A Somewhat Panicked Phone Call

Michael

As Mitch dumps Carl onto the floor of the 12th floor suite that Mitch and Roger shared last night, Mitch should start by giving me a First Aid check on Carl. Defaults to IQ-4. (Oh, and if Mitch goes to the sink to get a glass of water, he gets a nice steady flow of tap water.)

>>>> FAILURE

Carl's still unconscious and Mitch has no idea how long he will be so.

Jeff

Ugh. Okay. I'm sure our kit includes cuffs of some kind. Mitch puts Carl in restraints, in case he comes to unexpectedly in the next few minutes. Then he tries calling Livermore.

Michael

We should do the Livermore call in this channel just for clarity so I'm summoning @Inverarity and Leonard since I believe Marshall and Jo were waiting by said phones. While Archie is engaged with Krane.

Brant

I imagine we can assume Jo, Arch, and Marshall will congregate around a speaker phone in another conference room down the hall, door locked, blinds drawn.

Leonard

Jocasta is right here by the phone ready to get the debrief. She’s also going to make a note to Marshall and Archie that we should be ready to run Charley and Sophie to ground if this ends up being an all hands on deck situation.

>>>> 3d6 … 13

Jeff

OK did Roger call in with this morning's news, Mitch meeting Richie? He did that's why Charley went to the lab. OK.

Michael

Yep, that's right.

Jeff

"Hey, guys, it's bad here. I'm not sure how bad yet, could be really bad. We didn't manage to run Carl down and he and Richie set off a thing, it … everybody at the opening ceremony passed out for a minute and now this whole building is cut off. Roger tried to haul Richie outside and now Richie's dead. Got a strong sense were trapped in here. I put the whammy on Carl, I got him tied up here in the suite, don't know when he'll wake up.

"I don't know how to fix this. I don't think it's going to get better on its own, I think this building is going to end up in History B."

Brant

“Thing? What thing did they set off? Some sort of History B reality shard or something?”

Jeff

"I'm not sure, it was like a … like an improvised explosive ikoter. Took everybody down and triggered something. Something bad. I'm trying not to use the word 'temblor,' Marshall, but … "

Rob

"What do you mean, the building is 'cut off'? Can you not leave? Can people enter? Do we need to cordon it off from outside?" (We probably don't need to play out every beat of the Livermore PCs being horrified and asking questions the hotel PCs don't know the answer to yet, but I do think one of the first things to nail down is whether we want to throw up police barricades, or GU.SHUB glyphs, all around the hotel).

Jeff

Answering that is going to require some reconnoitering. Mitch can go try to get some of this information but it'll take him some time and he'd be leaving Carl alone.

If there's some piece of info I've forgotten to pass along let me know, but assuming we indeed do not want to play out a lot of panicky questions and panicky non-answers I dunno what else needs to be established in this call. If Jo can get back here ASAP that'd probably be good.

Leonard

During the call, Jocasta is furiously scribbling notes, sliding over her tactical sketches of the hotel to Archie and Marshall, and (maybe a roll necessary here?) searching her memory of SANDMAN training to remember if there's any advice on/historical instances of reality-quake containment other than just destroy-the-village-in-order-to-save-it stuff. Once the phone call is over she'll suggest we leave a maximum of one person at Livermore to coordinate a wider response if needed, but otherwise she's in favor of getting everyone to the site that we can. She's ready to hop in the van and floor it back to SF at a moment's notice but probably will want some advice on any equipment we should load in first.

Bill

(Given Roger just got more information, he may also be calling in in a few anyway. I get the sense we'll need to call in a lot, as long as the phone lines stay open.)

Brant

Marshall is going to let Archie take the lead on the questioning and will be taking Jocasta's sketches as she hands them to him to evaluate. He also grabs a notepad from a nearby credenza and starts writing out action items as they develop.

NOTEPAD:

#1, contact LE assets to cordon hotel — Padden & Hall? Cover = bomb threat? Gas / chemical leak?

#2, question Carl, find out what he knows.

#3, Krane have any use? Return him at end of convention, big reveal it was all a 'game'?

#4, the Clock — return it? Make things better, worse?

Leonard

Jocasta will reply on the notepad:

P & H solid, but need good cover - much more public event than Mansa show. Temblor will increase as people believe it - how to get people inside to doubt reality?

Brant

Scribbling:

In CO, was able to 'fix' event thru group hypnosis, re-estab. consensus belief structure.

Marshall draws a line mid-way down the page then writes:

SOLUTIONS?

#1 mass hypnosis?

#2 tactical destruction of site inc/ occupants?

Michael

Leonard, Hidden Lore (History B) roll here, add 1 to your effective skill from your successful Tactics roll.

>>>> SUCCESS

Yeah, as "soft options" go, trying to get everybody in that hotel on the same page belief-wise is the best possible way to prevent further ontological slippage and shore up the new subduction zone. But here's where Jo's scouting out the con throughout Thursday and the beginning of Friday allows her some perspective on this unique situation: how is anyone going to get a thousand scifi fans to believe the same thing? Archie's right: they're "memetic kindling" but they're also, from what Jo has seen, petty and argumentative and a lot of them have, let's be fair, pre-existing psychological conditions and weird beliefs of their own. How are you going to enforce uniformity in a petri dish like this one? And what meme or memes can you use?

Leonard

In the SOLUTIONS column Marshall made, Jocasta writes:

"Dose the whole building with psychoactives? Probably too late/too big to use 'forget' glyph. Need show of force if irruptors present. Do we have access to reality shard?"

She thinks for a moment, based on her deep lack of knowledge of nerds and a distant memory from her past: "Would they believe this was a play/movie? Can the belief in Atlantis survive without its author?"

Brant

Marshall looks at what Jocasta wrote and then looks at Jocasta with sort of a, "Holy shit, you fucking genius," expression. He circles her question and writes in all cap letters:

YES.

He draws an arrow down to a blank spot:

therapeutic role-playing been shown to help change perceptions / correct mal. cognitive processes in cert. profiles, esp. intelligent 'sensitives' only children etc.

Would need someone to orchestrate / be convincing + buy-in from audience.

Drawing from his knowledge of the psychological applications of Nash game-theory, he concludes:

Need rule-set for / to est. consensus for non-cooperative play, participants can't know they are pieces in game — what would attendees find believable?

Leonard

"Aliens?"

Rob

Archie says (in partial answer to Jo and Marshall's notes, but speaking aloud so Mitch can hear too): "We need to cordon off the affected zone, keep people from going in, keep ideas from coming out. Mitch, you and Roger be careful what you tell us on the phone. Tactical info is fine, but be oblique about … metaphysical stuff."

"Then, yes, maybe we can get some kind of counter-meme going among the people inside the hotel. Those sci-fi buffs are like memetic kindling: we have to take control of the idea space in there before the enemy does."

"Mitch, watch out in there. Even if there weren't any irruptors in there this morning, depending on how bad this is going to get, anything could be, could have been, retrocreated." One more thought: "Is Abeille in there? Is she doing this?"

Jeff

“I dunno. I don’t think she’s directly related, like, I didn’t get a sense she was masterminding anything. Roger spoke to her a bit, he was asking her to try to keep the crowd calm. It could be she’s some kind of something without her knowing it, I guess. Didn’t get that vibe from her, though.”

“Roger went to check on her right before the thing happened, he’ll be able to tell you more I’m sure.”

Rob

To minimize silo-ing of information, Archie sketches the nascent LARP/"this is all a game" plan, such as it is, for Mitch. Also says: "We should make contact with Abeille. If she is on the other side, there's no need for subtlety any more. And if she's not, maybe we can use her."

Jeff

"Yeah, I mean, generally I get a vibe, you know? I got more of a vibe from Andy … Andy's okay, right?"

Brant

Marshall interjects: "Yes, Mitch — and listen, she is savvy and will be suspicious. When you explain things to her, you are going to want to emphasize the coercive and parasitic nature of the enemy, the abuse and slavery, especially. To get her on our side, you see."

Rob

"Krane is here, confused but not hostile."

Brant

"He may also be of use. He has taken all this extremely well, all things considered."

"We need to round up our horses. Find out what Roger knows, get in touch with Abeille … and we have not heard from Sophie or the child yet. There are too many moving parts right now. We need to get on the same page."