Plans and Visions
August 16, 1973 | Thursday
Brant
Sipping a milkshake, Marshall lays out what he thinks the plan should be:
(1) Black bag Bernadette. As he said last night, he likes the aesthetics of a disappearance: she leaves work late one day, the field team stops her on a lonely isolated road somewhere, toss her in a van or trunk, haul her off to the Mission, where she can be safely housed in the CCRME. Someone else -- perhaps Dave, if we don't want to split the field team up too much? -- takes her car and drives it to Livermore for safe keeping. But ultimately Marshall will leave this up to the field team to handle as they deem appropriate. If someone has a better plan that can accomplish this and the other items listed here, let's hear it.
(2) Establish a fall guy. As Jocasta and Roger both noted last night, we will want to black bag one of Bernadette's male accomplices if at all possible. This guy could be our fall guy for when questions arise about Bernadette's whereabouts. We can use Dan as a backstop fall guy, i.e., if we can't get our hands on one of Bernie's accomplices, we'll use Dan as our surrogate patsy. Dan will need to be "obtained" and isolated on the same night at Bernie's disappearance so that he does not have an alibi, in that event.
(3) Bernie's house. After we abduct Bernie, at least one of her male cohorts, and isolate Dan, we should probably devote some resources to getting into her house and rummaging through her things, if only to get our hands on her glyphs and whatever other History B related paraphernalia she may possess. Maybe this could be happening while Bernie's is locked up at the Mission, being interrogated by (presumably?) Marshall, since we don't necessarily need every member of URIEL observing her interrogation.
(4) Research hellmouths. Sadly, you guys always treated Sophie like shit so she ran away, so we don't really have our "best" researcher available, but some research should be done into History B wyrmholes (to use a W:tA term). Obviously we need to address the site in some way but this particular phenomenon is new to all of us so more intel is needed before you, you know, drop a bomb on the building. Who would be best equipped to do that research? Charley talking to spirits? Jo doing a ton of acid and talking to some Jungian archetype? Roger communing with the loa? Mitch wandering into a library and happening to find a book called, So You've Gazed into the Abyss and the Abyss Gazed Back at You? One of our weird Contacts?
(5) Marshall and Archie need to talk. Marshall needs to have a sit-down with Archie in the Rooster House to tell him what Frank Stanton said about the INDIGO Program and the Next Generation of Freaky Psychic Kids that Frank wanted Archie to mentor or parent or whatever, and how pissed Marshall is that he was overlooked for that role. Also: how best to leverage this intel going forward. But that's also not time sensitive; they can let the meme percolate for a while and discuss things once the heat has died down a bit on this whole Agrigenics thing, IMO. Missing anything?
Michael
me when Marshall does a numbered-list agenda
Brant
90 percent of being a good CIA officer is making numbered lists and delegating things to underlings
the other 10 percent is sadism
Michael
Can I provide, uh, a possibility for bullet point 2 that could dovetail with one of our long-dangling plotlines? The Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders… What if we pinned Bernie's disappearance on Det. Atwood's bête noire.....
Obviously Bernie is not a runaway or a hitchhiker but she has had documented car trouble
Brant
oh that's clever. the only problem I foresee with that is that it might turn up the heat on that investigation which could be problematic for Marshall, depending
Michael
Now Bernie's commute is a little out of his range, but...
Yeah, that's also true, but again... given the vibes in Northern California in summer '73, this kind of fate for a solo young woman is, sadly and eerily, not gonna be too surprising. (What got me thinking about it is that book I just linked to in game-inspiration, please check it out)
Brant
we'll add it to the list of Possible Covers. it's real good! it might be the way we want to go depending on what sort of information we get out of her during the interrogation
Jeff
Roger and Charley seem to have good relations with loa, and loa have information and perspective unreachable to us by any other means.
Mitch can try a Tarot spread on what we're missing, that's worked in the past
Bill
Having an interview with the denizens of the noosphere seems like a great research plan. Papa Legba was pretty forthcoming before. There is a point with the loa where it might get more transactional, though, so we might want to keep costs in mind. Talking about Hell with the Devil seems like s good idea, until he wants to deal for the info.
Also seems like you want to add adopting information hygiene protocols to the agenda of Marshall’s talk with Archie. Letting Archie in on secrets Stanton is feeding Marshall comes with some danger of Archie acting on them consciously or unconsciously and threatening exposure.
Maybe Marshall would want to let Archie make his next call to Frank without knowing too much, keeping it natural.
Leonard
It's numbered lists is it
(1) Black-bagging Bernadette: I'd argue that this should be left to the men of Team Field, plus Dave. I think there's still a decent possibility that Bernadette has some eldritch powers or dangerous defenses, meaning we'd need to have maximum muscle plus some arcane abilities at our disposal. That's Roger/Dave/Mitch. Make sure she's out and stays out before moving her.
(2) Establish a Fall Guy: I wasn't convinced at first of the need for an inside man at Agrigenics and Dan, who is an obvious and easy chump if we need an excuse for Bernadette's disappearance. However, I thought about it, and it makes sense; anyone investigating has to waste time following another lead, and we can also use them as an extra, er, source of information. I think I should handle this one; for the inside man, I can just do the rent-an-office thing for an interview with one of the people on the Agrigenics list, and it should be easier for me to snatch up Dan, because he's already seen Roger and Mitch.
(3) Bernie's House: Agreed with this in theory, but we should be careful here -- how many people are living with Bernadette? If it's more than a couple, this could turn kind of ugly, and possibly attract attention. I don't say we shouldn't do it, I just think we should exercise plenty of caution.
(4) Research Hellmouths: Yeah it's a real shame we were so mean to Sophie and you're stuck with poor me, who cannot research her way out of a paper bag. Anyway, yeah, pursue all options to figure out what the big score is here, but also, don't forget that we can find out shit from Dan just from asking, and from our inside man at Agrigenics with some pliers. Bernadette will be a tougher nut to crack, but both Marshall and I can do mind probes, so we'll get there. Interrogation first, and that will show us the research path to take once we know what we're looking at.
(5) Marshall and Archie Need to Talk: I'm a little agnostic on this because I'm trying to know as little as possible about the situation for plausible deniability. But Frank Stanton is no fool and he's likely playing a double game, feeding Marshall info to see what he does with it, so keep your paranoia sharp. (As an aside, I thought about the Santa Rosa killer as well -- I thought Mike was dropping hints about it with the bad vibes at the truck stop, in fact! I'd agree with Marshall that we don't want to create clues that might ramp up the investigation, but if someone else wants to connect the dots, we should let them.)
Michael
more notes to self for when work calms down:
• capsule descriptions of the Bernadette (and other!) dossiers that Mary Smith requested
• Jocasta's second try at Psychometry on the stuff from the Downer Ranch
• a Mitch Tarot Oracle on what we're missing
• Master Jiyu's letter (I really need a weekend to do this so I can integrate the images from Jiyu's RL book)
• have a think about our commerce with the loa and what they could tell us about Whatever's In the Basement: Roger and Charley chatting with Kalfu, the Baron Samedi, and... maybe even tuning in the Uriel Frequency for the first time?
• plausible deniability on the Marshall/Stanton thing; how and whether SANDMAN might slowly hedge Archie slowly out of URIEL leadership (edited)
Jeff
I've assumed that Jiyu's letter, which came to Mitch in the mail on Monday or Tuesday (according to the timeline you laid out) doesn't contain anything immediately actionable/relevant to the Agrigenics case.
Michael
No, but I've been promising it for ages and I want Mitch to have its insights on hand.
Brant
Marshall grabs a few fries from Roger's tray and counts off action items:
1. Roger and Mitch, with assist from Dave, to arrange for Bernie's abduction.
1.a. Marshall to interrogate. Maybe Jo with assist on that? With their two mind probe powers that's a deadly combo.
1.b. Any proposals for Bernie's male companions? How to abduct one? What to do with the rest? How to get into the house?
2. Jo to acquire inside man at Agrigenics (perhaps Dan?) and also make arrangements for a fall guy, if needed.
3. Mitch to consult his cards.
4. Charley and Roger to commune with their automated personae subroutines the spirits about the wyrmhole beneath Agrigenics.
What else? Thoughts? Ideas? There are no dumb proposals when we're brainstorming, he says, grabbing another fry.
Jeff
There's what, four guys at the Beale Farms house? That's a lot of guys. We could try to pick them off one by one -- guy goes to get lunch, guy goes out to the carriage house, then we ring the doorbell and one guy answers it, leaves just one guy in the house -- but maybe it'd be better to subdue them all at once somehow. Could we somehow get them into a situation where they're all viewing the Redgrave Cassette?
Bill
Roger gives up, gets up, and brings back another large fry and ketchup, and spreads the fries out on the tray.
For 1: Roger lays out where to pick up Bernadette on her commute route. He had a lot of time looking at sight lines driving around her neighborhood, so he can pick a lonely spot. His recommendation is that Dave park near it, Roger and Mitch trail her, and when she gets close, Mitch blows her car radiator. If she takes it as par for her car's current issues, great, Dave can be the first "passerby" help, and we can come up and zap her as they talk. If she senses Mitch's power, Dave will need to block the road in front while we come up behind and zap. I think we can leave the car abandoned: it will be clear she went for help, maybe hitchhiking, and...
For 1b: Glyph up: they've proven they're susceptible. Roger can lure at least one out, or even get into good position in the house under his established lineman cover. Mitch and Dave can approach later, we can catch them in a crossfire if need be. But I'm betting we can walk in and make them Obey. Free all motor functions, fboy.
For 4: Roger is willing to call down Papa Legba or even Kalfu, but ideally, he'd need another to ask the questions while he's being ridden. He could try to do it through private internal conversation, but that doesn't give the loa as total a ride. (I'd prefer running that one in channel, so Mike can feed me info while I get to play the loa; I do enjoy it so.) (edited)
Brant
what day of the week is it again, in-game?
Michael
So this discussion can be happening on Thursday afternoon, so our next reasonable window for action is Friday the 17th of August. Or over the weekend, or next Monday.
Brant
My concern, Marshall says, is with action item 1. Timing, specifically. As you noted, Roger, the clock starts once we have Bernadette. We can’t leave the boys at her place without her for too long, unexpectedly, because they might do something insane like call law enforcement. So do we need to, uh, deal with them both simultaneously? No. But we need to either hit the house very soon after she is detained or we need to hit before she leaves work, and she never gets home to be missed by anyone. That is a lot to ask of you three. Four. He slaps Dave’s shoulder and squeezes.
Leonard
"We don't have to worry too much about Bernadette's boys.," Jocasta suggests. "We still have piles of Halothane, and it worked pretty well at Westercon on a bigger crowd than she has stashed at her house. Once you all pick her up and get her away safely, you could just chuck a canister through the window, or — if we want to foreclose the possibility of them getting wise and running out, where they'd have to be run to ground or picked off — even sneak it into someplace out of the way ahead of time, like a garage or chimney or something, and put it on a timer."
Brant
"Halothane. Right. We have that." Marshall strokes his beard. "You're right. Maybe just confirming all four are in the house and toss in a cannister or two. Then just discreetly bring them out to the van. The area's rural enough that we're not likely to encounter any witnesses if we do it right after she leaves for work on, say, Monday."
"I suppose I could be on site for that, in case any civilians needed to be dealt with."
"Though usually I have my kundalini workshop on Mondays ... "
Michael
On Thursday evening the 16th, I can do the Psychometry rolls for Jocasta and the Oracle roll for Mitch. I already know the parameters for Mitch's reading, Jeff, just tell me what kind of spread you want to do. And Jeff, please let me know how much Corruption you're using for openers for the apple tree branch and the Genesis placard from the Pruist barn, respectively. I'll roll all these secretly once I have that info.
Leonard
I'll stick to just 2 Corruption, I'm hoping the set and setting will do the extra work
Michael
Extra Time as well, I take it?
Jeff
Mitch's usual four-card spread: what it is, where it's from, where it's headed, what it all means
Sometimes he'll pick out a card to be "what it is" but not today
Melanie
After finishing her McShake, Charley abruptly says, “What about the lower levels of the basement? There might be worse things then the pod. Oh maybe they have bodies down there.”
“I wonder if LO would know?”
Brant
"I think it's safe to presume," Marshall takes the finished McShake from Charley and hands it to Dave to dispose, "that the basement's lowest levels are filled with things worse than just the meditation pod. But I am, ah, extremely hesitant to loop in your new 'friend,' Charley. At least at this juncture."
Michael
Jeff
Mitch groans when he sees the Tower and groans again when he sees Judgement reversed. "God damn it. Can't ever be anything easy... okay, well." Deep breath, tap of the Nine of Coins. "Nobody who does their own laundry would wear a robe like that outside. We're forgetting the money, the substantial money behind Agrigenics."
He moves on to the Tower. "The money comes out of...bad vibes? I dunno. I look at that tower and I see a whole series of shitty choices and small bits of bad luck coming together to make a disaster. You can't control the weather but you can avoid putting a big damn crown on top of your no-safety-railings tower you decided needed to be at the very edge of the cliff, there. Red Cape and Van Dyke, there, they could have planned better... I'm sure the original source of the money isn't an insurance payout, so, it's a disaster on our end. It's History-B, those jerks, infiltrating systems. Infiltrated, this isn't a new thing.... I dunno, I think I'm missing something on this one. This is one of the shitty cards. Never good when it turns up."
"Looking at these two together, the Nine and the Tower, somebody got rich out of it. Profited in the face of trauma. War profiteer, maybe? That guy's got a falcon, which is a rich people, old-money kind of deal, aristocratic. Maybe we should be thinking in terms of the fault lines that run deep. Maybe Agrigenics money originated with the slave trade or something... Nah, that doesn't feel right. The disaster is old, but it's not that old. Holocaust? No, Holocaust was too personal, this is a big slow systemic catastrophe. I'm sure the Holocaust felt like that to the people in it, but that's not how the...the cards...would read it." Mitch scowls.
"I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it because this guy is blowing the get-off-your-ass horn."
"Upside down, you see, the bodies are just falling out of the coffins. Somebody didn't latch the coffins! Somebody was just, oh, I'm gonna sit around and read the paper, I don't have to do my job, I got time, and boom. Rain of corpses."
"Sitting around and doing nothing, that's the specific thing we need to avoid, here. This isn't a watchful-waiting kind of scenario."
"We need to get on the horse and go riding for answers." Mitch taps the last card. "Pay bribes if we have to. Coin of the realm. Talk turkey, get your hands dirty, go in. Move fast and break things, like the assholes say. Don't let the grass grow under our feet, because there's a window and it's closing and if we try walking instead of riding on a swift horse, we'll miss our chance and the bodies will start hitting the floor."
Mitch looks up warily.
"I mean, that's what I'm seeing here."
Michael
I'll add some annotations of course but if this is a Tarot reading canonically being done among the empty Big Mac boxes and fry containers (before Jo goes home to dose and read her objects), if people want to interject, that's fine too.
Jeff
If we weren't reasonably confident that Agrigenics isn't SANDMAN-affiliated before, Mitch is now. If the disaster were close to home, a family thing, the cards would've indicated that. Not to say OZYMANDIAS can't be tangentially related, but this isn't a Uri Geller kind of deal, it's somebody else making a play. Somebody bad.
Michael
The shades of meaning in my interpretation roll for Mitch are still to come and may give some additional info, but this conclusion was the big one I had ready to drop on you, so glad we're simpatico
Jeff
The difference between the Tower and the Devil
Michael
But I would say that between The Tower and Judgement reversed there is plenty of apocalypse energy here. A sweeping away of what's old and the coming of something new. And the two Pentacle cards, well, the Nine is full of symbols of fecundity and wealth: all those grapes on the vine and the falcon, which is a sign of nobility and hunting (food for the elite). The Knight, well, he's about action but also thoughtful planning beforehand. There is a greater web of interaction, of conspiracy here. Could that web eventually lead to something OZYMANDIAS-related? Well, sure, given their portfolio about bringing on and surviving the apocalypse, but that's not the primary impulse here. The primary impulse is that someone very elite and well-fed is looking to survive what's coming with careful planning. Let's put it this way: if Agrigenics is trying to produce some kind of two-tiered world where the rich get to eat well and the poor get to eat a lot that is not nutritious, they would indeed be a tasty morsel for OZY to gobble up. But Mitch is pretty sure they're not actively part of what's happening now.
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 1
Michael
Cool. I'll continue once we've done the thing here, Leonard. Maybe Jo had an acid flashforward to her reading tonight while finishing her coffee shake
Brant
Marshall is delighted. He loves when Mitch does his Thing. “But if it’s money … I mean, money or resources, we’ve done a deep dive on this place and we haven’t seen anything. Or, at least, we don’t think we have. Whoever is bankrolling this operation — and we know it’s not the Project, at least directly — has hidden their trail incredibly well.”
“I mean, could we … obtain their banking information? They’re not publicly traded, right? Do we know anyone at the IRS?”
(Mike, Agri is not publicly traded, right?)
Michael
It's a privately-held company incorporated in the state of California in 1965. If we want to go deeper into the financials than we have previously (as much as we can given it's privately-held), that's easily done with a Patron roll and/or additional research rolls (Law, Research, Finance, etc.) But they do not have any public shareholders to report to, no.
Will also point you to what Jocasta and others found out: Agrigenics — Operation URIEL
The current board, I can tell you from Jo's previous research, is made up primarily of the folks who did that Green Revolution work back in the early '60s. A cynic might say that after their time toiling in the fields of international democracy and diplomacy, they're trying to get rich off selling new mass-agricultural methods in the West instead.
Interestingly, Chris Butler joined only in 1970 and has a board-equivalent seat as the head of public relations. He's the newest member of the board. One gets the impression Agrigenics formed out of a sense of camaraderie among those Green Revolution researchers and bureaucrats who'd learned hard lessons in the trenches in India and sub-Saharan Africa, etc. This company is no cult of personality; it's a Cold War-era bureaucratic entity. (edited)
Anyway, the upshot of Mitch's reading is that it would be very intriguing to get a look at Agrigenics' own internal long-term planning documents. The idea of History B being involved with this corporation at a deep root level and then Agrigenics getting gobbled up by OZYMANDIAS or at the very least some aspect of the American imperial power structure is concerning to say the least.
(Whenever our sojourn at the Golden Arches is finished, I will continue with Jo's set of Pruist Visions.)
(FYI I'm gonna delete and re-place that first apple tree vision once the McDonald's meal is done, Leonard, just so things flow better for the wiki. We'll keep your successful Fright Check of course. )
Jeff
Yeah, the nine of coins with the tower implies something beyond "capitalism" I just dunno what
Michael
Okay, unless there's any more to unpack here I will repost Jo's first Psychometry result and the math for using Corruption to avoid failure on the second.
Jocasta doses and prepares to spend a long time communing with the dead withered apple branch and piece of the sign. Both the objects have a clear patina of bad vibes coming off of them as the acid starts to kick in; both dead pieces of wood, and while only one has been shaped expressly by human hands, Jocasta can sense the apple branch is the product of a lot of time and attention. Jo concentrates first on the branch and tries to feel out its entire life (and death), trailing backward through the lifespan of the tree it came from, from dead withered specimen to slowly dying apple tree to fruitful part of a productive (way too productive, Jo realizes) orchard to its early days as a graft, carefully selected and bred... the emotions around this tree and all the others is one of love, of care, of true stewardship... but how did they get so fruitful.
Jo knows now. In the fields, all around the apple and pear trees and amongst the vines and the root vegetables, dozens of Pruists happily cavort in the fields, paired off two by two, rutting in the shade of the trees and the mud of the furrows. An old-style pagan fertility ritual, or at least the version that would have come down to the Pruists in late-19th century California. But along with this joyous lustful release from the propriety of the sexual mores of their society, there is a omnipresent feeling of being monitored. Watched. Being made examples of, if the copulation is... not quite up to snuff. Jocasta's acid allows her to see vague spectres of high-level Pruist officials, walking amongst the rows, with ledgers and checklists, watching the "happy" parishioners encourage the plants to grow with their seed and their waters. Jocasta feels a terrible chill go down her spine at this... mechanization of the mystery of sex. Fright Check, succeed on 13 or less.
The sign's history continues to be impenetrable to Jo, but the Corruption and the LSD has allowed for a tiny opening in this opaqueness to allow Jo to go back to witness its strongest emotional attachment. (I rolled a 17, not a critical failure but a regular failure on an effective skill of 17). That tiny window of awareness does confirm, however, that the emotions around this placard are profoundly distressing and horrifying. Jo's acid-soaked brain can just see the corners of this horror. Jo can spend more Corruption to get a spot-on success (1 Corruption to get you an effective 16 on the roll), a success by more than 0 (costing from 2 to 10 Corruption) or a critical success (this will cost you 11 Corruption to bring a 17 die roll down to a 6).
Leonard
Jocasta, tripping more intensely than usual, turns the apple branch over and over in her hands, the dark impulse in her lizard brain creeping up quietly behind her consciousness, urging her: Push it. Go farther. There is so much more to learn. This time -- this time -- she suppresses it. You've been going to that well a lot lately, Joey, and the water is brackish. You're turning into a dirty girl, she thinks, setting the branch aside on her desk.
She peers over at the sign fragment, and picks it up again for a moment. Speaking of dirty girls, she thinks. Sexual Taylorism, all with the goal of...doing what? What were the Pruists to Bernadette, or her to them? Recognizing that her mind is wandering to no good end, as often happens when she's frustrated and unable to correctly interpret something, she again decides not to force the issue, but try one more thing before surrendering to sleep, hoping she's not too far out to do it lest she burn her house down.
Fetching a clean plate from the kitchen (it takes a few minutes), she also unearths from her art supplies a small block of modeling clay and splits it into two. Funny how all these futurist types come up with some way of corrupting or perverting some perfectly natural, normal process and think they're reinventing the world, she thinks idly to herself. She takes the plate, the clay, the two pieces of dead, bad-vibes-soaked wood, and her father's old Zippo lighter onto the back patio. Sitting at the little table set up there, she gazes up at the waning gibbous moon hanging heavy in the sky over Alameda County.
Artemis, she thinks. The moon's avenger. The great huntress. She sticks the branch straight up into one hunk of clay, and the sign fragment in the other, and then flicks open the Zippo, a frisson going down the base of her spine at the familiar metallic click, to light them both. All right, then, Deer-Shooter, Horse-Finder, Friend of Young Girls: guide my aim. She leans forward, puts her chin on her hands, and watches the smoke rise as they burn.
[A knissomancy attempt, obvs, before she and I go to bed.]
Michael
Burning both these pieces of tainted wood feels remarkably freeing for Jocasta. It's clear from the way the copious smoke from each of these intertwine that they were related; not that the Genesis placard was made out of wood grown on the ranch or anything, just that what happened in the fields somehow had to do with the far more horrific thing that happened in the barn. Jocasta is suddenly earnestly and completely relieved that she did not put herself through viewing what happened in the barn. It's my choice, she says to herself, to not subject myself to that directly, to not push myself in ways They would approve of. The knowledge of the tree. I don't have to eat that fruit.
Instead, Jo sees as through a glass darkly. The signs of the knissomancy are much more... suggestive, abstract, not a direct line straight into her empathic centers like psychometry. The sign on the stall at the barn: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." I mean, fuck! That's patriarchy distilled, isn't it; and at the moment they're ejected from the Garden. The Pruists wanted to get back to the Garden, so why are they reveling in this sentiment and putting it where the cows and horses laid down and bore their calves and foals.
Because maybe it wasn't the animals giving birth in there. Maybe it was the Pruist women.
This reminder of the pain of childbirth, literally hanging over the heads of these women who'd nine months before been joyfully (yet under Beale Downer and his factotums' watchful eyes) copulating in the fields, to remind them what: they were no better than the beasts of the field? That their pain had a purpose, a greater purpose? That they were meant to populate the Earth? Their perfect babies, their golden children, the same plan for the future, the same corruption of a natural, normal process as men from the Pharaoh Psamtik to Lt. Col. Anthony Barnes Reinhardt. The babies didn't belong to the mothers, they belonged to the group, to the future. Imagine having your child ripped from your breast to be taken away to the communal creche. Imagine if your baby didn't come up to standards, didn't pass Mr. Downer's requirements for the Perfect Race to Come. What happened to those babies, the ones with cleft palates and disabilities and signs they were not favored by Those Who Provide?
You might well call to the Virgin Huntress Queen, in the night, for revenge, seventy years later and several lifetimes away.
As for Bernadette and who the Pruists are to her, that's a more complex question but Jo now knows on some deep intimate level it's no coincidence that it's a woman with a male harem who has resurrected their mission and their purpose. Jo would bet for a fact that Bernie is on birth control. She's not interested in being a brood mare; she's interested in making the world what Beale Downer wanted it to be, but doing it right this time. There are more efficient ways to make the master race for Their Coming than picking out deformed babies and drowning them in buckets.
Weird how this trip took her to all these frightening places, but Jo feels none of the terror these revelations would otherwise inspire in her. It must be that choice not to use psychometry or Corruption. Jo feels cold, clean, pure: as marble-white as Artemis herself.
Next on my agenda is to present the Agrigenics dossiers of Bernadette (in detail) and the other personnel (in brief) that Butler et al. thought Miss Smith might find interesting. Those will arrive at a drop-off by courier on Thursday afternoon in game time, so if people have anything they want to do on Thursday morning at the office, I'm all ears.
Payable Hours
Jeff
So since our current issue is Agrigenics and its mysterious income sources and sinister agenda, I asked my wife the corporate litigation attorney what she thought, and once she confirmed that it was a) founded in 1965, b) not publicly traded, and c) incorporated in the state of California she had a couple suggestions
One: the information we have includes the identities of the board of directors. Board members probably own stock. Contact one, buy or otherwise get control of their stock, then as a shareholder initiate a books-and-records request which will require the company to vomit up its entire financial structure for our perusal. I told her this was a good plan except that based on watching over her shoulder for the last decade I know books-and-records actions take months to resolve in 201X, presumably they're no faster in 1973.
Also it would be loud
Two: reminded of the need for alacrity and minimal noise, she suggested hitting their lawyers
Michael
(I did intend for Agrigenics to be a bit of a black box so I am glad that I essentially accidentally ended up being right about how opaque American corporate structure was even in 1973)
Jeff
Agrigenics has corporate counsel of record, that law firm will have all the financials stored on site in big 1973 filing cabinets, and that law firm will probably employ a bunch of mid-level associates who will believe a stranger who shows up claiming to be a lawyer for so-and-so who needs to see the Agrigenics file immediately before such-and-such gets back from Tahoe.
Claim to be a high-level tax attorney and low-level corporate attorneys will cower before you. One of them will let you into the records room out of fear.
Her third suggestion was to show up at Agrigenics in jumpsuits and claim to be radon inspectors who need to check the lowest levels of the basement, radon is this new thing in 1973 perhaps
Michael
This is great and makes me wonder why Emily is not in this game
Jeff
Because she has a big-girl job
Brant
I’m taken with Emily’s suggestions in re: lawyers and I kind of feel like that would be a good thing for Archie to handle since I believe he has Finance, Administration, etc. So maybe put that on the radar and we can discuss when Rob gets back?
Michael
So what does Agrigenics' personnel department want you to know about possible consultant Bernadette Fry! Well, they want you to know she's young, but she's an up-and-comer. She graduated from Berkeley back in '69 having taken her sociology degree seriously enough to graduate summa. Instead of grad school and a career as a top research sociologist, or a handsome government sinecure in one of Dick Nixon's newly revamped and revitalized federal social service agencies (thank you, LBJ and the Great Society), she decided to feed the world. She took some of Agrigenics' founders raw data and early research on the impact of social class on food distribution and nutrition (and nutrition's impact on social class) in India during their work in the Green Revolution and published some groundbreaking studies in both academic and agribusiness research journals. And she decided to resurrect an old Northern California health farm colony for the branding of her organic label Beale Farms, put together with some simpatico colleagues, all fellow nutrition/agriculture nuts.
She's now brand president for Beale and a sort of researcher-without-portfolio at Agrigenics HQ. She gets involved in marketing meetings, she can talk to the research wonks, she ferries messages on "visionary futures for agribusiness" to the board once a quarter. One foot in the past, one foot in the future, this gal. Oh, there's a quote on her file from one of her papers in one of those research journals:
"Everyone on this earth deserves fresh, organically-grown, nutritious food, not just the wealthy or the geographically-privileged. With the Beale Farms label we hope to bring health and good life into millions of American homes in a coming era of both faster food and food poverty."
It's funny they don't give her a higher profile, because Jo did the research on Bernadette once we got her name, and the types of business journals she was looking at weren't the ones that published academic papers. For a PR guy, this Butler dude is lying down on the job. Unless Bernadette and Butler are trying to keep her profile low. Odd.
The majority of the other folks Agrigenics send along as possible consultants have worked with Bernadette on past projects; they're a sort of de facto "silo-busting" (not sure if Harvard Business Journal has invented the "silo" and its "busting" in '73) team of quick thinkers and researchers. They'd be a perfect unit for a company looking to utilize Green Revolution-type ideas in North America.
Um, anyone who's reading this batch of files when it arrives on Thursday the 16th who has Intelligence Analysis can roll that.
Leonard
>> CRITICAL SUCCESS
BOOM
Michael
Jo, staring into space: I AM THE RESEARCH
Jack Kirby dots bursting all around her
Leonard
It really pays to keep up with the alumni association newsletter!
Michael
The way the other files of this "strike team" unfold, Jo gets the feeling from sub rosa references and off-hand scuttlebutt and the like, that much of the rest of Agrigenics (or at least its younger employees) considers Beale Farms either a lark, or a joke. Like, a reference to how Bernadette founded this little label in Berkeley in '71 to put her (implication naive) ideals into action and insisted when she got headhunted that Agrigenics buy it as well; they were a package deal. Could be internal politics, could be institutional sexism. Could be both, could be nobody likes Bernie at Agrigenics but they have to respect her because she's tipped for the top. Some seem to have a modicum of genuine respect for her but... these are all men. Bernadette is the only woman in this division of the company. Again, this is maybe 80% between-the-lines inference by Jocasta. But she's seen institutional fuckery of the gender variety since she came in from the cold and joined this man's army. It's a tricky assessment.
Like, people praising her? But also sounding kind of sarcastic about it.
Leonard
So, kind of treating Beale Farms like a little pet project they don't really care about but that is getting a pat on the head because it's a favored employee doing it? Or more like they don't personally like her?
Michael
I would say there's envy mixed with disbelief mixed with edging-from-healthy-to-unhealthy rivalry. This is corporate capitalism, after all. But again, all the evidence is pretty subtle, all told. Like, a piece of internal PR on Bernadette included a bit where Beale Farms was parenthetically referred to as an "upscale vanity (health food) label," which from the Bernadette Files is decidedly not what Bernadette professes to want Beale to be.
Dismissiveness, belittling language. Jo is sensitive to it.
Brant
>> SUCCESS by 2
Can't imagine getting anything better than what Jo got but eh, why not.
Leonard
LOL that's so thematically appropriate
Michael
Marshall sees in these files, amidst the makeshift org charts and project reports, a bunch of young moldable kids with Bernadette as their queen bee. She does not have them enslaved and emptied out (like the description Roger and Mitch gave Marshall of the Beale Boys). But it's clear from the text that good or bad, everyone there is still thinking about what she has to say. That tantalizing mention of her being considered "a visionary." Sure, she doesn't get the press of the boys, but that's perfectly natural in a situation like this... and a sign that Bernie probably isn't using glyphs or NLP or memetics at the office. Or if she is, it's a weird kind of SANGUSH that gives negative attention.
(I needed Marshall's internal monologue to be like "Sexism? Sure, but what else would you expect at a corporation, come on.")
Leonard
"Well, I looked over the files on Bernadette, and I think I found something pretty interesting, if I could..."
"Let me take a look at that, little lady"
Brant
"So she is decidedly not a pawn, but she is also not the King. The Queen, perhaps? The most deadly piece, kept in abeyance until she is needed? That doesn't seem right to me. Bishop? Knight? I'm getting Bishop vibes."
"That would make Butler the Rook: one dimensional, but in that dimension, powerful. Formidable. Stolid. Like a castle. Which makes sense: he's a company man, right? Can he castle with the King, do you think?"
Leonard
"I think Bernadette is playing chess and the rest of the board are playing checkers, that's what I think."
Brant
"Clever girl. Bernadette, that is."
Michael
(I was thinking since we're getting into corporate politics/structure stuff, along with the aforementioned Emily Ideas About Getting Into Their Financials, maybe we'd let Rob/Archie catch up on some of this stuff upon his return before moving too far on? But if Roger, Mitch, or Charley had anything to add of course, or if Jo and Marshall want some more banter over it, feel free.)
Leonard
I'm good to wait, Jocasta's next move would be to fill in Archie anyway.
Michael
Point 4 from our Marshall agenda above, "Research Hellmouths," is something we could move along if and when Bill and Mel are ready. I put it in my notes as "Have a think about our commerce with the loa and what they could tell us about Whatever's In the Basement: Roger and Charley chatting with Kalfu, the Baron Samedi, and... maybe even tuning in the Uriel Frequency for the first time?" But yeah, we have options here as well for intel gathering of a less materialist sort.
So the opportunities for further discussion and research in-character prior to our springing a trap to black-bag Bernadette and deal with the other Beale Boys are: • discuss ramifications of finding out that Bernadette is not particularly well-respected at Agrigenics, due to her ambition, her pet projects, her being a (mouthy) woman, because of mind-control shenanigans or some combination of the four • the aforementioned discussion of What Charley Saw briefly in the Astral (and what Jo saw when she touched the basement elevator button) and how we could use other loa or entities to investigate further • how best to process Stanton's phone call; definitely wouldn't be a bad idea for Rob and/or Brant to refresh themselves on what exactly was said: it's at 55:00 to 1:09:40-ish in the M7S3 recording • and then I think if right before our next live session, we sort of come up with the bare outlines of the black-bag/Beale mission, we can have that series of action scenes comprise most of M7S4.
Leonard
Sounds great to me. We can RP out Jocasta’s info dump or we can just assume she wrote everyone a memo about it like the dork she is
Michael
has jocasta done any research that i’ve overlooked — or found anything in her prior research — about the history of Agrigenics’ HQ building? like when it was built, whether it was Agrigenics that built it or whether they bought it from another company that formerly used it as its HQ? can we get building or architectural plans for it from whatever government office they’d be filed in?
Marshall ruffles through the copies of the architectural plans that are part of the rapidly-growing Agrigenics file at URIEL's office. Designed by the LA firm Albert C. Martin & Associates, who usually ply their trade in the Southland, it's a sleek late modernist design— maybe even edging into postmodern?—and evocative of other big glass towers popping up all across America the past few years, including the infamous I.M. Pei-agency designed John Hancock Tower boondoggle in Boston (known to locals as "the Plywood Palace") that can't stop sending panes of glass onto poor grubby Bostonians below and which honestly might never get finished. Martin & Associates have always been bold—Martin Jr.'s dad helped design LA City Hall, after all—and all the PR on the Agrigenics HQ makes sure to mention its "space age" designs and whatnot. It was specifically designed for Agrigenics to occupy.
This is the first in a planned "development zone" on the outskirts of Vacaville, hoping to lure scientific labs, freight warehousing, and corporate HQs looking for wide open spaces to settle into, right off the highway. Agrigenics and a couple of warehouses (unrelated to Agrigenics) are the only ones to settle on Aldridge Road so far but local Vacaville city councilors are hopeful there will be more throughout the '70s.
The plans for the building show fittings for lab space on floors 4, 5, and 6 and basement levels 1 through 3. The loading dock goes right to a staging area on floor B1 (please note neither Mitch nor Charley in either of their explorations got far enough on level B1 to find out where this loading dock hooks up to the rest of the building). There are separate elevator banks for the above-ground and basement levels (as Jocasta saw first hand) which is an unusual design and seems to have been fitted in against the architects' wishes. Some talk is given in the plans filed with Vacaville that this was done to keep the basement levels "quarantined due to laboratory necessities" but not much else is mentioned. The Agrigenics HQ has proper local and state permitting for using animal subjects in their building, as well as permits for limited food testing and manufacture in their lab spaces, as well as for "biomedical facilities" and hazardous materials shipping and storage. These include but are not limited to the storage of liquid nitrogen, gaseous oxygen, natural gas fittings for laboratories, and other hazmats used in food science and preparation.
(Architecture as a skill defaults to IQ minus 5—I'm not sure if anyone actually has it as a skill—and as Brant mentioned, it is an "intense looking building" so if Jo or anyone else wanted to try Occultism after looking through these files, anyone in URIEL is welcome to try either skill.)
Remaining (possible) text scenes before we get together in person to actually hatch the Bernadette kidnap/Beale Boys neutralization:
talking about what Jo discovered from the Agrigenics files (if there's no interest in hashing this further out in-character, we can cross this out)
"hellmouth research": Roger + loa, Charley + various oracles and entities, Marshall (and/or Mitch) at SCANATE to get those weirdos to scry at/around Agrigenics, the Beale House, and/or the Downer Ranch site
Jiyu's letter (will start this this weekend, I swear I swear)
Marshall/Archie op planning/reaction to the Stanton call (I feel like we need a code name for internal use for this ad hoc op of Marshall and Archie's... any good ideas, the two of you?)
actual planning of the black-bag: this is the most crucial part and we could do it over chat (my preference) or at the outset of our next live sesh, but I want the abduct/interrogation to be live for the excitement factor
Leonard
I assume everyone is caught up on what Jocasta learned from the Agrigenics trip, the files, and her own trip, so I don't think we need to play that out in chat unless someone really wants to. But I'm ready to do the black-bag planning whenever y'all are.
Michael
She's going to assume (paranoia!) that the Colonel is still monitoring her, so she'll wait until Friday morning and then quietly let Marshall and Archie know about the call. She'll transcribe it as exactly as she can.
Friday morning conversation in the Rooster House between Jo, Marshall, and Archie? And since we now know our next live session is next Monday, we should get the entirety of URIEL planning the Bernadette op in this chat afterwards.
Brant
“It seems too coincidental, which is par for the course for us, so it feels like it should be connected,” Marshall says. “It could be the meme. It would surprise me if it’s moved that quickly but who knows what sort of channels the King of Kings has running through the organization. Maybe he’s coming to informally feel you out about Archie. Or me. Maybe he wants you to keep an eye on things here for him. Or maybe it’s entirely unrelated to anything we have going on. Anyway. Be wary.”
Leonard
"Understood. Should I try to draw him out on anything beyond what he already wants to tell me, or just answer his questions?"
[Also, as an aside to Michael: I'm assuming that even if she doesn't let on that she knows he's actually been an inside man i URIEL, Jocasta thinks that the Colonel knows about SANDMAN's work and can speak with him -- albeit generally -- about History B matters. But is that wrong?]
Michael
[You are not wrong! I had always envisioned the Natural Guard as fully clued-in into the reality war and a part of SANDMAN. I haven't fleshed out the specific training or defenses that a typical Guard unit might have that differ from standard SANDMAN operations or detachments, but yeah, call them functionally a SANDMAN operation. The Guard's primary mission and focus is developing human potential but it's in service to keeping History A safe.]
Brant
“Well, he must want something from you. Why else arrange to meet with you? Play it by ear, I guess. But get your lies straight about Charley, and the chip especially. He may be coming to town to … collect.”
After a pause, he snaps his fingers. "Though maybe now would be an opportune time to hand off the disk. The disk with Houdini on it. You could wait until the end of your dinner -- or whatever you're going to be doing with him -- and tell him that the team found it, and doesn't know what to do with it, and you're handing it off to him because he's the only one you think you can trust ... "
Leonard
"Oh, yeah, good thinking. I'll give that a try when we wrap up," says Jocasta, quietly thinking, It shouldn't be hard to sell, I barely know what the fucking thing is myself.
Michael
What's the plan for Bernie, gang?
All I need is the barest outlines so I can plan a little for next Monday night.
Leonard
Jocasta still thinks the best plan is to have the boys grab her while she (Jocasta) picks up the other strays, but she's also happy to help plan the Bernie grab with Jeff and Bill.
Michael
And the overall plan was, abduction on her way to work some morning? Or on the way home?
Bill
Originally we’d discussed it happening on the way home, that is, not in broad daylight. Would the boys even miss her, or go out for pizza again? Seems less risky than having her work miss her.
Brant
I believe the plan was to pick her up on her way home after work. Then take her and her vehicle to the Barn. We also need to de-alibi Dan Miller by isolating him somewhere — perhaps the Mission — that evening so that we can potentially frame him for her abduction or murder later. OOC, I think I’d prefer we not split up the field team too much for this one. I know we want to nab one or two of her boys as well, but I think Bernie has tricks up her sleeve and I’d prefer to go at her full bore with the entire field team. Once she’s safely at the Barn we can figure out how to snatch one of her boys later.
So Marshall would probably propose all three field team operatives abduct Bernie after we arrange for Dan’s isolation somewhere first. Like, isolate Dan that afternoon then fetch Bernie on her way home from work. Deal with the boys later, but not much later because we don’t want them calling the police before we deal with them.
Michael
Okay, cool, so we'd spring this early next week in-game, Monday the 20th or Tuesday the 21st, given Jo's meeting with Reinhardt is over the weekend.
Which means it would fall to Roger to get in contact with Dan and get him to the Mission over the weekend while Jo is meeting Reinhardt?
Brant
well he is roger’s asset
Michael
And we were thinking something like a road crew/detour kind of thing to get her off-track and vulnerable to an ikoter hit while she's driving?
Brant
that i leave up to the boys.
Leonard
-I get wanting to bring the full weight of the field team to bear on Bernadette, but if there's any chance she gets away, we don't want her connecting any dots re: Jocasta. She'll go if she's ordered to, but I don't think it's a great idea.
-She can, however, pick up Dan pretty easily, since he knows who Roger is and doesn't know who Jo is. If the feeling is he'll come in willingly, that's fine too (although as a fellow paranoid, I have my doubts he will), but if we do have to pick him up, I think Jo can do it with less risk.
-Are we still planning on picking up some other mid-level Agrigenics VP? Jo's set up a framework through which we can do that pretty easily, too, but if that's too high a risk factor (two Agrigenics execs disappearing on the same day), I'd be willing to junk the idea.
-Bernadette's boys, I think, should be treated like they're dangerous but not too dangerous. The risk is, there's a lot of them, but the benefit is, they don't seem to have it on the ball too much. We should take them out soon after nailing down Bernadette so they don't spread the word, but I think just hucking a bunch of crowd control at them should do the trick.
Michael
Hey, if we need extra muscle, we always have the promise of the commandos that Frank Stanton offered us (edited)
Leonard
I guess Jo's overarching message is, we've done our research on these people, and it would be naïve to assume they haven't done the same, so force is a consideration, but so is exposure.
Michael
Okay, I think we have enough of a loose plan to manage Bernadette at the beginning of the next live session.
Leonard, I would like to do Jo's dinner with Reinhardt over the next few days and if Roger is okay with Jo honeypotting Dan, we can just give Miss Menos a very busy weekend/Monday. We know Dan's commute to Agrigenics and routine so we could, say, nab Dan in the morning of the Bernadette op and Bernadette in the late afternoon?
Leonard and Mel, (and the rest of the group, but this is a Jo/Charley pair of plotline possibilities here for tomorrow night) do you mind a bit of GM advice on a few different ways to handle the Beale boys that would pretty naturally follow from Jocasta's tactical evaluation upon reading Mitch and Roger's surveillance reports?
1) Jo and Charley go to Dixon while Mitch and Roger are handling Bernadette on her way home from work. Charley uses one or the other of her remote control powers to mess up the secret lab's power supply and/or gather more information/intel before we spring part/option
2) We use Padden and Hall and maybe officers from that brand-spanking-new fed agency, the EPA, to investigate this weird lab in this small town in Solano County. Full-on raid, investigation, and we keep tabs on it via Padden and Hall and/or taking over the investigation (because there are "Army security implications" because some of the lab equipment is Army-grade.
3) Halothane.
Option 2 is Dominoe again, basically. (edited)
It worked there with way more in the way of possible opposition from the local community.
Melanie
I’ll let Leonard make the call. I’m cool with any of the options.
Leonard
I'd be good with letting Charley fuck around with their power supply and/or gather more intel, but when the rubber meets the road I think we just pull the plug and drop a Halothane canister down the chimney. #2 has way too much risk of exposure, too many people involved, just too many moving parts. Render them confused/powerless with a blackout or something similar, flood the house with gas, and drag 'em and bag 'em. They're isolated and weird and probably won't attract any attention for a bit, and we wanna reduce as much as possible the risk of anything going wrong.
Michael
Sounds like a plan. Hit 'em around 7 or 8 maybe... late enough that you'll have cover of twilight, but not so late that they're starting to worry about Bernadette not having come home yet (she could be working late). Also hopefully by that point one or both of the other extraction team will have gotten free from the Bernadette op to help you get them out of there. Figure it'll be a late night. We can worry about where we'll hold them—I think the Barn really only canonically has space for a few prisoners—tomorrow night... make a Patron roll to get ourselves another military base with a few empty cells, that kind of thing. Getting into the building also gives us an opportunity to do more in-person snooping and picking through their effects. Modafinil, down the hatch.
One good thing about the Beale Farms house: neighbors would be used to vans pulling up weird hours because of their business, so moving large parcels out of the house on a warm summer Tuesday night won't arouse too too much suspicion.
So while I look at the route from Agrigenics to Bernadette and the Beale Boys' house, I see this shit which is NOT helping my paranoia
Now, they weren't there in 1973, they were in Richmond. But they have been called Lemuria Nursery all along apparently!
Anyway, hi. This game still finds ways to freak me out.
Picturing Bernadette making an unexpected stop on the way home at a farmstand and Mitch and Roger ikoter her like Solozzo's men getting Don Corleone while he was shopping for oranges