Mitch Befriends a Cop
Michael
Mitch comes into the Engineering Sciences complex at SRI around 3 on Wednesday afternoon after a whole lot of driving and Detecting. On a purely FP basis, he's refreshed but hey, sitting on your ass for an hour and a half in a VW bug is no relaxing spa weekend. The SCANATE receptionist ushers Mitch back to the offices where he tested and interviewed yesterday, gets him a general campus pass/Engineering complex that expires in six months, and gets the information for his pay. All this doesn't take much more than a half-hour, so when that's done he's ushered back to "the bullpen," the area where SCANATE personnel hang out when active experiments aren't happening. It's a larger office room with a couple of couches, a cozy corner with bookshelves or two, some suitably abstract and occult prints on the walls (it doesn't look like a hippie den on the Haight, rather like a modish psychotherapist's office) and a couple of sturdy old steel office desks with some filing cabinets nearby. In the bullpen when Mitch enters are Puthoff and Price bantering in one of the couch corners and a man Mitch has not yet met sitting at one of the desks sketching something on an artist's pad in charcoal pencil.
"Mitch!" Puthoff bounds towards Mitch with his hand out for a handshake. "Welcome. You met Pat the other day," handshake handshake, "and over here is Mr. Ingo Swann." Swann's voice, quiet and measured and somewhat musical, floats in the fluorescence-lit office's air, out of place amongst the bluff hearty (over-)masculinity of Puthoff and Price. "Mr. Hearst, a pleasure, we've heard a lot about you." No sign of Mary-Lynn or Targ.
Jeff
Aura checks all round w/ the handshakes. Mitch's habit of pausing, holding his partner's hand for exactly one second, then releasing, makes his handshakes seem oddly formal perhaps but not worth remarking on. He's from Alabama after all.
Puthoff first.
>>>> SUCCESSES
Michael
Puthoff and Price's auras don't look much different than they did earlier this week. Both of their moods are convivial, and physically Puthoff still looks in good shape and Price still looks like a 55 year old man with 30 pounds extra who drinks whiskey and eats steaks on the regular. Price's psychic aura is powerful; Mitch can even tell this without him having any powers activated right now. Ingo Swann's aura is indigo, like Charley's and Anna Turner's. It is cloudy, misty, swirling like a lava lamp. It's the aura of someone who is highly sensitive, an artist, of a great imaginer, of someone who can and needs to engage in flights of fancy. Mitch would not be surprised if Swann were naturally synesthetic. His psychic potential and/or power is tougher for Mitch to gauge. It feels like he has some form of power but it doesn't express itself in as straightforward a way as Price's or Mitch's. Mitch wonders if his artistic ability, his creativity, and his psychic powers are tied together necessarily in some way, like he can't use one without the other. Mitch also wouldn't be surprised if he had some kind of passive aura sight. An odd duck, Mitch has never seen an aura quite like this one.
Jeff
"What have you heard?" Mitch asks, one eyebrow raised. "I'd try to be funny, say 'it's all true, I really do enjoy hiking and play guitar,' but I should probably know before I commit." Mitch is feeling a little anxious, more than he would otherwise, because of his sense that Swann (and perhaps Price for all Mitch knows) may have some hidden sense of Mitch's emotional state or horoscope or something.
Mitch makes a mental note to try to follow up with Anna about Ingo.
Michael
Ingo fairly purrs, "Well, they," he sort of shrugs in the direction of Price and Puthoff, "say you're accomplished in peekay, and want to try to reproduce my magnetometer hit. Or maybe make some matchbooks sitting in a shielded room catch on fire from across town. I'm sure that could be verrrry useful for the Company. Have you concentrate on some important filing cabinets in Moscow and whoosh!" Ingo is out here just sort of broadly referring to the CIA. Pat and Puthoff both kind of shoot him a look. Ingo's aura turns a sickly green, a sign of envy or bitterness or cynicism.
(I was thinking about shielding one's thoughts and emotions, and I remembered that Charley took some mental defense Skills, part of the Indigo Program, and it turns out you can use one of them with Default skills! I'll paste in Mind Block.)
Jeff
"That'd be something, I suppose. Starting a fire on the other side of the world." Mitch takes the CIA reference in stride, as he is already part of a secret government-funded operation that exploits his psychic powers to advance policy goals.
"This seems like a pleasant little hang-out space," he continues, indicating around them with a tilt of his head. "Is there coffee?"
Michael
"Help yourself," Price says, gesturing over to a half-empty, seemingly long-simmering pot of coffee on an office Bunn model coffeemaker well on the other side of the bullpen. "In fact, and I know I probably shouldn't this late in the day, I'll join you, MJ." Pat helpfully shows Mitch where the Styrofoam cups, Coffeemate, sugar and Sweet 'n' Low packets are while Ingo returns to his sketching and Puthoff sits on the couch leafing through what looks to be an issue of Source, the Scientology magazine. "Don't mind Ingo," Price says in a low tone, "he's just in one of his moods," Price inflecting that final word with a just-this-side-of-cruel camp lisp that says volumes about how he feels about the artist-psychic. In a more public voice, Price says as he pours the coffee. "Where do you hail from, Mitch? I was guessing by the accent Georgia, Alabama, maybe Tennessee? Somewhere in that general area."
Jeff
Mitch imagines, for a second, cooking Price's heart inside his chest.
"Heh, you've got the ear. I'm from Huntsville originally."
Michael
"You spend enough time as a cop, you start to pick up on accents, regional slang, that sort of thing," Price says. "I mean, I'm not saying you boys from the South are more criminally-minded, heavens no," Price says with a chuckle, putting lots of creamer and sugar in his coffee, "just, you know, you gotta know who the out-of-towners are... where they might end up going to ground." Price takes a sip, eyeing Mitch. "What do you do for work, MJ?"
Jeff
"I'm a night watchman over at Livermore Labs. Out by Altamont, you know? Great hours."
Michael
Price nods. "Oh, that's great. You thought about maybe an eventual career in law enforcement?"
>>> CONTROL PYROKINESIS = SUCCESS
Mitch doesn't try to hide his disgust. "No, man, that's not my scene. Night watchman keeps an eye out for fires, is the main job."
"You were a 'cop' then, right?"
Michael
"Ah, the younger generation. Well, don't worry MJ, I retired because that wasn't my 'scene' anymore either. All joking aside, it's not a job for everyone. Takes a lot out of a man if he's not careful." Price starts walking over back towards the couches and Puthoff. "Ah, I see our princeling Dr. Hal is boning up on his ell-arr-aitch."
"Just something to read," Puthoff says, sort of disgruntledly putting down the Scientology zine. "The latest issue doesn't have much on when the LA Church is going to finally start spending money on us again up here in the Bay." Price says, "That's because I told you, they're done with us up here. All the money is flowing into Hollywood right now. That's where Yvonne and the Commodore are focusing their attention. The movie stars, Hally. That's where the moolah is. San Francisco's full of kooks and burned-out hippies and weird scientists like you, my friend. Not exactly bursting at the seams with cash. You're no Robert Redford." Puthoff says, "We're doing so much real research into all the things that would prove LRH's theories correct, right here, and they leave us meeting in the basements of Unitarian churches." Price winks at Mitch. "Sorry, we're speaking the 'secret language' of the Elect, MJ. You ever come in for a free personality test?" Mitch isn't sure if Price is being wholly ironic here about Hubbard and Scientology here but he's definitely being partially so.
Jeff
Mitch shakes his head. "Something about cans?" he hazards, then chuckles as if he realizes how silly a thing to say that must be. "I don't know much about Scientology, except the name sounds kind of dumb... though I could say the same thing about Freewill Baptists. Wouldn't have thought a 'cop' would be into all that...?"
(Price using 'us' when referring to Bay-area Scientologists ratchets him up a little in Mitch's esteem, from a 4 to a 6, on a 100 point scale.)
Michael
Price laughs his booming—maybe even overcompensating?—laugh. "Oh Mitch, you gotta understand something very important. When I first started getting psychic flashes, I mean, I had no idea what to do or where to go or even what to read. This was back in... '60, '61. It was a very different world back then. You probably don't remember, you couldn't just walk into a bookstore and head to the occult 'n' paranormal section unless, well, you were in a bookstore already appealing to that stuff. But you know who was on the shelves of the book aisle at the local drugstore? L. Ron Hubbard. And then I was lucky enough to live in a city with a Dianetics/Scientology center. And I cleared the first few levels and, yes, did plenty of auditing: the "cans," ha ha. Clarified my mind. Gave me a modicum of control. And hey, the Church caused me to collide into Hal here," he points to Puthoff, "and as I recall it's where Ingo met Hal as well." Ingo nods wanly from his sketchbook. Puthoff says, "Plenty of my colleagues have gotten into Buddhism, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, ufology. But Scientology actually has methodology that lets one let go of traumas and get closer to full control of one's psychic abilities. We don't use Scientology tech here at SRI but it'd be less than the full truth if we didn't admit what we've learned in the Church hasn't influenced us. But of course, MJ..." Puthoff says, "we don't have any kind of religious tests here. You can be a Freewill Baptist and work in this program with no problems at all. But if you hear us occasionally slip into lingo that you don't understand, well... best you know where the three of us are coming from."
Jeff
Mitch nods slowly. "Sure. I mean, everybody's got a different path and nobody gets to choose everything about the world they inhabit." He's slightly less tense than he was a second ago, Price's walking back of the cop bluster is working on him. "I haven't been to Sunday services since I was kid," he adds, lest anyone mistake him for a Jesus freak. "Using some tool for, uh, divination, I get that. Shapes the energies, helps you filter the world through your perceptions. I use the cards." Mitch casually pulls out his tarot deck and starts shuffling it in his hands, like it's a habit. "I only ever read the little pamphlet that came with the deck, though."
Michael
Pat's aura flares.
Like, blindingly so.
He staggers back to the arm of the couch and uses it to support himself. "Pat?" Puthoff says.
"Whooo, that was a doozy." Pat very quickly says. "I'm all right. Just got a little flash there." Pat looks into Mitch's eyes. "Those cards and you are the real deal. I can tell."
Pat is truthful when he's saying that he got a flash from Mitch shuffling the cards. But Mitch can also tell he's hiding something else, something more meaningful about why his aura flared and he got knocked for a physical loop.
Ingo has come over and taken an increased interest. "Tarot, eh? Hal, we've never included any kind of protocol for cartomancy in the program because you said traditional methods of divination were too imprecise, too prone to retroactive reading and re-interpretation." Pat says, interrupting, "It's true, I don't know how we'd test this in any kind of rigorous manner. But we could think about it, work it through with MJ here. We've got to entertain a questing mind, willing to entertain all possibilities here."
Puthoff looks at Price and then at Mitch. "All right. I still want to try some PK experiments with you, MJ, but if Pat says these cards and your ability to interpret them hold real power and potential, well, let's just say I've learned to respect Pat's hunches over the past few months."
"I'll work with him," Pat says, maybe a little too quickly. "I know what you're after, Hal, don't worry. In a few weeks we'll have the kid finding Soviet missile sites using his best friends Rider and Waite."
Jeff
Mitch is legit nonplussed; he expected some kind of reaction to pulling the cards but nothing this intense. Jo's Missionaria Protectiva act succeeded pretty well, apparently. "It can be tricky, the cards. You have to...I don't know if I could get, like, longitude and latitude out of them. We can try something, though. Uh, something simple and falsifiable."
What Mitch has in mind is as follows: Price picks a number between one and ten, writes it down and shows it to Swann and Puthoff. Mitch then uses his oracular/serendipitous power to divine the number, shuffling and pulling the X of Swords, Cups, Pentacles and Wands off the top of the deck, where X is the number Price picked.
He'll lay this experiment out, warn in advance that he won't be able to do it more than the one time today at least, and see how it lands with these guys.
Michael
"Okay. I'm game." Price tears off the back page of the Source and grabs the charcoal pencil out of Ingo's hand. He toddles over to the breakfast counter with Puthoff and Ingo and after some low muttering, writes a digit on the paper, and puts it inside an empty box of Red Rose teabags, seals it with a bit of Scotch tape, and walks back over to Mitch and his wicked pack of cards. "So.... you pull, then?" Price says.
Ingo is watching Mitch's hands shuffling very closely.
Jeff
"Yeah, hm, I guess it could look like a card trick, couldn't it? Here, you want to shuffle a bit?" He stops shuffling and offers the deck to whoever wants it.
Michael
Ingo takes it. He very carefully feels the edges of the cards along the whole deck, looking for forced cards, does a couple of unorthodox cuts, and then five full shuffles. "Should be all right," Ingo says, hanging the cards back to Mitch.
Jeff
Mitch cuts the deck and draws four cards.
"C'mon," he says aloud as he does, "don't embarrass me here."
Michael
So, a one-charge use of Serendipity?
Jeff
Sure!
Two mendicants in a snow-storm pass a lighted casement.
Divinatory Meanings: The card foretells material trouble above all, whether in the form illustrated — that is, destitution — or otherwise. For some cartomancists, it is a card of love and lovers-wife, husband, friend, mistress; also concordance, affinities. These alternatives cannot be harmonized.
— A.E. Wait
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
A posse of youths, who are brandishing staves, as if in sport or strife. It is mimic warfare, and hereto correspond.
Divinatory Meanings: Imitation, as, for example, sham fight, but also the strenuous competition and struggle of the search after riches and fortune. In this sense it connects with the battle of life. Hence some attributions say that it is a card of gold, gain, opulence.
— A.E. Wait
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
A disdainful man looks after two retreating and dejected figures. Their swords lie upon the ground. He carries two others on his left shoulder, and a third sword is in his right hand, point to earth. He is the master in possession of the field.
Divinatory Meanings: Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonour, loss, with the variants and analogues of these.
— A.E. Wait
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
Occult explanations attached to this card are meagre and mostly disconcerting. It is idle to indicate that it depicts min in all its aspects, because it bears this evidence on the surface. It is said further that it contains the first allusion to a material building, but I do not conceive that the Tower is more or less material than the pillars which we have met with in three previous cases. I see nothing to warrant Papus in supposing that it is literally the fall of Adam, but there is more in favour of his alternative--that it signifies the materialization of the spiritual word. The bibliographer Christian imagines that it is the downfall of the mind, seeking to penetrate the mystery of God. I agree rather with Grand Orient that it is the ruin of the House of We, when evil has prevailed therein, and above all that it is the rending of a House of Doctrine. I understand that the reference is, however, to a House of Falsehood. It illustrates also in the most comprehensive way the old truth that "except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it."
There is a sense in which the catastrophe is a reflection from the previous card, but not on the side of the symbolism which I have tried to indicate therein. It is more correctly a question of analogy; one is concerned with the fall into the material and animal state, while the other signifies destruction on the intellectual side. The Tower has been spoken of as the chastisement of pride and the intellect overwhelmed in the attempt to penetrate the Mystery of God; but in neither case do these explanations account for the two persons who are the living sufferers. The one is the literal word made void and the other its false interpretation. In yet a deeper sense, it may signify also the end of a dispensation, but there is no possibility here for the consideration of this involved question.
— A.E. Wait
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot
Michael
An exchange of raised eyebrows from the three men. Pat walks over to the tea box and hands it to Mitch to break the seal on and open.
(IQ roll from Mitch.)
>>>> SUCCESS
As Mitch looks down at the deck and flips it over, he can see the Five of Cups was nestled right next to where Mitch pulled the Tower from. Mitch doesn't have a good explanation for why his usual Serendipity came up a bit short, but he is in a room with two psychics, one of whom is quite powerful, and of course it's possible that psi fields are rubbing against each other causing perturbations in Mitch's ability to work his will. But Mitch didn't notice a flare in either Ingo's or Pat's auras when he was working the card magic. The three men await Mitch's opening of the box with the number in it.
Jeff
Mitch turns the deck, so that everyone can see the five of cups, then with a rueful shrug he opens the box.
Michael
A big numeral "5" is written in charcoal pencil over an ad for a Scientology book. Pat shrugs. "75% is pretty good in our line of work, MJ." Puthoff says after patting Mitch on the back.
The fluorescent lights above the four men's head flicker for a moment, then steady.
Jeff
"Don't like that tower. Usually portends something unpleasant. I mean, look at it."
Michael
Ingo nods. "Of course, but... you weren't using the deck to divine, per se. You were using it to give your subconscious a way to express the number you sensed on the sheet of paper. Right?"
Jeff
"Mmm. Not the words I'd use. I used the deck to make something happen. I didn't know the number until I flipped the cards over, but I knew the...context."
Michael
Price looks at the Tower with real sympathy. "It's still a hit, MJ. Three fives are still a majority of the cards. Not bad. I bet with further training things will get sharper." He's trying to be encouraging, but given Mitch's relative knowledge and power levels, it might feel a little condescending.
Jeff
"I suppose." Mitch scoops up the cards he laid out and puts the deck back into his jacket. "Anyway that's me trying to do something that doesn't lend itself to after-the-fact reinterpretations and justification, since foretelling the future tends to attract skepticism..."
I want to try a Detect, right here and now.
Michael
Go for it.
>>>> ACTIVATE = SUCCESS
>>>> PERCEIVE = SUCCESS
>>>> ANALYZE = SUCCESS
Jeff
Successes all around, crit on analysis if there's anything to analyze.
Michael
Before I paste all this in, are you sure that's a crit on the analysis?
Jeff
Shit, maybe not.
The effective skill for analysis is straight IQ for Detect, so 14.
Michael
Okay, still an MoS of 9 which is impressive. But it does change the amount of info. One sec.
Jeff
BUT is there any way I can after-the-fact cadge a +1 for taking time or looking weird? I swear I always forget to think about that. Ugh.
Mitch is def not afraid of looking weird in front of these guys.
Michael
Yeah. 1 point of Corruption. And I would call for a Corruption-to-Disadvantage roll because you're kind of due for one.
Jeff
Sounds fair
What do I need to roll?
Michael
Okay. First I'll paste in the crit result. Then we'll roll.
There is a concentration of History B energy in the fluorescent light bank above Mitch's head. It is that trademark "dip" that Mitch was talking about with Archie, a deformation, a warp in reality. And as Mitch peers into the deformation with his mind (Mitch is not physically peering up at the lights—which again, only flickered for a moment after he drew the Tower and the "5" was revealed—in front of Hal, Pat, and Ingo, he's just pushing his Detect ability at them), he feels the unmistakable presence of a nascent, unformed, yet very possible Irruptor. It's not fully manifested, it's not physically embodied, it's just... somewhere along its way to being retrocreated. The full set of circumstances haven't yet been realized but with this critical success roll, Mitch is realizing that both something going on within this building where SCANATE is based and something going on elsewhere on SRI's campus are both contributing to the ongoing retrocreation of this Irruptor. The whole campus is part of the matrix that will birth this Irruptor. It's also watching Mitch right now in its unformed, embryonic, potentialized state. Your Corruption is now 45. So you'll roll against Will minus 4 (12). If you succeed, you don't convert 25 of your Corruption to a 1-point Disad. If you fail, you do.
>>>> SUCCESS
Okay, so the Corruption sticks around.
Jeff
In the fluorescent light, you say
Michael
Fright check for being watched by an unformed Irruptor?
Pass on a 13 or less (rule of 14).
>>>> SUCCESS
Michael
So is that your Fright Check result, 8 (plus 1 for the MoF, so 9?)
Jeff
I meant it as the check for Uncontrolled pyrokinesis (heating up the light, would have been cool) but as you like. Or I can roll again.
Michael
No, let's keep that. It's the next roll needed. One sec, let me check against the Fright Check table.
So that's either a 1 second stun or a condition of my choosing since the trigger for the Fright Check was setting-specific... it does seem like a lot of these Madness Dossier conditions seem a little serious for the circumstances... but an automatically-failed attempt to lash back at the monster in the electrical system does seem cool. You want to hit the fluorescent tube with Pyro?
Jeff
Sure
Michael
Inanimate objects resist with HT, and I can't imagine the HT of a fluorescent light is very high.
Jeff
A quick contest then
>>>> PRYO-16 … 3d6 = 14
>>>> im just a lamp y r u doin this 2 me
>>>> HIT-6 … 3d6 = 14
Michael
So 12 HP of damage (spontaneous combustion)? 2 x 6?
Jeff
Oh, sure. I was going to say, it's only 2 HP, but no, you're right, if Mitch is doing this as a result of a failed Fright check he'd fire both barrels.
Michael
I think that's going to melt/cause gases to expand/shatter the bank of lights. I can't reason using the Object rules in Campaigns that a fluorescent tube would have more than 12 HP
Jeff
I wouldn't think so.
So, are we fleeing the building as the fire alarms go off, or rolling to avoid being burned by hot spattering glass, or...?
Michael
Well, there's a loud pop and a flare of flame from the ceiling as those lights explode, showering the four of you with glass. No appreciable damage from that to any of you, although Ingo and Hal sort of dodge out of the way. Pat doesn't flinch. There's a fire extinguisher in the corner of the bullpen and Pat runs to grab it, aiming a jet of foam at the ceiling and putting out any remaining flares of flame/smoldering acoustic tile. After the craziness of the moment passes (and Mitch's second or two of fugue/stun wears off), Hal and Ingo have backed themselves across the room, their auras fearful, while Pat just stands there with the fire extinguisher tank in his hands, his aura steady: if anything, Pat is more unguarded than he has been up to this point, sympathetic, feeling bad for what he sees as obviously Mitch's "uncontrollable" powers' fault. There are no alarms going off either in this room or elsewhere in the building, but there's an abiding smell of burned metal and foam in the air. It's at that moment that Russell Targ pokes his head in the bullpen. "Quitting time, gents!..." and his eyes goggle behind his huge eyeglasses. "Uh... everything okay in here?" Pat holds his hand up and says, "Just fine, Russ. Light bulb." He points up at the bulb with the nozzle of the extinguisher. "In fact MJ and I were about to go grab a drink down at Andy Capp's. We'll see you guys tomorrow."
Jeff
Does this building have an automatic sprinkler system?
Michael
I would imagine they would have to, considering it's a federally-funded lab, even the break areas. They didn't go off in here, though. Either Pat moved fast enough or... well, they just didn't work.
Jeff
I think it would take them a bit to kick on, as they respond to ambient temperature (I'm told), so yeah.
"I didn't mean to do that."
Michael
Puthoff says, "Of course not, and I mean, there's nothing that says that was a PK effect..." But Pat seems even more insistent on getting Mitch out of here and away from... all this. "You wouldn't mind grabbing a beer, right? Long day."
Puthoff says, "Of course not, and I mean, there's nothing that says that was a PK effect..." But Pat seems even more insistent on getting Mitch out of here and away from... all this. "You wouldn't mind grabbing a beer, right? Long day."
Jeff
"Beer sounds great."
Does Mitch think the History-B taint has gotten worse compared to the trace stuff he sensed yesterday, or that this breakroom is a better vantage point to sense it, or some third thing?
Michael
Mitch only used Detect once the energy had focused and pooled and concentrated itself in the light above his head. If he were to use Detect again now, on the way out the building with Price, he would get the same vague diffuse concentration in the walls and wires that he got yesterday—maybe even now a little weaker.
Jeff
Ok, interesting
Michael
So no, it hasn't gotten worse or built up at all, it concentrated itself in one part of the building's electrical system.
Jeff
The taint shifting in response to events in the present would seem to shut down the residue-of-the-distant-past theory, as the present affects the future more readily than the past.
Michael
"I'll drive," Pat says as they get to the parking lot and his Buick. "Bring you back here for your car after we've had a couple. I don't want those boys poking and prodding your head right now."
Jeff
Mitch is a little annoyed by Price's paternalism but mostly he's distracted fretting about History-B and how it suddenly seems a lot more proximate than it had as recently as five minutes ago.
Michael
(I picked Andy Capp's in Sunnyvale mostly because it has the Pong machine but it also feels like a real dive bar from the description, the kind of place by the name and reputation a guy like Price would feel welcome in.)
Pat seems to be a regular—he's greeted by the bartender—and he gets the two of you a small table in the corner. Pat gets himself a Hamm's draft. "What're you having?"
Jeff
Mitch, an experienced 1973 beer-drinker, will have something appropriate from what they've got on tap. Some IPA, maybe.
Michael
"Ah, a connoisseur," Pat says with a smirk. He brings the pair of brews back to the corner table and smiles. "Before I say anything else, I just want to tell you that I have a story to tell you. It may not mean anything, you may think I'm an utter fucking looney-tune when I'm done with telling it—more of one than either Mr. Swann or even the absent Mr. Geller—but I'm gonna tell you so we don't have it between us while we're working together. Savvy?
Jeff
"Okay. I mean, if you want to say a thing." Mitch is visibly ill at ease, glancing around, checking auras and Detecting, because he doesn't want anything else sneaking up on him today.
Michael
Give me one set of rolls for each ability. I'll type out Pat's spiel.
>>>> SUCCESSES
No unusual auras in Andy Capp's, no History B anywhere to be seen.
Jeff
Listen you never know when a bar back is going to have a memetic demon riding them.
Michael
"So this story dates back to when I was still a pretty green detective. About thirteen years ago. I worked out of the Burbank bunco division. And I started having, well, visions, for lack of a better word. Flashes that came first while I was sleeping, then when I was awake. At first they were vague. Then they started getting... more specific. Like I was seeing through someone's eyes while they committed... terrible acts. It makes me sick to even think about remembering them." Pat takes a long pull from his beer. "I didn't want to go to a doctor or a shrink—what if they thought I was a psycho? That I was cracking up on the job? So I started drinking more. At first while I was off-duty, then I'd have a nip while I was in the office, or at my desk, or in the field. A drunk Irish cop, that's a new one, huh?"
"Anyway, the visions started getting more... certain, I guess. I got more sure that they were showing me something horrible happening in the real world. Back then we had a case called the La Cienega Strangler... probably forgotten amidst all the fucking psycho killers out there now, but 13 years ago it was a big deal in LA. Kids getting abducted, raped, and murdered. Sick, depraved stuff, enough to make you want to lose your faith in humanity completely. And I knew for sure who this guy was. Not in the sense that I knew his name or his address or anything, but who he was preying on, how he was killing them, where he worked. And I dithered, Mitch. I sat in bars trying to blot out my mind and make the visions go away, for fear of being called crazy or worse, an accomplice. They 'caught' the guy eventually; shot him in his lair. But not before he killed one more kid. I could've done something. I didn't. And that day I was gonna take my last drink, go to a bridge over the LA Reservoir, and take a header onto the concrete 50 feet below. But I didn't get a chance."
"Because as I was about to do it, I got an honest-to-God visitation from the Virgin Mary Herself. Blessed be Her name."
He crosses himself.
Jeff
Mitch's eyes widen slightly at that. Sharp exhalation of breath.
Michael
"Sure as sunshine, she stood in front of me, surrounded by... pine trees, Mitch. I could smell 'em. I gazed up at her as I lay in the gutter outside that bar on Glenoaks. She called me a fraud, a liar, a phony. That I was hiding my true self from the world and I'd only see the reality—the big-R Reality—behind things when I stripped off my own mask. When I admitted I was special."
Jeff
"Pine trees?" Mitch repeats dully.
Michael
"It's the things like that you remember when you have a vision like mine. The incongruous details."
"Anyway. You mind if I smoke? I might need a cigarette for this next bit." He shakes out a pack of Pall Malls, offers Mitch one.
Jeff
"Sure." Mitch takes a cig. "You don't expect pine trees, that detail stands out when the rest of it blends together."
Michael
"It's all they had at the vending machine in the commissary. I usually smoke Winstons."
Jeff
"Good man, that's my brand, too. So Mary told you to stop fighting yourself and embrace who you really are?"
Mitch doesn't say "I assume Mary told you to stop being a cop" but he's thinking it loudly
In part to drown out the thought "shit what did Jo tell him again?"
In fact …
>>>> FAILURE
Well, I tried.
Michael
Pat laughs. "Of course it is," to the Winston brand reference. "So I understandably start babbling in front of the Blessed Mother, I ask her all this stuff I've been aching to ask God since I was an altar boy, but mostly I ask why the boy had to die, why the world was set up this way, how I would know when to let down the mask. Just... madness. I felt like a kid after his first tab of acid. And she says to me—and I can remember it clear as day because it made absolutely no sense to me at the time: 'At the Institute, talk to the man with the cards. You can trust him with the truth.'"
He takes a last sip of his Hamm's, as if to say, "ta da," picks up his cig from the ashtray, takes a drag. "The last few months every time Ingo's told Russ to shove his Zener cards, every time Hal wants to play gin rummy, my... radar's gone up. But nothing. It just didn't feel... like it was the right moment. But then you come in today and nearly the first thing you do is take out those cards and my senses just go... off. Like a fire alarm."
Jeff
Mitch glances around, uncomfortable like a woman on a second date with an armed man who just told her he's in love with her.
Michael
"Like I said... looney-tunes. But son... my hunches are never wrong anymore, not since that day in 1961, and because of all this, I do think I can trust you."
Jeff
"I'm not sure how to take that, man."
"Do you have a secret? Does it involve pine trees or other conifers?"
Awkward chuckle.
Michael
"I got a few. A few I've been holding back from the esteemed Dr. Puthoff and Mr. Targ and the CIA spook who's been hanging around SRI the past few weeks. I don't know what they mean, exactly, some of the things I've been seeing lately. But one thing that I have learned about my powers at the Institute so far is that I have a hell of a lot less control over them than I thought."
Jeff
Mitch raises an eyebrow. "CIA spook? And... less control? I mean, I didn't mean to do that, with the light. I just was frustrated about the cards and I got spooked by... I don't even know what."
"That doesn't usually happen like that."
Michael
"Another reason why I thought I could trust you, the surge there." Pat chuckles. "I thought... hey, maybe this kid can understand what I'm dealing with here." Pat puts his fingers up for two more beers. "So let's say Hal and Russ want me to focus on a set of coordinates. They're in Palo Alto, and I send my senses out like I've done a dozen times before. I focus and I give them a vision of a huge art deco building with giant towers and beautiful glass windows. But it doesn't match the site—the building isn't there and they call it a miss. But then, a week or two later, I get curious. I look up the spot in the Palo Alto city records and find out it was a water purification facility built back in WPA times that was knocked down a few years back. Apparently it provided clean drinking water to thousands. Had a lot of psychic juice behind it... but it doesn't exist anymore."
"I've surveyed sites behind the Iron Curtain and I'll see thousands of dead Red Army troops spread across the city, smoking ruins and bomb craters... it's clearly a vision of the city during the War. I'll even... I'll even see what are clearly glimpses of the future. My 'remote viewing' will hit the present-day about 60, 70% of the time. Not bad at all, but not good enough for the CIA. They don't care what the most 'important' moment in the history of the spot I'm scanning is. They only care about here and now, for intelligence purposes."
"Russ keeps saying that remote viewing is a 'quantum' effect, whatever that means, that it spreads across both space and time, all four dimensions. All I know is sometimes I'll work hard to find out what's going on now and instead I'll see what already went on or what is going to go on. It's not without its uses. But it's not what the spooks want."
"I signed up for this program, MJ, because I wanted to get better control of my abilities and because I wanted to serve my country. But it seems increasingly like I'm not able to do either. And maybe... maybe that's not ultimately what I'm meant to do? Anyway. The Virgin Mary told me to trust you and to not hide anything from you so... here I am."
Jeff
Mitch has to mull this over. He smokes in silence for a bit.
"I could try to bullshit you, but I feel like you're being straight with me and I don't want to bullshit you. So, without the bullshit, I don't know what to say to all that."
"I believe you, for what that's worth. I mean, I think you're telling the truth as you experienced it. Virgin Mary, I dunno. But I met an old woman up by Mount Shasta who claims she and Jesus were real close personal friends, fifty years back. So, sure... I got a lot of questions I'd like to ask you but I don't know which of them make any sense. I never...I don't know about focusing on coordinates, that sounds at odds with how what I do works, I gotta see what I'm looking at... but that's... Ugh. So, put a pin in most of it. Who's the spook you mentioned? You don't mean Swann, you mean somebody I haven't met, right?"
"Or, no. First question. Yesterday the lab guys asked me where in history I'd like to go. Was that connected to your, uh, past-vision?"
Mitch is shaking his head, not least because he wants to ask about Site C but can't come up with a way to do it that doesn't reveal he's not being totally frank.
Michael
"They did what?" If Mitch explains the two questions, Pat will let out his trademark exaggerated jovial laugh. "Oh... oh my stars and garters. Those two. Well, for the record, I can't actually do anything when I remote view the past or future, so Question Two there is moot. But yeah, I guess they must have changed the intake interview to reflect my tendency to wander across time. Funny."
Jeff
"It seemed weird at the time, and when I thought more about it, it seemed weirder."
Michael
"As for the Agency... If you haven't met Mr. Green yet, you will, and soon I bet. I figure they did a pretty intensive background check on you before you came into the program so I'm assuming I'm not chatting away with a Commie agent about the CIA guy who lurks around the lab, but he's a fussy little prick. I don't like him, I get bad feelings off of him, and I think like a lot of guys in the Agency he's out to pad his bank account rather than actually take the fight to the Reds."
"Maybe a King of Swords type," Mitch muses. "Cards said I should be wary of a King of Swords type, at SRI."
Michael
"I know jack shit about the Tarot, MJ, so I'll need to trust you on this too. What does that King of Swords signify?"
Jeff
"In this case? I mean, there were other cards with it that shaped my interpretation, but..." Mitch pulls out his cards, finds the King of Swords, and shows it to Price. "This asshole. Look at his big sword and his fancy throne, he thinks he's so big. But he's sitting out in the middle of a field and he's not even looking at the birds. Why be in the field if you're not going to look at the birds? He thinks he's in charge and he'll lop your head off if you cross him, but he's not seeing the forest for the trees, he's not even looking the right direction. Something's going awry on his watch, and he doesn't know, and if you try to tell him his first and last thought will be covering his own ass."
"That's not every King of Swords, but it's this King of Swords. I thought it might be Puthoff, messing around with stuff he doesn't understand, but he doesn't seem malicious now I've met him, so I dunno."
Michael
"Aw, Hal's a sweetie. Easily led, having an early midlife crisis, classic case of a bookworm who gets a little money and buys fast cars and re-marries young." Mitch can tell by Pat's estimation this is a series of dismissive insults; the way Hal cozies up to Pat, Pat definitely considers Hal a "beta male."
"And it's not Ingo, this guy seems a little too..." Pat pauses, looks at Mitch, realizes from earlier this afternoon that Mitch is maybe young and liberal and didn't appreciate those "fruit" jokes/references earlier, "Well, Ingo's definitely not aggressive or assertive enough to be this King. Definitely not Russ. Sure, it could be Green... or any number of the other people who have popped in from other parts of the Institute, or from Stanford, or the Pentagon to observe." He pauses. "Could be Uri. That creep."
Jeff
"That's what the cards give me," Mitch adds. "No names or faces, definitely no coordinates. Just... story elements. Character, setting. Like we're putting a narrative together."
Michael
"They may not end up liking your lack of, er, 'scientific precision' in nailing down predictions and projections, but I do think Green is gonna love the fact that you can set shit on fire with your mind." Another pull of beer. "So you said you need to watch out for this King of Swords. Is he after you? Hal and Russ? Is he a saboteur or something? An agent trying to steal information about the program?"
Jeff
Mitch shrugs. "He thinks he's in charge and he's not paying attention to what's really happening, and stuff is slipping through the cracks as a result. I think. The spread I did before was about the whole of SRI, so... Here."
Mitch has been shuffling the deck in his hands while talking. He sets the King of Swords down on the table in front of him, and lays out four more cards, attempting an oracular analysis of the King of Swords element. What it is, where it's from, where it's going, what it all means.
Michael
Nice. Okay, let's get the Oracle rolls all set here. Pat is your "inside man" at SRI, so you'll be "cold reading" him for the Sense roll, and you'll get the +3 for Aura Sight being up. So I'm rolling Fortune-Telling-17, then the IQ roll for interpretation.
What it is.
Where it’s from.
Where it’s going.
What it all means.
Pat sits back with his nearly-empty second glass of beer in his hand. "It's all Greek to me, hoss."
Jeff
"Red Hat, my old nemesis..."
Michael
"Shitfire, you're old enough to have old nemeses?"
Jeff
"Oh, Red Hat has shown up before. He's the fox in the henhouse, taking those swords out of those tents in broad daylight in front of God and everyone. It's weird to see him explaining the King of Swords, though.
Michael
"Enemy agent. Sneaking around."
Jeff
"The first spread, like I said, it pointed pretty strongly to the King being somebody with authority in the project, who wasn't doing a good job stewarding it along. Red Hat is all about taking things.
Michael
"No reason why somebody who's close to being in charge couldn't be stealing. There's a lot of money in this project."
Jeff
"Embezzlement, sure. Or sending secrets to the KGB or something."
Michael
"I know enough about the Tarot to know the next three cards are all Trumps. They're more important cards, right?"
Jeff
"Well, sorta. The tarot deck has five suits, basically. Swords are spades, pentacles are diamonds, cups are hearts and wands are clubs, and then there's the Major Arcana, which is... it's a bunch of stuff.
"The Major Arcana are less straightforward in their symbolism. Like, I know Red Hat." Mitch taps the Seven of Swords. "I know what that's saying, or I think I do. The rest of these you gotta use context clues a lot more. Like, this position..." Indicating the Devil... "This is 'where it comes from,' and in this context I think it means our Red Hat slash King of Swords, our Red King, he's got some organization behind him. The Devil's been around since the beginning. The Devil has his fingers in a lot of pies. The Devil is old and is not interested in hearing your opinions about its doings.
"There's a bunch of Major Arcana that are basically portraits of people sitting on thrones looking smug, and this one is the only one that has chained up naked people and no pants.
"Unwholesome."
Michael
Pat nods. His Hibernian garrulousness is slackening right now; he's rapt at Mitch's performance.
Jeff
Mitch stares at the cards. "I'm missing something. There's something I'm not catching... here." He taps the 7 of Swords, the King of Swords, and the Devil, making a triangle.
He shakes his head and moves on. "Maybe we can get something from the other cards that'll help. This card here, by the way?" He indicates Strength. "This is good news. This is everybody gets a medal."
Michael
"Good news for who?"
Jeff
Mitch taps his nose. He points at the red lion on Strength, and the thief's hat on the 7 of Swords. "This is 'where it's going,' and the 'it' in this case is Red King. Red Hat, Red Lion. He's going to get head scratches from a cute girl. Maybe the Red Lion makes his escape, gets to Cuba or Moscow or whatever with a sack of research notes."
Michael
"Are those head scratches? It looks like she's taming him, like they used to do with putting their heads in the lion's mouth in the circus when I was a boy. Showing she's stronger than him. Or even putting him into place, where he needs to be."
"Anyway, six of one, I suppose."
Jeff
"I see what you're saying, but... I don't think he's the girl soothing the savage beast through force of personality, not this time."
"Partly because of the last card. 'What it all means' is Judgement. The trumpet calling down Jericho, dead rising from their graves, tombs thrown open and buried secrets coming to light. This is the card of Revelations."
Michael
Pat's eyes open wide; that hits him right in the catechism.
Jeff
"Now it's a Red Cross, attached to something bigger than itself."
Michael
"Whoof. So wait, are we talking 'someone exposes SCANATE' or 'someone triggers the Apocalypse' or something in between here."
Jeff
"I'm seeing it as somebody..." Mitch points to Red Hat. "Takes his secrets..." Red Cross. "Back to his masters..." The Devil. "And gets rewarded for a job well done." Red Lion.
"He's exposed in the process, but it doesn't matter, the mole is long gone by then."
Michael
"I guess the question now is... what are the secrets? What's of value at SRI? Is it just SCANATE? Is it one of us in the program? Or something else entirely?"
Jeff
"It's easy to spin it as a spy story, KGB and briefcases. The revelations here, tombs thrown open, they make me want to say it's information. But those seven swords are big old heavy things with obvious purpose, the opposite of secrets, and they're what Red Hat is taking, so maybe not."
Mutants
"Tech."
Jeff
"You can see why I wanted to do something clean and simple and falsifiable, back at SRI, right? Prophecy that only makes sense in retrospect isn't very useful. At best you get a gleaning of what you should be looking out for."
Michael
"Yeah, I do see why now." Price considers this for a moment. "If it's a thing and not information, my mind went to 'technology,' just because SRI is doing so much in that area right now. But our offices... I mean, apart from some of the testing equipment, and Russ's little ESP training machine, we don't actually have a lot of, well, stuff."
Jeff
"And the Devil could be the CIA...or IBM...as easily as a foreign power."
Michael
"So basically we've got to look out for one, maybe two, people, maybe in a position of authority, who are looking to get away with something physical and material for their Devil organization that will bring them great rewards but will also lead to a terrible Revelation."
Jeff
Mitch stares at the cards. "Sure. Maybe. The King of Swords, we didn't get new info on him, we got some info about what it is that he's missing. He's not watching as Red Hat earns a reward from the Devil for stealing...something that leads to the end of SCANATE."
"Maybe next time I can start with one of these pieces, the tech-or-whatever that's getting stolen, or the whatever-it-is that ends, if it's SCANATE or our trust in our buddy Red Hat or...whatever. Unfortunately I'm tapped out for today. Tomorrow, maybe, maybe not. There's a...I can tell when I can do it again, I can't just do it at will. And it's like waiting for a pot to boil, it doesn't just happen on a schedule, it... I'll know when I can do it again. Probably tomorrow or the day after, maybe a few days more than that. One time it was like three weeks, one crazy day it was twice in the same day. Three times?" He shrugs.
Michael
Pat stubs out his cigarette. "Yeah. Yeah, I get what you mean. While I can make it happen more often than Ingo can, I still sometimes come up empty and I can't tell why. Didn't get a good night's sleep, the stars aren't aligned, who knows."
"That's why they treat us with such kid gloves over there at SRI. I come in most days and read and hang out waiting for the high sign from the powers that be. Ingo paints and draws and corresponds with other psis but he also gets out of the office pretty often to get out in nature. Haven't seen the new girl enough to know what her schedule's going to be like."
Jeff
"Yeah. I was hoping to see Mary-Lynn there... tell me, do you know when you can do it and when you can't? Like, not through trial and error, you just know?"
"It's odd."
Michael
"Sometimes it will come on when I'm not expecting it... the vision back in '61, the knowledge you were the Man With the Cards today. But most of the time when I'm doing SCANATE assignments I do a little Zen meditation, let my mind slip away, put the numbers in my head and a vision resolves. Rarely I'll tap out unable to get a strong image in my head. But most of the time I can do it at will."
Jeff
"It's like that with some things. I can see auras whenever, for example. But the divination, no, that's different." Drag on cigarette.
Michael
"What's the deal with auras? I've gotten some sense of them, with what I've read about Kirlian photography, but it's what, the 'life force' of someone surrounding them?"
Jeff
"Sure. I mean, I guess... when I'm looking, I can see whether someone's healthy or sick, what's the matter with them if something is, their emotional state...usually it's nothing you couldn't glean from watching somebody for a few minutes normally. But I can see tumors, implants, that sort of thing. Your aura went whumpf when I pulled out the cards, I saw that, but the way you staggered back was also a clue, y'know?"
Michael
"Tumors, huh? X-ray vision." Pat gulps, his aura goes pale. "That's a sobering thought, to have that kind of power. Kind of like me with the Strangler... what do you do if you find out someone has six months to live? Tell them to go to the doctor and run the risk of sounding like a crank if you insist?"
Jeff
Mitch is silent for a moment. "I've been lucky: that's never come up. I have a friend...she doesn't have cancer, she's diabetic, among other things...I advised her to see a doctor but I wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know."
Michael
"Yeah. Trust me, you get to a certain age with certain hard miles on your odometer, you don't need any reminders that death is just around the corner." Pat stands up. "I'm gonna settle up at the bar—don't you dare take your wallet out—and then I'm gonna take you back to your car, MJ. It's been fun, but I cannot live it up on a Wednesday night like I used to."