Marshall and Archie at Point 7
Monday, October 8, 1973.
Michael
Marshall and Archie: Point 7 (epicenter 40° 15' 24.12" N, 82° 39' 8.388" W, Bennington Township, Ohio, one mile northeast of Hartford, Ohio): "Eight hundred thousand people." That's the phrase Kendrick Mead kept repeating and repeating to Archie and Marshall as he personally briefed them both on taking command of the Point 7 SANDMAN detachment. (Due to both Archie and Marshall's rank in the organization and their skill in esmology, memetics, and NLP, they are going to manage the team of a couple dozen Sandmen currently in central Ohio.) There are 800,000 people in Columbus, including quite a few thousand young, easily-duped student-age folks at The Ohio State University. Despite it being one of Nixon's "football schools full of good kids," SANDMAN is taking no chances on History B ideas taking root among the population there. The specific area of the History B intrusion is farmland with no major arteries passing through, but 15 miles to the southwest is Columbus, and that is the frightening bit.
Marshall and Archie's mission tasks are two-fold. One, they are to take command of the personnel on the ground, including technicians, black-baggers, and a taisher assigned to the Ohio/Michigan/Western Pennsylvania/West Virginia area out of Detroit, an older Black man named Morris Parks. Morris is a Korea vet whose psi powers were discovered during the war; he joined SANDMAN in '52 and has been a domestic op since then, keeping his eye on major urban areas along with the rest of the Detroit squad (some of whom are working Point 7, others are on Point 5 at the OH/WV/PA border). Archie and Marshall will meet him at Point 7 HQ in Newark Ohio, a Columbus suburb of 40,000 that's 10 miles from both Columbus and from Point 7; HQ is an abandoned hotel/rooming house building in Newark that SANDMAN picked up for sale over the weekend in a quick (and expensive) buy. SANDMAN personnel are largely disguised as a renovation crew at the hotel.
Two, Marshall and Archie are to monitor news reports out of Columbus, use esmology to detect any patterns, strange happenings, or mass movements beginning to percolate in the area, to make sure no Red King influence is incipient in the city. If any are found, Marshall and Archie are to use their own powers and their team to eliminate these History B impulses at the root, the implication being "with extreme prejudice." (SANDMAN commandos assigned to Point 7 are less "full military kit" types and more CIA assassins in civvies.) The technical/scientific and surveillance teams will continue to monitor the original irruption point on the farm in Bennington Township but can be moved and redeployed if conditions dictate.
Brant
The specific area of the History B intrusion is farmland with no major arteries passing through, but 15 miles to the southwest is Columbus, and that is the frightening bit.
Do Marshall or Archie know what the "intrusion" is yet? Like is it a ziggurat in the middle of a cornfield? Just a weird vibe?
Michael
At this point (Monday morning) the only visual evidence collected either by eyewitnesses or recon flights have been the evidence of high-altitude lights and objects in the areas above 9 out of the 12 subduction zones. All other evidence of subduction has been gathered through SANDMAN instruments recording electromagnetic anomalies matching what has been observed in past subductions observed by SANDMAN globally since WWII. (This research into the EM qualities of subduction zones/reality shards/Irruptors will eventually end up enabling SANDMAN to create the "Irruptor Disruptor" detailed as "experimental" in the MD corebook on pp. 48-9.). So, quite simply, it is at this point mostly vibes.
If you two want to do a scene where you meet the taisher or talk to the squad, let me know. But maybe before that, it makes sense for Marshall and Archie to take some time to get a sense of the human terrain in central Ohio on Monday morning/afternoon. Your initial analysis of the past weekend's news and SANDMAN recon reports I can turn into a pair of Intelligence Analysis rolls for the two of you. Intelligence Analysis-14 for Marshall, Intelligence Analysis-18 for The Big Guy Archie.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 8
Michael
(I should add at this point the taisher Morris Parks has not been first-hand to the subduction zone so if you two wanted to accompany him personally for his first probings of it, that can be arranged. But let's see what comes of the scanning of the weekend news first.)
Rob
>> SUCCESS by 5
Yes. I'm not able to write a full-on Jocasta-style memo, but I figured the order of business on getting to Ohio is:
set up HQ, both the physical space and delegating jobs and roles
meet the taisher and any other personnel of note
how big is the team, more or less?
get access to all the local news, media, alt media, memetic landscape
assemble a team to check out the subduction zone
including obviously the taisher, one or both of Marshall & Archie, and some of those other personnel (commandos, a tech or two)
Michael
The hotel in Newark is an old decaying brick building of four stories: old iron fire escapes, very much pre-Depression architecture now fallen into disrepair. The disguised commandos and logistics folks are hooking up telecommunications equipment in the first-floor hotel offices and the ballroom is being set up as a briefing room for the Point 7 team. The commando team is a squad of twelve ice-cold black ops types. Working under Archie and Marshall will be a small team of six memetics/esmology specialists, a tech detachment that is setting up EM-detection equipment on the roof of this building and two others in towns triangulating the Point 7 zone. When Archie and Marshall arrive, the junior esmologists have prepared summaries of the news stories from the last 96 hours with accent on the stories since the subductions popped up overnight Friday-Saturday. Archie and Marshall can see Morris Parks sitting in the briefing ballroom, smoking a cig and drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup; he's hogging the space near the percolator and his ashtray shows he's been chain-smoking. Before they meet him in person, Arch and Marsh can tell by the look of it Morris is feeling a little edgy.
The intel from Columbus and central Ohio is largely inconclusive. There haven't been any reports in the papers of strange lights in the sky or weird happenings in Licking County. There was a story in the Sunday Columbus papers about personnel at Wright-Patterson base outside Dayton being activated and put on alert because of the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East. I'm not sure where Archie and Marshall land personally on whether the Yom Kippur War and this subduction outbreak are related at all and how SANDMAN fits in, but it's clear with the aerospace industry in Ohio and Wright-Patterson, there are ample opportunities under the cover of war to help cloak any SANDMAN ops in western/central Ohio. The papers' local concerns over the weekend do seem subsumed under a flurry of war worries, and if Marshall and Archie were to put a button on the "vibes" right now, they definitely seem unsettled, fearful of what might be coming, the possibility of escalation.
And actually, sorry to over-egg the pudding on rolls here, but I think given the analysis of the news was inconclusive but indicative of "vibes," maybe both of you should make Expert Skill (Memetics) rolls too. 18 for Arch, 16 for Marsh.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 8
Rob
>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
This kind of unsettled psychosphere locally could be extremely bad should the zone expand or start tapping into Columbus. You don't want people's belief unsettled and looking for certainty when History B is in the offing. There's not much that can be done about the local populace's worries about expansion of the Middle East conflict from regional to global; after all, they're going to see stories about Israel on the network news regardless of what appears in the local papers and TV news, and it doesn't look like Sadat or Meir or Assad are laying down their arms anytime soon, despite newly-confirmed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's efforts. But Wright-Patterson in Dayton and Goodyear in Akron offer an opportunity to drop some good, gung-ho, "American know-how will help our stalwart allies in Israel hold back the tide of Red-inspired Arab treachery" memetics into the mix to offset things. This state is patriotic and blue-collar; from reading the "man on the street" interviews in the Sunday papers about the war, it's clear Ohioans are looking to the Nixon administration for guidance and given the fact that Agnew is hanging on by a thread in a courtroom in Baltimore and Watergate continues its slow smolder, the people of Central Ohio need some reassurance that the country is strong and stable. A meme that appeals not only to patriotism but also the material contribution of Ohioans to the war effort, might enable the state that voted for Nixon by 21% last year to feel good about itself in the face of Red escalation. Until the situation evolves, this would be a good first-line prophylactic effort against further deterioration of the social matrix.
Rob
Archie will get some junior esmologists to start brainstorming patriotic feel-good memes at our first team meeting/briefing. Right now, he'll stroll over to the taisher (with Marshall too if Brant's willing), stick out his hand for a handshake and say "Mr. Parks, I presume? I'm Archie Ransom. How's the coffee?"
Brant
Marshall got his hair cut into something more conservative; he's wearing a gray suit and glasses. He'll follow Archie.
Michael
Archie will get some junior esmologists to start brainstorming patriotic feel-good memes at our first team meeting/briefing. Right now, he'll stroll over to the taisher (with Marshall too if Brant's willing), stick out his hand for a handshake and say "Mr. Parks, I presume? I'm Archie Ransom. How's the coffee?"
"Nice to meet you, and what do you think? The coffee's crap, it tastes like they dug it out of the storage room," Morris says, shaking both Archie's and Marshall's hands. "So you two are the cats from California, huh?" He chuckles through a smoker's cough, his yellowed teeth showing a mirthful grin. "Welcome to Ohio, asshole of the United States. Quite a change from back home, I bet."
"So you want me to go lay eyes on this demon pit outside o' Hartford, huh?" Underneath the raspiness Morris's voice is deep, rich, charismatic: Marshall doesn't sense NLP per se but he does sense a little bit of psychic oomph behind his words, something unconscious he gets to get people to listen to him. "I'm just gonna warn you, I do things a little different than most of the other Sensitives you've probably worked with in the past. I got a whole, uh, rigamarole I gotta go through to get a read on people and places. So I don't want you to be too put off by it, which is why I mention it as we're first meeting here. It's a little bit... uh, religious, you might say."
"I'm eager to get on the road and get this over with. Every time I've been near one of these, needless to say it ain't been too pleasant."
Brant
"Near one of what?"
Michael
"What do you call 'em, ah, 'subduction zones.' You're gonna have to excuse my not being up on the technical lingo. I just call 'em 'demon pits' because, well, that's what they are, right?"
Brant
"How do you know there is a subduction zone? Have you been there yet?"
Michael
"I've been briefed. I've just been waiting for the two big dudes from California to get here."
Brant
By the way: there is literally not a single thing that any NPC will say to Marshall where he is not rolling Detect Lies. I think you're supposed to do that behind the screen but let me know if I should.
Also, was this guy at Huntsville? I don't think so?
Michael
Oh sure. Marshall's not getting anything lie or misdirection-related from Morris here; he's blunt and direct and clearly has his own way of approaching things—not unusual for a taisher/psi type, one supposes. He's definitely not one for institutional discipline, it seems, and it strikes Marshall that given what he's said and his attitude, he doesn't see a lot of active duty gigging out of Detroit.
Marshall didn't see him in Huntsville at the Monday morning briefing. He didn't travel here with Archie and Marshall and the other Point 7 members who came in on Monday afternoon. He was already here in Newark when you two got here, along with the commandos/assassins in their moving uniforms and the technicians setting up the communications hub.
Brant
"Briefed by Dr. Gottlieb?"
Michael
"Uh, no, late last night, uh, cat named Mead came into town, got us all set up here. I drove my Pinto down from Detroit yesterday after I got the call on the phone from the computer to 'activate' me. Made me feel a little like James Bond." Morris laughs.
Brant
"Kendrick Mead?"
Michael
"Yeah, that's him." Morris takes a drag from his cigarette. "What's with the third degree, man?" He gives Archie a glance. "I am compos mentis, activated, and ready and eager to get this done."
Brant
"Don't look at him. I'm asking you questions."
Jeff
(such a charmer)
Brant
"What did Mr. Mead tell you the purpose of this trip was? Why was he sending you here?"
Michael
Morris narrows his eyes, but gamely continues answering Marshall's questions with no verbal static. "Last night he told us we were dealing with one of twelve demon... uh, subduction zones spread across the Midwest and South. Said he had to get us on the ground early 'cause it's so close to Columbus, said we'd get the rest of our team tomorrow. He flew out after that briefing, late Sunday night. This morning we got a call from Alabama that two dudes... uh, case officers from California were coming to take command of the forward HQ after a big briefing at Huntsville." He's starting to snap back into a more military cadence and terminology. "That you'd be in charge of the, uh, mass media and general strategy for dealing with it, and that I was here to observe and use my Sight on the zone, up close and in person. ASAP. Sir." Morris's voice betrays far less irreverence and far more gravity by the end of his verbal recall of the past 24 hours.
Brant
Marshall glances at Archie then back at Morris. "And — sorry — but do you get many subduction events around your area? Detroit, I think?"
Michael
"We had a couple during the riots in '67, if you can believe that. All kinds of weird shit happened that week. The entirety of East Grand Boulevard is burning down and I gotta walk around peeking into burning buildings looking for bull-men. One side of the government is trying to shoot my Black ass and the other side is paying me bonus money to call in artillery strikes on demons." He does an eyebrow raise and chain-lights a new Chesterfield off the stub of the old one. "It was pretty fucked." Still telling the truth. This guy has to deal with a lot of internal contradictions, Marshall is realizing.
Brant
“Interesting. Thanks.” He looks to Archie.
Rob
Archie claps his hands once. Gives Marshall a 'what was that about?' look, then a big smile for Morris. "Well, we're happy to have you on board, Mr. Parks. Obviously the man for the job. And I think you'll find we're pretty comfortable with, ah, religious rigamarole."
"Marshall, maybe you could introduce yourself to the commando team? Pick some volunteers and get them prepped for a visit to the site?"
Brant
“On it.” He steps out.
Michael
"Your buddy seems a little uptight." Morris says as Marshall leaves the briefing room. He suddenly has a sad look on his face. "Listen, I know the danger of what's going on here, Mr. Ransom, I know how serious it is. But you gotta understand... I gotta keep things light and loose in my head. I don't need to be obsessing on anything, or fearful, when I get into the zone, you know what I mean? The demons, they'll eat me alive if I show weakness or if I'm lacking confidence. You get me?"
Rob
"Well, Dr. Redgrave takes the work very seriously. As we all do. And of course he's concerned about Israel. You understand." Archie waves all that off, but nods seriously at the second part, about the demons. "Morris - can I call you Morris? Have no fear. Whatever you need to do your job, you tell me, and you'll have it. Everyone in this organization has their own process. Especially agents with your, ah, specialty. It takes all sorts to make a world."
Michael
At "It takes all sorts to make a world," Morris smiles completely without irony, warmly, nodding. "It certainly does... it certainly does. 'Morris' is fine, Mr. Ransom, and I won't need much. When I'm outside the zone getting ready to see what's happening, I'll just need some time to clear my head, meditate, pray to God, and to consider and contemplate the oneness of the human family with utmost sincerity and care." To hear this somewhat cynical-seeming, rough-and-ready man start talking with a sudden profundity about "the oneness of the human family" seems like a bit of a 180 from where he was cursing out Ohio, the Michigan National Guard, and going toe-to-toe trying to prove his sincerity to Marshall.
Rob
Of course Archie is charmed by this. "That we can do, Morris. That we can do." But now he can't help himself from asking: "I have to ask, then: in your expert opinion, were the riots in Detroit the, ah, the Enemy's doing?"
Michael
"Well, see, this is the thing about that, Mr. Ransom... Archie. Every human soul has dignity. And they deserve dignity, not just from the light of God but from the laws of man. Bahá'u'lláh says in his Epistle to the Son of the Wolf..." Morris looks up for a moment to recall the words, his cigarette smoldering. "'No light can compare with the light of justice. The establishment of order in the world and the tranquillity of the nations depend upon it.' 'Tranquility.'" He chuckles wryly, shakes his head, maybe thinking of the fires of '67, maybe thinking about the "paradise" the Anunnakku promise. "The way I see it, the Enemy sees how we hurt each other when we stray from the light of equity and the sun of justice, and They see a way into our hearts. Black or white. The Enemy is in our hearts when we say to ourselves all of that type of folk are evil. And then we humans become easy to direct, just the way They want us to act. In mass numbers. As you beekeepers well know. Then the blood inevitably flows, and They show up."
"But that also don't mean you turn your cheek to injustice and offer yourself up to the slaughter like a lamb. The Enemy loves that shit, too. That's what they'd do to us if they were in charge again, right? Make us into sheep, gladly scraping and bowing our heads for the hammer of the slaughterman. We're just toys to Them. God endowed us with reason, to avoid the extremes of passivity or mindless retribution. Both are a dead end, both are how They want us to be. Both summon Them to our world."
"Fact is, we don't need Their help, Their lies to make a perfect world, Their empty promises of singing an endless hosanna to some false gods. A real earthly justice for all is within our grasp, if we just use our heads and open our hearts to the light of God, if we all just bear truthful witness to injustice."
"Sometimes I think the real trap door They left in our heads wasn't that impulse to love and worship Them if They show us Their signs. I think it was the impulse to hate people not like us, the will to carry out that hate, to treat other dignified human souls callously like objects, to create an endless cycle of violence and retribution and domination. To be like Them."
Brant
Marshall knocks on the door before peeking in. “The field team is ready, Arch. Do you want to come with, or stay here to continue evaluating our memetic options? Or vice versa? I have no preference — I suppose we could both go.”
Rob
"Son of the Wolf ..." Archie takes a second to clock Morris as Baha'i, but he's enthusiastic about much of this line of thinking.
When Marshall comes in, Archie looks to Marshall, looks to Morris. He hadn't intended to go to the site, there's lots to be done here, but now he finds he wants to, and not only to run interference on Marshall's paranoia.
"Let's go," he says. "I want to see just what we're dealing with." Gestures for Morris to come too. "Mr. Parks?"
Michael
The fifteen-minute drive north from Newark to the tiny town of Hartford is dotted with the mounds that Hilary mentioned. Most of them cluster around the south end of Newark but a few are evident from the car on State Route 62. There's one near a practice field for the new Ohio State satellite campus in Newark: flat at the top, it's likely one of the mounds that settlers razed the top off of. There's also the famous "Alligator Mound" which is one of the landscape-effigy-type pre-Columbian structures; a 200-foot-long earthwork shaped roughly like a quadruped, a quarter-mile off the state highway.
There's an early October chill in the air as the group of four vehicles, staffed by undercover commandos, a few of the memetics team that Marshall met back at Newark, Archie, Marshall, and Morris, pull into a roadside parking area about a half-mile east of Hartford and south of the epicenter of Point 7. Morris stretches his legs, lights a Chesterfield, and walks across the road to the edge of the small soybean field there. With very little fanfare, he kneels down and begins to pray, his eyes closed in the soft late-afternoon light. Morris speaks his prayer clearly and distinctly, but not loudly, so anyone who wishes to hear would need to come to within a few yards of him:
"Immeasurably exalted art Thou, O Lord! Protect us from what lieth in front of us and behind us, above our heads, on our right, on our left, below our feet and every other side to which we are exposed. Verily, Thy protection over all things is unfailing.
"O God, my God! I have set out from my home, holding fast unto the cord of Thy love, and I have committed myself wholly to Thy care and Thy protection. I entreat Thee by Thy power through which Thou didst protect Thy loved ones from the wayward and the perverse, and from every contumacious oppressor, and every wicked doer who hath strayed far from Thee, to keep me safe by Thy bounty and Thy grace.
"O God! Refresh and gladden my spirit. Purify my heart. Illumine my powers. I lay all my affairs in Thy hand. Thou art my Guide and my Refuge. Is there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!"
With that Morris goes silent for a minute or two; his eyes remain closed in prayer, his knees buckling on the soft shoulder, his hands clasped over his heart. A deep inhalation marks the end of his meditation, and a visible shiver goes through the middle-aged Black man as he struggles to his feet. He mutters a quick Bahá’í prayer of thanks—both Archie and Marshall note, with much less sincerity that the prayers that he offered up for his vision—saying quickly and perfunctorily, "All praise, O my God, be to Thee Who art the Source of all glory and majesty, of greatness and honor, of sovereignty and dominion, of loftiness and grace, of awe and power."
"Fear," he says to Archie and Marshall when he's on his feet. "They're here to cultivate mass fear. Individual fear, too; in a way that's even more toothsome for Them." Morris lights a cigarette. "This is not an intrusion designed to get us to love Them. No invitations to form a church here, no messages for the prophets of the Annunakku. This ain't an invasion. They are here to feast."
Brant
Marshall blinks. “And? That’s it?”
Michael
"Might be why the subduction zones are just sitting here, not getting any bigger, not 'coincidentally' attracting all kinds of lookie-loos who'll give Them fuel," Morris says. "There's no urgency, They're just... sittin' there, taking their time. Oh sure, there's psychic energy building, pressing against the barrier between histories. But Their usual 'signs and wonders' are muted, waiting for the right moment to appear... the right audience. They're not gonna appear to us, after all; we're trained and prepared, strong enough to deny all their pomps. It'd be a turkey shoot."
"The zone is keeping itself alive right now through an undercurrent of fear abroad in the human minds around here. And that fear pathway ain't new, either. I could sense it's been here for a long, long time; like an ancient road that's sort of been overgrown with new trees, but you can still see where the road lay. Old myths, old boogeymen. These pinholes got stitched up over the years, during the good times, but the social fabric here has long been frayed and thin. I don't know much about the other zones y'all are tracking but I'd look for old examples in the history books of mass hysteria, you know? Rumors of outsiders, invaders, conspiracies. That kind of a thing can give Them a way in, a long time after the initial hysteria's died down. They're bein' subtle because the path's been laid for Them."
Brant
Marshall reaches into his inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and takes out a little notebook. He writes a few things down.
OOC, you said there's a "practice field" in the area — practice field for what sport? Football? Also, how close it is where we [the PCs, etc.] are now?
Michael
Oh, that was right outside Newark where the Point 7 forward base is. Just some set dressing on the drive up from the hotel. Newark is the closest mid-sized town to here; the Ohio State-Newark field would have been right around the mound symbol on this map. The "alligator mound" is marked in green on this screen shot, and you all are on that road south of the black subduction zone mark right now.
Brant
And what does the area that we're in right now look like? Farmland? Open fields with lots of little mounds? Are there any buildings nearby?
Michael
Yeah, it's more farmland, occasional farm houses, some forest cover along the road, and a half-mile to the west is the small town of Hartford. Homer and Appleton on there are basically one-stoplight towns.
Brant
Are any of the members of the team SANDMAN assigned us from Ohio?
Michael
I would imagine a couple of the in-civvies commandos might be Ohioans, yeah. Maybe not from right around here but from the Cleveland or Cincinnati areas.
Brant
Marshall summons one of them over. "What can you tell me about this area?"
Michael
(I should also note that the esmologists and memeticists will likely have built up basic reads of the social fabric of these outlying exurbs of Columbus as well, but getting a born-and-bred Ohioan's read on this area makes sense too.)
Marshall summons one of them over. "What can you tell me about this area?"
One sec, I just gotta make a couple of rolls.
"Well, you can't get much more Middle America than Licking County, sir," a commando named Glen Johnson from up near Cleveland says. "Heartland of the heartland. Suspicious of the big-city folks over in Columbus; small-town America, minds its own business. Some say these kind of towns are dying, with all the small and medium-scale manufacturing falling down around here since the World War II... people moving closer to Columbus and the Columbus suburbs encroaching closer and closer. Tight-knit, maybe even a little closed-off."
Brant
Do we have someone knowledgeable about Native American history in this region on the esmological team?
Michael
The simple answer to that question is that there is no Native American expert on the team; like, there's no academic whose specialty is Indian anthropology or history here at Point 7. The mounds near to Newark do show up in the esmologists' report but they're almost handwaved in a sort of high-level travelogue of the area type way. There's no deeper analysis of whether or how all these earthworks might reflect what reality was like here before the Ontoclysm. Savoir-Faire (SANDMAN)-16 roll for Marshall, please.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
Marshall does find this seemingly willful incuriosity about the mounds and Indian history and legends to be a little suspect. I mean, sure, Marshall's suspicion here could be the effect of what it's like to work in California with all the vogue for Indian spirituality among the New Age kids out there, but this esmology report is purely about white American history, anthropology, and sociology. The dead civilizations are dead and of no concern to these esmologists working out of Huntsville. It seems a conscious choice, and a curious one, given SANDMAN's archeological focus. But again, the history of SANDMAN archeology, even before it was SANDMAN, was to pay attention to ancient Mesopotamia. The idea of irruptions on American soil unconnected to that memeplex doesn't even seem to be occuring to these folks. Only Hilary saw the pattern, or has seen the pattern yet. Why? Marshall's semi-paranoid mind seems to scream at him.
Brant
“I’m curious,” Marshall says to Archie outside of anyone else’s earshot, “whether the other quote-unquote ‘zones’ where our colleagues are deployed have a religious element to them. There are parallels here to what’s happening in the Middle East. A surprise invasion launched along multiple fronts. A conflict involving a colonizing force — backed by the ‘West’ — and an indigenous people — backed by the ‘Soviets’ — with ethnic-religious overtones. Danger to a ‘heartland’ — the American heartland and the homeland of the Jews. This one,” he gestures discreetly at Morris, “just happens to practice a religion that emerged in the Middle East and incorporates elements of the three major Abrahamic religions.”
“The team we’ve been assigned seems to have completely discounted the Mound-builder angle. So far only Hilary has raised that with us. He is not a specialist in this field, though — and he noticed it. So what do we make of that? Assume that no one in SANDMAN specializes in Native American ontology? Assume that none of the esmologists we’ve been assigned have noticed the enormous coincidence that these alleged zones are roughly concomitant with a series of mysterious earthen mounds? I find it difficult to believe that only Hilary — and us — could have sussed that out, or at least find it curious. One could attribute it to Western prejudices or bias, and I do, to a degree, but it beggars belief to assume that no one besides us and a lone English historian with no expertise in this area would notice these clues. It would call the entire organization’s competency into question. Are we prepared to believe that everyone besides us can’t engage in basic deductive reasoning?”
“Unless, of course, what we’re being told is the situation isn’t really the situation. Then again, they would predict we would figure that out, too. Or that some one would — if not us, one or a couple of the other memeticists or esmologists they’ve deployed. So perhaps they want us to explore the obvious Mound-builder angle to conceal what is actually going on.”
“And why would Hilary come to us with his theory, and not central command? The impression Abeille got from him was that he is concerned for us. Concerned how? His concern coupled with the fact that he came to us with this intel about the Mounds and not central command — given, especially, that central command explicitly told us to come to them with our theories about what is happening — implies that he thinks it is not safe to share his theories with central command. Not safe for him? Or us? If us, why not just tell us we’re in danger? Why be coy? If him, what relevance does his theory about the Mound-builders have? Does he think SANDMAN would punish him — or us — for figuring this out, this thing with the mounds? Or not act on it? Or act on it in the wrong way? Absent a clear motive, my suspicion is that Hilary was sent to us — wittingly or not — to give us, specifically, this information. I’d think he is a catspaw. But to what end? And again: between their Math, and their knowledge of my and Menos’ psych profiles, they would know that we’d find this suspicious, question it. So maybe they want me thinking this way.” Marshall takes out a cigarette and lights it. “Seems like C Suite bullshit to me.”
Rob
Archie tries to follow all this, pinches the bridge of his nose. "The organization probably does have a blind spot where Indians and such are concerned, but: Hilary putting the idea in our minds, you and I following up on it... that is SANDMAN recognizing the Mound-builder angle, isn't it? I mean, we're SANDMAN, right? As long as we report our thinking? Also, this has all happened very fast. We're practically the first ones on the scene. Not counting flyovers. So I'm inclined to focus on the subduction zones and how to contain them before I worry too much about the, ah, 'C Suite.' Or SANDMAN's insensitivity to Red Indians."
I assume we're leaving the vehicles, walking out into the fields, techs doing their tech things, commandoes doing theirs. What are we actually seeing in terms of the subduction zone? Morris has this sense of psychic energy, an undercurrent of fear. But is there anything else we can see just by being here? Have there been lights in the sky or other manifestations in this area?
But after a few minutes of looking around, Archie picks up the conversation again. "I don't know what to think about Hilary. It's true that he hasn't been subtle reaching out to us. He may be putting himself in jeopardy. But wasn't he always a little guileless? He could be just what he seems."
Pause. "What you say about the Middle East, though. Those parallels. All this happening simultaneously. That concerns me. That does seem like the way They operate." He doesn't specify if "they" means the Red Kings or OZYMANDIAS or the C Suite. "Is anything happening anywhere else, besides America and the Middle East? Could this be... world-wide?"
Michael
There are no visible signs of the subduction zone down here on the ground, and Archie in the few minutes he's been here hasn't really felt any "vibes" as the kids say. It does feel like one of the many hundreds of thousands of square miles of America that people pass through on the way to somewhere else, but that's nothing to do with subduction per se. Like Morris said, the zone is being subtle because it can afford to: if SANDMAN can't find a proximate cause of the subduction, we also can't shrink/disappear it. But that also means the minute the zone starts being more overt, the moment it touches the hearts, minds, or eyes of human witnesses, there will be a trail to follow. Think about all twelve of the zones (well, maybe eleven with the trees being knocked down at Point 10, but y'all don't know about that yet) as dormant volcanoes, ones that could go more active in future.
Point 7 is one of the zones where SANDMAN/USAF aircraft doing recon since Saturday have detected high altitude lights and "objects" over the zone—this is at 40,000 feet and above, so right around the maximum altitude where transcontinental commercial airliners fly—but in the local news there haven't been any "UFO" sightings among those on the ground.
One last thing in Archie's internal monologue: "Hilary putting the idea in our minds" reminds Archie that Hil (at least a couple of years ago) didn't have any skill in memetics... but a lot of the people—the big shots especially—floating around Huntsville since Saturday do. What if one or some of them released a meme into the SANDMAN gathering, especially among those who were at Huntsville early, the ones assigning the teams and analyzing the data, that "Indian mounds aren't worth looking at"? And what if Hil didn't happen to get exposed to that meme in the short time he's been at Huntsville?
Brant
Marshall dutifully follows Archie as he wanders the fields. At one point he seems like he’s about to say something, pauses, and then doesn’t. “Sorry, I’m not being very helpful — to the immediate situation, that is. I guess … I guess, if I’m so guileless that They,” here it also is unclear to whom Marshall is referring, “can predict my every thought and move, or at least the contours of those things, it’s pointless to try to anticipate Their motives. Or plans.”
“So if what we are supposed to do, nominally, is solve this quote-unquote ‘crisis’ — how do we do that here? Morris didn’t clock anything specific, no magical berries or History B leylines or whatever. At the St. Francis we had people, and context. You were able to flood the mental landscape with memetics. But there’s no one and nothing out here. I initially, driving out here, had a thought about organizing a football game or the like — a fundraising thing to nominally raise money for Israel. Get two of the local high school teams to play. Flags, fireworks, the whole ra-ra patriotic thing. But that makes no sense with a football field down the road. People would wonder, why here, why not at Ohio State? Then I thought perhaps a music festival, or concert, also for Israel … but given the psychosocial matrix out here, I doubt that would work. Probably make things worse.”
“So … leave a team here for observation and go back to HQ? Should probably figure out who owns this land and acquire it from them.”
Michael
(The Project can take Marshall's recommendations on acquiring the land onboard. Observation team will be left in place. If you two want to continue the discussion about next steps during tomorrow night's live sesh, I'm absolutely down for it.)
Rob
Archie is curious to get back to HQ and find out what the local memetic landscape looks like, but before we go, are we really not seeing anything else of note out here? No marks on the ground, no bad vibes for those of us who cannot detect History B, just lights in the sky and Morris' sense of psychic energy building up. I assume we have some tech guys with us: no odd electromagnetical readings, anything like that? Archie shrugs, makes a joke to Marshall comparing this to the St. Francis: the seven of us all on our own as the hotel literally slid into History B, infested with irruptors, turning into a ziggurat before our eyes, versus the alacrity with which SANDMAN scrambled every operative in the country to come look at this empty field.
"Of course, now I've probably put a jinx on us, ha ha."
Michael
The "off" electromagnetic readings detected over the weekend are still present here on the ground, but there haven't been any major spikes since their initial appearance and detection by Green Bank.