Mitch and Marshall Meet Mr. Green
Brant
I think I want to start putting the wheels in motion to replace Green. I’d like to do it in DMs though because I want to surprise the rest of the PCs when it happens (I’m a diva). We don’t necessarily have to RP out a whole thing but maybe we can get some rolls going? Marshall will use all the resources at his disposal to make this happen.
In terms of justifying this request to SANDMAN, he’ll be reasonably forthright: the team has identified hostile ontological activity at SRI, and the situation has developed to the point that Marshall feels they need someone in place there, someone a step up the ladder who can monitor and direct their research. He will convey that they have the situation under control currently but in order to keep it that way, he thinks he should “step in” as an official liaison, replacing Green.
Michael
Okay, to start things off let's do a simple Patron-15 roll.
Brant
>> CRITICAL SUCCESS
Woot!
Some day my crit-luck with SANDMAN related rolls will fail, but apparently not today.
Michael
Wow, that is a crit, and so let me assemble the Reaction roll because there are going to be a fuckton of modifiers here.
All right, so +3 from the crit, +5 from Charisma and various reaction modifiers, +2 from Rank, and a +1 on top for describing/strategizing how you would supplant Green in-character. That's 3d6+11, roll high.
Brant
>> 3d6+11 … 20
20. Meh.
Michael
20 is Excellent, the top you can get:
Requests for aid are granted. NPCs help in every way within their power, offering extra aid.
So I think it's reasonable to expect that Green will get his reassignment papers tomorrow (Tuesday) and leave Marshall to take his place by Wednesday. I think he's gonna be pissed he no longer gets the flight and hotel stay in Hollywood and backstage passes to Carson. And with this result, Marshall never needs to meet or debrief him if he doesn't want to.
Brant
Oh, word. Marshall does want to meet him both to "debrief" him, get eyes on him, and break the news. I have a whole thing planned in my head that involves bringing Mitch with me to his hotel. But we can play that as it happens. Mostly I wanted to get this set up so that there isn't a "gap" between Marshall's takeover and Green's "dismissal."
Michael
That's great. So if Marshall tells Granite Peak that he wants to be the one to deliver the reassignment papers, he can do it after work Tuesday or Wednesday morning … pretty much any time and in any context Marshall wants to! You let me know once we get to the right spot in the chronology.
Brant
Yeah. I guess I can share it with you so you can plan. In broad strokes, I anticipate Mitch meeting up with Marshall on Tuesday, I guess, for the "talk" Mitch wants to have. Assuming Mitch doesn't like kill Marshall, they can have their talk, then Marshall is going to ask Mitch to come with him — like, right then, get in a car and go — to Menlo Park to confront Green at his hotel.
Michael
Yeah, that works for me! Two birds one stone.
Jeff
Tuesday. July 24, 1973. Strolling through the Mission grounds. "So I think … oh, thanks for taking the time, man, I don't know what you had to drop … so I think, it's better to share than to keep completely secret, you know what I mean?" Mitch waves to the Oldtimer but doesn't approach. "If I have a thought, it doesn't go anywhere, it just sits there in my head. Telling you about it, there's a record, right?"
Brant
“Speak the truth, like the Buddha said. I will remember. I remember everything you tell me, MJ.” He taps his head.
Jeff
"Yeah, I know. I was thinking about what you were saying at the meeting yesterday. When Archie speculated about bad actors inside SANDMAN. You remember."
Brant
“I remember.”
Jeff
Mitch is silent for a while but Marshall successfully waits him out. "You've already decided you're not going to report Archie, like you said you were gonna," he finally says.
Brant
“Right.”
Jeff
"So that's good... It goes back to something I told you a while back. You remember: you and me and Archie and Roger and Jocasta …
And Charley and now Viv. The seven of us."
Brant
“Yes. That we all share a thing in common.”
Jeff
"And because of that, you won't report Archie." Mitch considers. "You might just to spite me now, I guess, but not in a way that anything would come of it, I don't think. Probably. It's amorphous. But part of being in the club is, you don't act against the interests of the club."
Brant
Marshall stops walking and faces Mitch. He looks him up and down. I’m gonna roll Body Language to determine if Mitch is threatening him.
>> SUCCESS by 2
Jeff
Success by two is probably enough to confirm that Mitch is not threatening him.
Michael
Well, that success lets you either treat the roll as a Detect Lies or as an Empathy roll. I would roll either roll. And if Mitch is plainly giving off non-threatening body language I'm willing to just let the success tell you that much.
Brant
Good enough, that’s all I wanted.
He resumes walking. “And how am I to know what the interests of the club are?”
Jeff
"They're your interests, too."
"You already decided not to report Archie, you said. Why not?"
Brant
“It’s complicated. I take your point. But where does that leave me, MJ?”
Jeff
Mitch shakes his head. "I'm not sure you do, or you wouldn't ask me that. We all make choices, right? All the time. We decided to fight the Red Kings instead of … whatever else you could be doing with your life. Just this, I guess … " Mitch gestures around them, at the Mission grounds generally.
Brant
“Aren’t you saying my ultimate loyalty lies with us — the group — because we share this thing in common? That if I have a choice between URIEL and … everyone who doesn’t have this ‘thing’, I need to choose URIEL. No?”
Jeff
"Hmm. Yeah. I guess so. But, ‘need’ … I'm saying it wouldn't be so dramatic. I mean, I'm not saying you don't have free will.
"I'm not saying you do. I mean, that's philosophical, that question."
Brant
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” Sunshine jogs up, calling out “Doc! Doc!” She hands Marshall a secure courier envelope from Livermore. He takes it, thanks her, and keeps walking. “But was not Judas also an apostle? Was it his free will to betray Christ, even though God’s plan required his betrayal?” He looks at Mitch and smirks. “If you were anyone else, Mitch, this conversation would’ve gone differently. But you’re a hard man to disagree with.”
Jeff
Mitch is slightly perturbed. "Hmm. Could it be in the interests of the club for a member of the club to betray the club? Could be, I guess. You could construct some scenario. But in general, no. That's what the club is, is the aligned interests. Sort of, I think … We're getting off track. My point is, you're not reporting Archie, just like Jocasta didn't shoot me at the climax of the sci-fi con. Y'all give me a lot of slack, you know? Maybe more than you could justify, if the inquisition came sniffing around. You're not wrong to, I think. I think I'm acting in the interests of the club."
Brant
“Less slack than you think, MJ. But that’s because you make it easy. The things that are supposed to happen to you, happen. The things that aren’t, don’t. If the ‘inquisition’ came around looking for you — which they wouldn’t, because they’re not supposed to come looking for you — they wouldn’t find anything. Unless they were supposed to. Which they aren’t. Anyway, no, I’m not reporting Archie. Just like Jocasta did not shoot you. Because neither of those things were in the interests of the club. The club we are all in — the seven of us.” He opens the envelope and skims over the contents of the piece of paper inside. “I think you’re acting in the interests of the club. If that matters.”
Jeff
"All right, well, good talk. I'm not sure I conveyed what I wanted to but I'm not sure I didn't. Under different circumstances we'd all share a checking account, or a tontine. Anyway, if you're looking for a villain, look outside the club. Andy — well, not Andy, Andy's on a different team with me … " Mitch shakes his head. "That's separate. That gets complicated."
Brant
“Andy is as unwitting a dupe as I’ve ever met. I’m not worried about him. Message received, though. Oh, but hey — you drove here, yeah?”
Jeff
"Yeah, probably."
Brant
“Groovy. Come with me, lemme get changed. I’m going to have you come down to Menlo with me. You can help me with Kit Green.”
Jeff
"Sure. Who?"
Brant
“Kit Green. Mr. Green? The spook who’s running that SRI project for the Company? You remember.” Marshall starts walking toward his residence.
“I gotta tell him he’s being replaced. By me. And, you know, see if he’s host to memetic contagion or whatnot. Debrief him, if not. Kill him, if he is.”
Jeff
"His name is actually Green?" Mitch is disappointed. "I assumed that was, like, a codename. Mr. Green at SRI, Mr. Blue at Bell Labs, Mr. Red at JPL, Mr. Yellow at Brookhaven … "
Brant
“Nah. I mean he has a cover name, but he’s not that kind of agent.” Marshall lets them into his place and offers Mitch a seat in the living room. He also reaches into his pocket, draws out a vial, and snorts a bump. He offers Mitch some. “I just need to get changed into something more conservative. Be a minute. Make yourself at home.”
Jeff
Mitch partakes, obviously. "This is nice. You knew that, though. That's the point of it."
Brant
Marshall reemerges from another room wearing a conservative gray suit. He goes over to a mirror and starts tying his tie. Then he combs his shaggy hair back and puts on a pair of men's horn rim glasses. He takes another bump and offers Mitch the same. "Yeah. NLP operates on a lot of levels, not all of them interpersonal. Attire is another thing. Milieu, too. It all goes into the pot." He seems quite casual. Once he's ready, Marshall walks over to Mitch and puts his hands on his shoulders. "Do a thing with me. Close your eyes a minute." Marshall closes his eyes and tilts his head down.
Jeff
Cocaine and meditation seem antithetical, at least given Mitch's understanding of meditation, but he's willing to play along.
Brant
Marshall says in a quiet, steady voice: "We relax. Our shoulders melt. Our chin dips. We feel a string at the top of our head — at the sahasara, the crown with one thousand petals — pulling our backs straight." He pauses. "We are redirecting our attention away from the thoughts, feelings, impulses, sounds, distractions that surround us. We are redirecting our attention toward the confidence within us. The awareness that is not our mind. To our breathing." He falls silent for about five minutes. Then he slaps Mitch gently on the shoulder. "Alright! Let's do it, man."
Michael
(I know the Visualization is essentially a solo exercise but I'd like to see how Mitch's vibes affect Marshall. Mitch can give me an ordinary Meditation-17 roll — the coke kicking in near the end of the five minutes means no real penalty — and we'll see how that affects Marshall's IQ roll for Visualization.)
Jeff
Okay!
>> SUCCESS by 9
Michael
Okay, that means Marshall, your Visualization roll is at IQ+1 or 17.
Brant
>> SUCCESS
Success by 10.
Michael
Not a crit but that success by 10 means … holy crow. +10 on checks if things in the scene with Green turn out just as you just visualized, a +5 if they're not quite the same, and a +3 if they're completely different. Even if Marshall gets wrong-footed he's going into this plan with supreme confidence in himself and in the universe to bring him what he wants.
Brant
("I am the awareness that creates the world.")
In terms of next steps the Visualization description in the other channel is my plan, OOC and IC. Basically pile into Mitch's car and head to the hotel in Menlo. What happens beyond that is up to Mike. Oh, and Marshall will obviously show Mitch the photograph you posted of Green so that he knows what the dude looks like for aura reading / History B-detecting purposes, and relay what he knows from his CIA contacts.
Michael
Cool, we'll keep the next part of the scene in here. I'm gonna repost Marshall's Visualization as well for reference.
They arrive at Green's hotel in Menlo in Mitch's VW bearing URIEL's two GP-issued glyphs: GU.SHUB (Mitch, "neglect") and SANGUSH (Marshall, "I belong here"). They survey the hotel lobby to see if Green is there. If he is — and assuming he is not possessed by a memetic demon — they approach and insist on chatting with him in his room. If they do not see him, Marshall uses the SANGUSH glyph to get behind the hotel reception desk and look up what room Green (under his code-name Richard Kennett) is staying in. He then uses the SANGUSH glyph + Hypnotism, if necessary, to get a key to the room from whoever is at the desk. They go to his room. They knock. If he answers, great. If not, they let themselves in and wait. Marshall explains to him that he's been reassigned back to D.C. He has taken over the SRI project due to security concerns — the Company has a mole in the project and believe there are leaks. Marshall's been tapped to act as the new liaison. He will show Green the paperwork from Langley confirming Green's termination. Then he will debrief Green about what he knows. It all goes super smoothly.
The only question I have for setting up this scene is, did you picture Marshall and Mitch's visit happening in late afternoon closer to when the workday is over/Kit returns to his hotel room. I figure with Mitch visiting Marshall up at the Mission and the drive back down to the Valley this makes the most sense narratively and time-wise. This timing would mean that Marshall would more than likely be waiting in the room as visualized when Green gets back from SRI. It would give Marshall and Mitch, under cover of glyphs, a chance to follow the Visualization's infiltration pathway more precisely if they arrived at, say, 3 pm or so: get behind the desk, get the room number and the key, go up to the room, with Marshall's glyph easing Green's suspicions and Mitch's glyph letting him aura-read and Detect with no distractions.
Jeff
Let's see, Mitch hasn't used Oracle for Tuesday, has he? And he's got two Serendipity uses in the quiver, right? I don't think I've used them but I'm very tired.
Michael
You have both powers available at full power, yes.
Jeff
Full of drug-induced vim, he'll read the clouds on the drive, not looking for anything in particular beyond his own near future.
Brant
The only question I have for setting up this scene is, did you picture Marshall and Mitch's visit happening in late afternoon closer to when the workday is over/Kit returns to his hotel room.
I'm ambivalent. It probably does make the most sense that they don't wind up in Menlo till like 2:30 or 3:00 pm. That's fine. I think Marshall is operating on the assumption that Green won't be there when they arrive but he can't 100 percent be sure — maybe Green isn't at SRI today for whatever reason, y'know?
Jeff
"Where do you want him to be?"
Brant
(Oh fuuuuuuuck, love that. I'm gonna need to ponder that a bit.)
Michael
now that's some coke Overconfidence-plus-Serendipity talk right there
Full of drug-induced vim, he'll read the clouds on the drive, not looking for anything in particular beyond his own near future.
Highway Oracle, I love it. Let me consider "the signs," make some rolls, and get back to you.
Oracle: As Mitch grinds through Marshall's superb pharmaceutical-grade cocaine on the long ride from Sonoma to the South Bay, his eyes track the exit signs and sights on the sides of the road. Mitch is driving—after all, it's his Beetle—and the highways are un-congested and smooth during this drive. Mitch's local-level sense of direction is pretty good after years in the Bay Area, and thus he knows the highways and bridges between Sonoma and Menlo Park pretty well.
Mr. Green. What does Marshall want with him? Is he a danger to Marshall or Mitch or Mary-Lynn or indeed SCANATE as a whole? It's right before Mitch merges onto the McCarthy Bridge, right as he drives by San Quentin, that Mitch has a quick flash of what's ahead at the hotel, and it comes from the symbolic combination of two random happenings: 1) Mitch seeing a Greyhound bus departing the pickup area a half-mile down the road from the prison, a couple of presumed now-ex-cons stumbling onto the bus, each holding onto their one bag of possessions, and 2) Mitch nonchalantly flipping the McCarthy bridge toll into the bucket at the toll plaza.
Mitch feels like Marshall is going to set someone free today, but it's going to cost him (Marshall). Not much, mind you: just a little, the metaphysical equivalent of pocket change. The person he sets free is gonna be both happier and less secure: it's a strange feeling for some ex-cons to be on the outside again, after all. Meanwhile Marshall, perhaps a little poorer, will as a result be well on his way to his own destination, riding high over the waters.
Brant
Marshall drums lightly on his knees as "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" comes on the radio. "Where do … oh! Right. You can do that. Haha!" As Elliot Lurie hits the first chorus Marshall sings along for a minute and then laughs again. "Fuck man, we gotta get you a convertible. I've been looking at convertibles recently. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh — where do we want him? Shit. There are pros and cons. If we spot him in the lobby, that is probably safer, we can observe him from a distance, see if he's co-opted. But we lose some of the element of surprise. Walking into your room to find two dudes already there ... that sends a certain signal to people in the Company. It would unsettle him. If you catch my drift. What do you think?"
Jeff
"I think wherever you find him, you'll find him surprisingly eager to divest himself of the burdens you're going to take away from him."
"I find it's easiest to nab them while they're eating. Gotta focus on the food in front of you, when you're eating. Hard to keep your guard up."
Brant
"Man — you can do that? Like, you can have us meet him while he's eating? Fuck, dude. The magic-man. Magic-man MJ. Eating! Yeah, let's join him for dinner in scenic Menlo Park! Haha!"
Michael
The Cardinal Hotel seems like the best option. Been there since the '20s, usually where high-profile Stanford U. guests would stay, and has had a restaurant and barber shop in it since the '30s.
It's pokey even in 1973 (only three stories) but also seems like the right level for a medium-term guest whose bills are being paid by the Corporation.
(Also in the present day it is across the street from the Institute for the Future which I consider a good sign)
Jeff
Yeah, I mean, let me know how (whether) it works.
Michael
Mitch's instincts would lead him to the restaurant attached to the Cardinal Hotel and specifically to two seats side by side at the bar, within view of a couple of cozy small tables in the little brick-lined lounge area. If Marshall wants to come across Christopher Green, this would be the vantage point from which to do so.
Question: Will Marshall stick with his original plan to be wearing SANGUSH and to have Mitch wear GU.SHUB before entering the hotel? Before entering the hotel restaurant? Will Marshall do any of his front desk stuff/Green's room stuff knowing that Mitch has zeroed in on the hotel restaurant for dinner as a place to "happen across" Green? (All these conditions will of course give me an idea of how much of the Visualization bonus to assess.)
Brant
As "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" comes on, Marshall takes off his glasses and looks into them, adjusting his hair. His mind rearranges the set pieces. He assumes until proven wrong that Green is compromised-dangerous-hostile so, yes, use the glyphs until you get eyes on him. Barring unforeseeable difficulty, Mitch will be able to detect whether Green is compromised-dangerous-hostile almost instantly upon getting eyes on Green. Assume, then, that Mitch finds Green is not compromised-dangerous-hostile, observe while glyphed until Green is at a place where he can approached. Then, remove glyphs and approach.
"Wait, did I just say that out loud?"
Michael
Okay. The wearing of the glyphs for the scene will give you each 1 Corruption. And I need to make some rolls to see if/what Green sees once he comes in the restaurant. Once I've done that we'll get into Mitch's rolls.
Jeff
"Nah, man, you're fine." Mitch accepts another point of Corruption.
Michael
At about 5:15 Christopher Green (or at least a man looking identical to the figure in the CIA file Marshal received) walks in. He waves to the bartender, who comes over to the side of the bar adjoining the brick nook and says to Green, "Evening, Doc! The usual?" Green takes off his sunglasses, adjusts to the dim lighting of the bar, and points at the barkeep, saying, "You got it, Tony." Green sits down at one of the two-person tables near the fireplace and takes out a copy of the Chronicle he had in his hand under his sportsjacket on the way in. Body Language-17 for Marshall, and Mitch may fire his divinations when ready.
Jeff
Aura sight first
>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 2
>> DETECT … SUCCESS by 4
>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS by 5
Detect History B second
>> ACTIVATE … SUCCESS by 6
>> DETECT … SUCCESS by 11
>> ANALYZE … SUCCESS by 0
Juuuuuuust barely made the Analysis roll on Detect, but that's only relevant if there's something to see
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 7
Michael
Okay. I'm gonna put it all out here if that's all right. First of all, there is no History B taint on Green at all, even after Mitch, ahem, concentrates and tunes out the two Anunnaki glyphs the boys are wearing on their lapels. The rest of the bar, both the physical space and the patrons, is free of taint as well. Green's aura is baseline human. Mitch sees no evidence of active or passive psi powers here. His mood is fairly ebullient, a cherry-red aura of self-satisfaction and happy-go-luckyness. There's a seriousness underneath it, but this guy is Jocasta's age, in his early 30s, and seems pretty cocksure, like he's got the world by the balls. Physical health-wise he also seems in pretty good shape. Mental health and strength-wise, I mean, even with all this cockiness taken into consideration, he seems to have a pretty high level of mettle. That becomes a little more evident as both Marshall and Mitch are able to notice something about his behavior as he sits down and gets comfortable. Both Marshall's mastery of deciphering Body Language and Mitch's aura sight tells each of them that Green did do a little inadvertent and unintentional double take when he sat down at the table, looked around the bar area a second time and caught sight of Marshall, specifically. But Green also quickly tried to tamp down and hide said surprise. He doesn't seem to be looking at Mitch at all. The barmaid delivers Green a Rob Roy. He takes a sip and gives his silent compliments to Tony at the bar, tipping his glass to him. He settles in to read his paper.
Brant
"Hm." Marshall calculates that Green has exceptionally high mental fortitude to have pierced the glyphs. He'll signal to Mitch to leave the glyphs on, and then to follow as he gets up to approach Green. Assuming nothing weird happens and Mitch follows, Marshall will tap Green on the shoulder and smile his broadest smile: "Rich. Marshall. How are you?"
Michael
"Oh hey... hey! Dr. Marshall Redgrave! I thought that was you but I wasn't sure from a distance, nice to meet you!" He is completely ignoring Mitch; on quick assessment it seems like GU.SHUB worked on Green but the SANGUSH didn't quite do the job. Realizing that Marshall has called him by his workname, suddenly he says, "I'm... well, you have me at a disadvantage, I guess, because I didn't think I had anywhere near the kind of reputation to end up on your radar." He's trying some flattery, and Marshall figures at the moment that it's for one of two reasons: 1) Green might believe Marshall might know him from a professional context—maybe seen Green at a conference using his workname—or 2) Green might be realizing that Marshall is Agency as well—again, given the times, stranger things have happened—and if Marshall is Agency he's here for an official meeting. "Please, please, sit down, can I get you a drink?" He clears off the other chair at the table.
Mitch watches Green's aura curdle from bonhomie to fear.
Brant
"Actually, could we go somewhere more — what room number are you? Let's head up there. You know. Protocol and whatever."
Michael
"Ah, yes. Right." Now he knows for sure. He gulps down the Rob Roy—for courage or for expediency, who can say—and leaves a generous tip in cash on the table. "No dinner tonight, Tony," he says to the barman. "Business calls. I'll call down for room service later."
"Okay, Doctor Kay. Have a good night."
Brant
"Lead on."
Michael
Okay. He heads up the stairs to the second floor, takes out a key, and admits Marshall (and invisible Mitch) to room 207.
Brant
On the walk there, Marshall will signal to Mitch in ASL to drop the glyph when they get into the room. He'll try to do this so Kit doesn't see.
Michael
The room is made up—after all, he's been at work all day—but still some of his dirty laundry is piled up near the hotel room writing desk. There are a couple of bottles of booze on the desk as well: one half-empty Scotch bottle, one fuller bottle of vodka. He pulls out one of the chairs at the table and says, "So. I'm not gonna say I'm... fully surprised." He turns around and sees Mitch standing behind Marshall. "Huh? Who's this?"
Brant
Marshall takes a seat at the desk. "Just a friend of mine. Does some odd jobs for me. Listen: what do you mean, not fully surprised?"
Michael
"I think, oddly enough... it was the Carson appearance. It just felt a bit too much like a public relations psyop to me. The self-immolating soldier touch, that just seemed a bit too pat. It evokes the very first horrors of the war that Western audiences were aware of—the Buddhist monks torching themselves—just as we officially detach from Vietnam? Textbook psyop. Give the American people closure, the POWs are home, let them know the bones have been buried. Did they let you actually torch a vet or did that guy not even exist?"
He eagerly scans Marshall's face for any kind of reaction to this theory.
Jeff
In the background, Mitch helps himself to the scotch.
Jeez, one of these guys, he thinks to himself.
Brant
Marshall chuckles. "Wow — nice. Nice. But yeah, the guy existed. Anyway. Know why I'm here?"
Michael
"Is... is it Carson again? This guy Geller?"
Jeff
Mitch snorts.
Brant
"Close! We'll get to Geller. Kit, I'm here because we're pulling you off the SCANATE project at SRI. We've budgeted the project for the next couple of years so we'll see that through, but we're putting it under new supervision effective today. That's me. I'm that supervisor." He reaches into his jacket and takes out an envelope, in which is the notice of his reassignment.
Michael
Green takes the documentation. Reads through it very deliberately. Nods to himself a couple of times. All the while Mitch's aura reading shows Green's overall level of fear and suspicion... maybe ease up a couple of clicks. "Okay. Thank you, Doctor. I'd be more than happy to give you a sitrep and briefing on the current status of the project now, if you want."
Jeff
Mitch walks behind Green, such that Marshall can see Mitch clearly but Green cannot see him at all. Told you, he's happy to drop his load, Mitch signs.
Brant
Marshall makes no sign that he notices or sees anything.
Michael
Green is trying to be as cool as possible with an unknown in the room; his body language and aura makes it clear he does not recognize Mitch from SRI.
Brant
"Yeah. Yeah, why don't you catch me up. I only just got word about this myself yesterday — and you know, busy with my work at the Mission — so I could only read the executive summary. Pretty wild fucking stuff, man, sounds like. And I knew a guy in Cambodia who meditated by laying on a bed of hot coals."
Michael
"Well, the main thing to keep in mind here is that I was brought on when Swann showed himself able to remote view a target by coordinates. Intriguing, I thought, and I pulled strings at Langley to get assigned to this program. It looked really promising. I'd been spending the past couple of years poring over Soviet and Eastern bloc intercepts, translations of papers and journals on psychotronics from behind the Wall, and of course chasing the usual red herrings across the wide range of American 'psychic' malarkey."
After telling the broad contours contained in that PDF, Green says, "So, given the circumstances of the boys cracking a top secret NSA facility, I kind of figured that someone would be on their way to bump this program to a higher level at Langley. I bet the generals in Army Intel were ripshit at us. But see, these two are the real deal! Especially Price. He just... hits, 80, 85, 90 percent of the time. He's a gift from God!"
"One thing unites both Price and Swann's sight: they're only going to see the stuff that's 'important.' That might seem a frustratingly vague concept but trust me; this bit with O'Donnell's cottage being a few miles from a very juicy RV target only proved it to me. Their minds seek out things with meaning. When you get there, talk to Price about his... heh, 'time-vision.'"
"Targ and Puthoff are expanding the program, using the Company money to recruit and then hopefully have Swann and Price train more folks like Swann and Price."
Brant
“Fuck, dude. And you have confidence in the work? Accounted for biases and cues? Feel good about the security of these assets — I mean, you know they’re not just getting fed intel by the Soviets?”
Michael
"They ran the entire SCANATE program through some very high-level screening after the West Virginia incident. Higher levels than I could get at if it took me 10 years of lobbying and wheedling. The Pentagon were really spooked, man. Security-wise, DIS, Army counterintel and the Bureau went over all of them with a fine-toothed comb. Probably Agency too. And yeah, they found out Swann's a homo and Price is a drunk and Puthoff's a swinger and a pussy hound and all three of them are Scientology freaks but I mean, when it comes to psychic shit, you can't choose your family, you know? All acceptable areas of possible compromise."
"All that ultimately mattered to DIS was that none of them were Commies or dupes, none of them had any strange interludes in their past or mysterious bank deposits, and none of them were gonna make off with the NSA material. All the codes got changed and the units rotated after the breach. And Price and to a lesser extent Swann are now regularly scanning the USSR and coming back with verifiable hits. I mean, Pat came back with that satellite control site in the Urals. HUMINT and SIGINT on the ground in Russia confirmed it up and down the line."
Brant
Marshall whistles. “Hard to argue with that.” A silent pause. “So here’s what’s going on, Kit. Some of our sources in the Bloc, they recently received credible intel about what is going on over here. They had names, a few other things. So, there’s this feeling that maybe we need someone more local on the scene. Keep a closer eye on things. Plus, you know, I have the background. But that brings me to my next question: I need you to think back, recall any strange incidents or behavior by anyone over at SRI? Random people hanging around? Unexplained absences? Just want to make sure I can hit the ground running when I get over there tomorrow.”
Michael
"No, you'll... you'll be a great fit for the program. I'm obviously eager to still contribute however you might need me. Once I get a new duty station—probably back to remotely diagnosing the various diseases of senescent foreign leaders, ha—I'll just be a phone call away." Mitch sees that sickly frog-green of envy creep into Green's aura; not wholly, just a streak. "I've had my eyes on the security over there. I mean, there's all kinds of people in and out of that campus—Stanford grad students, reps from corporations, academics on exchange programs—and given the low profile we're keeping in there, anyone with the ability to waltz into the Engineering building could see any of us walking around—but the files are locked up tight. We keep single copies, on paper, locked in a secure file cabinet in Puthoff's office. We're not connected to the ARCNET or the ARPANET or whatever. All indication that the boys in SCANATE are doing work for intelligence are hidden from the rest of the Institute; as far as they know we're rolling dice and drawing Zener cards all day. We keep our quarterly reports to SRI brass nice and vague."
"But you know... people talk. That's the nature of a private research institute, they want that kind of cross-pollination in research. There's been a few people who've poked around asking questions—internal permanent SRI faculty and staff, of course. I bring up the Augmentation Research Center because a lot of the people on staff over there, including Doug Engelbart and some of the younger system engineers—are into Weird shit like psychic powers and so forth. They'll hang out, try to get Ingo or Pat to talk, take Russ or Hal to lunch. You know these people, Doctor," Green here assuming Marshall's guru act is just that, an act, "they all hang out together, go to Esalen, sit in the hot tubs and smoke dope and get in touch with their feelings. And then there's fucking Harman over in the Educational Policy office. You must know him; ran the Alternative Futures Project a few years back, wanted to feed LSD to every CEO in America?" Kit shakes his head. "It's a real circus over there, Doctor. The best you can do is stay close to the wall and let it all wash all over you, keep your eyes open for diamonds in the rough. Some of these futurist types might end up being of use to the Agency or to the psychic program."
Brant
Marshall looks up at Mitch. “Got any questions for him before we let him go, man?”
Jeff
Mitch signs over Green's shoulder a little more. I told you what my magic told me about him: you are setting him free. If there is anything about that worth asking, ask. Otherwise, no. This man is a small morsel.
Brant
“My friend says you seem pretty relieved to be getting this news — to be taken off the project, that is.”
Michael
Green glances over his shoulder—briefly. And then looks right back at Marshall. "Relieved? I don't know about that. I mean, if all this holds true, if Pat and Ingo keep achieving hits on a consistent basis, then this has to be, well, some of the biggest news in the history of humanity, right? Confirmed psychic ability that breaks down all the barriers between time and space? And the great thing is, you don't really even need to psyop people from not believing it, because it's so inherently unbelievable!" And at this thought Green looks at Marshall, maybe already melting in Marshall's therapist's aura a little bit. "But if I have to be honest here, okay, I am a little relieved to have this big a project no longer be solely on my shoulders. If things are moving at higher levels now at the Agency about taking this seriously, maybe the Pentagon, the White House, the other agencies will accept the reality of it all more readily. If Ingo and Pat are the only two psychics worth their salt in the entire country, well, we've got them, and that means we have to keep them safe. If they're not... well, we're going to need some kind of infrastructure to find more people like this and recruit them. And that's just the kind of testing regime that I think Puthoff and Targ can put together here. I mean, this has been a wild assignment. It's confirmation of just the kinds of things I've suspected for years studying the human brain. It also deserves more than just me hanging around those offices all day."
"Which reminds me, one more thing: don't let the military or the agency regiment this program if you can avoid it. Those boys need space and air and calm and relaxation to do what they do. Pat's pretty much always easy-going but Ingo... he can be a little highly-strung. I think it's one of the reasons he hits less than Pat, he sometimes can't relax and let go. You may think Hal and Russ give them tremendous latitude when you get there and see that things are unstructured, but I'm telling you that's the only way to foster this kind of ability. From my very brief observations."
Brant
Marshall pauses a moment, smile still on his face. “My friend also wants to know what you meant at the start, about Geller. Israeli military, right?”
Michael
Green scratches at his hairline and sighs. "Christ, Uri. I mean, on some level none of this ever would have happened without Edgar Mitchell bringing him to Hal and Russ. I get the impression that Hal and Russ are... substantially more dubious about Geller than they ever have been about Swann and Price..." Green pauses. "And yet every now and again, Uri will do something to really surprise you. So is he a complete fraud? I dunno. There were people at Biomedical Sciences who swore that the powers he'd demonstrated could only be explained if he'd been implanted with bionics that let him sense and affect magnetic fields, bend metal, etcetera. I can tell you I haven't seen any evidence of that borne out from the tests he's allowed us to do. I do note that his RV hit rate is far less than either Pat's or Ingo's and that all his little demonstrations—the spoon-bending, the driving blindfolded, the electromagnetic pushes and sensations—can all be explained away as old stage magic tricks updated for the computer age. Of course it's hard to debunk him; if he is a stage magician, he's once-in-a-generation good at it." Green takes a breath. "I don't think he's a psychic, I don't think he's gotten his powers from a supercomputer in space like he and Puharich say. I think he's a performer with a marked ability to make people think they've seen something. But instruments don't lie, and he's never done anything as impressive as Ingo did that day with the magnetometer. Uri's good for publicity, for raising funds from private sources, and for inspiring Ingo and Pat to do better, and not much else is my considered opinion."
"As for his affiliations, do I think he's spying on SRI for Mossad? At this point, he's been enmeshed with the SRI program so long there's probably no hope ever of separating them. He does mix with some pretty impressive company back in Israel—Dayan, Yariv, even Golda Meir. Whatever the case, I know for a fact that he's no double agent for the Soviets. Same Agency background checks, and he's done his own SCANATE-type work for Shin Bet in the past. I think his agendas are personal aggrandizement and enrichment first, serving the interests of Israel second, and then maybe 'discovering and cataloguing occult knowledge' third. Whether the first and the third activities are secretly in service to the second, I can't say. He seems a pretty shallow guy but then again, a lot of spies with public profiles or fame do seem to lean that way, in order to throw attention off their activities. Look at this Carson thing. Builds his reputation as the world's preeminent psychic and psychokineticist."
Brant
Marshall stands up. “Great. Great! You seem like a good guy, Kit. I’ll let you pack up for D.C.” His smile broadens. “But before I let you go, you know, I have to ask: you’re not the leak, right?”
“Like, if my friend here digs around at SRI, or whatever … he’s not going to find something you wish you’d told me today, right?” Smile.
Michael
Green takes this very seriously, and Marshall, having Visualized not precisely this interrogation but one very close to it, feels certain Green's got nothing to hide here (I made a Detect Lies-24 roll for you.). "I've kept everything above board: every report to Langley, the answers to every question from DIS. I've kept a very close eye on the operational side. Even considering everything I mentioned, as loose as this whole program's been, if there is a leak, I'd look on the ground at SRI. Ingo and Pat don't talk to much of anyone outside of work. I don't know what kind of level of leakage you're looking for, but I'd find out with more certainty and precision who's been asking questions about the program, hanging around the offices. SRI is a Defense establishment outfit but there are definitely a small contingent on the SRI campus of leftist university types who might find themselves sympathetic if a subversive or someone in the underground approached them. There's also the possibility that if the Sovs have specific info from SCANATE, well, maybe they have their own folks who can read the odd bits of files from inside shielded file cabinets thousands of miles away, just like Pat did in West Virginia."
"Honestly?" Green suddenly straightens up in his chair as if he's had a "eureka" moment. "You'd probably be best off asking Pat to find the leak."
Brant
"What makes you say that?"
Michael
"He's patriotic to a fault. He's loyal. Dependable. He always seems to be able to find things that are 'important,' and a leak at SCANATE definitely seems to qualify. He knows the human terrain intimately, all the major players. To my mind, it's worth a shot."
Brant
Marshall nods. "Have your secretary send all your files and notes to me; my address is on file with Terry. Sorry that we had to meet under these circumstances, Kit. But you know how these things go." He extends a hand.
Jeff
Mitch moves towards the exit.
Michael
"Not a problem, Doctor. I wish you luck at SRI and please, get in touch if you need anything else."
Brant
Alright, Marshall heads out and to Mitch's VW. He's quiet for a while once they hit the road, clearly a bit lost in thought.
Jeff
Mitch has a thought. A button on the scene, perhaps. "I don't say this lightly. And I'm just saying, I'm not advocating. But I'm getting every kind of bad vibe re Uri Geller …
Is it in the interests of the club for him be walking and talking and going on Carson?
Maybe he shouldn't be doing any of those things. I dunno. I'm getting a vibe."
Brant
"No, I agree. He is still the last major known-unknown in this story. We need to get eyes on him. I imagine we have his residential address, or the hotel he's staying at, somewhere in Kit's files ... we may need to put Jocasta on that. Finding him. And observing him in his off-hours." Another pause.
"The ARC thing is also concerning. Harman, too. I get the impression that our target ... " A pause, he's struggling with something, " ... our target might not have been in SCANATE? That it might be ... adjacent? Sorry, I'm being really scattered here. I'm trying this new way of thinking."
Jeff
Mitch hardly seems to have heard Marshall, as he mutters aloud. "Literally nothing I've heard about him has been good..."He stops short. "Sorry, what? New way of what? The ARC thing, I dunno, that feels like a red herring to me but the last time something felt like a red herring it turned out to be Carl and Richie."