A Visit From the Boss
Michael
On the Tuesday morning precisely one week after Nixon took off from the White House lawn on Marine One, Archie and Andrew are doing their usual planning for media buys and the eventual move to a production office of their own much closer to Hollywood.
Archie's still got an open door policy with the clued-in Sandmen who work in the upper office where Archie gets up to his plans for North American memetics, so on this cool May morning in Los Angeles, Archie is not surprised to hear a timid knock on the doorframe around 10 am.
He is surprised to see Granite Peak eminence grise Beth Cole standing there, her dark hair still severely short, wearing a sportier, more "L.A." version of the grey "company woman" business suit Archie last saw her in last October. She has a broad smile on her face as she looks at Archie and Andrew, looking back at the few animators but mostly esmologists and memeticists who work on this upper floor.
"Mr. Ransom! And Mr. Krane, I don't think we've had the pleasure." As she comes in and extends her hand for a handshake first with Andy, then Archie, Archie and Andrew can both see the edges of the metal SANGUSH glyph worn on her lapel, that she's covered up as she's approached Archie's office, as if she's saying in essence, You have no security worth a damn here. "Mr. Ransom, I was wondering if we could have a chat." In Archie's head, a source-code loaded subtext hits him square between the eyes, NLP practiced at a very high level. It seems to convey, Let's walk and talk in public and lend my aura of Control to your loyal core of Sandmen here. She's already Enthralling, making Archie involuntarily feel more confident, more sure of the future coming (obviously Archie can resist any of these blandishments easily). Andrew (who'd frankly usually be at the beck and call of a dark-haired, forbidding, slightly butch woman) has training now against the source code and is able to see through glyphs and NLP. He sort of gapes openly at Beth's power but defers to the dynamic that Ms. Cole is provoking here: a one-on-one tête-à-tête between the two of them. "I can handle this bit, Arch," Andrew says to a mess of memetic projects on Archie's desk.
Rob
"Miss Cole!" Archie stands to shake her hand. He grins warmly, seemingly guilelessly, then wags a paternal finger at the young woman. "But I thought we'd dispensed with such formality! You promised to call me Archie."
He is not doing any NLP but he invokes just enough Enthrallment for this to signify Yes, yes, I know all the tricks too. There's no need for them ... between friends. "This is California, Beth. We don't stand on ceremony here, ha ha."
He is happy to walk and talk with her, but definitely resists any NLP or Enthrallment pointed his way.
Michael
Beth actually approximates a smile at the gentle chiding from Archie, and soon the NLP codes urging any eavesdroppers to feel confident in her and Archie fades from her patter. The "zone of silence" NLP remains, though; a very similar application of the source code as Marshall has gotten adept at using in crowded bars, restaurants, what have you; Archie spontaneously is reminded his conversation at Chasen's with Marshall late last summer. "Oh, you know how it is, it's hard to drop the all-business act. But you're right," she looks around winsomely at the cubicles on the top floor of the Venture Toons building, especially at the framed posters for Kelley-Nicholson and Venture Toons that Archie and crew never bothered to take down up here, "when in Rome, eh?"
During the outset of the walk and talk, Beth opens with asking how the plans for relocating out of Tarzana are going, if Archie has decided on a location for his production empire. "This was good camouflage," Beth says, gesturing at the lantern-jawed multi-racial multi-national heroes of Nicky Nicholson's (and the Zagreb School of Animated Films') The Challengers, "but I am assuming that given the coming challenges in mass messaging, you're still wanting to move a little closer to the action. Of course the Project can clear away any obstacles between you and Andrew getting just what you need."
Rob
Archie smiles but doesn't react strongly to the offer of Project help. "Honestly? I've been too darn busy to put much thought into real estate," he laughs.
"Could we use more elbow room? You bet. But we don't need anything like, you know, Dr. Stanton's penthouse at Black Rock." He chuckles. "I'm not trying to awe anyone into submission. I don't want to be Moses bringing down the tablets from on high. I want us in the middle of things. The networks, the studios, cable television, computers..." Gee-whiz excitement slides into his voice. "In ten years, Beth, this business won't be recognizable." Leaving it ambiguous which business he means.
Michael
Beth seems especially taken with Archie's pause at "computers," like he's talking her language. "I'm really pleased we're still on the same page as far as venues for implementation—the 'hardware'—is concerned, Archie. But I'm here today because we should have an orienting talk on what the messaging will consist of: the 'software,' as it were."
"The events that have rapidly unfolded since the President's resignation and the revelations about the SLA and Donald DeFreeze have presented a slight—Control rates it between five and ten percent—esmological danger of blowing back to the Project."
Beth can't help it; the next bit of what she says is laden with NLP to calm and reassure Archie; again, resisting it is child's play but the fact she's using it is noteworthy in and of itself. It's almost like the NLP is second nature for her. She must be racking up an incredible amount of Corruption if this is how she operates normally in sensitive situations conveying Control's operational instructions.
"Now, your Operation's cleanup of the CWG's legacy projects so far has been exemplary: top marks, really, all around. Colonel Reinhardt's various contacts have been interviewed and dealt with, thanks to intel from Dr. Redgrave's 1972 memories and Control's own investigations. Dr. West's whereabouts are known to Control, and in due time we will pouch OD Redgrave and Agent Menos with instructions on how to best effect a cleanup in that regard. Dr. Gottlieb is in India still; his 'retirement' in a civilian sense may not protect him from eventual Congressional oversight; when the time comes, we'll discuss what sanction if any is necessary. Dr. Puharich, having fled his Ossining estate before your agents' reassignment of the ex-Indigos and other students to the St.-Germain School, is also currently in hiding but Control is handling this one personally; there's some... sensitivity to the data he possesses that Control must deal with effectively before permission for final sanction can be offered to your team. Mr. Geller, well," Beth sort of scoffs. "C'est la guerre."
"That field work is all mostly outside your direct purview, of course, Archie; that's more Dr. Redgrave and URIEL's bailiwick. I share because Control wanted you to be well aware that the work of purging this fatalistic philosophy from the Project continues. We want optimism!" Beth approximates a positive, winning smile but falls just short. "Just the kind of optimism you project. And so that brings me to Control's little... programming request."
(I'm going to pause here, Rob; I have the second half all typed up and ready to go. But if Archie has any questions, skill rolls, whatever to apply here before Beth moves on, go for it.)
re: the CWG cleanup (Also, I know we never did Puharich onscreen but I have a few more things up my sleeve for him and he did run and abandon the "Gellerlings" at Ossining back in Jan/Feb when URIEL rescued them and brought them to Shasta. I know I never spelled that out but I'm doing that now. Also I know we didn't do a full Reinhardt memories debrief other than a brief mention in M9 of Marshall getting his memories back but that's on my agenda too.)
"What we need in the culture in the next six to twelve months, specifically in the US, is media that will make people believe in their government again. You see, Esmology at the Peak has been doing high-level calculations, and these revelations about Hoover's FBI and the CIA—especially the programs with hidden Project backing—could end up not just endangering the Project as I mentioned earlier, but overall societal control. And Control," Beth chuckles at her unintentional repetition of words, "cannot have that happen."
"What form all this programming takes is up to you! It might take something new, something that recuperates these feelings of disquiet among middle America about trusting their government, processes them while acknowledging them, but brings Americans back into the fold of trusting us," Beth says. By "us" clearly she's talking about the Project who's been behind all this postwar military-intelligence complex business.
"The network upfronts in New York are in two weeks. Help the networks pick a few winners for the Project there. God forbid any more cop shows," Beth says sincerely. "The viewers will never buy them. I'm not in memetics myself, but Control was pretty adamant: no cop shows. Then when you come back, over the summer you can look into syndication and satellite and, yes, cable and computers for us. We can beekeep our way to finding the right place to put you in Hollywood."
"This is where you're meant to shine, Mr. Ransom. Archie." Beth takes Archie's hand ever so briefly. "I have no doubt you'll come through with flying colors." Beth isn't done, but she is done with being the "Voice of Control" on this series of requests.
Rob
"No police shows, got it. Are private eyes okay?" Archie's just joking, but he's also sort of fishing to see how humorless Beth Cole is or isn't.
More seriously: "Optimism. Yes. You're speaking my language." He talks a bit about the Fall television season, some specific ideas and themes he'd like to see. "But it's not a snow job! There's plenty to be optimistic about."
"Nixon's resignation, the FBI, CIA stuff... there's a way to come out of all this stronger than we were. We need to help people feel that the last ten years, all the protests and upheaval, that it was actually all for something. That something's been accomplished." "We're not just doing damage control"--this is, deliberately, the only time he uses the word control--"We're building something. That's how we win back people's trust. Or rather, that's how we earn it."
(Archie thinks about ways to refit "The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller." It was probably too downbeat anyway.)
Michael
Beth smiles: again, in that slightly-off way that she does, like she's trying to approximate human emotion. "'Rebuilding back stronger' is an excellent meme for us to work with, Archie. After all, that's what we're confronted with now in the Project, and I have no doubt our efforts can move in parallel: Control internally within the Project, you externally out there in the culture."
"I suppose there's one last thing I need to chat with you about on Control's behalf, past the CWG cleanup and North American memetics. I recall you and URIEL being particularly incensed at how Operation ALLOCHTHON was testing limited-scale Irruptions in an effort to aid in testing the CWG's long-term survival plans. A very dangerous business, I'm sure we can both agree." Archie gets the sense that maybe that agreement isn't as strong on Beth's side, like it's a concession she's making.
"We've discovered much about the Enemy in our past near-century of existence. Out of curiosity, and in many cases sheer necessity. Scientia potentia est, as Bacon and Hobbes said. We use that knowledge every day in the Project. Indeed, your life, your livelihood, your career and position are dependent upon skills dredged up from the darkest of places." For a moment Archie isn't sure if Beth is talking about memetics... or the Aulang. "What that means is that in many cases agents of the Project are required to descend into the deep dark, to bring back weaponry for use in our war against the Enemy. To put it in URIEL terms, perhaps—" a more authentic, if ironic smile suddenly playing across Beth's face, "the shamanic or visionary journey into the depths of what the applied anthropologists call 'liminal experience': spiritual communion, physical ordeal... drug experience, what have you."
"You work on the light side, in the lambent glow of the cinema lamp and cathode ray tube. Your optimism in human nature has been noted in your work and in past conversations within the Project. But undergirding all these efforts is the source code; the trap door in human consciousness that makes so much of our work possible."
"Do you think the Project's work could be done without recourse to the Enemy's tools?" This, from a woman who was using NLP liberally, willy-nilly, in front of around a dozen or more SANDMAN witnesses a few minutes ago. "Do you believe your healthy media could keep humanity from the Enemy's temptation without using corrupting elements? Memetics, esmology, neurolinguistic programming, psychic potential... even the 'spiritual' weapons evinced by your teammates, the loa, the belief memeplexes you've all clearly harnessed... everything."
"Control is sincerely interested in your thoughts on this, Archie. It could mean a great difference to how we proceed in future."
Rob
Can I make a Psychology (or Intelligence Analysis or Leadership) roll for more insight on what Cole is angling for here? Is she signalling "look, we already know URIEL is off the reservation"? Or is she trying to find out? Is Archie supposed to be tempted by the idea of a SANDMAN that does all the same stuff but without using the Enemy's tools? I find it hard to believe Control would ever go for that.
Michael
Excellent set of plans. Okay, this will be two rolls.
One will be a secret Detect Lies-17 roll that I will make for Archie to determine the level of sincerity of Beth's proposed thought experiment here; i.e. is this a fishing expedition by Control to see what URIEL's up to or how far URIEL is likely to go in what Control already might or might not suspect URIEL is doing, or is she sincere about Control being interested in going Corruptionless in future. I will say that given her mask-like scrambling of her own social cues and/or Indomitability, both Archie and Rob can assume her unreadability is going to make the Quick Contest fairly difficult here.
The other will be an Intelligence Analysis-20 roll that you can make in order to interpret the manifold "what-ifs" and implications counterintelligence-wise with respect to this entire set of questions.
For the Detect Lies roll, Corruption is available, although since it's a hidden roll, you can tell me to open up with 1 and then, say, keep pouring it on until you break through Beth's resistance. And for Intelligence Analysis, both Corruption and Stoney's +3 are available; if you invoke Stoney, of course, all his Disadvantages like Overconfidence as well as his personality/roleplaying tells would come into play. I'll narrate the results of both rolls simultaneously since this will all be happening during Beth's monologuing up there.
Rob
Ok, cool. I think I'll take my chances without Corruption or Stoney.
Michael
Okay, I'll make my Detect Lies now, you give me Intelligence Analysis-20.
Rob
>>CRITICAL SUCCESS (3)
not bad
Michael
(not BAD?????
who fuckin needs Sebastian Stone
the yin and yang of crits
Okay, let me set this up, it's gonna result in far less "Archie staring into space considering all the Math" than I'd anticipated.)
(I think Archie knows he's got everything below right-on at a critical success level; not out of Stoney-ian Overconfidence but out of everything that's happened so far in this scene. Remember how Stanton had people literally measuring his office when Archie came to visit? Beth's demeanor and use of NLP were meant to shake Archie up, but he's seeing everything exceptionally clearly now.
Archie is playing The Great Game, and he feels like he just rolled Yahtzee on his first toss.) Archie spends some time trying to read Beth's face while this prolix set of imaginary "concessions" on the Project's use of Corruption comes out of her mouth; it's only about halfway through—maybe even as early as when she quotes Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes—when Archie's grandfather's voice pipes up in his head: "Patter, boy. She's been sent to deliver patter." And then another voice, not Stoney but not not Stoney, if you know what I mean, says, "As Enoch spake forth the words of God, the people trembled, and could not stand in his presence." It's in that moment that Archie realizes Beth is literally just a loudspeaker, the condenser in the receiver of a telephone, a hollow vessel for Control to speak through. And Control did believe that Archie would be, if not taken in by the prospect of a Corruptionless SANDMAN, at least intrigued enough to freely extrapolate upon the possibility. One thing Archie's sure of: the statement Beth ended her pitch on, Control being "sincerely interested" in his thoughts for the Project, is an outright lie.
But that doesn't mean Control is uninterested in Archie's answer to the question. Otherwise, why even bother asking it?
If this question isn't about SANDMAN policy, what is it about? Let's surmise that the Bohemian Club and Control are either the same entity or as close to identical (enmeshed in a master-servant dialectic) as to make no difference. They don't sincerely want to dispense with esmology and memetics and so forth; these skills plus knowledge of the reality war put the Owls where they are today, and we currently assume that survival and enjoying their place as Kings of the World is their number-one priority. On one level, then, maybe it is a test of Archie's loyalty to the Project-as-currently-constituted; only a fool would say, "Yes, let's free ourselves from the Kings' tools right now, consequences be damned." Archie knows it would mean annihilation on a practical level if SANDMAN just, like, laid down on the job all of a sudden.
But let's pull these threads even deeper than that. Assume that the Owls know URIEL knows about the old Bohemians; all it would take is a cursory look through URIEL's activities of the two weeks around the SLA's activities to deduce it, if not solely from Mitch's encounter at the baseball field. So now the Owls may well suspect that URIEL knows that there have been multiple capital-O Ontoclysms, and one of them made the modern world we live in now, and the Owls benefited.
The part of Beth's monologue Archie is stuck on is when Beth asked—essentially, not literally—"If SANDMAN laid down esmology and memetics, would Roger be willing to give up the loa? Would Jo be able to give up the drugs and the spirits? Would Archie be willing to part with the puppets?" In a typically Archie moment of deep, vertiginous realization, Archie sees that Control is trying to suss out, in part, exactly what kind of ontology URIEL wants to engineer. A world with lots of magic? A world with no magic, in which the Annunaki maybe never even messed with humanity's heads? In other words, in this moment Archie knows that Control knows that URIEL is up to something very big, but Control does not know what it exactly entails, nor do they know how far URIEL is willing to go.
And with this Archie realizes that Control considers URIEL capable of engineering an ontology. Suddenly, this little cell of 600-point characters (huh?) and their loyalists are Control's equals, if not rivals. All the tact and tacitness and misdirection inherent in Beth's programming (Archie realizes his grandpa's voice really wanted to say "she's been programmed to deliver patter") was meant to befuddle Archie, get him overthinking and second-guessing about what the "right" answer specifically to protect URIEL's plans might be. And yes, all five members of URIEL are still alive and well, undamaged, un-blackmailed, still useful to SANDMAN's stated organizational purpose, and perhaps even its secret ones. Maybe Control want to see what URIEL will do next. Maybe they are sincerely worried URIEL are compromised by History B. Maybe Control is compromised by History B.
In a very profound way, Archie realizes that Control and URIEL are in effective stalemate. Mutually-assured destruction, Archie remembers from his elementary game theory/esmology speedlearn courses back at the 'Peak in '68. Control could easily sweep URIEL off the board physically and metaphysically, but instead they sent the Voice of God here to banter amiably about the fall TV season and whether Archie Can Envision A World Without Corruption. It could be the same case (but on a much larger stage) as the CWG keeping a watchful eye on URIEL: URIEL is too talented and knowledgeable to either discount or liquidate, and may be too powerful for Control to stand overtly against without losing everything ontologically. Better URIEL inside the tent pissing out. It's another Ontological Cold War: watch, wait, see, don't interfere but do try to get a handle on what the rivals' agenda is, exactly. Why liquidate URIEL? You all could be useful, even if your ideas currently seem outré and/or unsound.
Whatever the case, the safest route for Archie right now is to hem and haw and equivocate on stopping using glyphs and memetics and the rest of it. Say it doesn't seem like a wise move considering the intent of the Enemy. Whether Archie wants to go further than that with Beth, give signals or veiled threats that, like, "the game is afoot" or make a statement for URIEL's right to continue to look for a better world where the Anunnaki aren't always the B option in the quantum stack, well, I'm sure a Peabody-award winning memeticist would have no problem casting about for a quick 30-second soundbite that could encapsulate a message conveying something like, "The real grown-ups are looking at the problem now; you flunkies should continue to serve your Owl masters" if that was, for instance, Archie's wont. Archie surely can skillfully convey whatever he likes to Beth. As with Archie's past Smiley-Karla type interactions with the Comte or with Stanton, a message can be sent here. Whatever message Archie thinks valuable at this time, or indeed none at all.
Rob
Archie nods, thinks about all this for a few seconds, and asks: "Did you ever see The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance? It's one of my favorites." He quotes the famous line almost reflexively: "'When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.'"
Whatever her reaction, he chuckles at himself. "Before your time, probably." Self-deprecating (listen to the old guy going on about cowboy pictures) but also pointing out her youth.
Then he launches into it, earnestly. (What's more fun than explaining an old movie to an attractive young woman?) "It's one of John Ford's last Westerns. Lee Marvin is swell as the heavy. He's this outlaw, Liberty Valance, who's got the whole town under his thumb. But the picture's really about the conflict between the two men who stand up to him, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. Jimmy Stewart plays an Eastern lawyer, named Ransom actually, ha ha. John Wayne plays-- well, you know, John Wayne. A rancher, a gunslinger."
"So Jimmy Stewart wants to bring Lee Marvin to justice, but legally. He's all about the rule of law, teaching the townspeople how to read, teaching folks about the Constitution and 'all men are created equal.' And, you know, Jimmy Stewart seems like a bit of a weak sister. They even put him in an apron for the final showdown. But he is the one who takes the fight to Liberty Valance."
"Meanwhile, John Wayne keeps telling Jimmy Stewart the only way to really stop Lee Marvin is to pick up the gun. But Jimmy Stewart says if he does that, he'll be no better than his enemy."
"I guess the metaphor's pretty obvious. But it all seems important somehow."
"Of course there's a shoot-out in the end. And Liberty Valance is shot and killed, and everybody thinks that Jimmy Stewart is the man that did it. It makes his career."
"But really, it's John Wayne who shoots Liberty Valance, hiding in the shadows across the street. He lets Jimmy Stewart take the credit, because he realizes the woman he loves is better off with Jimmy Stewart. Jimmy Stewart becomes governor or senator or something. He brings statehood and civilization to the wild frontier. John Wayne dies a drunken failure, a relic of a world that's, you know, moved on."
"It almost seems like a koan, doesn't it? If you take up the gun, you become one of the barbarians. But to protect civilization from the barbarians, somebody has to take up the gun."
Michael
Beth takes a sudden breath, nods ever-so-slightly. She's remained quiet long enough for the last bits of even the "zone of silence" NLP clinging to her to drop. Some of the heads of the esmology-and-memetics Sandmen at the tables and in the cubicles on the top floor involuntarily turn towards the boss man talking to the representative from the 'Peak. Andrew peeks his head out of Archie's office.
"What's that exchange from Heller?" Beth says. "'That's some catch, that Catch-22.' 'It's the best there is.'"
"I can see why Control likes you... Mr. Ransom." She extends her hand for a departing handshake. Beth turns for the elevators and hits the button. There's a ding, and the doors slide open.
"We'll be seeing you," she says to Archie, smiling. "Keep up the good work."
(I think also as a result of that combination of Detect Lies and Intelligence Analysis rolls, Archie can surmise all the odd things about Beth—her age, her mannerisms, perhaps even her prodigious use of NLP—mark her as a graduate of the Indigo Program's predecessor, the "Secret Schools" program from the 1950s as mentioned in Mission 5 (in the Indigo Dossier and in Uri's hypnotized flashback to childhood in Marshall's Rolls) and in Mission 6 (mentioned by Reinhardt in the phone call with Dr. Haynes and Frank Stanton in Charley/Roger's Granite Peak flashback under Shasta).)
https://www.san-narciso.com/scenes/the-helix-dossier#indigo
https://www.san-narciso.com/scenes/a-ride-in-the-rolls
https://www.san-narciso.com/scenes/charley-dreams-of-granite-peak