The Solstice Party
Played | November 30, 2023.
MIKE
What I have envisioned right now is that Mission 9 will happen in Spring of ‘74 and then roughly we'll go forward about 12 to 18 months every mission after that. And I want to put a lot of the sort of the bigger picture strategizing about how we're looking to change the world. I want that to kind of be happening in the background. And I want the results of each of these missions to kind of inform how that goes. Obviously. But we have big plans now we know. Kind of what we want URIEL to do going forward — how we want to operate — and the kinds of things metaphysically that we want to try to have happen to, you know, change the world for the better against the, you know, diametrically opposed poles of History-B and whatever you want to call the sort of animus urge in humanity the … whatever you want to call that, you know, to plot that path that avoids both of those sort of like forms of tyranny. Okay. A lot of the the sort of big picture stuff that we're doing — the social engineering that we want to do — the spiritual reawakening that we want to unleash upon America and the world … I want you guys come up with big ideas for those that we can implement in those sort of time jumps. And each of the missions that I have planned — and I have five more planned — all of them short — each of those will obviously reflect upon the work that we're doing on the on the big sort of neosphere ontological level. So basically what I'm envisioning is that these next five missions will take us right through to 1980 and that's kind of where we'll end the campaign.
So when I told Mel this, I'm like — if you do plan to come back for the final mission — Charley will be 13 years old. So you'll have to kind of like think about how that's going to have changed her and everything and. She was like, wow that actually sounds really cool. So was really excited about it and I told her a little bit about what I had planned for each of the individual missions and, you know, obviously a lot of the later ones are still kind of in the nebulous form but that's kind of what I have planned. So take for instance, that we kind of roughly planned Leonard which was Jo wants to go and take care of Puharich between Christmas in April of ‘74. That would be very, very satisfying and fun to play, you know, in game — in character — but I think that's the kind of thing that's probably going to happen between missions from here on out. And again, these can be big changes like I've — you know — what I plan to do tonight with with Terence McKenna is kind of like, on a meta level, kind of put forth the idea that we are now in a different timeline and we're going to be changing things the the Alan Watts — the Redgrave gam Gambit, all of the stuff that we've done, that's kind of changed the direction of the timeline from ours, to this unique one. But like I said, like these kind of actions that we want to take, we've got the latitude. We're playing at immortal level. We're playing at, you know, that higher level now, where we have the ability to make changes to the world without having to worry too much about like die rolls, without having to worry too much about the chance factor. But within each of these five missions coming up there will be events that won't be certain how things go. And that's … so there'll be a higher level sort of importance to each of these as we go yeah. I'm fine with, like writing that off screen. I might write a few scenes just for color that's kind of what I'm thinking yeah.
LEONARD
But I'm happy to have Jo just check in with Marshall every once in a while and hand him an envelope with a a new RIP written on it.
MIKE
Yeah, exactly. And if I decide that something does need to be done in character — in the narrative, we can talk, we can negotiate that and talk about that. But you know we have big plans and I guess that's really what it boils down to now, is kind of like, you know nailing down exactly what those plans are, you know? We have Marshall's sort of like after action report to kind of build upon because that was kind of our mission statement, saying like, here's how we're going to do things differently, you know, here is how we are going to handle this. And SANDMAN will have to respect this and have to respect the way we're going to operate from here on out. And, you know, there's still going to be politics, there's still going to be intra-SANDMAN politics. There's still going to be URIEL versus the world. Whether that's the RED KINGS, cults, the remnants of OZYMANDIAS, the folks who are kind of carrying on the sort of the morality of OZYMANDIAS and their sort of agenda, but like there there's going to be opportunities both within each of these missions and in the sort of intermission type stuff to explore that a little bit more. And so, yes I want people's input. I want people’s sort of like proactive plans on what they plan to do. Again, we have the very rough sort of ideas of what where everybody's going to end up going after the new year as far as northern versus southern California. As far as the new jobs that we have, Mitch School, Archie being down in LA, Jocasta and Roger may be working with some of the folks in the American Indian movement and so forth and of course you know Marshall kind of being the head of URIEL in Northern California, taking care of the stuff that pops up there. Yeah I mean, this — it's really cool. I like the ambition of the time jumps and taking us all the way up into the ‘80s. Five mission seems like a lot. Like, we, you know, we've had missions that last almost a year. Like, we've had, I mean, some missions are short and some missions are long and sometimes we're not playing as much as others. I'm not saying that I want the game to end but I like, yeah, it's a long … I want to get back to playing in person like more frequently in the New Year, if we can make it happen. I mean, scheduling is what it is. I understand that. But it is what it is, but I liked like to — my conception is that we get back to like a mission one and two kind of thing, where we meet every two to three weeks and we wrap. We don't do a ton of chat play. We kind of like, leave it on the table in person, doing live play. Like that's going to be — and I could see us having some substantial chat play in between each of the missions coming up. But I kind of feel like I want to do like, I want to do each of these missions in a couple of months, you know like two or three months. you know. Like my vision is that we just play through the remainder of 2024 and kind of see where we are at the end of the of next year. Like that's kind of my my idea is like that. That's kind of where I would like to end. So if I told you it's another 12 to 15 months of game like that's kind of what my internal clock is telling me.
BRANT
What do you feel like needs to happen to kick off — before you can kick off the next mission?
ROB
Yeah, what is the next mission? Or do we know.
MIKE
I'm gonna, I'm holding that under my hat yeah but it'll happen in April of ‘74. What needs to happen before then is basically three things, two of which I put in the channel today, the first is that I really want to get, like a final list of who's going to be a northern and who's going to be in southern California. We're very close to having that. I wanted to do it in character at the Christmas party but that we don't have to like, that's something we can just kind of like scramble and work out but I think
ROB
You’re mostly talking like the NPCs?
MIKE
Mostly the NPCs because we know how the PCs are going to go at this point so that's one two is to do this Solstice thing because again like, that's going to be the sort of like thematic you know pivot upon which the rest of the game will be you know sort of like proceed from there. With Alan Watts being alive and Terence being part of that scene. And the third thing is just basically making sure that Charley gets a good farewell. And that's something I'm going to do over chat over the next few weeks. Basically until we launch mission nine so I want to start all three of those uh things tonight if we can — and again I feel bad that Bill's not here. Obviously, Bill is going to be part of the game going forward but I think it probably would be best if we at least kind of like touch upon on all three of these before we all break up because we're probably not going to be able to get together before the New Year and I totally understand that. To be honest I don't think I'm gonna have the availability to do it myself.
ROB
So the … just the sort of, where the NPCs go that seems like relatively simple. Like, who do we not know where they are?
MIKE
Let me bring up the thing that I put together because there's a whole like thread … just give me a second.
ROB
I actually figured maybe that's not the most important thing to do that just felt like the easiest one.
MIKE
It is the easiest and it's kind of the one that like in character we were going to do anyway. So let me, just see if I can find it. I think if I just look for like one of their names I probably will … let's see OK here we go. OK. URIEL North, Marshall in charge, Dave becomes a SANDMAN we were talking about doing that, is still, uh, Marshall is that still the plan get him full, full-on training at Granite Peak. OK, yeah — Jo part-time, most of the time she'll be down in LA. Roger also part-time, he's going to be doing a lot of like, Roger and Jo I picture kind of being bicoastal. Or whatever … bi-end of the State of California.
With Mitch, Shasta, at his school — his new school. And at Livermore, and Pat Price, and SCANATE, for any of our, like, remote viewing and/or weird tech kind of stuff, URIEL South, Archie bringing Andrew down to work on creative stuff. We talked about Jo there most of the time. Oh! And Viv should definitely be URIEL North. I had in the original thing that she would switch back and forth. I think she's going to stay up in the .. I think it makes sense for her to stick around the Bay Area. But of course she can travel if we need psychological triage or something. Like that … so URIEL South: Archie, Andrew, Jo, Roger (part time), Mystic Kate — if we start needing to do any of the sort of occult stuff in Southern California I think she would be a good person to have there. For our media team, Venture Toons, Johan Xanten, Anna Turner. We do more of the American Indian stuff, we've got Bertha at the Museum down there. Rob, if you were amenable to wanting to bring back Ray Mulligan at some point, that might be interesting given his history. We don't really have, again, with the exception of, well, we’ve got Jo to do the heavy hitting stuff if we need to, I guess. And I think that's everyone we were going to keep. We weren't going to bring Morris out to the West Coast; we were gonna keep Hilary in Boston and I think that's, I think that's everyone.
ROB
Yeah, yeah that seems pretty good — I mean I assume there are other LA Sandmen already, right?
MIKE
Well there's Jolly West. We've already talked about so …
LEONARD
Not anymore.
MIKE
Well again yeah he will he … will be on the Hit List, one way or the other I'm sure.
ROB
Right, so then maybe we like … I'm not sure — it's not so much that Archie's taking over — well, what is the status of LA SANDMAN?
MIKE
Ok, so LA SANDMAN itself, obviously, they got wiped out back in ‘70, ‘71 when Mitch was there. They got rebuilt basically under Jolly West like. That was Operation MORNINGSTAR, I think I called it. And basically it was him, a bunch of heavy hitters doing the kind of like mind control stuff that our universe Jolly West was up to at UCLA at this time. So yeah basically, that was the way, again, like we named our terms with SANDMAN — with the Project and you know, like, how did they do media ops before all this? Well, again, that was mostly headquartered out in New York with Stanton. So if they were dropping memetics into network TV and films, it would have been Stanton working from New York. So he hands off in that sense, even though they probably have tons of SANDMAN-friendly people in the studios and the networks and stuff like that. But this is going to be Archie in LA working with the new technology like satellite and cable to kind of like wrap the whole country and world up in whatever our messaging wants to be. So, like, it's going to be a lot more hands-on. Like it's going to be a completely new operation, right?
ROB
A new operation, yeah. Yeah, so probably — and I don't know if we have to, you know, figure out — name all these people and give them all characters until there’s a specific reason. But I assume that there’s like, he kind of staffs it, brings in a bunch of memeticists, basically just to do a lot of that stuff. People from Granite Peak or people from the last mission — all the people we interacted with. But not indiscriminately, like, people — he’s picking people who don’t seem like they’re OZYMANDIAS and who seem like, you know, they can work with them. That sort of thing. He’s not — we're not reading them in on on our sort of, you know, URIEL’s larger mission. But there’s just a lot of memes to be written and to be dropped into things and stuff like that.
MIKE
So the people who will know that things in SANDMAN’s mid- to high levels have changed after ALLOCHTHON realize that, obviously, Archie's gotten a promotion. That's like officially within Project SANDMAN, he has gotten a promotion and so yeah he's going to bring in his own people. He's going to bring in his own — and you're right, a team so that Archie isn't taking on all the corruption, all the work. But the the realization that Archie will be directing which way that team of memeticists go. And Rob, I don't know if you saw it, I'll re-ping it, but I put together an idea of how it could work, as a — what the cover business might look like.
ROB
Right, tell me again —
MIKE
I think to satisfy my sort of like —
ROB
Yeah, yeah. No, no — we want it, you're right to color in all the the lines, I get it.
MIKE
What exactly he’s doing, so this is — okay, so my idea basically was like a new kind of media company that channels content from one box to another essentially. Like a middleman kind of content delivery kind of thing so — but in this era that was actually happening so like again, this gets me to all my cable TV stuff all the stuff I've been doing research on and this is the way like, as you handle a piece of media — a TV series — a pilot, a film whatever — when it goes from point A to point B you can slip the stuff you need to slip in there. And then it gets off to the to the next person and again like it's gonna, you know, the Mormon contacts will help, the cable industry contacts will help, obviously the fact that we've got some great like cutting edge countercultural content creators to tap as well. So like that's the basically the idea, is that it's going be a very modest business on the outside, it won't look like much but it'll grow.
BRANT
We're gonna get Alan Watts on Sesame Street.
MIKE
Yeah that kind of thing. That's exactly what I'm thinking of is that kind of thing. So yeah, that was my idea if you like it.
ROB
No, that's great that's great. That's great. So, I mean, does that mean that like — how out in the open is it? Are people like saying like, oh gosh, there sure are a lot of shows with the Ransom Productions logo or is it sort of like someone would have to be a conspiracy theorist to say like, hey, did you know that all of these programs … ?
MIKE
I mean in Mission Nine, you guys will be putting maybe one or two different series together. By Mission Ten, Eleven … as the ‘70s go on you're right, there'll be … it's going to grow because esmologically, you'll know where to hit right. You'll know like which creators are going to have the really big successful shows. You'll know financially how to like get tapped into things. So like you know basically it's an opportunity to grow like a little seed out into the entire sort of like media sphere of — again, globally, at some point, it you know it's gonna start in America, but of course just like everything — all media stuff you know starts in America in this era and — yeah, I'm excited because again like my idea Rob is that like in between each of our missions we come up with a couple of pieces of lost media that never happened in our universe So that that's kind of what I was thinking. So that's kind of what I had planned. Again, but between northern and southern California there's still going to be a lot of stuff to investigate. There's still going to be a lot of stuff and that's where these missions will start bubbling up over the next six or seven years of campaign time.
So, big picture stuff — Jeff are you still kind of stoked to put together like the school and to talk about what that might look like when we start Mission Nine? I'll have some like the students that we've rescued from Puharich, some of the other students that we've gotten from other places. I you know the idea being we make this into a a school for Illuminated. Like, that Mitch becomes a trainer of the future generation. We're not going to make them into Golden Children, we're not — well, I mean, who knows what we're going to end up doing with the Golden Language, but like we're more interested in making these people, these kids, into like fully actualized, actual Illuminated so that we can win the war basically.
JEFF
Yeah, the more people who understand the true nature of reality the better.
MIKE
Yes, of course it's kind of fun to think about the fact that they'll all be NPCs. I mean maybe at some point we we say on a metal level this is the next generation of PCS who are coming out of the school but we never play that game you know what I mean like something along those lines where it's like you know those kids become a new club who are kind of entrusted with you know making sure uh our long-term plans uh end up uh uh coming out the right way.
JEFF
As time goes on the boundary between player character and non-player character becomes more fluid.
MIKE
I think if you talked to either Alan or Andrew at the solstice party, those kinds of things would definitely not go amiss. I mean —
JEFF
I have to create some new category of the GM PC.
ROB
Or maybe the goal is to create a world that will be okay without PCs, you know? That we sort of make ourselves obselete.
MIKE
Bill's not here, but I'll just like — I have talked to Bill about this, it was right after Mel said she was going to be leaving, Roger obviously is going to be taking up a lot of the spiritual side of this. Obviously Jo will be as well, but he’s going to have to take on some of the tech side as well. In sense that I had some stuff playing with Charlie that really does need to happen before the end of the game and it's going to kind of fall under Roger’s banner and we haven't worked on his XP yet but we will but basically he's going to be taking a little bit more of a detour into that side of things. But, Jo and Roger are our Spirit Squad, like they are going to be doing a lot of the work when it comes to — obviously Jo's got plans for helping out with some of the memetics when it comes to like awakening people to the New Age or whatever we want to call it, but like we're also going to be doing like purely mediumistic type stuff and obviously Roger's got the power suite for that now. He's got Channeling. He's got Medium. He's going to take a lot of Charley's legacy of doing a lot of the the the tech-spirit, the techno-shamanistic side of things. So he'll definitely have the ability to tap in to some of the things that Charley has investigated up to this point. But for Jo, other than and — again, kind of like trying to envision this world that has a more spiritual bent to it, what do you have in mind personally for her arc kind of going forward?
LEONARD
Yeah, Yeah. She's do her Duty in terms of what needs to be done with cleaning up the remnants of OZYMANDIAS. She'll act as Archie’s second, you know, as much as as necessary. But she's really going to focus on the spirit mother stuff, you know. She's really going to focus on finding out if there can be some — if she can help cultivate something like a new Ghost Dance. She's going to pursue various contacts with the spirit world. I think it's too soon to have an overall strategy for that but yeah, she's really just basically going to be pursuing the idea that the spirit world is real and it's not just real, it's accessible to anyone. That it's one reality amongst many, right? You know, that nobody has a particular call on it and to encourage people to access that aspect of reality, rather than in controlling — like this is a resource that we need to make, to monopolize, the way that OZYMANDIAS was doing.
MIKE
I love it. I love it. And, Brant, again apart from having sort of like, title of being the head of URIEL now, like finding people like Alan wants to bring under your sort of purview, I mean, you're still you're going to go deeper into LA as well, I would imagine, right? Because like you were talking about — you've bought some Advantages to be able to get into Hollywood with the last batch of XP that you bought. So they're still — you're still going to be working that aspect of things.
BRANT
Yeah. Um, Marshall like — Marshall has like a two-prong trajectory in his head, though I think narratively I really do want him to get shot by a random obsessive fan at the end of his arc. Like I would like his character to die by just some nerd who was obsessed with him. Anyway, but in his head, his trajectory is like: one, with Archie ascendant, he can safely like bring his ship into Archie's wake. Like Archie's the big ship now and he's heading in the right direction and Marshall has influence there and knows he's protected. So he's gonna kind of follow Archie's lead and that's going to mean, from his perspective, doing things like I said. Like getting Alan Watts on Sesame Street. You know, really bringing some Eastern philosophy — like radical Eastern philosophy to America through television and media in a teaching way. Like teaching people what it means, how to meditate without using the word meditate. Like really get it in young people.
MIKE
I mean it's kind of ironic because this is the kind of stuff you were talking about when Marshall was on Carson back after Mission One. Like this is the venue I can actually use to, you know, tell people about the kind of things I want to do and now it's on an even bigger scale basically.
BRANT
Right, he wants to bring his brand or a brand of nondual Tantric philosophy to America because he thinks that if you could teach Americans that, they would become — who even knows? Enlightened? Immune to the Anunnaki or whatever? Just like, he's — he was susceptible to it. The irony with him and OZYMANDIAS is like, he’s an OZYMANDIAS guy. He gets it. He’s pro-doing-weird-shit to people because that's what the white ruling class has always done and he's a scion of the white ruling class, and because it's not like any other system is working, so why wouldn't you try this radical shit? It just so happened that they, like, you know, offended him. They insulted him by not looping him in sooner and so … but then that ties me into his second arc and his second arc as the head of URIEL, there are some things that he sees that are like real problems — or maybe real solutions — that he wants to be involved in. Like one of those is like the Illuminated. You know, Mitch's whole thing with the coincidences and all that craziness. There's too many question marks for Marshall's liking right now. Like, I mean Mitch is — part of URIEL’s remit is to do all this Weird Shit, and now that he's in charge we're gonna do this Weird Shit. But we're going to do it and not worry about whether we're like aiding and abetting some crypto-Nazi conspiracy. Like we're the people in charge so let's do the real work of solving this problem.
MIKE
I love it. That's great.
BRANT
And then he'll catch a bullet when he's going to see Cats.
MIKE
Well this is what I'm saying is like 1980, I chose that year for a lot of reasons obviously. Like in both in our universe, I mean like when you talk about getting shot, I think about John Lennon. I think about Reagan getting shot in ‘81. I don't know who's going to be President in 1980 in this timeline — it's up for grabs as we get further and further from the divergence point of the fall of ‘73. This universe's history will get more and more different. So yeah.
BRANT
Like a perfect coda for Marshall if I could even just write it as an EP, even if it became an epilogue, is like, if Marshall can catch the bullet instead of John Lennon that would be that would be —
MIKE
They certainly could be out to dinner that night in December of 1980. One extra guest there to actually take the bullet. Well, you know, it's in my head now so we'll see how how it gets remixed. The solstice party, I think is going to be, like I said, I don't really think — I don't really imagine Archie would go to it. And honestly it probably, I don't know if even — after after everything Roger's been through — trying to get over to the party with the Zebra killings going on that he would want to go up to Sausalito either. But if the three of you — Mitch, Marshall, Leonard — were willing to do a little bit of RP at that party with Alan, with Terence, with other guests, I mean, Viv will be there, obviously. Like, we can do a little bit of that tonight and then I can kind of lead us into how Charley's going to depart.
BRANT
So we're at — are we still at Archie’s party?
MIKE
We can start at the Ransom family party and like say say our goodbyes after we've had our sort of like, after we've had our organizational discussion about where everybody's gonna end up in the New Year, which we just did out of character.
BRANT
So we're gonna go from this party to whose residence?
MIKE
Well it's going to happen at Druid Heights, which is one of the places where Alan Watts has been headquartered. It's been a while since I've been in character as Alan but I've really mostly prepped the Terence stuff for tonight. Now, remind me, obviously everybody who was in the hotel at Mission Four met Terence but has Marshall actually met him yet?
BRANT
No, he has not.
MIKE
He has not had occasion to do so because obviously it was Jo, Viv, and Archie who went over to their house that night to do the mushrooms. So okay, so this didn't really happen in real life because of course Alan Watts died, but the way I kind of pictured the party getting planned was the fact that Alan is celebrating a new lease on life after having been healed, after having been brought back from the brink what he probably tacitly understands as his death that he was kind of careening towards before he was not only physically healed, but kind of like psychologically got the idea to basically break up with … I'm forgetting her name right now because I didn't do enough prep, but his partner at the time who was kind of encouraging him to isolate himself to drink heavily, to indulge in all of the sort of temporal pleasures that were slowly killing him. So this solstice celebration for him, it's going to attract a lot of the the local sort of like followers of his the local neopagans. The North Bay, Sausalito and environs, counterculture folks. I just saw — has Mitch met Terrence? Well, I mean —
JEFF
I don't want to interrupt.
MIKE
No, as I recall you all were on the same side of — oh, no. No, you were on different sides of the game because Mitch was an agent in that — he was a MARPA agent. So he probably was —
ROB
Yeah we all, I mean, we all interacted a little handed upstairs and stuff.
MIKE
Yeah exactly. So I don't think they've got a lot of screen time together, as it happens. So — but obviously Jocasta has, so she's going to kind of end up probably being the main entree into Terence’s world once we get up to Druid Heights. So yeah, this is a nighttime party. Basically it’s an all-nighter. I think the solstice happens at like around 3 or 4 in the morning and Terence is very, very intent on, right now, the comet Kohoutek is really close to the sun, so its tail is really brilliant, but you can only see it in that twilight period. So if people are looking for Terence at 1, 2 in the morning, he's going to be basically waiting for the sun come up on the eastern part of Druid Heights.
But Alan will be the first person to greet everyone and of course he'll greet Marshall and Mitch and Viv with great hospitality since technically it's his party. He's the one throwing it. There's fires and —
BRANT
Sorry to interrupt. Mitch did meet Terence McKenna at the Atlantis LARP at the St. Francis. So they do have that connection.
MIKE
Oh, definitely yeah yeah. Absolutely.
LEONARD
All Jocasta is gonna do is tell them he's a really weird guy, you're either gonna love him or hate him.
MIKE
I mean, she's gotten I think the most face to face time out of the three of you. That's great. So Alan greets the three of you. Alan has not met Jocasta yet so he'll obviously — I gotta start with Alan because it's his party and he needs to greet everyone. I mean he's probably going to come in for a hand clasp and a hug for when he's meeting someone new so the question, the first thing, is: gloves or no gloves before doing this, Jocasta?
LEONARD
Jocasta is being very careful to keep her gloves on. There's probably a lot of weird weird sensations floating around this place.
MIKE
Let me give Mitch a little bit of aura sight since he's got the automatic Aura Sight now. What Mitch can see in the auras of all of these people at this party — well, not all, I mean, everybody's altered in some way, but some people are already on acid, mushrooms. I mean a quick census using Aura Sight would give the impression that about 40 to 50 percent of the young people at this party are actively hallucinating right now. So the energy, the spiritual energy is very charged here. Like, it's the solstice, it's the longest night of the year, there's definitely — Mitch can tell just emotionally that there's a lot of spiritual potential here.
Are there any active psionic or otherwise psychic or otherwise sort of like, engaged with the other side of reality? Good question. Well, first of all there's no History B. I would again assume that Mitch would probably do a quick scan with for History B and we'll just kind of like cut short the sort of rolling of dice and say he doesn't get a sense that any of the belief energy here is really directed in that fashion. But I think what he could probably tell from the Aura Sight is that most of the young people here are really in awe of Alan. Like even if it's just using your Aura Sight or just using a little bit of Body Language afterwards, it's very very clear that … it's almost like people are like re-welcoming him to the fold because he's been so hermitic for so long. He's been so isolated on his house boat up to this point. So he is effusively greeting everybody who comes and if Mitch and Marshall want to do the introductions to have Viv do the introduction for Jocasta, he will clasp her gloved hands and say, making very direct eye contact with Jocasta: “Welcome! Tonight we celebrate the longest night of the year and the rebirth that comes afterwards. I am so pleased to see new faces here, including yours — any friend of Genevieve, Marshall and Mitch is undoubtedly a friend of mine.”
LEONARD
“Well, it's a pleasure to meet you as well. Anyone that Marshall speaks so highly of is a surely someone worth knowing.”
MIKE
He'll chuckle at that and say: “I have much to thank these three for and much work to do with all three of them as well. And I like to think of of tonight as not just the beginning of a new season of the Earth but of a new season of my own life and my own journey. Welcome.” He'll chuckle and say to generally in the sort of direction of Genevieve: “Young Terence has been asking after you, dear. Quite intently. He heard a rumor that you might be coming up tonight. He's very eager to see you.” And Viv goes: “No, I should probably go see him. Does anybody want to come and see young Terence with me?”
Viv says: “I have a feeling that the young people here are enjoying the fruits of his labor and I would like to” — this is after her ego break and dissociation and derealization and depersonalization, she's like: “I think it's time for me to get back onto that horse.” She chuckles to herself. “Does anybody else want to join me in — Jo, would you like to come and receive communion?”
LEONARD
“Oh, absolutely. I have a lot of things to discuss with Mr. McKenna.”
JEFF
“A bit intense for me but, you know, if that's the kind of party … ”
MIKE
Alan says, “It is most definitely the type of party it is. I am still feeling a little bit too fragile from my recent, um, health experiences to go too deep into that. But there are plenty of people here enjoying, as you say Genevieve, the fruits of his labors.”
LEONARD
Before Jocasta goes with them to meet Terence, she's going to say to Alan: “Remember the world that you almost left, with your help, does not have to be the same world that you came back to.”
MIKE
Interesting. I might have you make a roll for that. I'm just gonna have you make a Reaction roll but before you do, make an Occultism roll and we'll see if that gives you a bonus.
LEONARD
[succeeds]
MIKE
Alright so that's a success. Not a crit, so you're going to roll 3d6, higher is better because it's Reaction roll. We're going to add Appearance because he's very taken with you. Let's see, I'm going to give you the conditional +2 for those having psychedelic experiences because you're in the vibe right now. you want to make sure everybody's having a good trip. So that's +3 plus another 1 for the Occultism so give me a 3d6+5 and obviously higher is better.
Yeah that's an Excellent reaction. So he'll take that pronouncement very seriously. “Yes,” he says, “I really believe that you should talk to Terence as soon as possible because, well, I've tried to understand what the young man is talking about and I don't know I feel like he could use,” he chuckles, “I feel like he could use a sounding board to bounce some of these ideas off of. He's been very garrulous this evening. He has that sort of, I would say that gift that comes to the Irish. That gift of of Blarney. That gift of the gab. And he is deep in his cups, shall we say. So, yes it might be a good idea to bring that idea of a new world to him because that's all he's talking about.”
LEONARD
“Well, that’s my cue. Pleasure to meet you.”
MIKE
“Pleasure to meet you as well,” he says with a very obvious to everyone here — including the guy with Aura Sight, and including the people without Aura Sight — very flirtatious manner. So take that for what you will.
Jocasta, Genevieve, Marshall, and Mitch walk over to sort of the bluffs on the eastern side of the Druid Heights site where Terence has a few fellow young people around him, probably around his age, mid-20s. Somebody's playing a guitar just sort of idly, not a really singing circle, there are drum circles here but Terence is teaching like — Marshall can see it right away, he's taking the pose of somebody who's trying to explain things to this group of six or seven kids who are kind of in his circle right now, and I think Marshall should give me a roll to get a first impression off of him. Let's take a look his Skills … I mean, I'd like you to give me a Teaching roll, Teaching-16, to kind of get a sense of how he operates.
BRANT
[crits]
MIKE
That is a crit with 16, right? Indeed it is a crit. OK, so this being the first time that Marshall has really seen Terence in action, what Marshall sees here is deep profound potential. What he's saying is … Marshall really can't make any sense of it. It's not like he's kind of got like xenoglossy but he is, you know, Alan Watts is right. He is very garrulous right now in the midst of what you can kind of overhear, as you guys approach slowly to his circle, you can hear him talking about the I-Ching. You can hear him talking about his time in South America, why tonight is so exceptionally special. The kids, they're listening, he's not doing NLP — that's something I should make very clear. He's not using source code or even the non-source code powered version of NLP. But he's very naturally talented at teaching, at public speaking. He has a great deal of charisma, even though Marshall, again, kind of looks at him and says, “If I saw this kid on the street he wouldn't look any different from 100 other young grad students at Berkeley or whatever.”
As Marshall and the rest of the group get closer they can kind of hear more what he's saying and he does seem to be talking a lot about time.
BRANT
How old is the crowd?
MIKE
Mid-20s. They're a little older than Special One age. They would have been 18 in the Summer of Love. Terence says: “So you see the pattern that I was able to discern between my mother's death and my brother's and my experiences at La Chorrera led me to believe that there would be two more cycles between our experience with the insect teachers and tonight it is why I am here to see the comet, it is why I am here to exist in the same space as all of you, to tell you what I have in mind as far as this acceleration of novelty — this idea that change and novelty in the noosphere happen in great quantum leaps, as if you are talking about an electron going from shell to shell, the energy gets higher and so every time we have one of these realizations that the universe is bigger than what we thought, we end up in a new place, in a very real sense.” At this point he'll kind of take a pause and say: “Genevieve, Jocasta! Welcome, it is so good to see you. I remember Mitch from the science fiction convention. Dr. Redgrave, I presume? I don't believe we've met. Come, please, sit and share of our fire. I'm probably talking too much for everyone here and it would be good to have someone else's input on the great things that are going to happen at this solstice.”
BRANT
What is it?
MIKE
I'd say it's probably a little after midnight at this point, 1 a.m.
BRANT
And Terence is high?
MIKE
Yeah, oh yeah, not, I mean, psycho-actively. You can tell he's — Marshall thinks it's probably more likely something organic than acid. But I mean, I won't have you make a roll, but yeah, he's high and of course Mitch can tell that as well.
BRANT
Well if everyone's high, Marshall will happily sit on a pillow and like tell some Buddhist parable about whatever. He'll do the full thing, he'll turn on the charm, he'll tell a wistful tale with a sardonic meaning to all the stoned high people well.
MIKE
You're lucky I've got your character sheet out because I want to see exactly how you're going to do with this. Let’s see, if we're having like a guru-off, he's gotta throw in Public Seaking-22. I mean again like, it's — there's two very powerful egos here, one very young and early in his life …
BRANT
[succeeds by 8]
MIKE
OK, by eight. That's pretty decent.
BRANT
He's not trying to show anybody up.
MIKE
No, I totally understand I think that sort of, like, given the fact you got to hear like the last half of his sort of spiel, all three of you should give me Occultism rolls and Rob I hope you don't mind being a little bit of a spectator just for a little while. Something's gonna happen when Archie goes to bed after after this party has a lot of gurus at I mean it's an Alan Watts party
It looks like — it looks like Marshall actually did the best there and I think that these ideas that Terence is kind of putting out there, this idea of accelerating novelty, might appeal to him the most. Because basically he'll probably like fill in the blanks and sort of talk to you about what he was thinking about and I'll do it out of character because I want to save the Terence voice for the emotional stuff. So he kind of goes back and explains that when he had this experience down in South America, where he and his brother did massive amounts of of mushrooms and ayahuasca, what he got was the sense that time was an illusion. Dennis had a telepathic telephone call with their mother back in 1951, they had all these experiences that made them feel like basically time was an illusion. But since coming back what Terence has kind of started thinking about is the fact that like every human mind has this engagement with these invisible cycles of time and when he was using the I-Ching he was sort of looking at the 64 different hexagrams you can have multiplying it by the six different lines of the hexagram and saying that, basically, there are these 384-day cycles that every sort of perception of the universe, every individual human reflection of the monad, would be able to see. And for him, he saw that two cycles after their big drug experience there was going to be a combination of this — the solstice, obviously, an eclipse happening in South America, which went through La Chorrera, and also was at maximum coverage at the town of Belém in Brazil, which is Portuguese for Bethlehem, he sort of quotes: “What rough Beast comes slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.” And then he realized in May, when all the articles appeared about Kohoutek that Kohoutek would be at brightest this night.
So he says, “All three things have told me in no uncertain terms that this evening is a moment of great — it is a pivot. It is a moment when the novelty level of the human collective mind will take a leap forward and I am hoping that I can sense the nature of that once Kohoutek appears on the horizon there.” And he sort smiles to himself and at this point Jocasta’s non-government asset is probably starting to kick in. Anybody else? I mean I would assume that Genevieve has gone with the mushrooms and not acid.
BRANT
“Should we get to a place where you can get a better view of the comet? Like an observatory or something?”
MIKE
“I feel like if I had my druthers I'd be in Brazil right now but that was not something —”
BRANT
“No, but we could get you there. Do you want — do you need — like how long is it until the comet?”
MIKE
Well, let's see, the time zones — he's kind of flummoxed at this point, like the idea of getting on a private plane and flying to Brazil right now. “I'm not sure if we'd be able to make it in time because once the sun comes up fully it won't — well it shouldn't be visible in the daytime sky.”
BRANT
“Could we get you to the island in the Pacific? You know, because the light pollution around here is terrible, I mean, you can barely see the sky — like we could get you — we could get you out to like an island in the Pacific with no light pollution to get a really good view. Do you want to do that? We could do that right now.”
MIKE
He is really like, literally flummoxed. “You have to understand, Doctor, and I know time is of the essence, but I have spent the last seven months of my life since that convention existing as a destitute graduate student, so the idea of some sugar daddy whisking me off to a far off place —”
LEONARD
“Terence, you and I both know the truth of what you've just said. I've personally experienced traveling through time with the aid of the very ideas and substances that you're talking about right now. And I realize it's a contradiction to say that time is an illusion and of the essence, so let's dispense with worrying about where we can get you right now — although we can certainly make that happen, if you want to make it happen. And let me just ask you this: if there were no limits to the kind of research that you want to do, to the search for the truth that you are looking for, if we could get you anywhere in the world, if you had access to only the finest natural substances, if you could be at play in the fields of the mind with virtually no material limits, what would you want to do?”
MIKE
“Why, Ms. Menos, are you taking the role of Mephistopheles to my Faust? What is this offer that you are dangling before me?”
LEONARD
“I am your Aldus Huxley. I am showing you a door and asking you to walk through it.”
MIKE
Tears begin to roll down his eyes, roll down his face from his eyes, and he says: “You're really interested in the things that I have theorized about the time wave?” The flattery is kind of like subsumed into a sort of … not disbelief but like the kids were listening to him, but they weren't really listening. For someone to actually be listening to him is kind of like a big change for him. But he knows that you all had profound experiences back in July at his house.
LEONARD
“I can let Dr. Redgrave help you sort out those details specifically, but what I want to tell you is, yes, we are interested in possibilities that other people do not believe are possibilities. Where your research will lead is not clear to me any more, honestly, than what the foundations of it are at this moment. But I want to help you make it clear one way or another.”
MIKE
“I want to tell you” — and again we have witnesses here, so he’s going to be circumspect — “what I will tell you is that the project I am working on with the most urgency, I am working at a distance with my brother in Colorado. What we would like to be able to do,” and he holds up the little plastic baggie of dried mushrooms, “is find a way to more efficiently, with all honor due to the mushroom itself and to what it represents as a spore of intelligence from Beyond — a way to cultivate these things. Again, we have to be respectful and we can't turn it into some kind of laboratory experiment.”
BRANT
“So you need your brother. You need cultivation space. Do you need staff?”
MIKE
“I would imagine it we would want to keep it relatively tightly staffed but yes, absolutely.”
BRANT
“And where would you want to be, physically?”
MIKE
“Well, ideally it would be here in the Bay Area. I would prefer to be where I know there will be an endless supply of willing explorers to test with these mushrooms.”
BRANT
“Could we get you to Mount Shasta before the comet? Do we have time for that? Like if took a helicopter?”
MIKE
Yeah, you could get there in a car in two or three hours but in a helicopter, even quicker, yeah. That would be very. That would be very easy. In fact, you're probably better off in a helicopter because it's at elevation and driving up there might be a little bit tricky.
BRANT
Marshall is serious. If Terence wants, he's gonna make it happen, he branch off and go make a call.
MIKE
“Well, and I will tell you the second thing that I think would be a fairly good, fairly great urgency — not urgency but given that I have these theories about the acceleration of novel ideas and novel concepts, it would be that I don't have a lot of connections with people with powerful computers. But what I've kind of begun to realize is that I do not have the mathematical wherewithal to do the kinds of work that I would like to regarding charting these time waves. But I would imagine someone skilled in computational … um, speed calculations could do it very easily.” And I think, again, given Terence's history, given the fact that he kind of knows the government — he talked about it on that night back in July — the government is interested in this kind of thing, I think he probably understands that now he is being approached, and he is trying to get everything he can out of it. He says: “So of course it’s a Faustian bargain. What do you want from me?”
BRANT
“Just your research. We just want to see what happens.”
MIKE
“So, in essence this is a pure research kind of offer that you're providing me?”
BRANT
“Yes.”
LEONARD
“What we want is for the door that we're opening for you, we want you to open it for everyone.”
BRANT
“Because having these one-on-one meetings, let me tell you, they get exhausting. It would be much better if we could just sort of franchise this.”
MIKE
“You would like to go to Mount Shasta tonight? I've been there —”
BRANT
“No, no. I want you to be where you think the best place is for you to be to see this comet.”
MIKE
“I will tell you that my thoughtful meditation and consideration, as I have been sitting here, is that it is here. Because Dr. Watts is here and all of these lovely people are here and I feel if you are talking about democratizing the experience, that it should not happen among a select circle. It should be something that everyone sees.”
BRANT
“Can we cut the powers of the neighborhood? Black-out? I mean, everyone will have to come out and see it.”
MIKE
I mean, the good thing is again, this is Druid Heights. You know, kind of isolated and in the woods. You're right there's still city light from across the Bay and everything but I think that he's going to be, I mean, they like brought a little dinky telescope so people could take a look at the comet. It's not really about the astronomy for him, it's about the astrology of it. So I don't think it's a matter of like — he sure despite what everybody told him at Berkeley, he calls it “Cal” — he says, “I have faith that this will be the brightest comet ever seen and tonight is the beginning of that exceptional brightness magnitude. 10, -1 — we're talking about something maybe as bright as the star Sirius and the tail quite a long ways, many degrees in the sky we just have to wait until dawn.”
Alright, can anybody who took drugs just give me an HT roll? I just want to see how long the trip lasts. (All successes). I mean y'all are not going to be like distracted influenced or taken kind of away by the visions that you're going to have with the drugs but they — you know, Leonard, as Jocasta, taking the civilian acid, it does feel very different for her. It's a much milder trip. Dawn would be in the 5 to 6 a.m kind of range at this time of year. So at around at around 5:30 the very first signs of the of the dawn are starting to glow up on the eastern horizon. We're kind of out of the trees and kind of like off on a a cliff, like a little ledge, and most of the kids have you either gone off to do other things, gone to sleep, or left for the evening and so it's basically the four URIEL members — three of you and Viv — and Terence and Terence's old lady Eve — and the six of you sort of like are sitting cross-legged on the grass as the the first light of dawn comes up and sure as hell there is the comet Kohoutek and what I would like at this point I think I should declare Oracle for Mitch because this is basically — Terence is trying to use the stars to try and predict the future, he's trying to use Oracle. He doesn't have the ability to do so. Mitch does and yeah if Jocasta wants to either lights incense or use the smoke from her joint, whatever, both of you can give me an Oracle roll and for Marshall, I know you don't have Oracle but you've got like Mind Probe, you have to ask a question with, like an active kind using it, but you know what I'm gonna have you give me an Empathy role and that will kind of open things up, like if you find something interesting with the Empathy, sensing what Terence is seeing in the comet, we can kind of take it from there.
LEONARD
[fails]
JEFF
[succeeds]
MIKE
Jo is too stoned but Mitch is not and then I think for your Empathy, Brant, it's a 16.
BRANT
[succeeds]
MIKE
Alright so when the three of you see the comet. I mean first of all, Marshall and Mitch, back in May, saw the comet for the first time in Estes Park in Colorado. It was very faint then; they had to use the telescope they had there to actually see it but now it is bright, it is quite prominent, and as it comes up Mitch kind of gets a sense and I kind of want to like have Terrence kind of narrating as Mitch kind of gets this sense. So Terence says: “All throughout history these comments, these messengers have been signs of great change. 1066, at the Battle of Hastings, kingdoms have risen and fallen based on the arrival of these signs in the past. What does this one have to offer when it comes to this quantum Leap in novelty?” Mitch realizes and again like I have to kind of rack my memory for sort of how much Mitch has been aware — well, I mean he talked, to the Janitor so obviously he knows all this. Before we did the Redgrave Gambit, taking over ALLOCHTHON, and saving Alan Watts, this comet would not have been this bright. The actions that we took, Mitch realizes with his Oracle, here on Earth have affected what happens in the skies. Now he doesn't know how to explain that. He doesn't know whether it was some sort of mass belief that's propagated from us making these small changes but he's absolutely sure of it. And as Marshall uses Empathy on Terence, what Marshall realizes is that Terence is sensitive to these changes in the timeline. He has a latent ability to be able to see how timelines will change based on these very abstruse, very occult signs. And as he goes on with his very long spiel about the comet it becomes clear that he's able to sense what you guys did and he's able to sense that there has been some sort of like major —
JEFF
Didn’t the comet abruptly start existing after Mission Four? Or do I misremember?
MIKE
In our universe, Comet Kohoutek was discovered in April and it only became like a big story in May. Once it was confirmed by astronomers all over the planet. So yes it did very abruptly come into being and nobody knew about the comet before April to May 1973. But yes, what Mitch is able to tell now is like it's different than it would have been in whatever the original timeline would have been before we made those changes. Also you have to remember that back when we were Mission Four, on the roof of the St Francis, the skies were different but Kohoutek was there. It was part of the skies that we saw in History B. So yeah so I guess what I'm what I'm trying to say is that Marshall, not only is he a talent, not only is this guy — go ahead, sorry.
BRANT
So Terrence, is he basically like a taisher for different timelines?
MIKE
That's an interesting way to put it and I think that's probably yeah, like he can sort of sense the direction of different timelines and how this fits in with this theory about novelty increasing in these quantum leaps. I mean you haven't really gotten some more details over the course of the evening but it's very abstract, he's having a lot of trouble but it sounds like —
BRANT
Marshall will look at Mitch sort of meaningfully and say, “Is this kid legit?”
JEFF
I mean, yeah?
BRANt
Well we're just gonna have to swoop Terence up. I mean he's super valuable. We're going to set him set him up with a farm and his brother and whatever he needs. I mean this is like this goes directly to operation URIEL’s prime directive, which is solving the problem of the histories.
MIKE
Yeah I guess the thing that comes out of this after everyone finishes tripping and after everyone kind of like talks to Terence a little more is that Terence is very happy to be the person who first senses this big change happening. Like he feels very satisfied, he doesn't necessarily feel like he's going to change the world but he wants to give people the road signs, the warnings and the map, to kind of get to a better world. And he thinks he can help with that. Like that that seems to be the the sort of thread through all of the stuff about the comet and the solstice and the time wave and everything and the drugs like he says the drugs are absolutely essential.
Alright I'm gonna zip back a few hours to Archie finishing his day having a warm glass of milk, going to bed, it's been a very busy day, a lot of gifts exchanged, a lot of decisions made for the future and all the guests have left, the kids are tucked in their beds and Archie falls asleep. Archie dreams and in the dream he's in a dressing room, like a TV dressing room, very different from the ones he used back in the late ‘50s at KLA. It's bigger, it's the dressing room of a star, basically, and Archie is looking at himself in the mirror and he is wearing very different fashions from the ones he usually wears. Wide lapels, plaid sports jacket, his hair is very long for him. Big, bushy sideburns. And there's a knock on the dressing room door and a young man with long hair and a beard pops his head in. It’s Ricky Jay. He knocks and says, “Five minutes, Arch.” Archie realizes he's about to go on television and as he sees the outfit he's in he thinks back to his mushroom trip and he realizes, “Oh, yeah this is what I look like on the cover of TV Guide. This is Archie Ransom's Amateur Hour and I'm on in two minutes. Oh my God, what do I do? He kind of looks around for clues and sort of like figuring out, he looks down at who's up for — who's on the Amateur Hour this week, who are the amateurs who are going to be either you know given their dream of a $300 contract or given the dump from one of the three judges. And he sees Rose Nichols and he sees Charley Helix on the performers list. It says Rose is a singer and Charley is a musician. There’s a couple other names on there but they blur in the sort of way that things do in dreams. But he also has that TV Guide uh issue open and it's open to the story where the middle brow TV Guide writers are declaiming the end of Western civilization because of the horrible acts and the way they are humiliated on the Amateur Hour. So Archie realizes, I've got to get on stage. Can you give me a quick IQ roll?
ROB
[succeeds]
MIKE
So his IQ is 15 so it's narrow success. And so what that means is that that Archie has a vague awareness that he is in a dream and is sort of able to kind of look at what's happening here and try to kind of like understand it. But there is a very big sort of like psychic urge to go with the flow basically and so Archie, he’s gonna go on in two minutes. Makeup girl finishes doing the rest of his makeup. He goes backstage and his trusty assistant Ricky Jay puts his hand on his shoulder and says, “How you doing tonight, Arch?” There's like a big heavy Masonic ring on Ricky Jay's finder.
ROB
“I'm a little foggy.”
MIKE
Ricky Jay reaches into his vest and pulls out a little container with a little bit of coke inside, a little tiny spoon. “You need a bump?”
ROB
“Oh, no. No, no. That's — I think that's just the problem.” He's looking around for like cue cards or a script or something.
MIKE
He can see the orchestra, he’s got an old style orchestra out there with — you know, just like the way he used to love them when he was a kid, the Guy Lombardo thing. He's got a big orchestra there but he sees the stage out there and it's garish, it's not the kind show that he would picture himself ever hosting and it's sort of like on an aesthetic level it's like bombarding him with a lot of input right now. Ricky Jay says: “Yeah, well, I don't — I don't think much of the singer but that little girl with her, well, I mean I don't think you've seen everything that they brought in, but they they must have brought it —” and the red light's flashing, like 15 seconds to air, so when Archie gets out onto stage he looks out in the crowd. The crowd goes nuts, it’s all young people, maybe a few older hipsters, but this crowd is like, Arch just thinks to himself, “These people in this crowd, they’re like my kids’ age. Why are they watching me?” And he has that flash of realization, “Oh right. They're watching me because I'm square and I'm trying to be hip. It's like this whole sort of like a set of realizations and he kind of turns and sees the other side of the backstage area where usually there'd be like acts warming up, and he sees banks upon banks of electronics and at the base of them there's a piano keyboard and all the way on the other side of the stage he sees Rose and Charley and Rose is standing there in a very simple prairie dress and Charley has a silver cape with like a big collar, like a Rick Wakeman kind of like synth lord kind of outfit. And she kind of like very like tacitly waves to Archie and that's where I'm going to leave that dream because I have three other dreams to set up before we end tonight because the three of you did drugs and the three of you are going to have to go to sleep at some point and so I'm going to set up the other three dreams that I'm going to be doing and I'll save Roger’s for when Bill is back.
So after we see the harbinger of the new age and the sun comes up and blots out the comet and the party kind of breaks up and everybody's either tired or you know wired or whatever, people go home and eventually go to sleep. Jocasta has a dream where she is dressed in ‘50s early ‘60s Capri pants, sunglasses and a headband, that kind of like hip late ‘50s or early ‘60s look. She’s out in the middle of the desert, the sand is white and she's sitting on the hood of like a gorgeous 1950s automobile. She's looking around and she's like, “What in the world?” And it reminds her of the time she spent a couple of months ago in in New Mexico and she realizes in this dream, she's not at the White Sands Reserve where we were hanging around, where Reinhardt's ghost was, you know, finally starting to depart. She's at the test site. She's at the Trinity test site on this car on this beautiful symbol of midcentury American dominance. And she could feel weird energy in the air; she looks down, she sees like the trinitite fused glass that came from the first atomic explosion and the energy is just like charged and the radio — it's a convertible — the radio is on in the car, it's daytime, the radio is on in the car and she feels compelled to listen and she hears a very faint voice in the ether amidst the static and then another voice and then a cacophony of voices and they're all speaking — Jo doesn’t have the language but she can identify that it’s Sumerian. And all of these voices are just crossing over with each other and then the voices get really agitated and they start getting like — there's fear in them. And then screams and then all of a sudden, complete silence. And as Jo finishes listening to all of this she looks up and sees out in the desert which formerly had no other people out there, she sees in the distance maybe about two 300 feet away, Charley standing in the desert.
Mitch dreams — oh he's at Mount Shasta. He's at Mount Shasta and he's not near any mirrors or anything. He can't see himself but what he can see is a big long bushy gray beard dangling from his chin and he's wearing outdoor gear, Pendleton jacket, broken in Wranglers, and he's got an axe slung over his shoulder that he kind of takes down and looks at and says, “I have an axe. Huh.” And he looks off in the distance and sees like, about 60 yards down a little path, a bunch of little buildings clustered together. There's a few classes happening over there with a few teachers and some kids gathered around, and the kids are doing esmology, others are talking about spirituality and everything, and Mitch has been cutting wood for the the wood stoves and the wood ovens and the classes. He looks down and sort of like, sees how much older he is and then, coming out of one of the little school houses, he sees a bunch of kids. And he sees seven year-old Charley.
And finally, Marshall finds himself dreaming of being inside a farmhouse. The farmhouse is all sepia tone, like the light in here is a kind of very deep tea brown, and he’s kind of like sitting in an old style rocking chair wearing whatever he wore to Druid Heights last night. He looks like himself, his own age, and he’s like … OK, you know what, roll Dreaming for me right now if you want to see how you kind of internalize the dreamscape. It think it’s a 16 — let me see here, 18.
BRANT
[crits]
MIKE
Oh that's a crit. Okay so I can tell you exactly what's happening here. You are in Dorothy Gale's house, which has just landed in Oz and as you look behind you, you see Charley. And it is not really Charley, it's a dream image of Charley, but it's a dream image being ready to be inhabited by your Charley. Like you know this on an instinctive level. Sanding behind her is Rose and Charley says to Marshall: “Are you ready to open the door to Oz?”
BRANT
“Yes.”
MIKE
“Alright, then why don't we walk through together then?” And she's dressed like Dorothy, her mother is dressed like Glinda. Marshall as the two of you, as the three of you walk towards the door, you turn from sepia into color. And that is where we'll leave that one off.