The Victims of Vacaville
1) A general canvassing of crime stories over the past half-decade or so, looking for patterns in the stories that would say, hey, this guy probably has an antenna in his head; this would be a combination of Current Affairs (San Francisco)-14 and Research-13.
All right, let's start with these two rolls! Don't be dissuaded by failures; that just means Extra Time might be required.
Bill B used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/25/24, 11:37 AM
@Bill B rolled
3d6Current Affairs SF:(6+2+5)= 13Bill B used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/25/24, 11:38 AM
@Bill B rolled
3d6Research:(6+4+2)= 12MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 11:40 AM
Successes by 1 on each roll, neat. I actually do need to do a touch more research on the RL Vacaville program to see how many possible appellants/sources could come of this, Bill, but give me a little bit and I'll come up with some possibilities. I will say good old "Death Row Jeff" from the Committee thread would come up early in Roger's research but that man seems far too compromised to be of use as a sympathetic subject.
Bill B — 9/25/24, 11:53 AM
Hmmm. But he might help in another avenue of investigation, since Clifford Jefferson is easier to get hands on. It'd be very useful to find transmissions that would set off the victims in less-murderous ways, enough to ID them, or get them to come forward for help (like, to a crusading clinic.). It'd be great if we could say find a way to do wide-broadcasts in a neighborhood to give them bad headaches sending them into hospitals in specific time windows to be picked up. (Giving the headaches is Old Way of thinking, but actually getting them help would be Thinking Differently.). Transmitting at Clifford Jefferson's cellblock would give Roger a way to figure out a less narrow-band than the one Cinque's "handlers" were using.
1
[11:57 AM]
In any case, the idea would be to find a somewhat sympathetic victim, get them protection of a law firm seeing a civil case, get X-ray proof, let the crusading rags pump the story out. Hell, with an actual victim, that'd probably prime Avery or Findley to pursue the rest of the victims for us.
1
[11:58 AM]
What happened to the broadcaster Cinque's handlers were using? Roger might take a techie look at it, possibly a Phreakish one.
@Bill B
What happened to the broadcaster Cinque's handlers were using? Roger might take a techie look at it, possibly a Phreakish one.
MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 12:10 PM
The data on the cartridge had to be analyzed by tech experts in the Project (unknown) because we didn't have free access to the Phreak at that point, but I believe that between Archie's and Marshall's rank, we should be able to retain possession of the broadcast device itself. It's probably at Livermore with all our shards and Weird Tech.
Bill B — 9/25/24, 12:25 PM
Oh, then Roger would definitely set the Phreak on it-- absolutely right up His alley, sticking it to the Man by suborning their communications devices. I could see Him going a different route than a radio-based broadcast. He'd be more likely to look for a signal to send across a telephone call, and then mass call Oakland or something.
1
[12:27 PM]
Let's say Roger takes SOP precautions about Phreak time in the lab, setting up check-ins, then summons up the Phreak with the job.
MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 12:30 PM
Cool, let me think a bit on the proper set of skill rolls here; just to confirm, the idea being people pick up the phone, 99.99...% of people hear a weird tone and just hang up, but the remainder with the right receivers get a message from the Phreak? And what's the payload/messaging we're hoping to deliver to these experimental subjects?
Bill B — 9/25/24, 12:49 PM
Oh, right-- Cinque could hear stuff. Man, maybe we can Jimmy Olsen's watch this thing: a message only Superman can hear. The victims will pick up the phone and hear the under-call transmission through their implant? Then they'd hear, instead of the tone, a phone call solicitation to call a number right back for compensation! Then we'd at least have their phone number, if not a direct call in by the victim giving their info.
MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 12:50 PM
Yeah, yeah, we could definitely use infrasonics here, we Have The Technology after all.
[12:50 PM]
I like this, it's practically untraceable and it means Roger doesn't need to be seen going to these people's homes to interview them (yet).
[12:51 PM]
I'd say this is some Thinking Differently for sure.
[12:51 PM]
It also means you only get the motivated ones, the ones who know something was done to them without their consent and have a stable base from which to recruit them.
Bill B — 9/25/24, 12:52 PM
Well, they all may come to the conclusion something was done to them if they notice the difference in how they're hearing the call. (The call was coming from inside the house... inside my head!)
1
MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 12:56 PM
Good point. Okay, so to me this is two rolls: one to reverse-engineer the broadcast method and one to put together the auto-dial algorithm: if Charley could invent Caller ID in 1973, the Phreak is putting together robo-dialing for 1974! • To reverse-engineer the medium of the infrasonic broadcast message, the Phreak will use Engineer (Electronics)-17 (13 plus 4 for using a SANDMAN lab to break down the operational use of the broadcasting device). • And to design and deliver the messaging payload, Electronics Operation (Communications)-18 (14 plus 4).
Bill B used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/25/24, 12:57 PM
@Bill B rolled
3d6Engineer-17:(3+6+2)= 11Bill B used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/25/24, 12:57 PM
@Bill B rolled
3d6Operations-18:(2+2+6)= 10MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 12:58 PM
Excellent. Will get you some results ASAP; still have to do that research but I have some ideas.
1
Bill B — 9/25/24, 1:14 PM
Oh, one more thing: after the robo-dial, the Phreak would absolutely call in to the papers claiming responsibility for the mass phone hack. More rep, more worship. From an unidenifiable untraceable number, He'd send in a message in a wave-tuned robotic voice that the Phreak commandeered the phones of Oakland (and whatever other exchanges He hit) "just to show the almighty Ma Bell has no control over the lines." (edited)
1
September 26, 2024
MutantsMichael — 9/26/24, 7:09 AM
(Going to abstract a bit of this out, but given how well the Phreak planned this, there will be a crop of callers the next few days: we can say Sophie mans the phone number with her middle-American accent and law-office secretary demeanor and takes down the contact info for those ex-cons who called in looking for compensation for the weird shit they endured at Vacaville.) Three very important pieces of data come from this electronic canvass: 1) The folks who call in—I'm going to arbitrarily say there are seven total callers, more on their demographics in a minute—universally mention in their answering machine responses/brief conversations with Sophie that all of them were warned that their signing up for these procedures meant they couldn't sue. What they got in exchange for this treatment is, much as in our friend Stanley's film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's novel, early release and a generous untraceable state stipend. They were cured, all right. But these seven were the ones who have had enough... problems since their releases between 6 months and 2 years ago to want further compensation and/or justice. It seems like most of them just want relief from the weird symptoms they've been occasionally having since their release. Four are from the greater LA area, two from the Bay Area, and one below in point number 2. 2) One of these callers is a jumpy 22-year-old kid from Bakersfield named Gerald Biscoe, who did a few months in Vacaville after he got back from 'Nam; he signed up when he was 17 and came back with combat trauma, helped some friends rob a liquor store. Sophie tries to gently him talk down. Gerald said he's been hearing voices; most recently, in April. The voice told him to "start fires and grab his rifle and start taking shots at houses," and the pain in his head wouldn't subside until he did. He just wants to be released of these urges, and even though he feels similarly about the phone call he got—he said it felt like one of those voices, but he dismissed this because, well, it was a recorded phone call, not a message coming from inside his head—he is desperate for help. Of course Roger realizes this is the Bakersfield Sniper who was causing havoc the night Roger, Cinque, Mizmoon, and Fahizah took shelter in the now-disgraced Father Dan's church. 3) All seven of the callers are Black. Two of the callers are women, who were not treated at Vacaville at all, but instead at a state hospital in the Southland. They cite fewer outwardly and physically violent urges than the men but equally unexplained personality changes, saying and doing things they can't explain, especially in the months leading up to and around April of this year. Sophie only gets the barest details but the behavior seems to be compulsively social, going out and mixing in parts of South Central LA they didn't usually go to. Sophie notes the women are more willing to share their weird behavior than the five men but still reluctant to go into detail with a white-sounding woman on the phone. All seven victims are eager to talk to someone in person, someone with clout, power in the court system, and most importantly someone Black, who will believe them.
Bill B — 9/26/24, 11:01 AM
Roger is no lawyer, but it seems like the first thing to do is to somehow get copies of the agreements they signed, and get a sense of how those could screw the process and these people. That just puts the need for an experienced lawyer at the top of the list. Roger is ready to do some traveling, interviewing in person (and however they feel comfortable), claiming to be from a law firm, but it'd be so much better to actually represent one. He's all for following up with Marshall's recommendation, but would want to sus out what kind of lawyer this guy is, and how he'd treat Blacks. As for the Bakersfield kid, that one needs immediate attention, but he needs more info on what's going on there. He'll use his FBI cover to call in to Bakersfield PD to get a report on the current situation with the sniper case.
September 27, 2024
@Bill B
Roger is no lawyer, but it seems like the first thing to do is to somehow get copies of the agreements they signed, and get a sense of how those could screw the process and these people. That just puts the need for an experienced lawyer at the top of the list. Roger is ready to do some traveling, interviewing in person (and however they feel comfortable), claiming to be from a law firm, but it'd be so much better to actually represent one. He's all for following up with Marshall's recommendation, but would want to sus out what kind of lawyer this guy is, and how he'd treat Blacks. As for the Bakersfield kid, that one needs immediate attention, but he needs more info on what's going on there. He'll use his FBI cover to call in to Bakersfield PD to get a report on the current situation with the sniper case.
MutantsMichael — 9/27/24, 6:42 AM
(Okay, I feel like we could stand to have a Marshall-Jocasta-Roger three-hander at this point to talk about Our Legal Needs a.k.a. M. Belli Esq., and I'll work on getting that set up after I reply to Leonard, but in the meantime let's give you that information on the June sniper using Roger's Legal Enforcement Powers.) There's been no progress made on finding out who took those shots and lit that shed on fire back in April, but it wasn't for lack of trying (i.e., violently shaking down the entire Black side of Bakersfield for a month or more). Case is open but cold, and since the end of the SLA and Zebra business elsewhere in the state (right now the four men fingered by an anonymous informer for the Zebra killings are awaiting trial), the white paranoia that had ensued has largely quieted down.
MutantsMichael — 9/27/24, 7:20 AM
So as I mentioned above, Roger and Jo have enough material to bring to Marshall now, especially on the legal front on the Vacaville experimental subjects (and on trying to find Jolly West through Melvin Belli and the Jack Ruby connection) so I was thinking a Marshall/Jocasta/Roger three-hander scene might be nice to do. Sophie can also be involved for infodumping purposes. @Inverarity @Leonard and @Bill B, we can do that here if you like!
Leonard — 9/27/24, 2:10 PM
Jocasta pulls into the big parking lot at Livermore surprisingly early, looking quite professional. Her days of street life may not be over, but she looks a lot more like a functional human being than she did when running down the SLA. After checking in on her mail and her dummy phone forwards -- taking particular interest in anything that may have come through on her psychic registry, the Alpha Leonis 'book', or the Vacaville survivor hotline -- she brings a stack of files and a flat gray lockbox into the building's biggest conference room and thumbs through the new issue of Newsweek while waiting for the others to arrive. (edited)
Inverarity — 9/27/24, 5:02 PM
“It’s like how when you turn on a light, all the roaches scatter,” Marshall says as he walks into the conference room, eyeing the Newsweek. “The Manson connection will be another headache for my, ah, former colleagues.”
1
1
Leonard — 9/27/24, 10:01 PM
"Mm hmm. Sunlight is the best disinfectant but someone still has to clean up the mess," Jocasta says, sliding the Peking House files over to Roger. "This is all I've been able to put together on the people who have been in Westbrook's orbit most lately, but if I could dig it up, it's in there. It doesn't look like anyone's used the place in a while, and I threw them off it if they do. But Hopefully this'll help out with what you're doing." More gingerly, she slides the lockbox with the key on top over to Marshall. "Here's the tapes I got of them. Some medium-value intel, but they're throbbing with memetics. It's from right when the SLA name was starting to ring out. The way it seems to shift, I'd bet they had some of it just...broadcasting to him, like a prison camp PA full of source code. I could do a read on it if we really want to go into specifics, but there's not too many bumps in the road from this back to, well, us. Or the CWG, anyway."
Inverarity — 9/27/24, 11:12 PM
“I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing, to be honest,” he says in response to the first point. “It’s a psychology of deliberate ambiguity,” he says, half-explanatory. “OK, so we have a clean-up situation on the one hand. Right? We know DeFreeze wasn’t the only loose end of these experiments. We have to be on high alert for this shit. So: nice work Jocasta, with the fliers. The rest of what we want to do depends on us doing our actual job. So — that brings us to Jolly. There are a lot of leads worth following up here but he seems to be the biggest. Am I correct that he is in the wind? Still?”
Leonard — 9/27/24, 11:59 PM
“Yeah, he’s out of pocket, and likely under protection; if he was dead I think they’d have let us know, although the operant question is ‘Who’s they’,” Jocasta says. “Like I said, Westbrook thinks he’s under the wing not of Reagan, but the people behind Reagan. I don’t know if he knows about SANDMAN but he at least suspects there’s a layer above CIA and State. ‘Who’s they’ again.” She pauses, a wrinkled furrow of self-recrimination above her eyes. “I should have finished it when I paid him a visit last year. He was thinking his powerful friends would reel him in even then.” (edited)
October 1, 2024
MutantsMichael — 10/1/24, 8:09 PM
Sophie will push the Telex from Archie across the table. "It's likely the Committee has Gottlieb, Archie says. They're negotiating for his testimony. He probably is the only man who knows more than West about the Project and how it relates to the intelligence community. I could run some numbers on what might happen if both men testified in public session and told the right amount of the truth."
October 3, 2024
Bill B — 10/3/24, 3:45 PM
"I'm trying to get my head on straight here. Are we damping this stuff down because it's coming at SANDMAN, or are we ramping it up but pulling SANDMAN out of the way? Seems we never did decide that clearly." Roger shakes his head as he pulls out some files. "But what I do know is: these folks taken to Vacaville got a raw deal, real raw. Our recent effort found a bunch." He waves the files. "Some bleeding right now, some on the verge right now of doing worse. More than anything I want at least one of them to get some justice, you get me? But it's gonna take handling, I dig it. Stuff in the limelight, which saints know I ain't good at. These folks need a lawyer, someone they can trust. They need help proving what was done to them. And yeah, we need to control the message. We gotta at least disable the metal in their heads. We need a good legal team, and yeah, I'll say it: someone Black."
[3:47 PM]
"One of them, I need to get to, quick. He was the sniper in Bakersfield that night we escorted the "general" and company. Poilce don't have him, not yet. Not sure he's our public man, but we don't want him shooting up another neighbor and making this worse. Right?"
[3:49 PM]
"You're the media mogul, Marshall. Which of these Vacaville folks you think you want under that disinfecting sunlight?"
[3:49 PM]
"My money would be on the ladies-- nothing revvs up old men like a woman put in danger." (edited)
October 4, 2024
MutantsMichael — 10/4/24, 7:58 AM
The legal agreements signed by the Vacaville prisoners are on record with the state corrections office. It seems like the nature of the procedures are kept pretty vague throughout the documentation (specific drugs are mentioned—the Anectine and Prolixin—and in a few of them, "invasive neurosurgery" is expressly called out but the nature of the surgery left non-specific, there's a lot of "including but not limited to" verbiage in here) and that the informed consent and both monetary and insurance compensation documentation is based on a boilerplate agreement the state regularly makes with prisoners: "Phase 4 Research: Research into the method of treatment or rehabilitation of prisoners." Informed consent was provided and signed by the inmates and their legal counsel. Legally, it's all rock-solid. Nowhere is the Agency's involvement mentioned; from this perspective, it's all a California State HEW/Department of Corrections production. The ongoing payment the experimental subjects are receiving is enough to put them into Comfortable territory GURPS-wise.
[8:02 AM]
The doctors who are giving the subjects their ongoing care as part of the post-parole coverage are also all state employees of the Department of Corrections, which means when they go for their post-parole checkups, they're being examined by friendly doctors who may or may not know the nature of the radio implants in their brains.
Bill B — 10/4/24, 8:35 AM
(All that said, they didn’t give any kind of consent to be used as puppets. Hmmm. Maybe a demonstration on the stand is called for. Cochran would love that. “If they received a transmit, you must acquit.”)
1
MutantsMichael used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 10/4/24, 10:04 AM
@MutantsMichael rolled
3d6Sophie Esmology-16:(2+5+6)= 13@Bill B
"I'm trying to get my head on straight here. Are we damping this stuff down because it's coming at SANDMAN, or are we ramping it up but pulling SANDMAN out of the way? Seems we never did decide that clearly." Roger shakes his head as he pulls out some files. "But what I do know is: these folks taken to Vacaville got a raw deal, real raw. Our recent effort found a bunch." He waves the files. "Some bleeding right now, some on the verge right now of doing worse. More than anything I want at least one of them to get some justice, you get me? But it's gonna take handling, I dig it. Stuff in the limelight, which saints know I ain't good at. These folks need a lawyer, someone they can trust. They need help proving what was done to them. And yeah, we need to control the message. We gotta at least disable the metal in their heads. We need a good legal team, and yeah, I'll say it: someone Black."
MutantsMichael — 10/4/24, 10:11 AM
"So. My predictions—and I understand, Jo and Roger, how reluctant you are to engage with the esmology given the... spiritual variables we are trying to assess for. But my esmological assessment is that if the Owls are able to maintain their political and ontological supremacy thanks to the actions of the intelligence community and SANDMAN respectively, and that we still believe the Project infrastructure is important to maintain in the face of History B, that our exposure must limit itself to intelligence operations that have little-to-no connection to both the reality war and SANDMAN's WISHING WELL-derived technology. No sense in putting information about both of those out there; it'll cause chaos among the American and Western populaces at large." "Take the Vacaville project for instance. Will people believe in the idea of medical experimentation upon prisoners? Certainly. Will they believe in brain surgery? Definitely. Will they believe in brain surgery meant to send radio signals to recipients? A bit of a bigger burden, but still eminently believable. Can they conceive that the transmissions were meant to drive these Black men and women to anti-social actions to discredit the civil rights and Black nationalist movements? Not all, certainly, but some will. Will they understand—or, indeed, should they!—that those transmissions took the form of highly concentrated memetics that can literally spread like an infection? No, nor should they, if we wish to keep the Project's operations secret and co-opt its power once the Owls are in retreat." "The fact is, between Gottlieb and West, there's plenty of non-SANDMAN dirty laundry to tar the CIA and Defense for a generation. And that, according to the predictions my most recent numbers have shown, should be enough to considerably weaken the Owls' domestic and international reach, and to weaken their power over the masses in the West in general."
Leonard — 10/4/24, 11:21 AM
Jocasta rests her chin on her fist and rather glumly sparks a Virginia Slim. "It's not really that I don't want to engage with the esmology, Sophie," she says, already feeling out of her depth. "It's just that I don't understand it. I wonder why we come up with math equations that tell us we can change things, but not too much, and I wonder, if what we're actually talking about here is weakening the hold of...well, financial capital, what's going to replace it. If we're not tearing the whole thing out at the roots, what are we doing, exactly? Going back to a pre-1906 model of American society? Letting the reds take over? Neither seems all that appealing to me." She shakes her head. "I shouldn't be thinking that way. It's out of my depth, even now, knowing what I know. I don't have a knack for the big picture. Our immediate job is blunting the Owls' claws, and that's our natsec rivals. That I can understand. Just point me in the direction of a knot and I'll find a way to cut through it." (edited)
Bill B — 10/4/24, 1:31 PM
To those with abilities to read people, it's crystal-clear that Roger is right now maintaining a very thin facade of calm rationality over seething rage. He looks the three white people in the room, each in turn, saying nothing, as Jo speaks. He blows out a breath, unclenches his fists, and states, as calmly and cuttingly as he can, "Right, OK, so that's no justice for the Black people, check, back to SOP. One question: would it be permissible to the math to disable all the devices in the heads of the 'project participants'? Or do we think we might need to puppet them again?" (edited)
October 14, 2024
@Bill B
To those with abilities to read people, it's crystal-clear that Roger is right now maintaining a very thin facade of calm rationality over seething rage. He looks the three white people in the room, each in turn, saying nothing, as Jo speaks. He blows out a breath, unclenches his fists, and states, as calmly and cuttingly as he can, "Right, OK, so that's no justice for the Black people, check, back to SOP. One question: would it be permissible to the math to disable all the devices in the heads of the 'project participants'? Or do we think we might need to puppet them again?" (edited)
MutantsMichael — 10/14/24, 8:28 AM
Sophie considers her latest esmology briefly, sensing Roger's simmering rage and balancing it carefully against what the Math has told her. "Fact is, Roger, that these revelations just in and of themselves, if demonstrated to the public without a shadow of a doubt, are likely to be extremely explosive politically. Human beings rightfully find the idea of having their brains operated upon... disturbing." She idly scratches at one of her own THROWAWAY scars, now covered up by her natural dark tresses which have grown back since last September. "But whose brains, of course, matter. Lobotomy, for instance, has long been a 'convenient' procedure for families to inflict upon members whose mental illness is an embarrassment or an inconvenience. They've been essentially off-limits in the US since 1967, but..." she lets that trail off. "Yes, Roger, a demonstration of what the Vacaville experiments could do would be earthshaking. But my feeling is, for justice to be done, that these subjects should have their implants removed, if possible, and not puppetted another time, even if it was in service of embarrassing the Owls and their servants." Those with Detect Lies and other abilities like Empathy can tell that Sophie is trying to balance the needs of the Math with her own personal feelings about both her own brain hacking and Roger's righteous anger about the victims of Vacaville. The Math clearly says if we could turn on a radio transmitter doohickey on these people on national television—in front of Congress, say—it would shock the American people into reacting more strongly. But is it worth it?
October 15, 2024
Bill B — 10/15/24, 3:29 PM
Roger looks a little abashed when he realizes Sophie took his sarcasm literally, and why she's rightly sensitive. But then the anger returns. "Yeah, of course the implants should be disabled immediately, and then removed. But what's going to stop anyone using this again? Sweeping it under the rug just lets the next puppeteer do it again. Lobotomies were normal, legal; they saw the light of day, and now they won't just happen on some doctor's say so. Just like researchers won't be giving Black men syphilis and watching them go insane and die instead of giving them penicillin. You know the sharecroppers of Tuskegee got free health care promised, so it was all 'fair', right? Maybe they shouldn't have had those hearings last year, kept it quiet." (edited)
[3:31 PM]
"Fuck that. This should be in front of Congress and the American people. Maybe not in depth on memetics and other higher weapons, but at least the idea of the implants and the way West and crew could flip switches on their victims-- that needs to see the light of day." (edited)
1
Message "[M10I3] Roger and the Victims of Vacaville, San Francisco and Elsewhere, Aug 1974"