A Real Show

Monday, November 5, 1973.

Michael

The packing has begun. In Archie's office are a bunch of government-issue document boxes, strewn about and half-filled, as Archie sifts through nearly five years of esmological charts, personnel and investigative dossiers, and other artifacts of his time as head of Operation URIEL, choosing what comes to Los Angeles with Archie and what stays here in Livermore with Marshall. A couple of the Ransom Roundup puppets are out too, perched on Archie's office couch (Hobo Stan and the Dragon Lady) and on top of one of the filing cabinets (Enki) as if they've been helping Archie out with the packing process (in fact, they probably have been, especially if Archie needed any help decoding old maps or translating foreign languages from the files).

The energy crisis since URIEL got back from Alabama has been biting deep into every civilian's ability to drive around, but not URIEL; the members of the team have a government hookup for gas here at URIEL's informal vehicle pool. Kissinger's in Tel Aviv trying to work out a cease fire. The aftermath of the Saturday Night Massacre, which happened the night URIEL flew back to San Francisco, is still unfolding, with Leon Jaworski getting to work this Monday morning in the Watergate Special Prosecutor office. Those headlines sit on Archie's desk along with the rest of today's inbox; lots of logistical documentation from the Peak about the imminent URIEL/AUGEGOTTES reorg.

Jocasta knocks on the office door.

Rob

"Jocasta! Come on in, have a seat." Archie's standing up, actively packing. He gestures to the couch; Jo has the choice of moving the puppets or sitting between Hobo Stan and the Dragon Lady. "Sorry about the mess." He finishes filling a box, stacks it on top of another with a thump. "The financials are Marshall's problem now, ha ha."

He looks at her, claps his hands together. "So! We're headed to Hollywood! What do you think about that?"

Leonard

Jocasta sits a bit awkwardly between the two puppets, like she's posing for an ad shoot. "It's pretty wild, chief. I spent almost my whole life in the Bay, you know, and Southern California still seems like a foreign country to me. Different magic, different rules. Feels like we're really getting called up to the big leagues.

"How about you? How's the family taking it? You're an old hand down there, must be at least a little bit of a homecoming."

Rob

Archie frowns a bit at the mention of his family. "The back and forth's going to be a hassle, no doubt about that. But that's just temporary. We'll work it all out."

That cloud passes quickly. He's animated, enthusiastic. "The big leagues, that's it exactly! We can finally stop putting out fires and start making America — making the world — a better place. It's a bully pulpit, is what it is."

He sits on the corner of his desk like an earnest youth pastor. "Tell me. If you could plant one idea in the head of John Q. Public, if there was just one thing you wanted to get across to every living room in America, what would it be? It's not a hypothetical question."

Leonard

Jocasta returns a little frown, crinkling her eyes and briefly patting her jacket for a cigarette before thinking better of it. "Wow, Archie, don't you want to ask me something easy, like how to turn lead into gold?"

Her mouth soon softens into a smile, though, and she thinks for a minute. "If I'm hesitant to answer, it's not because I haven't thought about it. It's more that...the world is a difficult place, you know? Every time I think about stuff like that, I convince myself that whatever I come up with, I don't know enough about, or that the unintended consequences will be too much. Even now...I mean, we're kind of in charge now. No more grousing about how the big shots are doing things wrong; we're the big shots, and it's up to us to do right now.

"But I guess if I'm on the hot seat," she says, glancing briefly at the puppets that flank her on either side, "I'd say: We're all part of one big club called the human race, and there's nothing we can't achieve if we just work together." Her smile turns wry. "Maybe that seems a little red. But that's what it would be. Live together or die alone."

Rob

"Live together or die alone," Archie repeats, pleased. He even jots it down. "Well, it wasn't too red for Benjamin Franklin. 'Join, or die,' right?" Then, as if speaking to Hobo Stan: "I told you she was a natural."

He switches topics. "Say, what do you make of, ah, Agent Nichols? Any sense of her mental state? Obviously, she and Charley want to reconnect, and I know I can't get in the way of that. But gosh, I don't know what the protocol is here. Do we take Charley to see her? Do we have her over to the house? Melanie's beside herself and I don't even know what to tell her. And we really don't know what shape she's in: Rose, I mean. What kind of, you know, damage she's sustained. I don't know. I don't know. I just want to do what's best for Charley."

Leonard

Jocasta says nothing for a long moment, but Archie can see the air let out of her.

"I don't know, Archie. I've never met her. And I..." She clenches a fist hard enough to make a small popping sound.

"I don't have any kids. I'll never have kids. It's...it's just not for me, it's not something I can do or should do. Anything I would say would just be a fool talking. All I can say is, this is something for Charley to decide. She's not like other kids, not like your kids," she says, the pointedness of that phrasing immediately flooding her with regret at how cruel it sounds.

"You knew this was a possibility when you brought her into your family. And you know — and if you don't, I'll tell you — what this job can do to people. I can't even imagine that Raven is ready to bring a child back into her life just yet, even if it's her child. My purely amateur opinion is that she needs years of therapy and recovery before she's even ready to be an operative again, let alone a parent.

"I just...I don't know either. If you want, I can talk to Raven and," and she gestures vaguely with her gloved hands, "sound her out, but I think the best you can do is talk to someone — maybe Viv, maybe someone else — about how to deal with it. And don't keep your wife at bay. As hard as this is for you, it's worse for her."

She looks around, almost as if she's hoping one of the puppets will say something to break the tension. "Sorry. Maybe that's me talking out of turn."

Rob

"Well... I am talking to someone about how to deal with this. Someone whose opinion I trust." Archie says, mildly. "But sure, we'll tap Viv's expertise. It's just, Charley doesn't... Viv isn't Charley's family, the way you are."

Archie looks closely at Jo's face. "How are you holding up? You know, I never did get the story on how you ended up driving from Alabama to New Mexico. Did you miss the turnoff for I-65?"

Leonard

Jo’s expression softens to a comfortable smile. “Probably. It’s a big country out there.”

She points offhandedly to the pile of personnel files on Archie’s desk. “Maybe you know what’s on there. Maybe you don’t . I had…a little bit of a break. With what happened at Beale Farms, and what we found out about the CWG, and…well, I got lost. But Marshall found me, and he helped me remember what I can do, what I’m good for. It helped. Having this, having structure and duty and work to do, that helps too. I’m…getting better.”

She tries to put her good-soldier demeanor back on. “And whatever it is that I thought I was going to do with Reinhardt, it ultimately led me to the Underwater Panther, and what I learned from it. When you’re ready, I think it would be valuable to talk about that, for what we’re trying to do now.”

Rob

"Oh, I never read personnel files." Not clear if he's joking. "If you say you're up to snuff, I'll take you at your word." But he still watches her closely, as if he could read her mental state.

Then: "The Underwater Panther, right." He can't quite say "underwater panther" without implied quotation marks. "Isn't that all settled? The subduction zones all closed?"

Leonard

"Sure, it's settled — for now. But spirits have long memories, and they're always hungry. Taking down that UFO, or whatever it was, closed the subduction zones, but the lives of the crew was the price that had to be paid for the knowledge that it had to be done."

She pauses for a moment, unsure about how to make this more clear, and then just dives in. "Archie, I was as skeptical as the rest of SANDMAN about the reality of the spirit world when I came here. It took seeing them in action, and developing my own ties to the other side of the veil -- largely with Roger's help -- to understand how important it is.

"I want to tell you what the Mishipeshu told me. I want to tell you what I bargained for. I think it's incredibly important, and I think it's important specifically to what you're trying to do, to the message of renewal that you want to put in people's minds. I know esmology, meme-crafting, all that stuff...it's not my area of expertise. I'm less than an bumbler. But I have complete faith in what you're doing, and I think what it taught me can be a fundamental, essential part of that. And I know you have a lot of skepticism around this stuff, and that's fine. It's for the best. But...I want you to believe. I want you to have faith in it the same way you have faith in me. I came here, like the Book says, as a thief in the night, but I saw the light, and it was with your help. And I know that you still believe in the Book, in the knowledge, in what you were raised to think, and I want you to remember that when I tell you what I'm going to tell you.

"Maybe I'm just blowing gas at you, talking about this so seriously. Maybe it's just all..." She taps her temple with the fingertips of her left hand. "Up here. Maybe it's just me hoping for something real that will make my life mean more than being a cheap killer. But maybe not. Maybe what I bargained for was a key that unlocks something bigger."

With that, she fishes her sketchbook out of her bag and opens it up.

"I struck a deal with the Great Lynx. I would feed it the lives of the UFO's crew in exchange for three words. A word in the language of the native people, of the indigenous American tribes that was lost forever, known to no one today. I wanted something that was pure, a word of hope and optimism and promise. It gave me a word of greeting, of solidarity, of being in a fraternity that fought against deception and oppresion. That word is wih-wih-kaan.

"The second word is another word from Native languages that is unknown to the white man, but still known to the people of the land -- something they know, but we don't. It gave me a word from Athabaskan, the Navajo and Apache tongue: dih-yihn-yayh. It's a word that refers to the nature of the people of the skies. Visitors from...somwhere else, somewhere above.

"The third, and this might be the most important, was to be a name. A lost name, a vanished name, but a true name from the people of this land. The name it gave me was oh-rye-hah, and it was the name of a great king -- but Archie, this was a white king, a king of people who lived alongside but apart from the natives, who fought wars and built an aristocracy of men unlike the other tribal people. For them it was heaven.

"Archie, I think these were the people the Mormons talk about, the 'giants in the earth' who lived in America contemporaneous to the Indians." She'll go on to describe the vision she had of the pilots of the UFO as the Great Lynx devoured them, how they shifted from modern men to aliens to blond giants.

"This is why I think that the spirit world is so important, that the Red Kings are weaker than we thought, that there's more than two Histories, like Mitch has been saying all along. And this is why I believe these words are important, that...they could be the fuel that powers your memetic campaign. I'll leave that to you to figure out, because again, this isn't my specialty, but I think it's important. The second word, I want to save for myself; I think I want to talk to some of the natives who partook in the Ghost Dance at Wounded Knee and see if it resonates with them. But the others...I think there's power there, Archie. Something primal and ancient that may help account for why the Anunnaki didn't get a total foothold here, something that can maybe make sure your meme package really gets its hooks into everyone in America, not just...people like us."

She stops, sheepishly, like a student turning in a slapdash paper that was written overnight in a panic. "That's, uh, that's what I think. What do you think?"

Michael

(Archie can give me a Theology (Mormonism)-14 whenever he likes.)

Rob

>> SUCCESS by 4

Michael

Jocasta's knowledge of the Book of Mormon seems to be a typical Gentile's: "giants in the earth" is really more of an Old Testament or Book of Enoch affair. But the explicit, by-name mention of Orihah, the first heir of Jared, who settled the promised land in those "barges" Archie was idly sketching in the Hilary meeting—the first righteous king of the Jaredites here in America!—that's a detail that speaks urgently to Archie. Underwater Panther, an Indian god, considered Orihah an important ruler of this land, enough to be given as a secret name along with a word of community and resistance and one of holy awe. And the idea that the pilots of the UFO could have been, through retrocreation, these same "blond giants..." what could it all mean?

Rob

Archie takes this all in, all Jo's earnestness, nods appreciatively at the last part, about tying the words to the memetic campaign. "And you worry about being just a, a killer? Don't ever say that, Jo. Put that right out of your mind."

"As for what I believe... look, that doesn't matter, really. I try to believe as little as possible, or at least keep some daylight between what I believe at the office and what I believe at home. Helps me do my job. If the client is an underwater panther, hey, I can work with that."

Then, almost to himself: "It is funny, though, how things keep pointing me back to the Church. If I didn't know better I'd say someone was sending me signs, ha ha."

He jots down the Mishepeshu's words, with some notes. "So I'm thinking we just get these out there, Orihah and Wi... wihwihkaan? Make them grabby, get them circulating. Some approximation of what they signify, but high fidelity isn't important at this point, it would only slow down transmission. We'll follow up later with variants that activate the message we want to put across, let folks 'well, actually...' the memetic payload."

He grins, eager to get started. "This is going to be good. We're gonna put on a real show."