amenable to our approach. She does, however — to Brant’s point — have serious questions about her motivations; she's clearly tainted by WR Hearst's bloodline, junked up with source code from the original Bohemians' poetry, and also subject to other personality splinterings, so we need to be pretty careful with her because if she turns on us, she'll be pretty formidable. That's what Jo is working on, but she's not at a point yet where she's sure. That's one reason she wants to do Mind Probe and Spirit Empathy ASAP.
Beyond that, Jo has no idea the stuff with at Lookout or the black-baggers. I think our best-case scenario is that we prevent any Bohemian/Enemy/CWG shenanigans at the rally, deliver a memetic event of our own, discover or expose the main factions and dispose of them as necessary, recruit Hearst as an asset or agent, and establish some kind of beachhead for furthering our memetic messages as propaganda and not just damage control.
Jeff
Can we throw together some kind of pro-ghost-dance, anti-violence, spiritualist payload in time? What's feasible given the schedule?
Brant
i think the impeach nixon rally/march happens on April 27
if i'm right that means we have (calculating ... calculating ...) six days left
we've done more with less time
Michael
That's just under seven days away.
Brant
so in the immediate term we need to:
1) interrogate the black bagger to find out who he works for and what his assignment was, see if we can trace that back to its source
2) figure out how to "resolve" cinque -- kill him? but that seems a waste. i feel like we need him alive until we know how we're going to spin/resolve the hearst kidnapping/bank robbery/murders. he could be a fall guy for us, easy, but there's some work we'd need to do there. like if we wanted to say he "killed" hearst after she fought back against one of his sexual assaults, we'd need to mind-wipe him and also stage a burning somewhere so that he could lead the authorities to. but that is a grim meme to inject into the american psyche and the racial backlash would be considerable.
3) get hearst to shasta + ambrose so that we can get more intel on her plans.
Jeff
Shit, I forgot I had Ambrose Bierce sleeping in my guest bedroom
Yeah totally should get her and Dodd together asap, maybe Jo to mediate? Or Archie, he did pretty well talking to Bierce. It feels outside Mitch's wheelhouse, to me
Brant
(as a total side note watching that case files of the unexplained episode about shasta did really impress upon me the scale of shasta; it really is huge)
Michael
(yeah, same here Brant! SO many tunnels and caves. Each to a different world maybe...)
Okay, so basically all I need at this point to move things along a little bit is some minor points of strategy from y'all on how the next few hours are going to unfold. To wit:
The play on Cinque, Wolfe, and Roger: Is URIEL using trusted Sandmen (in law-enforcement drag) to pick them up close to the safehouse? I get the impression that for any of the operations on the streets of South Central (including picking up gang members exposed to Cinque's memetics), we're not deputizing actual law enforcement just because of the possibility of exposure (in the many meanings of that word).
Rolling up the SLA at the safehouse: Same question. Of course we have some advantages here because the safehouse is under 24/7 electronic surveillance and we can choose a time to drop some halothane/shoot some ikoters in there where the majority of them will be asleep or otherwise occupied and do a clean, quick roll-up; the neighbors can be kept quiet using ikoters/memetics/hypnosis if any do happen to be curious. The results of both these roll-ups can end in a dungeon at Lookout Mountain where we can interrogate/decide what to do with them.
Interrogating the two agents: I would imagine this op is pretty sensitive security-wise given what we believe we know about them and should be done by someone either in the Club or very very trusted by the Club. I can tell you that once Mitch and Arn get to Lookout Mountain, if URIEL wants to do this, word can go out to Granite Peak to see if these two are identifiable by their prints/photos as Sandmen and a response should come back pretty fast on that.
Inspecting the contents of the duffel: Alas, we no longer have our technopath Indigo Child but we do have Sandmen tech boffins who can inspect this or, if we don't trust Project personnel to give us a rundown on what the agents have in their bag, well let's just say it might be time for the Phreak to start pulling his weight with this unit.
Jocasta, Patty, Shasta, Ambrose: As soon as I can get some answers on the immediate stuff above, I can RP the drive back up to Shasta and Jo can do what she has planned with Patty insofar as Mind Probing and Spirit Empathy are concerned. Very stoked to do those. (Edit: Archie to head to Shasta to be present for the Elsie/Ambrose/Patty (re)union.)
General countermemetics: We had talked a few sessions back about Archie (and maybe Sophie) concocting some "Purple Cow"-inspired countermemetics for "A Wine of Wizardry" and having that handy if needed to deprogram Patty, members of the SLA/public, etc. We also would want to have countermemetics in pocket for the stuff Cinque was spreading amongst the gangs in South Central as well. Delivery methods for both of these, we can talk about as we get closer to the Impeach Nixon march and discover what the use-cases might be.
Plans for next Saturday's march: Are obviously highly dependent on how the bullet points above resolve but figure that's our M9S6 finale right there.
Rob
Sorry for radio silence. I haven't much to say on any of those points, but Archie would go back to Shasta to be there for the Beirce/Hearst/Jo summit if not needed in L.A. As is increasingly the case, Archie lets Marshall and the rest of the team handle operational logistics.
On the memetic/esmological front, yes, I did want Archie to come up with some kind of countermemetics for "Wine of Wizardry." When we first mentioned it, I was really just thinking of an inoculation for Jo & Roger or anyone else in contact with Patty & the SLA, but if there's a way to make it more general in application that would be great.
So it's some source-code laden version of the old rhyme:
I never saw a Purple Cow, I never hope to see one
But I can tell you, anyhow, I'd rather see than be one!
The point of the meme is to make fantastic visions of utopia, Bohemia, Revolution seem a little ridiculous (purple cows), and beyond that discourage interest in seeing the invisible world behind the world. It's not meant to be major mind control, just a snarky little ditty that punctures earnestness, short-circuits fervent belief for a second, so people infected with the meme can't be as easily enlisted to, say, fuel mass ontoclysmic rituals with their unquestioning belief.
Archie's also been sketching out cover-story scenarios for what "happens" to Patty & Cinque in the press. Bonnie & Clyde, alchemical marriage, star-crossed lovers on the run stuff. "It'll make a swell movie one day," Archie says. "Of course it has to be a love story. I know that's going to upset folks, the black and white of it, but that's the story behind the story, everybody's thinking it already, that makes it stickier than any political program either of them could cook up."
He's working on the assumption the story ends with Cinque dead and Hearst fairly pliable to us, neutralized or an asset or something. Big picture, Archie likes the optics of Patricia reintegrated with her family, but not defeated, not returning with her tail between her legs. Rather the Hearsts have to come to her, transformed by this, learning from her, the scales falling from their eyes. Synechdoche for the whole generation gap in America, we're all thinking different. Teach your parents well / And feed them on your dreams / And know they love you etc etc. What leverage if any do we have or could we get on Hearst's parents? (Is Randolph Hearst an actual Bohemian?)
Brant
this is what i was hoping for from Archie/Rob, love the idea of Hearst reintegrating with her family — that’s powerful memetics.
if we can align her with us and our objectives and then reintegrate her with her family, that’s also a powerful connection for us
Rob
Archie's also been sketching out cover-story scenarios for what "happens" to Patty & Cinque in the press. Bonnie & Clyde, alchemical marriage, star-crossed lovers on the run stuff. "It'll make a swell movie one day," Archie says. "Of course it has to be a love story. I know that's going to upset folks, the black and white of it, but that's the story behind the story, everybody's thinking it already, that makes it stickier than any political program either of them could cook up." He's working on the assumption the story ends with Cinque dead and Hearst fairly pliable to us, neutralized or an asset or something. Big picture, Archie likes the optics of Patricia reintegrated with her family, but not defeated, not returning with her tail between her legs. Rather the Hearsts have to come to her, transformed by this, learning from her, the scales falling from their eyes. Synechdoche for the whole generation gap in America, we're all thinking different. Teach your parents well / And feed them on your dreams / And know they love you etc etc. What leverage if any do we have or could we get on Hearst's parents? (Is Randolph Hearst an actual Bohemian?)
Michael
From the notes in the media pre-abduction (which are scant; Randy really did try to keep a low public profile prior to Patty's abduction), Randolph A. Hearst isn't a big private club guy. He does belong to the Pacific-Union Club and several local golf/country clubs. Whether this has anything to do with his father's snubbing of/by the Bohemians back in 1902 in History A after the whole McKinley poem/assassination thing and the foundation of the "Family" private club, is uncertain. By 1974 the "Family" is a pale imitation of the power and the reach of the Bohemians and none of William Sr.'s kids are actively involved with it. Both the Pacific-Union and Family have real movers and shakers among their number, but neither club has the esmological "juice" of the Bohemians, Archie can tell.
Randy Hearst is big into charities, of course; Randy's mom helped found the actual no-fooling PTA and Randy has been bankrolling Parent-Teacher Associations and the Senate Youth Program during his professional life in the Hearst Corporation. Archie also notes with interest that due to Randy's having been general a second banana to his older brother William Jr. in the Hearst Corporation, he's been looking to get involved in some of the non-newspaper media in the Hearst umbrella, like television and radio. But one thing to remember is that Big Bill didn't leave functional control of Hearst Corporation to any of his kids; the Hearst board of trustees is designated in Hearst's will to be permanently made of 5 family members and 8 non-family, which means even if all five siblings managed to want to pull in the same direction, they'd still need at least a couple of the non-family board members to agree. Randy currently serves as chairman of this board but that's largely a ceremonial position; real power resides in the CEO, Frank Massi.
Brant
OK, I have a plan — will post later tonight once I’m done for the day.
OK. There's a lot to unpack so let's focus on immediate action items.
(1) Marshall will tap Donna at Granite Peak and Everett at CIA for intel on the black baggers picked up by Mitch. Whatever either can get. This should at least confirm whether that was just a COINTELPRO situation gone awry or whether we're dealing with something on "our" side of the divide. Otherwise keep the two operatives on ice at Lookout.
(2) Jocasta to Mind Probe Patricia ASAP. We need to know who we are dealing with here and what their plan is. We need to know if this is something that we need to thwart, or something we can leverage to our benefit, or what.
(3) I think we should take Cinque into custody at Lookout, drop the ruse and lock him down. If he's interested in doing so, Roger could interrogate him to some degree; it's plausible that he knows more, consciously or otherwise, about everything going on. Otherwise, keep on ice.
(4) I think Mitch should take a charter flight or whatever he wants to do to Shasta so that he can rendezvous with Jocasta and Patricia. We need aura reads on Patricia and a determination as to whether she's Special like Mitch is Special -- I don't think we haven't ruled that out, but I could be wrong. (Mitch can relieve Dave and send him back to the city, assuming nothing's gone wrong up there.)
(5) Sophie and Genevieve to find out everything they can about the impeach Nixon rallies: what organizations are involved, who the speakers are going to be, what political groups are sponsoring it, etc. Identify anyone ontologically suspicious. (edited)
(6) Archie (and Marshall, I guess) need to start thinking up the meme that's going to bring this home without a bunch of dead domestic terrorists and an American heiress. I don't want to round up the SLA yet because that's a lot of people to hold securely, and I think they can be put to better use as a petri dish for growing the meme that's going to bring this home without a bunch of dead domestic terrorists and an American heiress -- whatever that meme is.
Final point as to (6), my thinking is that we can keep the SLA securely on ice for at least two or three more days but beyond that the SLA members themselves are going to start getting paranoid and buggy what with Cinque and Patricia missing. Beyond that, if we can't think of a better way, we'll need to just round them up old school style before actual law enforcement find them.
Jeff
I am about 90% sure that Mitch did eyeball Patty Hearst around session four and confirmed that she is not Illuminated
But either way I'm fine with returning to Shasta
Brant
Oh right I remember that now! Regardless Mitch should be there to facilitate/thwart/etc whatever bizarre shit is about to go down.
Michael
Okay, so it's Archie, Jocasta, and Mitch at Shasta on Sunday, with Patricia, Ambrose, Peter Mt. Shasta, Dan Miller, Mary-Lynn, and the students and teachers of the St.-Germain School present as well obviously. Mitch and Archie can meet at Burbank Airport after midnight for a red-eye up to Weed Airfield. They will beat Patricia and Jocasta up there by a considerable amount of time, so they'll have time to prep. Roger's staying in Los Angeles, to be brought in with Cinque and Wolfe. We're leaving the SLA minus Cinque, Patty, and Wolfe to their own devices; this would put Bill Harris in charge as he was recently made second-in-command over Nancy Ling Perry. Jocasta to Mind Probe and Spirit Empathy on the way up to Shasta. Marshall to tap Donna and Everett for details on the two mystery men. I will set up some rolls before I go to bed tonight and follow up on both those scenes tomorrow morning. Viv and Sophie should have some decent data for Marshall on next Saturday's marches in LA, Chicago, and DC by mid-morning Sunday. Dave to return to the City soonest after Archie and Mitch show up on the plane. Also, Brant, it strikes me you've got Merrick around as well; he could be used on the memetics side of things, or if needed he could go down to LA and take a bite at our two mystery men, given how much research he did on the Jolly West/Vacaville/Violence Center/brain hacking side of things. He could work with Roger on both the mystery men and Cinque.
(I think I'll do the SANDMAN personnel/mystery man calls here, Brant: two rolls, Donna Montanari-9 and Everett Bumgardner-12. If you can't get either of them late Saturday night you can try again Sunday morning.)
Brant
>> FAILURE by 2
>> SUCCESS by 1
Michael
Bumgardner and Marshall haven't canonically chatted in a fair bit, not since Mission 4, where his CIA goons helped set up the dirty tricks that led to Marshall setting up Carl and Rich as a lovers' quarrel that led to Carl leaping to his death from the Golden Gate Bridge. Bumgardner's still on duty with CIA; with Vietnam pretty much a lost cause and the Agency's attention diverted elsewhere, he's been a bit at sea, working various domestic civilian-cover jobs at the US Information Agency in DC, so when Marshall reaches him it's nearly 3 am in Virginia. Ev figures it must be important so he hustles to Langley to receive a secure Telex from Marshall with a couple of low-resolution scans of Polaroid photocopies of our salt-and-pepper pair.
Everett doesn't know who the white guy is, but the Black gentleman rings cherries with Ev from his work in-country. "That's Freeman Calvert. He was a field technician with IGLOO WHITE. Good with electronics, surveillance, the radio barrier fence we used on the frontier at the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that sort of thing. Not afraid to get his hands dirty; went into the Shit a dozen or so times to repair the sensors. Got promoted to rear echelon duty, intepreting the sensor data. He was one of the 'pinball wizards.' Transferred stateside in '70, he didn't take a job with the Agency on separation, but I could track down his current whereabouts if you need 'em."
Brant
Marshall thanks Everett and signs off. This at least confirms it’s not a mundane op we intercepted; likelihood of a rival or enemy ontological faction increased. Yes, Marshall will send Merrick down to LA to interrogate the two black baggers but not Cinque, and report back. He’ll give Roger a head’s up that Merrick is coming.
Michael
I can give you the follow-up info on what Freeman Calvert has been doing since separating from his assignment in Vietnam, a combination of what Bumgardner was able to cull and SANDMAN resources. Calvert's dossier comes through at around dawn.
May 1970 - November 1970: Calvert attends California State Police (CSP) academy in Sacramento, completes Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) November 1970
January 1971 - August 1972: Member of Permanent Security Detail, Dignitary Protection Command, CSP Sacramento: Countersurveillance Duty.
August 1972 - October 1973: Head of Countersurveillance Detail, Office of the Governor of California, East Annex, State House, Sacramento, Calif.
October 1973 - present: Job assignment unknown, last record of his being a member of Governor Reagan's staff was a paycheck cut on Friday, October 12, 1973. Since then no tax records, no paychecks, nothing.
Bill
(6) Archie (and Marshall, I guess) need to start thinking up the meme that's going to bring this home without a bunch of dead domestic terrorists and an American heiress. I don't want to round up the SLA yet because that's a lot of people to hold securely, and I think they can be put to better use as a petri dish for growing the meme that's going to bring this home without a bunch of dead domestic terrorists and an American heiress -- whatever that meme is.
If Sophie and Viv have a second (or Archie), it’d be helpful to pursue the meme Cinque launched into gangland L.A. Roger can try to get its source out of the mystery men in an interrogation, but seeing it in the wild might also be recommended, if we’re going to write a counter to that one.
Michael
Merrick might really come in handy for this as well, Bill, because he's a memeticist trained especially in counter-memetics. I fancy a scene between him and Roger once things calm down a little bit at Lookout Mountain. I gotta get you three arrested first though.