Ambrose and Roger
Michael
On Friday morning, Roger reports to his morning group therapy session with Dr. Claire. After the hour is up, as the rest of the damaged veterans are filing out, Roger notices, skulking out in the hallway of the hospital building, a middle-aged man who's definitely aged considerably in just the few years since Roger had seen him last: in Los Angeles in 1970, during the time Roger was doing his first domestic ops. The grey that used to merely streak his temples and provide him with a salt-and-pepper receding hairline has gotten more generous; the lines on his face more grooved-in, his expression more careworn. He looks tanned, not ruddy, and a little skinnier than he was in Vietnam.
As Dr. Claire and Roger exit the group therapy room, Ambrose O'Connor, clad in casual civvies—a sportsjacket, button-down, and chinos—reaches out his hands to clasp both of Roger's in a warm greeting.
"Roger. It is so good to see you."
After pleasantries are exchanged—it's clear from Ambrose's and Claire's interactions that they're at least passingly familiar with each other—Ambrose asks Dr. Claire, "Say, Simon, do you mind if Roger and I take a walk on the grounds before we start the therapeutic sessions? I think we need to catch up given it's been... gosh, a few years now."
(modified secret Hidden Lore: SANDMAN Legends roll)
Dr. Claire, who has been solicitous of Roger's needs and careful with Roger's treatment, does blanch a bit at this request. Roger can sense the contradictory organizational impulses here: Claire wants to stick to his therapeutic script, but simultaneously has to acquiesce to his superior in SANDMAN in situations like this. Having reported Roger's new persona up the chain, he now has to deal with the fallout. From the minute he clasped Roger's hands in martial brotherly affection, Ambrose was in charge.
"Uh, sure," Dr. Claire says. "Our first session was scheduled for after lunch anyway. Take the next hour, and I'll meet you in the mess hall at noon."
Roger and Ambrose walk the grounds until they find a nice scenic spot, but only after Ambrose has done (what he thinks is) a surreptitious check out of the area for outdoor bugs and cameras. As he looks to Roger, Ambrose sits down on a big rock, gesturing for Roger to take the "seat" across from him. He looks inestimably sad.
"How are they treating you, Roger? I have to say, I dreaded the day I'd get a call like this one. Are you doing all right?"
Bill
Despite time to prepare, he still can't control a bit of a start when he realizes he has to lie to this man. That it's become necessary to lie to him.
So it doesn't turn into a tell, Roger starts with truth. "No. I'm all kinds of fucked up. It's the job, yeah, but it's fucked."
"Ambrose, I died. I died, man. It's absolutely a miracle I'm alive, and what do you do with that?"
"All these miracles... you think you get used to them. But then you realize you can't. The world, the histories, they're still always bigger than you thought."
Michael
After Roger speaks this, Ambrose puts his hands together and says a little prayer, mostly to himself: Roger has to strain to hear. "Holy Father, please give this soldier of Christ the resolve and peace he needs in this time of trouble. In the name of Christ, our Lord, amen."
Ambrose sits back and looks at Roger really deeply, making prolonged eye contact. "Roger, I suggested you for URIEL because I could tell doing the undercover work in LA was killing you by degrees. If someone had sent me in to infiltrate a, let's say left-wing Catholic anti-war group, I would've felt like you have to have, sandbagging those poor Negro revolutionaries. But no matter. I suggested URIEL because of course I knew your talents were special, that being amidst the spiritual ferment of the Bay Area would be good for you. And the progress you've made is a testament to that." Ambrose doesn't get into detail about how he knows for sure that Roger has made what he deems "progress."
"But now, yes, the danger you've come across has put you on Heaven's doorstep. And I can't forgive myself for that. Of course, our work is dangerous work. Whether in the jungles of Indochina or the streets of San Francisco, we know that tangling with the Enemy can mean we lose our minds or our lives. But Roger... you must realize by now that the Project needs you. It needs you of sound mind and body, and it needs your expertise. Your life—unique, precious, gifted by God—is worthy enough all on its own, but you and I both know the things you can do, they're valuable to the Project... and thus to all of History A." A tear in Ambrose's eye. "All four billion of those poor benighted souls out there." He gestures to the Bay. "They're depending on what you can do, and for you to live long, healthy, and wise enough to share and teach that wisdom, to bring those other Sandmen, fighting the good fight, into the light."
Bill
Roger is honestly touched. "You really looking out for me, amigo. That's doing me a solid right now." Roger frowns. "But man, you're wrong. It can't all be on me. Pardon, but God ain't that dumb. There's others out there. I'm not the only beloved of the saints. I can't be. There must be more."
Michael
A cold, chilling stare. "The esmologists tell me there's far, far fewer than you might think."
"Oh sure, I'm sure if we went down to Port-au-Prince or Louisiana or Miami we might gather ourselves a handful. But do you think chevals like that are gonna work for the Company? And this... communion with the saints can't be faked, can't be programmed, can't be compelled from outside. It's gotta be based on faith of one kind or another, and if the cheval doubts himself or his cause... he's lost. The saints will flee him. God gave the martyrs the power to withstand their tortures and indignities... but only if they kept the faith."
Bill
"Ambrose, amigo, do you still believe? Not just that God is there, and we need to keep the faith, but that He will keep faith with us, keep His promises? Do you still believe the Lord of Hosts, the source of all the forces of good... will win?" Roger watches Ambrose's face carefully. Maybe his friend is still in there.
Michael
"I believe, Roger. With all my heart, I believe. I don't worry about what the archeologists tell me, the weirdos at the Peak and at Duncorne, I don't worry about what parts of history are a lie and what's the 'truth.' There's still only one Truth from where I'm sitting, buddy, and it's the Word made flesh. We men are flawed, the flesh is weak and susceptible to temptation, but through our works we exalt Him and drive the devil out."
"If you can keep faith with your saints, and with God, and with the Project, you're going to come out of this just fine. Maybe somebody's already told you this, but this... it wasn't your time. Miracle or not, you're still here, and you're here for a reason. And I think you and I both know what that is."
Roger senses deep sincerity, even if O'Connor's conflation of God, the living Church, and Project SANDMAN does get a bit tricky in parts.
Bill
Roger nods. "It's becoming clearer. Whether or not it was my time, someday it will be. There must be more... so maybe there should be others outside the traditions. I think, and this new loa is maybe a sign of it, that the hosts of heaven themselves are changing the rules, to make sure they still have hands in a changing world."
And so the lying begins, thinks Roger. But maybe it isn't as directly antagonistic as we thought. Maybe there's hope that the Project can turn. "I think this loa, with his particular type of beloved, has come forward just for this reason. The match to Project agents... it is so perfect as to feel like the hand of God."
"This is the first one I think in the form of the tradition that is the Project. Agents, even ones who only believe in the Project... they could keep faith with this one."
Michael
"I have to confide in you a secret from the 'Peak," Ambrose says. "When the news came in from Dr. Claire that you were managing a new loa, one that as you mention exists in the, er, much larger, more ecumenical congregation of popular culture, let alone the world of tradecraft, the esmologists ran the numbers and quite simply said, 'This is where the true power is going forward.' Their eyes fairly goggled out of their heads. Belief shapes reality, and a hell of a lot more people believe in James Bond than St. Peter, it's my sad duty to report. And I swallowed my pride, wondering how my man Roger was gonna take the news that this was the giant leap forward in the cheval project. 'Oh yeah,'" Ambrose says mockingly, "'well, Roger, you see, the REMFs at HQ are saying the future isn't in the syncretic ancestral gods and saints you've treated with utmost reverence and sincerity your whole life, but in James Bond and Bruce Wayne and hell, who knows, maybe even Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote.' I thought you'd flip your shit. But then they tell me, it's Martin who channeled this Agent. He's the one who found him."
With this Ambrose says, "Now why on Earth do you suppose the Agent chose you?"
Bill
"I don't know. And... with all this, even the miracles, I don't know. Am I worthy to be chosen? No. No, if anything, I am broken. I'm no good vessel for any loa, as the saints have shown me. They have left me. All but this one. I don't know if I am keeping the faith anymore. I've screwed up, for sure, and I am finding it hard to believe. But into that comes this new one. I can only guess that I was finally put into a place where he would reach out, and I was ready to hear."
"But Ambrose... it is not just human belief that shapes reality. The saints, the spirits, God: they shape reality with us. I know it seems I'm just splitting hairs. I know that the Humanists will only see humans 'making spirits.' But I know, and you know too, those spirits were already there. Sometimes they change their clothes, update their looks, but they were already there. Bugs Bunny? If that is the form pleasing and acceptable to both sides, then that may be the bridge across the Veil where a compact, a covenant, may be laid.
"I mean, I think it's ridiculous, but no doubt the cardinals in Rome don't like the clothing I put on St. Peter, no?"
Michael
Ambrose nods at Roger's expert example of Thomist/Jesuit logical "hairsplitting." "Maybe I've been talking to those damn beekeepers too much. You have a point. But my concerns sadly run a little deeper than pondering the chicken-and-egg nature of the Ten Thousand Masks of God."
Ambrose inhales. "So. The other loa leaving you... Roger, man, I wasn't trying to..." He blanches a bit, gathers himself. "Listen. Listen, I don't know what's happening with Papa Legba and your connection to the old loa. I'm shaken by that development, just as you are. I just... well, it's my job to be suspicious here, and it's my job to make sure that if we do decide to go ahead with Operation RED NEEDLE—that's what they're calling this op at the Peak—that there's nothing in the way of harmful memetics in your Agent that could infect the other prospective chevals."
"So I need you to be absolutely straight with me. The circumstances of the Agent coming to you, I need to know those circumstances, top to bottom, no elisions, as best as you can remember. If he is the only loa still within your grasp, I... we, need to understand why. A brush with death, sure, I could see your old loa ending up disconnected from you that way. You have the whole Guede lineage, the barons of the cemetery, to deal with. But who is this Agent? How did he originally come to you? And does he mean well or is he... well, is he an agent of the other side, one who's put you in this desperate position, lacking all your old saints and friends, a desperation so bad after a brush with death that you need my help, the Project's help, and then he slides right into the minds— and souls!—of our trainees."
Ambrose sighs. "Consider this... a security check for a new contract agent, one that you're the handler for. And I know, security checks aren't usually very pretty. But that's what I'm here to do." He lays his hands in his lap and shrugs as if to say, "This is all I've got."
Bill
Ah, Roger thinks, finally a role I am good at playing: the Model Minority. Roger marshalls his old self, the loyal soldier. "Of course, I'll do my best. I believe him, but it is the Project we're talking about. I'm glad they sent you."
Rogers starts to spin a story. He does start at the St. Francis, because it's likely come through somewhat in reports already. They will be looking, and find it. But he spins it: the clothing he put on there, the artificial ritual he did; it was the first time he ever put on that kind of show. It seems to have drawn the Agent's attention, as likely the intense need of the situation did. But, he will spin in, the Agent who answered was not the character invoked, he was not the product of that play. And he was clearly inimical to the Enemy, helping to tip the scales back to History A in one of the closest calls of recent times. Roger will drop the clue that he was again near death when the Agent first answered, but not making a point of it, like he's missed that point, let Ambrose put it together.
Roger will omit the Fourth of July entirely, and concentrate on the experiences he started having after seeing Live and Let Die for the first time. He'll spin his blackouts not as losses of control, but as working out of the boundaries of their compact, which, to be fair, it became over time. He will mention his own qualms, his own "security checks", including with the other (more proven) loa like Papa Legba. And he will sweeten it with tales of the new abilities he gained, the "pretty" ones. He'll make an eyebrow wiggle or two at the landing of babes. And he'll be honest about the trade-offs like the womanizing and gambling, fairly confident these white men won't find them so. He will use his kind of "sitrep" style at times to shade this more as reporting than just his own opinion. And if worse comes to worse, he'll draw on the Agent, justifying it as an interview, to let the Agent use his abilities to make his own case.
Michael
[I made an Acting-12 roll secretly but Bill, if you want to give me a Soldier-16 roll (13 plus 2 for your rapport with Ambrose and 1 for your Rank) to see how the after-action report lands with Ambrose, go for it.]
Bill
>> SUCCESS by 4
Michael
"So hold on a second. This all started in the midst of the event at the St. Francis... and you're telling me the arrival of the Agent preceded the deployment of the, uh, 'roleplay meme' by Ransom?" There's a new undercurrent of tetchiness, impatience, frustration in Ambrose's voice, like somehow this isn't a convenient set of facts.
Bill
“There’s some overlap in planning, but yes— the Agent made first contact before the full deployment. And then was riding me when I… really we, were one of the distributors of the meme. I doubt I could have run that group as successfully without his aid.”
(Roger will never believe the meme created a spirit, so if Ambrose is looking for a different answer, Roger doesn’t have it in him to say otherwise.)
Michael
Ambrose's eyebrows go up, and that's followed by another sigh. He mutters, "He still could've..." to himself, rattled, and then drifts off, furrowing his brow. Ambrose gets back to his formerly-collected self pretty quickly, though. "So you might say that in these very early hours, the Agent himself was... evolving to match the threat, the nature of his entry into our reality shifting as he discovered who his allies and enemies were? Seems we're damn lucky you were facing the Enemy that day, Roger. Who knows what the Agent might have become without the correct... crucible of circumstance to be born into. We're very lucky indeed."
"Did the Agent... imprint on anyone in your team, in alignment with the Bond overmyth? For instance, does he have an M, a Q... a Moneypenny?"
Bill
“Imprint? Like a baby bird?” Roger shakes his head. “He hit on Jocasta quite a bit. But then, I can attest, he’s hit on every woman on two long legs out there.”
“But he does love a fellow female spy.”
(Roger carefully keeps his mouth shut about Archie, concentrating on the fact that the Agent wasn’t born, so O’Connor can’t be right.)
Michael
"Let me change the subject slightly." Ambrose clears his throat and nods to himself. "At any point during your time dealing with the reality temblor at the St. Francis—before, while, or after the meme was deployed—did you feel like the... narrative scenario inside the hotel was being guided, diverted... intelligently stage-managed, let's say. In order to produce a specific end, towards an express purpose: bringing into existence your awareness of and compact with this new Agent loa?"
Bill
“God, no. Pardon my French, but that was a shitshow. Flying by the seats of our pants. The enemy had plans, yes, but we just pulled enough chaos out of our asses to survive. I know the reports maybe made it sound like we were being very clever, but God’s own truth, we barely had our heads on straight. Things we tried failed. There was no predicting the environment. Agent 00 fit the narrative, yes, but that story was about as hacked together at the last minute as the plot of a Bond flick. Hell, I think that was part of why he fit into it— the nature of tearing up the long laid plans, blowing up the secret base. If there’d even been time to concoct some clever scheme, it’d have died with whatever the latest twist was.”
“I don’t know if the eggheads at GP get how much comes down to luck on the scene. Yeah, there’s all these big trends they can predict. But in the trenches? You’ve been in them with me. We got supernatural aid when we most needed it. Feels lucky, and they don’t like luck. But aiy, if they want to turn down luck when it’s gonna save you, fuck that.”
“We’d all be back singing Their praises today if those bean counters had been there.”
Roger lets himself go, lets the terror of that time show through. He visibly shakes.
Michael
"Hey," Ambrose says, standing up from the rock he's sitting on and coming over to first pat, and then put his arm around, Roger's shoulder. "Pray with me a minute." He then gets down on his knees and says a Hail Mary.
"There is always Providence, of course," Ambrose says, brushing the dirt off the knees of his slacks. "None of us can account for all the variables: not you, not me, not the most talented esmologist out there. It's my job to be suspicious, like I said before, but I also need to remember... well, faith. And if this Agent is just what the doctor ordered during a high-level ontologically unstable event, who are we to look a gift horse like that in the mouth?"
Ambrose continues, "But the next week or so, Roger, before we get you in front of those eager pupils ready to embody the Agent, we'll need to do some tests. Some mundane, some medical, some psychological, some neurolinguistic... hell, some of these tests might even resemble religious ritual. We need to make absolutely sure this Agent is the real deal before we let him in the house, you understand. Which means at some point I'll need to meet him, too. Not today. But we've got nothing but time."
"I had to be the devil's advocate today, Roger. The adversary. It's not a role I relished. But I do have faith in you. And in your team. And, Lord save me, apparently in one Double-Oh Seven." He smiles.
Bill
Roger breathes deep, shakes it off. “Yeah, I get it. Wire me up, ain’t nothing new. Just, it’s been a lot in just these past few months. And with my local brass bickering back and forth, it’s been a tough run. There’s only so much I can take.”
Michael
"Local brass, yeah," Ambrose says, extending a hand. "Come on, let's get some lunch. Uncle Sam is buying, so you know it'll be good."
Bill
“Just pay no attention to the wetbacks in the kitchen, and I got a great place for our Uncle to spend his money on…”
Over lunch, Roger can likely be persuaded to gossip a tiny bit about the office. Yeah, Archie seems to be slipping a bit, but does that really justify all this second-guessing by Marshall? (The meme is good. #TeamArchie)