A Date with Reinhardt
Michael
Jocasta's just gotten home from a second day of research and black-bag planning at Livermore. Thursday night, time to turn on the tube and watch Mod Squad/Kung Fu/The Streets of San Francisco on ABC. But a little after 8, Jo's joint-and-TV-and-Jiffy Pop evening plans are interrupted by a phone call.
"Menos? It's Tony. How the hell have you been, soldier?" It's Tony. Anthony. Colonel Anthony Barnes Reinhardt.
Leonard
Jocasta instantly steels herself. What would have once been a mental determination to pay attention and absorb information now becomes a barely-hidden defensive crouch, almost as if she's readying for combat. She remembers the discipline and propriety that got her here; that's what he'll be expecting and that's what she has to give him.
"Situation normal, sir," she replies, "all fucked up." A laugh to put him at ease before getting to the red meat. "Still learning the ropes at the new assignment, Colonel, but everything's five-by-five. What can I do for you?"
Michael
"Well, I'm going to be in town this weekend—doing a little bit of... talent scouting, you might say, the Bay Area is a fertile hunting grounds, as you well know—and I wanted to see if you wanted to grab dinner and talk shop?"
Leonard
"Yes, sir, I'd love to," Jocasta affirms, her mind racing. "Just say when and where."
Michael
"I'll get settled in on Friday night, check in with my prospectives, and give you my schedule then, how does that sound? Sometime Saturday or Sunday, for sure."
Leonard
"Sounds like a plan, Colonel." She throws out a little bait, spontaneously, hoping it won't strike him as suspicious. "Would you like to meet anyone from the new outfit? I'm sure they'd love to hear about what's being done in the Guard — a lot of our techniques grew out of what you've taught us."
[To be clear, Jocasta knows that the Guard was folded into SANDMAN, and that Reinhardt was the Sixth Man, but she's acting like she doesn't to make him think the memory wipes are still effective.]
Michael
"Oh, no no, you have to understand, Menos, anything I talk to you about this weekend is just between us, you get it? This is all off-the-record and informal. I'm just passing through, wanting to meet up with an old comrade, maybe exchange news and intel that could be of help to both of us and to the Project. I don't see any overlap in our interests. I certainly don't want to disturb the integrity of your team. I'm not here to poach any of your projects. Call our getting dinner an... unofficial channel."
"In fact... I should tell you... I'm not with the Guard anymore. I'm working with a new team. That's the first of the big news. But I'll tell you all of it this weekend."
Leonard
"Understood, sir. Looking forward to seeing you this weekend."
Michael
click
Leonard, however you want to follow this up in-character on Thursday night or Friday at work, you let me know. We'll fold it into the Bernadette planning.
Leonard
She's going to assume (paranoia!) that the Colonel is still monitoring her, so she'll wait until Friday morning and then quietly let Marshall and Archie know about the call. She'll transcribe it as exactly as she can.
Michael
Basically, Houdini will suggest that since we have a good amount of sensory memory data on file from the month or two Charley's chip was recording normally, we use that as the "envelope" for the data on the drive, which will be Houdini himself. And if Charley can craft some code with Computer Programming/Computer Hacking to make Houdini's data look like corrupted, glitched-out sensory data, OZYMANDIAS might just download the lot right away. A classic piece of legerdemain, only in the digital realm.
Houdini's already agreed to break into (and out of?) Granite Peak in that scene, all that remains is making clear to him the parameters of his mission. Also we (well, Mel) needs to decide if Charley is going to secretly install some kind of kill switch, as Marshall mentioned at the outset of Mission Six:
Friday morning conversation in the Rooster House between Jo, Marshall, and Archie:
Brant: “It seems too coincidental, which is par for the course for us, so it feels like it should be connected,” Marshall says. “It could be the meme. It would surprise me if it’s moved that quickly but who knows what sort of channels the King of Kings has running through the organization. Maybe he’s coming to informally feel you out about Archie. Or me. Maybe he wants you to keep an eye on things here for him. Or maybe it’s entirely unrelated to anything we have going on. Anyway. Be wary.”
Leonard: "Understood. Should I try to draw him out on anything beyond what he already wants to tell me, or just answer his questions?"
Brant: “Well, he must want something from you. Why else arrange to meet with you? Play it by ear, I guess. But get your lies straight about Charley, and the chip especially. He may be coming to town to … collect..” After a pause, he snaps his fingers. "Though maybe now would be an opportune time to hand off the disk. The disk with Houdini on it. You could wait until the end of your dinner — or whatever you're going to be doing with him — and tell him that the team found it, and doesn't know what to do with it, and you're handing it off to him because he's the only one you think you can trust ... "
Leonard: "Oh, yeah, good thinking. I'll give that a try when we wrap up," says Jocasta, quietly thinking, It shouldn't be hard to sell, I barely know what the fucking thing is myself.
I assume as Charley builds in some programs for Houdini's infiltration package, she'll put together a way for Houdini to have some kind of encrypted, over-ARPANET, difficult-to-trace method of communication back to home base. Like an electronic dead drop! A dummy email address at the University of Utah or something.
Mel
There will be no secrets from Houdini. Charley respects and considers him a friend. So no programming that will harm him but a back door will be set up to get him back. And instructions on how he can hide in plane sight and an SOS signal known to only her that he can send if he needs her help.
Michael
Mel, I'm going to make a secret Computer Programming-15 roll for the hiding program and SOS signal and a Computer Hacking-14 roll for the back door to allow Houdini to transmit him back to Livermore, but given the limitations of 1973-era ARPANET transmission speeds, getting all of the Houdini data back once that back door is activated will take likely weeks upon weeks. And I'll use maximum Extra Time for both these rolls but the deadline is obviously very soon, considering Jo is going to meet Reinhardt this weekend. We can say Charley was working on some of these programs before Jo came in with this information.
Okay, Houdini by the end of the work day Friday will be equipped on the OZYMANDIAS futuretech hard drive with programs meant to hide him in a system, to send an SOS signal to Charley's dead-drop email address, and to get him transmitted piecemeal back to Livermore if necessary.
Gotta give some thought to what restaurant Reinhardt would invite Jo to. Suggestions for a military man-turned-human potential explorer in SF/Berkeley welcome, we don't necessarily have to go macrobiotic/health food but given this Mission's theme, might be fun
Leonard
Well, this sent me on a bit of a hunt. I feel like Reinhardt would favor a vegetarian place, but they weren't really common in '73, and I don't think he'd go to, like, Long Life in Berkeley, because he doesn't seem like someone who wants to hang out with the kids. Indian also seemed likely — he probably spent some time in south Asia — but the first one in the area didn't open until '83 (!).
I do think he's probably the type to show off by taking people to pricey restaurants, even if he's not loaded, just to establish his importance. That could definitely mean a steakhouse or a seafood joint. That could mean Garden Court, Balboa Café, the Old Clam House, or even the Tadich Grill if he wants to go super old school. If this was earlier he might do the Hang Ah Tea Room, but I think the era of powerful honkies thinking of Chinese places as bastions of privacy and security died not long after '49. Joe's in North Beach is a possibility, depending on how bourgie he is. If he embraces his Germanity, Schroeder's or Tommy's are the obvious choices, and if he really wants to show off, maybe Cliff House.
Michael
Oh, the Cliff House actually is perfect. Archie and Mitch have been there before, meeting up with E Clampus Vitus.
Leonard
Also, Jocasta is going to put the Houdini chip in something — like, a little metal box or something secure-looking — and put it in her purse prior to the meeting. She wants to convey to Reinhardt the idea that she thinks it's dangerous, or at least important.
Michael
The hard drive is about the size of a deck of cards, maybe a little bigger, so a small strongbox with a quality lock is just fine.
I suppose a Saturday evening dinner at the Cliff House with the sun setting over the Pacific would be pretty cool.
Reinhardt calls Jocasta back on Friday night and says he's got Saturday night open this weekend and would she like drinks and dinners at Cliff House on the western tip of San Francisco. Anthony Reinhardt is a big, strapping man—evidence of his Natural Guard and U.S. Army training—wearing West Coast civvies; too old to be mistaken for a hippie but still with a certain freewheeling fashion insouciance: with a shirt open to the third button, fashionable Italian shoes, he looks like a particularly hip ad executive or a California trust fund kid gone to seed in his late-30s. He's sitting at the bar nursing a Bloody Mary, chatting amiably with the bartender, occasionally glancing out at the Pacific behind the huge windows.
"Well hey there," he says to Jo, extending his hand for a handshake, a friendly smile on his face. "Long time no see, soldier," he says as he gets closer to Jo.
Leonard
"Colonel," Jocasta responds, shaking his hand with her (gloved) one. "It's good to see you. Civvies suit you." She holds out a cigarette, at first waiting an awkward second for Reinhardt to light it before remembering he doesn't approve of smoking. "Still haven't kicked the habit. Dr. Claire keeps threatening to hypnotize me. So, to what do I owe the honor of a Cliff House dinner?"
Jocasta's fit for tonight.
Michael
"Well, first of all, pick your poison," he gestures to the barman. "Lewis here wields a mean shaker." The bartender gives him a little two-finger acknowledgement. "I thought we'd go out to the deck, get some sea air, watch the sunset. Get that appetite up. Chat a little before we dine."
Leonard
"A lemon drop, if you please, Lewis," Jocasta says, citing the town's hot new cocktail. "Lead the way, Col...Anthony? Tony? Sir?" She laughs in what she hopes is a disarming way. "I'm not used to seeing you out of uniform."
[Another note: If Reinhardt touches anything small that he leaves behind — a gum wrapper, a toothpick, a piece of silverware — Jocasta will slip it into a purse pocket when he's out of the room, but she won't try to palm it or anything if he doesn't let her out of his sight.]
Michael
"Like I said the other day, I think it's best to keep things informal tonight. 'Tony' is fine." Out on the deck it's windy, a stiff sea breeze coming in from across the bay to the north. But the advantage to being out on the deck, Jocasta can see and sense tactically, is that there's no danger of being overheard by bystanders out here, plus any microphone placed out here would likely catch a lot of incidental wind interference. Smart. "So how's Livermore? I know I said I wasn't gonna pry about your team's activities but I figured... hey, it's polite. You liking it better than the Guard? Don't worry, you won't offend me." He smiles, sipping at his goblet of tomato juice and vodka and crunching down on the celery stick.
Leonard
"Livermore is good," Jocasta allows. "Good people. It's a world of difference from the Guard — better in some ways, not in others. Less discipline, of course, a bit fast and loose. It's hard to tell what command is up to sometimes. But I feel...well, this sounds silly, but I feel a little more at home there. They're tolerant of my, er, quirks," she says, sipping on the icy, tart cocktail. "The work is clean. The Guard, well, I always believed in your vision. You know that. But we had to operate under the direction of Washington and its priorities. Livermore is fighting the real enemy. No distractions."
Michael
"Yes. Direct action, unfettered by bureaucracy. It's funny you mention that. I had envisioned the Guard as a vision of an armed forces of the future, you know? One that had integrated mental and spiritual evolution into the existing physical and psychological training in a way that would keep the Enemy at bay and out of our heads, even amongst rank and file American soldiers and marines and airmen and sailors. But the powers-that-be... well, they decided that wasn't a fruitful approach. I'm here, Jocasta, because the Guard is closing down. As I mentioned on the phone, I've moved on to a range of new projects. All the final after-action reports for the Guard have been filed at the Peak, all the documents are being readied for use in follow-up pilot programs in the Army in the coming years. We did what we needed to; we opened the door. It's up to the Army of the future to walk through it."
"But we need solutions that go beyond these now, so that if and when the time comes, when... They might begin to operate more openly among us, we'll be ready. The media buzzboys are doing their best to inoculate the American civilian public against Them, but there still needs to be an elite to steer the ship, trained to run SANDMAN and to take command and control of its many subsidiaries, to take the fight to the Enemy. URIEL is one of the labs doing that sort of free-form prototype program development, of course."
"You've had a lot of close exposure to the Enemy the past six months, haven't you?" With this Reinhardt looks very closely into Jo's eyes. "It must have been hard, especially coming on the heels of Yugoslavia... and South West Africa."
Leonard
Jocasta returns his gaze. She's tempted to try an empathic read, but she decides to wait until it matters the most. "Belgrade was nothing. Just...moments of weakness on both sides. Africa was bad. The worst I've seen. But this, working with URIEL, it's just...no comparison. I've seen them, face to face. I've heard them speak. I've even gotten glimpses of the other side, or the other time, or whatever it is. I've seen our reality start to crumble around me. It's the difference between fighting the enemy and knowing the enemy," she says with determination. "But I can handle it. You wouldn't have sent me there if you thought otherwise."
She takes another sip of the lemon drop, remembering the way the acidic sharpness of citrus always boosts her acid trips. "What about you, Tony? You didn't ask me here just for Lewis' cocktails, good as they are. What are these new projects of yours? And should I consider this a job interview?"
Michael
"You most definitely can handle it. You and everyone in URIEL," Reinhardt smiles amiably, suddenly breaking off the rather intense stare.
"New projects. Well, it's a wild and thriving garden out there. With Vietnam more or less over, funding is coming our way soon for a bunch of ideas we've had in the Guard and at the Peak the past few years. We're obviously continuing with the lineage of projects around how to raise a B-immune generation of kids. It's hard work, filled with failures and dead ends—even if some of those dead ends are... wondrous in and of themselves, and capable agents to boot." Reinhardt inhales, looking at the rocky coast of the Bay, perhaps pondering the Indigo Children or even Charley specifically. "We've got some plans to do with media, of course, taking what television has opened up in Americans' souls and making it more... interactive, more responsive to people's desires and needs. A television that hypnotizes and engages."
"All fine stuff. But my own peculiar personal interests can't stop handing me clues as to ways we can already resist Them without technology or messy memetics or even the... admittedly bad optics of raising little kids in veal pens. Things we've developed over the past 1,500 years organically. Mystical traditions. Religions. Ways we have evolved to re-engineer the God module they put into us and turn it into an ad hoc neurophysical immune system. Danbe and ASL and linguistic reprogramming from birth are good. SANDMAN training... also good. But ultimately there's still room for failure, human weakness, and boom. You see a glyph or hear a word from Them and do what exactly what They say. Do that to enough people, and They're back."
"But what if you could essentially excise the part of us that's physically hard-wired to worship Them, and leave the human mind and soul empty, like a clean hollow copper pot?" He takes a deliberate pause, works up to what he's been talking around. "What do you know about Tibetan Buddhism?"
Leonard
"Just the basics, mostly," she responds. "Stuff from school. Lamaism, god-yoga, the tantras. Shambala. The Dalai Lama. I wish Marshall — Doc Red — was here; it's very much his thing."
Michael
Reinhardt nods at the mention of Marshall, almost like he expected this. "Yes, of course, in fact one could argue that a lot of what I'm working on now is thanks to Dr. Redgrave's pioneering work in Indochina during the war. But before us we have Buddhism, a remarkably elastic set of beliefs, despite its strictures and rules and lists. It managed to colonize the minds of millions in Our History while still maintaining much of the pre-existing belief structures underneath. Indigenous traditions contributed to localizations of Buddhism in Southeast Asia, in Japan, and of course in Tibet."
"Tibet is the roof of the world, of course. They say such places at the tops of mountains are especially liminal, especially 'thin'." Reinhardt lets that sit there a moment longer than Jo might have expected. "I spent several months there back in '66 as part of ST-CIRCUS, taking the Lansdale playbook and applying it to the war against Chinese oppression in Tibet. Bringing forth age-old cultural memetics to fight the Reds, all while looking for the memes that had the best application to keeping us safe from the Enemy's blandishments." Reinhardt sighs deeply. "But it wasn't until I came home and read a little book from 1929 that I discovered what I'd been looking for, what had been locked off and forbidden to me as a Westerner while I was there working for the Company. Alexandra David-Néel's Mystiques et Magiciens du Tibet. A bible for the beatniks and seekers here in America the past two decades who were discovering Eastern thought, and I found it in a little mystics' shop right here in San Fran." Oh, how it grates Jo's Sausalito-reared soul to hear him say "San Fran;" he might as well have said "Frisco."
"And in that book I found a tantalizing reference to a special tantric ritual, an esoteric Vajrayana practice in which the human mind dives deep into its most frightening aspects: our shared desires to dominate and be dominated, to eat flesh and drink blood and to be eaten and drunk in return, our acceptance of rot and ruin and death and primal, animal fear, a walk through the fearful field full of vulture-torn sky-buried corpses... only to come out cleansed, perfected, an elevated soul sliced free of the veil of maya. The ritual of Cutting Through. The Tibetans call it Chöd. Do you know who originally developed it? A post-Ontoclysm mystic. And not just any mystic, but a nun. Machig Labdrön, an esteemed woman Buddhist of the 12th century, an emanation of certain revered Masters who'd gone before and reincarnated back into saṃsāra. With it she healed the sick. The practitioner would empty themselves and provide a ladder for themselves and others, purifying the self and eventually ascending to Nirvāṇa. And in investigating the original texts, I saw the most intriguing references to this ritual banishing demons: internal ones, do you understand? The kind of mind-poison that can birth monsters from the lower realms, outside of reality." Again, an arresting attempt at eye contact with Jo. Reinhardt fairly growls to Jo, "This ritual. It kills the Anunnakku within us."
"Listen to her words, Menos. Simple, direct, pure."
As long as there is an ego, there are demons.
When there is no more ego,
There are no more demons either!
"The joy, the revelation in these words. A woman invented this practice. A woman accidentally brought it to the West. And a woman must birth it for the New Age. Do you understand, Jocasta? Do you see what I am getting at here?"
Leonard
[Okay, so, two questions, and possibly some rolls that need making. First, does Jocasta's Occult knowledge, which — unlike mine — is significant, tell her if what Reinhardt is saying makes sense? That is, given that it's the occult, I want to know not if it's logical or 'scientific' or anything, but just if it makes sense within the context of what is known about this sort of thing. Second, can she tell if he's trying to do any kind of mind control or hypnotism or NLP on her, and if so, can she roll to resist? I'll wait on a response before I answer him.]
Michael
So I think the first question is more properly a Hidden Lore (History B) roll at 16; the operative part of the question is wholly around issues of how humans can overcome Anunnaki programming despite the aura of human mysticism and occultism he's surrounding it with.
The second roll will be something I'll make. It'll essentially be a Will roll with all your heightened defenses (and Combat Reflexes, I think) factored in but I will be making it secretly. Feel free to History B roll now though.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 4
Michael
Jocasta's seen people physically change thanks to their religious devotion plus autohypnosis (Roger), seen people light things on fire with their minds (Mitch), seen them commune with the dead and manipulate technology (Charley). She knows what the human mind is capable of, how our psychic abilities, purportedly put there as potential long ago by the Anunnaki, can be triggered and used. But what about shutting that part of the brain down. Completely. Rendering it insensate to both stimulation to trigger psi and rendering it unable to be manipulated by Anunnaki neurolinguistic programming. That's a step further. What on Earth would that do?
Jo knows that any person who committed to such a... theoretical ritual of Chöd would lose all access to that part of their brain: what Reinhardt had memorably called "the God module." They would no longer fear God because they would literally have no conception of such a being anymore. It would have tremendous knock-on effects throughout the human brain, and, if you believe in it, the human soul. Perhaps that need to serve Those Who Provide filtered down into other aspects of the human superego: into, perhaps, the desire to follow leaders, moral, political, spiritual, or otherwise. What would a being with no desire to capitulate to authority, good or ill, look like?
And then Jo thinks about Pete and Betsy from 2016.
Three-plus generations removed from Tony, these chödpa (if Jo believes her experience under Shasta was true and real) had become easily-imprinted-upon by unsavory memetics, powerful warriors with no guilt, no human compassion or conscience to guide them. They could resist all the neuro-epistemic traps laid down by Them six millennia ago in Their fell laboratories, but they'd also been able to resist appeals to justice, hierarchy, stability and order. They'd be the first truly Self-Made Men.
They would be pure sociopaths.
Speaking of neurolinguistic programming, Jocasta knows as well as Tony: you can't bullshit a bullshitter and you can't NLP a SANDMAN. I mean, theoretically you definitely could, but you'd need to be so preternaturally talented and so hopped up on Corruption that you'd stick out like a sore thumb. Reinhardt is not giving off those vibes right now. Sure, his "monologuing" has been oddly compelling, and maybe he is using mundane NLP techniques to grab Jo's attention—things that ordinary non-clued-in schlubs can learn like proper cadence, pitch, body language—but if there were source code in it, Jo could tell. And she doesn't sense any.
Leonard
Jocasta steels herself internally at the memory of Pete and Betsy, but does her best not to let it show. "That's...amazing, Tony," she says with an enthusiasm she doesn't feel to keep him talking. "'The self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth', if I remember my Campbell right. Of course I'd want to read more on the issue — the occult side of me thinks it's transformative, but the psychological side wonders about unintended consequences. But the idea of using ego-death as a weapon against Them, it's certainly not too far removed from what some of the people at the Company have tried to do with chemical methods, albeit in their typically fumbling and imprecise way. And that I've personally investigated on my own, as you know."
She stops herself from reaching for another cigarette, but turns away from the Colonel. The Fear is starting to creep into her mind, without any of the 'chemical methods' that usually bring it to the fore, and she hopes that he reads her body language as a simple desire to look out at the magnificent views of Seal Beach. Centering herself, she turns back to him. "So who are you working with on this, and how far along? Have you picked out your Celestial Madonna yet?" She catches herself, or seems to. "Sorry, maybe I'm asking too much."
Michael
"Well, call it another ad hoc group, spread out amongst... several SANDMAN departments and operations. A 'working group,' let's call it. I've got experts in neurobiology, belief mechanics, religious history, from all over the organization all consulting on this. It's early days. I wouldn't expect any testing to start until at least next year. As you say, there's plenty to be wary of. Re-integration is the key to avoid those "unintended consequences," as you put it. But you caught my meaning quite easily. The one thing that's necessary for success, I'm sure of it, is that there needs to be a woman at the center of the program. A death goddess to help transition, rebirth and nurture all these new, just-out-of-the-womb chödpas."
"Do you happen to know anyone?" Reinhardt says with a cocky smile.
Leonard
Jesus, Jocasta thinks, trying hard to not betray any inner turmoil. Being the death-mother to a generation of dead-souled killers, what girl wouldn't want that? Still, she knows she needs to keep this channel open, for the sake of the club.
"I see why you wanted to buy me dinner first," she jokes, feeling a film creep over her skin. "I don't know if I'm ready to be anyone's death-goddess, Tony, but URIEL casts a wide net, and I won't tell you I'm not intrigued. Put in an order for way too many Kumamoto oysters and tell me more. And if you're lucky, I'll let you in on something we've been working on that might interest you." She smiles widely, almost greedily, the way she learned to when she wants a man to know she wants something.
Michael
I'd like you to give me two rolls, an Empathy-13 and then a Fast-Talk-14. I will be applying modifiers secretly so don't get too hung up on success/failure here.
You can apply Corruption to either of these
Leonard
Empathy
>> SUCCESS by 2
Fast Talk.
>> SUCCESS by 3
Michael
Tony nods, betraying only a little bit of disappointment. "Well, I appreciate you keeping your eyes open while on duty with URIEL. Our candidate could be anywhere: on a commune, in a monastery, working in a shop and going to meditation class once a week. This is where we'll find her." He jabs his hand into the stone wall of the deck. "Yeah, I've worked up enough of an appetite out here, let's head inside and get some food."
Over more drinks and dinner, Tony keeps the discussion light and mostly non-work-specifics-related, which is difficult given Tony's and Jo's entirely non-existent relationship outside of work. He speaks in generalities, saying that he's enjoying having multiple projects going at the same time and that one good thing about the bosses at Control (he definitely wants Jo to know he has a direct connection to the Big Boys who run the Project) is that they're always willing to tear down a dysfunctional project that has seen its natural lifespan expire. "Creative destruction," is what Reinhardt calls it.
But it's clear Reinhardt has been talking around what Jo so tantalizingly dangled in front of him at the end of drinks outside. "Okay, Menos. Spill." He's had a few whiskies at this point and is feeling himself. "How lucky am I, are you going to tell me what you've been working on... other than regularly tangoing with the Enemy?"
Leonard
"You might be twice lucky, Colonel," Jo says. "For one thing, I think we might have a line on some candidates for your, uh, sacred vessel. Maybe you can come in and meet the team sometime — I'm sure Marshall would have some insights, and we can talk about potential possibilities." Reaching delicately into her purse and pulling out a small steel government-issue strongbox, she fixes his powerful gaze.
"The other...well, it's not so much what we've been working on as what we haven't been working on. At one of our hot spots, we found this. It's some kind of computer hardware; I'm not sure what it is, honestly, which is part of the problem. Like I said, URIEL has a lot of good qualities, but tech-savviness isn't one of them. We don't have a lot of lab types, other than the girl, and while she's brilliant with that sort of thing, she's awfully hard to communicate with, let alone control." She curses herself inside for the lie, but she wants Reinhardt to carry the seeds of the idea that the Indigo Children might be unreliable.
"It's been sitting in our safe room for a couple of months just because we're not sure what to do with it, but we do know it's got some B energy in it. We don't have the infrastructure at Livermore to figure it out, but I bet someone like you can find a place for it." She dangles the lock-box key in the moonlight. "What do you say, sir? One last hand-off for the Guard?"
Michael
In a split second as the hard drive comes out of the lockbox, Jocasta makes eye contact with Reinhardt, and sees a tell-tale flash of recognition, excitement, and surprise in his eyes. He's markedly spooked, but only for the slightest of moments. Without her preternatural Empathy, trained and sharpened during her time in Guard, Jocasta wouldn't have seen the tell. "Uh, hardware, you say? I suppose I can bring it in to my computer boys, see what they have to say about it. I suppose you can't tell me more about the... area you found it in? Your taisher detected B on it, huh?" Reinhardt seems dubious about that: again, he's attempting to hide that doubt but Jo can see through him now. He wants this hard drive. "And your Indigo couldn't make any headway with it?"
Anthony almost too-eagerly takes possession of the lockbox, handling the hard drive and turning its bland beige plastic case over in his hands a couple of times before locking it away out of the peering glances of other diners (Jo and Tony are situated near a window at a table for two, far away from the madding crowd of diners, but still, Reinhardt shows discretion). Reinhardt also pointedly doesn't follow up on "meeting the team," but he does say, "Next time I'm in town—could be a few weeks, or a few months—we should see if we can include Dr. Redgrave in one of these little exchanges. I would definitely like to pick his brain on Chöd."
Leonard
Jocasta recalls what her trainer in Army Intel long before she ever entered the shadow world of the Guard and SANDMAN: if your target gets suspicious, you can lie just as well with the truth. “That’s part of the problem, unfortunately. Our taisher found it, all right — but it was on R&R. He’s brilliant, but his process is chaotic; you know the type. Like I said, URIEL doesn’t rate high on the discipline scale. He just came across the damn thing on vacation and locked on its B vibes. Since it wasn’t in the framework of a mission, we didn’t really know how to contextualize it. And, yeah, our Indigo picked up some vague sensations around it but nothing specific. Maybe your boys will have better luck.” She smiles fondly. “Stop by anytime, Tony. I know Dr. Red would be happy to pick your brain as well.”
[Assuming there’s nothing else pressing with Reinhardt, I don’t have anything else for this scene other than trying to get something he touched. But if you have more, I’m fine to keep it going.]
Michael
(I've been thinking about that... I know you said any discarded object would be fine, but I think you might want the object to have some kind of meaning and be something he's held onto close to him for a long time to assure yourself of a better stronger emotional Psychometry hit. We've established he doesn't smoke so sadly there's no chance of grabbing his lighter. Any thoughts? I'm fine with having it be a glass while he's in the bathroom or something but the emotions are going to be recent and transitory.)
Leonard
[Actually, I do have an idea for something, if not with a deep history, at least a good chance of personal attunement and possible interesting information. I'll roleplay it out, because it's pretty simple and less risky than palming something — again, lying through truth — and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work and Jocasta will just say a gracious good night with what she's already found out.]
As the two begin to wind down and make future plans, Jocasta digs around in her purse and pulls out a business card that reads:
ANDREA SCHIMMEL
Special Agent
Federal Bureau of Investigation
San Francisco Field Office
450 Golden Gate Avenue, Floor 13
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 555-1234
"By the way, Colonel, this is the face they're having me use. A fed, can you believe it? RIP, Jacki Roederer. Do you have a card for your new cover? I assume I won't be able to reach you at the old Guard exchange."
Michael
"Oh yes, of course." Reinhardt digs out his wallet (after paying for dinner, natch) and shuffles through the pockets and pulls out one of a half-dozen well-worn business cards. "Don't laugh. It gets me in the door at a lot of university divinity schools and New Age retreats." Reinhardt hands it over with a smile. "It's a little vanity press we set up in Colorado. Puts out pamphlets on ecological gardening, the Whole Earth Catalog, all that kind of stuff."
Barry Steenson
Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Suncross Books
Boulder Colo.
This wheel’s on fire
Rolling down the road...
"People seem to like the epigram from The Band and how it doubles as a mention of the pagan burning-wheel solstice rituals from Fraser." Another smug grin.
"Kind of funny how I've ended up with the business card that makes me a dirty hippie and you're the Man, eh?" He takes a toothpick out of his pocket, cleans his teeth, and throws it into the road as Jo and Reinhardt make their way to the parking lot. (Just wanted to give you the option to scamper after the toothpick later after he drives off if his fake business card doesn't enthuse you.)
Leonard
"You never know where life's going to take you, Colonel. We never get to choose our side," Jocasta says. "Stay in touch." [I think I'm okay with the business card. He touched it almost as recently as he did the toothpick, and it probably has more emotional resonance to him, even if it's not by much.]
Michael
Okay, give me a sense of how and where you're gonna do the Psychometry, whether you're going to use Corruption or not, and we can see what happens with a roll. I should be able to get this all wrapped up by tomorrow morning... which probably means we'll need to start off tomorrow night's live session with the Dan black-bagging, which is fine.
Leonard
She'll just take the card home and do a nice relaxed read on it so she's somewhere safe if it goes awry. She's willing to push maybe a couple points of Corruption if needed, but not more than that. She'll give a full report about his call, his comments, the handoff of the Houdini drive, and anything that comes up around the read of the card next time there's a chance for everyone to get together in the Rooster House — but she's assuming the Colonel is either having her watched or is doing it himself, so she doesn't want to tip him by contacting anyone right away.
Michael
Reinhardt's... essence seems to be still clinging to Jocasta, even before she decides to meditate, clear her mind, and focus on the business card itself. Jo's mind goes back to the time she felt Sophie's emotions around being zapped with the Urim and Thummim by Reinhardt—how the hell did I not recognize his cologne in my vision of Sophie? Jo thinks to herself. I had to smell that awful stuff every time he'd come by to address the Guard! Then Jo realizes that she was experiencing that memory as Sophie and couldn't make the connection because of that change of subjective sensory experience. Interesting; Jo makes a mental note of this given her frequent synesthesia.
The vibes on the business card are pretty evident from the outset: confidence, trickery, a feeling of accomplishment, of trapping or charming all the recruits and contacts that Tony has wanted a piece of. This card—and by extension really Reinhardt's whole job description since Jo has come to Livermore—is to be a watchman in the human potential community, to be a canny observer of these people and find those who will be helpful to SANDMAN's future plans.
Reinhardt's mind as he thinks about these recruits is definitely on the next few decades. He has a vision—vaguely imprinted on these cards—that SANDMAN needs to actively shape that future. And that is one of the reasons he is here in the Bay Area this weekend. Jo can't tell if the vibes are directed at her or at another person or persons he's set out to charm and possibly recruit this weekend. But he's definitely thinking of them as he slides these cards into his wallet.
Leonard
All right. Jocasta's going to write down his contact info, burn the business card, and get some sleep before we start snatching people up. [There's nothing else I particularly need to do in this scene; Jo will just run down what she learned next time we're all in the Rooster House. So I think she's ready to just jump in tomorrow night during the live session when needed.]