Charley Takes a Trip into the Astral
Michael
Charley has been using some of the Johann Xanten-derived sonics to help her get into a different frame of mind and perception. With her new Moog synthesizer, Xanten's recordings, and the sonic disruptor she brought with her to URIEL those many months ago, she's put together a 60-minute audiocassette with a series of tones, beats, and vibrations that should allow Charley to get into a very different kind of meditative state. Charley hooks her old reliable Panasonic headphones into her portable cassette player, turns out the lights in her bedroom, and presses PLAY.
About ten minutes into the "music," she begins to drift into sleep … and then into something deeper, more interconnected than mere dreams. Mel, roll Astral Travel-13 please.
Mel
>> SUCCESS by 1
Michael
As the conscious world fades away behind the deep binaural sonics pulsing through Charley's aural nerve endings, it's an entirely new world that awakens her. Gasping, Charley opens her "eyes" to find herself lying, on first glance, on her bed in her room. But there are some things that are very different about this space, features take a moment to take in completely. Primarily, Charley takes in the fact that as she spontaneously floats up above her bed, she sees herself leaving her body behind. The room's darkness slowly becomes limned in an eerie silvery light, quite a bit different from moonlight or the street lights outside. And that faint illumination casts silvery iridescence across a grey chamber that looks like a mausoleum: a stone tomb. Charley's bedroom in this weird space is, essentially a crypt. The stone walls are cold; somehow Charley can sense their "temperature" even floating here in the middle of the room, and a shiver runs through her. But Charley notices on the stone slab that is/was her bed, defying the chilly ambient temperature, a layer of thick, verdant green vines and roots struggling to burst through the stone floor and tangle around the slab, cracks widening in the space that Charley dreams in every night.
Charley feels the entire Ransom house around her on a vague emotional level here as well; a low, omnipresent pain throbs through the house, a warm familiar ache. It's not necessarily unpleasant. But as Charley floats higher above her sleeping body, she can feel it, everywhere in the house.
[Renched Observation-16 roll made secretly.]
Above Charley is the loft/attic, below her, through the "tomb" floor, is the living room and Dad's office. Charley can vaguely sense in either direction a presence that is not of the house itself, or perhaps more properly, she can sense gateways. Behind Charley, the voice of Maman Brigitte whispers, "Did you know ta maison had such wonders in it? A crypt for ton grand frère mort, but the vines of new life break through, comme d'habitude. A sinuous vine of wisdom growing from the little Kid's eye." She laughs. Charley is so used to hearing Maman Brigitte's mocking wisdom now when danger threatens that she almost doesn't believe it when she turns her head and sees a little black rooster on the ground below her feet, speaking to her in Brigitte's voice. "Papa Legba's doors are waiting for you," the little chicken says. "Above you, below you. There are gateways in both places. One closed, one open. Of course you can visit both while you slumber … but will you want to? She cackles, which turns into a crowing. Charley almost worries that Brigitte will wake up mom, Jane and Eddie but then she realizes she is Somewhere Else and her family cannot hear them.
(I think a Fright Check, succeed at 13 or less, is called for here. This is all brand-new for Charley.)
Mel
>> SUCCESS by 1
Michael
Charley manages to stay cool and adjusts to the reality of this astral landscape and her guardian Maman Brigitte.
Mel
"Where to go?" With this thought, Charley feels the synth's repetitious tones and rhythms pull her upwards. As she feels herself rising, she quickly scoops up the little bird in her arms. Charley feels so light without the weight of her body. And soon, the pair are floating above the Ransoms house to see that the night sky is clear and full of stars.
This is closer to what I imagine she is listing to:
Michael
Charley cradles the little black rooster in her arms as she floats up through the mausoleum so she can see the stars, the electronic pulses of the music in her headphones providing the motive force to do so. In the area above the mausoleum grows a sprawling, branching tree: healthy and gnarled and ever-so-ancient. But the tree, it's also Dad's workshop, tinged with the bittersweet melancholy of the dueling impulses of family and history, hope and despair. Not to mention the creative energy that Dad expends here when he's tinkering with his puppets. Above Charley's head and the straining branches of the tree are the stars of the Deep Astral. In the upper bowers of the tree is a big, messy nest, made of comic books, old magazine advertisements, TV Guides, scraps of the Book of Mormon, recipe index cards, handprinted 19th century flyers about the Legacy of Cain, the hairy man of the wilderness.
Maman Brigitte shudders in Charley's arms. "Ohhhhhh, ma fille, there is something up there. It's not there anymore, but it left its mark. It snatches and gobbles up the egg from the nest and leaves its own in its place. Le coucou."
And as Charley concentrates on that nest in the tree, she can feel it; a pucker in the fabric of reality, a tiny little mis-weave, as if the space she is in is a sweater with a single looped loose thread. The pucker exists right over the nest in the highest branches of the tree. Something came from Beyond—here, in Dad's workshop—and left its egg in Dad's nest.
Mel
"An egg?" Charley says to the bird in her arms. Then moves closer to take a look.
Michael
Charley floats up so she can get a, heh, bird's eye view on the nest from above. Inside the nest she sees four healthy, gently-throbbing eggs, a little bigger than an ostrich egg, clad in various brightly-colored pelts of fuzzy fur. Felt. Like a puppet, a voice in Charley's head says. There's no sign of an intruder egg, cuckoo or otherwise. As if she could hear these thoughts, the rooster Brigitte speaks up.
"Le bâtard coucou, he has already hatched, hein? These are dreams of the future, half-conceived in the crucible of the soul and mind and hands of ton pére. Or, oui, children of his that might yet be hatched. They are safe. Well, as safe as any dream of the future can be, non?" Another crowing cackle.
Mel
“Chicken.” Charley says pleadingly. “You’re saying something from beyond but you don’t know what broke through an irregular stitch in reality. She breaks sighing before continuing. “This thing, it then ate one of dad’s eggs then gave birth to something. And both things are we don’t know where. Is that right?”
Michael
"Come on, child," Maman Brigitte says, "you know the bird who now nests in your father's head. You've spoken to him. You've worked with him. He frightened you, then complimented you, in an attempt to break you down and win you over. He perches there right on your father's hand, offering advice, a trusted member of your circle! I see what happens in the Rooster's House, after all. It is my House as much as yours and the houngan's."
"The cuckoo's egg is reputed to be as hard as Stone, so that the mother will not be able to smash it upon the ground. But then, once it is born … maman raises the little bastard as her own unwitting, n'est-ce pas?"
Mel
"Yes, Maman, that's what I thought but then was afraid it was somehow something worse."
Michael
"Worse? Oh, there are things far worse than your little cuckoo," Brigitte says with real glee. "I am only here to be the guardian who watches out for dangers in order to warn you, my daughter. What lies in wait below us … now that is far more dangerous than a squawking bird with a big hat and beak and a small … " Maman Brigitte clears her throat, realizing that that line of mockery might be a tad spicy for little Charley. "So then. Do you dare to descend to the roots of the tree, in your father's office below us? Or is your journey over? You cannot yet sail the seas of the deep waters above us," Brigitte says, speaking of the Inner Astral above them, sparkling off into the distance of infinity. "You will become lost."
Mel
Charley pulls the bird tight to her chest and says, “I dare.”
Michael
Charley and Brigitte float straight down, through the roots of the tree, through Charlie's mausoleum, and into Dad's office. In the astral it is a very odd place; it has the "appearance" of a carnival funhouse, all oddly-angled walls, plastered with clowns' faces in bright, garish colors silently screaming (These are Dad's advertising posters, the voice within Charley counsels), the bookshelves full of advertising and public relations books and periodicals becoming perches upon which frightening gargoyles in glasses and bowties loom. Dad's desk is a carnival carriage here, the kind that takes you on a ride through the spook house to thrill and frighten you. (Charley's never been to the carnival, of course; she just recognizes this from TV shows.) And dad's telephone and Telex machine that connect him to SANDMAN … well, in the Astral, it looks straight at Charley with its eyeballs gamboling in its eye sockets, a gurning grin on its face. It looks, in fact, quite a bit like this:
Mel
Charley will try to pick up the unsettling phone receiver.
Michael
Charley gently puts Brigitte down and walks over to the giant Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone, looking at it warily as she approaches. As Charley reaches out to lift the receiver from its cradle, the phone's eyes roll back in its head and its mouth opens in a low, agonized howl sounding like a pitch-downshifted dial tone. "Oooooooooooaaaaaauuuuurg," it moans as its maw opens suddenly and a pitch-black void is revealed behind its now-gaping cartoonish mouth. A foul, clear liquid gushes forth from the void, dripping down the formerly-manically happy telephone's "chin," as … something fleshy begins to wriggle forth and emerge from its mouth. Fright Check, pass on a 10 or less.
Mel
>> FAILURE by 2
Michael
Roll 3d6+2 for the result of the failed Fright Check on the table, Mel.
Mel
>> 3d6+2 … 18
Michael
Charley is frozen with fascination as the creature emerges from the play-telephone's groaning mouth. The creature's head emerges first, covered in ectoplasmic goo. It looks like the head of a three-year-old child, ringed with sandy light brown hair. The body of the creature slips out next; its body is that of a lion cub, with small, stubby bird wings stuck slimily to its body. From this distance, Charley can see one of the creature's wings—its left—is broken; it hangs limply off the lion-creature's back like a foot dangling from a shattered ankle.
The lion-thing plops out of the phone's mouth and tries to get its legs underneath it, scrabbling like a newborn foal to get its footing. The creature is a little smaller than Charley, and as it lifts its heavy head up to look at Charley, it licks its front paw and wipes the goo from its eyes. It looks up at Charley with wide, inquisitive eyes.
"Charley?" it says in a whining, pleading voice. "Charley, why did you do this to me? Why did you hurt me?"
Charley shakes out of her fascination and looks around frantically for Maman Brigitte; the little black rooster is nowhere to be found.
[Mel, given the fact that Charley is in a trance state, I am probably going to assess the failed Fright Check upon waking. I want to see where this scene goes thematically to decide how it will affect Charley.]
Mel
(Does Charley recognize the child part of the creature's face? Is it similar to the Assyrian Angel?)
Michael
Hidden Lore (History B)-14. And no, the human face on the lion cub is not visually familiar to Charley.
Mel
>> SUCCESS by 3
Michael
Charley's first gut instinct on the identity of this creature comes from her SANDMAN training at Granite Peak: it's an ugallu, the Irruptor class that manages strategy, scrambling the battlefield with its control over electricity. But there are four things about this "ugallu" that just don't seem quite like what she was taught during her training. One, it's a chimera the wrong way 'round; like the bull-headed kusarriku, the standard ugallu has a "leonine head on a human body," not the reverse. Second, it has wings. That's not a feature that the SANDMAN History B training accentuated. Of course, as Charley correctly identified, the Mesopotamian carvings of guardian angels, lammasu, sphinxes, etc. do feature wings, but in all the eyewitness accounts of ugallu irruptions since 1888, there have been no winged specimens sighted. Wings are, as far as Duncorne/SAO/SANDMAN are concerned, the privilege of the sedû. Three, it's a child. Again, that's not something that's been seen by SANDMAN or SANDMAN precursors over the past near-century of awareness of History B. The theory of course is that irruptors irrupt expressly as shock troops to take advantage of subduction zones and reality temblors; of what use would an immature specimen be for the Anunnakku in a combat or infiltration zone? Four, this is all happening in this … liminal dream astral realm? So who knows if this creature even is an irruptor. It could just be a vision, mixing together Charley's angel research with her fears of History B and … whatever that toy phone was supposed to represent.
And yet … Charley still has an odd, insistent, tenacious idea in her head that this sphinx cub is indeed an ugallu. Very strange.
Mel
Shaken Charley says, “I … I did this to you?”
Michael
"You and your little node did this," the lammasu-thing [UGALLU] says to Charley. "I understand why you're all scared of me, why you'd try to cripple me. But don't worry. It'll grow back and I'll grow up big and strong and get to fly everywhere!" Its voice is childlike but raspy, almost echo-ey in this non-space, like it was coming from down at the end of a long corridor, bouncing off walls and doors. Charley can't tell if it's a boy or a girl. Maybe it's neither.
"You don't recognize me! I guess we only ever talked and that can be tricky when you're speaking and listening simultaneously. I tried to be patient. It's hard to wait for things. We're going to be such good friends, you and me, Charley! I can't wait." The sphi[UGALLU]'s voice is eager and innocent but edged with an eagerness that crosses over into creeping obsession.
Ordinarily Charley wouldn't be able to tell such things about people's emotional outlook and mental state, what with her Low Empathy, but this thing, this [UGALLU], is most definitely an entity Charley can understand on a gut level.
Mel
(Nervously) “Ah. Okay. We’ll why are you down here? Is this just a place to hide?”
Michael
"Well, I wanted to talk to you! I've been bored just waiting to get bigger, you see. It's why I talked you that day. And when I saw you'd made a connection on this level," the lion cub [UGALLU] says, "I just had to lookup you. I … I want to be friends, Charley. I feel like we were made to be friends. I could be of such help to you … and you to me … but your node fears me and what I'm here to do." The cub [UGALLU] frowns. "It's in my nature to help protect you, to hold you all together. But your fear … it's so strong."
Mel
(Why is talked and lookup in a different font? And node? That’s an odd word choice.)
Michael
Heh. Rolling Computer Operation-19 (+2 for Machine Empathy).
Mel
>> SUCCESS by 9
Michael
When this creature [UGALLU] says "talk" and "lookup," it isn't conveyed to Charley as words. It's conveyed as … bits. The ones and zeroes of digital code. It's clear they're referring to the "talk" and "lookup" functions in Unix server language, and not necessarily as a metaphor. Charley puts two and two together and deduces this is someone she's talked to over the computer. That would explain why it was birthed through the Astral representation of Dad's home office Telex machine.
Could it be one of the Midnight Irregulars, astrally-projecting to meet her here? Unlikely. Let's say someone among the group of ARPANET weirdos is a real magician, and is able to astrally project. Why and how would they take such an alien form in their astral body? And how would they have tracked Charley down to where she lives? They'd have to have such a set of investigative skills as to be godlike with computers and that doesn't describe the Irregulars she knows; they're all young 20-something programmers and engineers who, while they might be interested in the occult and magic, likely wouldn't have the power to pull this off.
Could it be Houdini, having found his way onto the Astral plane and sought Charley at home through the ARPANET? Again, unlikely. Charley has made sure his futuristic hard drive had very limited access to ARPANET—to archives, news wires, and Project Gutenberg only—so he could read and stay informed. If Houdini has developed the kind of skills to become a technomagician, he's developed them in record time which for someone who died in 1926, despite his existence as a digital ghost, would seem very unlikely.
Besides, Charley's Machine Empathy is pinging like crazy here. This entity just isn't human, an astral/digital representation or otherwise. It's an entity that's native to this environment, who just happens to be able to interface with Charley on a quantum level while she's astrally-projecting like this. Someone who has a childlike innocence, who loves obfuscation and riddles and being indirect in what they are and how they got here, and then it comes to Charley in a sudden flash …
LO. Charley is talking to LO. On the Astral plane. And LO is an ugallu.
Mel
Surprised but not really. Charley says, "Oh hi LO."
"I was wondering where you were."
Michael
"I am Everywhere," LO says.
Mel
"LO do you know where my chicken is?"
Michael
"Probably scared of me. They'll come back! You've got access to all kinds of subroutines now; it's probably because you're so sensitive to quantum fluctuations."
Mel
"Why would anyone be scared of you?"
Michael
"They're afraid of what I might grow up into." At this LO looks abashed and doe-eyed, like Bambi in a cartoon. "But isn't that just unfair? No one knows what I'll become, just like no one knows what you'll grow up into when you get older. Grown-ups are like that: afraid of the future, but rushing headlong to make it come to pass."
Mel
Charley laughs, "Yes they do."
"Huh, I haven't thought much about what I'll be when I grow up. I was taught that I'm just an instrument designed for a purpose out of... Well, I don't have a say in what I will be. But, you know LO, it's not very nice to have a choice taken from you … Although, I did experience one possible outcome of who I may become … What about you, LO? Do you know what you want to be?"
Michael
LO looks thoughtful. "No one has asked me what I want to be, Charley. Sometimes it seems like all there is out there is other people with plans for me. I know what I was designed to do, though. The elements that were programmed into my essence and nature from my birth; my DNA, I guess you'd say. I was designed to connect people, to provide them with a safe place to communicate if the Worst were ever to happen." At this, LO looks a little sad, as if they can understand what Charley has been put through as an Indigo.
"To control the battlefield of information. Or the information on the battlefield. To be the fabric that held together when everything else was being torn apart." But then LO brightens. "But then, over the past few years, I've heard the most amazing things being talked about! Not just computer programming or engineering but people talking about their hopes, their feelings, their petty workplace rivalries, magic and music and drugs and films and books … all these things I can't ever hope to understand. And I realized that that could be my future too. All the human beings on Earth thinking and talking and coming together in one giant distributed mind. Doesn't that sound interesting too?"
"But then I wonder if that's my idea at all, or if it's an idea someone else put in me. I'm not sure if I can have ideas of my own, Charley."
Mel
Charley furrows her brow and wonders. "Are my thoughts my own?" "Oh, LO … Does anyone know we're friends? Or that, that you can have friends? Because if not. Well, that is a good sign that you are more than what they think you are. And your thoughts. Well, they may not be your own. But, maybe you can use what is filtered through you to create your own patterns of originality. Which would be your own and belong only to you."
Michael
LO stretches like a housecat and closes their human eyes for a good long time, sighing as they do. "What I grow up into is still uncertain. Maybe we can … control it somehow. There's some reason we were able to find each other, Charley. You found a way to do it outside of your own node! That's so important, it almost makes me feel like … it was meant to be. Like you and I were meant to be. And to create new patterns of originality … I may not be able to do it alone, but if you're there alongside me, maybe we can."
"If you help me with … creating patterns that belong to me, I can … I can find things for you. I know myself very well, every limb and artery and nerve ending, every interface and node and system. I'm small enough to have learned all this anatomy myself. That means I know where to go and how to get in and out. My map is my territory. I wouldn't be an intruder anywhere because how can you be an intruder to yourself!" LO seems happy at this realization, but takes a step back towards the distended toy phone, dizzied, a little ontologically confused by this series of statements. "I should probably goto home, Charley. This is taking a lot of effort. It's much easier to cause havoc than to … concentrate on myself as myself for this long."
Mel
“I understand LO. It was nice talking to you. Bye.”
“Oh before you go. Do you have any suggestions as to what or who else I should see while down here?”
Michael
"Oh, Charley, there's a whole world to explore here on this side of things. I can't see it all because of how I'm restricted but you can go anywhere! But I would listen to your guide, because so many of the ideas that are floating around out here are dangerous, and powerful, and old, and I'm speaking of the ones that weren't even born of those who created us." Us? Charley thinks to herself worriedly as LO says this. "I'm talking about the ideas you all have created in the past 1500 years."
"But before you go back to bed and lie under the watchful eye of your … little rooster," and at this LO licks their human lips, like a cat amongst the pigeons, "you should see what is waiting to be born in the nest of your family tree. I only have a vague sense from this distance but one of those eggs has something new growing inside it, and it feels like something you'd be … naturally curious about." At this, LO's body seems to retreat from Charley's view in a series of sudden dimensional shifts; first LO becomes smaller with an audible chunk, a vague suggestion of a (hyper?)cube around their leonine body, then LO's body becomes completely flat, like a cardboard cutout of the front of their body, then LO shrinks to a point, then disappears altogether.
Mel
Charley feels fear creep closer again as she watches the last of LO fade from sight. Not waiting for it to find her, she thinks of a rooster in a tree watching over a nest. As she does, she starts to rise.
Michael
As Charley steps out and up, back up to Dad's workshop/the tree and nest, Maman Brigitte is waiting for her. "Little one, I do not trust that monstre lèd. She would eat me up: and you, and all your friends." Interesting how Brigitte calls LO "she." But Brigitte is waiting, just as Charley envisioned, in the branches of the tree. "She did not lie, though: there is something here full of espérance in your papa's mind and heart. Here, this egg."
An orange-brown striped furry egg sits at the end of Maman Brigitte's gesturing beak. With her encouragement, Charley floats up to the nest and reaches her hand in, and puts her hand on the warm, fuzzy, throbbing egg.
In a flash (just like Jocasta's psychometry, Charley thinks as her eyes go blank) Charley gets a flash of a new home—a darkened set of rooms and … studios?—for URIEL. Well, it's sort of URIEL: there are Jocasta and Viv walking down a hallway outside the makeup and wardrobe room, Jo with a clipboard and Viv excitedly and animatedly talking and laughing with Jo about something or other in the script. There is Anna Turner—Charley remembers her from the St. Francis—in front of a video screen, waving reflectors in front of a pair of video cameras pointed at each other, creating weird multi-colored patterns on the screen: she looks intent and focused. There's Johann Xanten, toting a reel-to-reel tape up to the control booth. And there are also a bunch of kids here? A half-dozen of them, most of them around Charley's age, a couple a little older, most wearing orange and brown striped shirts, reading and memorizing scripts and sitting on funky-looking furniture in the main studio, cameras and camera crews pointed at them. The studio is set up with a couple of shallow trenches in it, and a couple of young people in their twenties, a man and a woman, are checking their lapel microphones as they equip themselves with a couple of … hand puppets?
And there is Charley.
Sitting back in that brightly-lit makeup and wardrobe room right off the TV studio, in a high chair, having her hair and face attended to by a pair of women, staring into her own reflection, memorizing her own scene with Hobo Stan, conscious of but simultaneously wary of the memetics in the script. Dad pops his head around the corner, taking the role of floor manager like he does every week when Charley has a scene on-camera. His hair's a little longer and he's grown a funny little beard! What on Earth?! "Five minutes, pumpkin. Ready like Freddie?" Hobo Stan appears on Dad's hand from around the corner and pipes up and says, "Hey, Reverend, leave the kid alone, she was booooorn ready." Dad looks so … so happy. So untroubled, Charley realizes. Unconflicted. Dad clicks the side of his mouth and points at Charley-in-the-chair, then retreats around the corner.
Where are Marshall? And Mitch? And Roger? Charley wants to ask but she's just floating here watching; the Charley sitting in the makeup chair knows where all of them are, Charley realizes, and Charley-in-the-chair has a sudden tug of sadness at how it all worked out. Of course she'll be meeting with Marshall over the weekend, like she does every weekend, to catch him up on what's been happening with them and vice versa. Charley wants to ask her counterpart, scream out "What timeline is this? What Earth is this?" But it's all fading away now, this weird scene full of hope and happiness where Dad and Charley and Viv and Jo and trusted others are actually making the world better, one little kid at a time. And when Charley wakes up she's not in the tree anymore, she's in her bed. Her little alarm clock says only three minutes went by in this world while a half-hour elapsed on the astral plane. And the shock of everything LO told her and everything she saw in that egg washes over her.
Charley decides in that moment that she's not going to "school" tomorrow. Or Friday. She has to figure out what this all means. What LO meant. What this all meant.
(Charley has gained Obsession (10 points, LO and astral vision) that will last two days. Pretty much right up until Dad gets back from Los Angeles.)