Embedded Files
"The powerful people in that world were those people that were capable of reading the public mind and giving the public what it wants in those terms."
"The powerful people in that world were those people that were capable of reading the public mind and giving the public what it wants in those terms."
“Project personnel were granted 'mutual access' to all existing national security organizations and information, with oversight resting solely 'at the discretion of the supreme executive authority.' The mere existence of these statutes is classified – and, thanks to Sandman manipulation, completely forgotten by both national bureaucracies. No American President since Kennedy has been fully briefed on the Project; Winston Churchill told Queen Elizabeth II of its existence in 1953, and apparently left it up to her to inform his successors or not.”
Kenneth Hite, GURPS Horror: The Madness Dossier
Dr. Frank Stanton is the former president of CBS (1946 to 1971) and its current vice-chairman. Along with the company's founder William Paley, Dr. Stanton is responsible for growing CBS from an obscure regional radio operation into the so-called "Tiffany Network," the gold standard for American television. Oddly, neither Paley nor Dr. Stanton like one another very much and never socialize outside of work. Paley once famously described Dr. Stanton as a "closed-off, cold man."
Dr. Stanton's long tenure at CBS has not been without controversy. During the "Red Scare," for example, he required CBS employees to swear loyalty oaths to the United States. He also established an office for monitoring employee political activities and opinions, and ruthlessly blacklisted journalists and entertainers for their supposed leftist sympathies. This brought him into frequent conflict with Edward R. Murrow, one of television's most lauded broadcasters.
Dr. Stanton is a doctor of psychology and ardent technocrat. For his Ph.D. thesis, he invented a method of monitoring radio audience size, a sort of forerunner to the Nielsen ratings system. He helped pioneer the advent of color television in the early 1950's and organized the first televised presidential debate in 1960. In 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower selected him to serve in the "E-10" group, a secret body of civilian appointees charged with maintaining continuity of government in the event of foreign invasion or a national emergency.
Dr. Stanton is highly placed within SANDMAN and is charged, in a vague way, for overseeing Operation URIEL.
Major Stephen Wycliffe is one of SANDMAN's general logistics staff. There are so many teams and programs now working in Granite Peak — the global response Mil-Ops personnel, the Mass Media team that Marshall met back in March, the sociometrics and pure esmology folks, the more esoteric researchers into Anunnaki and History B lore, the head-crackers like Dr. Gunn, internal security, and of course bleeding-edge programs like INDIGO – that certain managerial staff are needed to act as go-betweens (and not so incidentally eyes for SANDMAN Control to keep tabs on all this work and to look out for people inside SANDMAN deserving of promotion ... or demotion or transfer).
Sophie Edelstein, known sometimes as the Librarian, was assigned to the URIEL library in early 1971. She presents to the world a façade of being all-business: bookish, fastidious, with a solemn respect for the machinations of the Irruptors and of History B. She's famed for her ability to find links and patterns of said History B in seemingly-unrelated pieces of media: newspapers, books, films, academic papers, intelligence reports, advertisements, even popular music. She is assumed to have come to SANDMAN and URIEL through her being an intelligence analyst.
She has an occasional unexpected playful side: very quick-witted with a wicked (and sometimes cruelly intellectually-snobbish) sense of humor about the people she doesn't like at Livermore and SANDMAN. She's the kind of person who does cryptic crosswords and asks you for help with clues but really doesn't need the help at all and makes sure you know it, maybe a couple of days or a week down the line. While at URIEL, she rarely went into the field.
Following the events at the St. Francis Hotel, Sophie reported herself to Granite Peak as a possible security risk. The members of URIEL have since deduced that her true goal was to obtain a transfer to the highly mysterious Project THROWAWAY in hopes of locating Charley Helix's mother.
⨳ Bio // CLASSIFIED
Sophie Edelstein was born in July 1944 in the Theresienstadt ghetto/concentration camp in Bohemia-Moravia in the Greater Reich. Theresienstadt was of course the "model ghetto" that the Nazis paraded before the Red Cross and other international monitoring organizations early in the war. By 1944, it was taking transfers from other concentration camps. Sophie's mother, whose identity is unknown, died during childbirth, and baby Sophie was raised by the community. Upon liberation, the baby was sent to a facility for war orphans in the Netherlands; raised in the orphanage until 1947, baby Sophie (named by the nuns of the orphanage) was adopted by a British Jewish family, the Edelsteins.
Despite this early trauma, Sophie excelled in school, finding herself particular adept at languages. She read Modern Languages with a second in Ancient Near Eastern studies at Girton College, Cambridge and was quickly snatched up by MI6. She was sent to various posts in Israel, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon (all deep-cover field assignments where she was resolutely NOT doing intelligence analysis) in the mid-to-late '60s. In the course of this work, she inevitably ran across History B (here the records are fairly fragmentary as they are still held and classified by SANDMAN personnel within MI6, but it's clear from reports after this first encounter with History B her sanity and stability was shattered) and was brought back to Britain to work as an intelligence analyst, where she truly excelled.
Her interest in (some former supervisors in her fitness reports say "fascination with") History B makes her an excellent, almost preternatural diviner of which phenomena, culturally and historically, are tainted by contact with History B. But nearly all her former bosses are unified in the belief that she is both too valuable and too, yes, attracted to History B to be sent into the field regularly.
⨚ Sophie fairly stares unblinking at Jo from behind her thick lenses.
Sophie fairly stares unblinking at Jo from behind her thick lenses. "Oh, Jocasta," she laughs. "This, all this?" She points at the books, the magazines, the boxes upon boxes of microfilm, the computer terminals, even your notes and sketches and xeroxes. "This is a haven, a sanctuary. Compared to my life before URIEL? I feel like I'm in retirement, pottering about in my garden."
"You saw me in Pittsburg. The Project doesn't want me in the field because I'm no good in the field anymore. And that's fine," she says, sighing. She's been doing a lot of sighing today. "As far as Charley goes, well... let me tell you a story. And in an effort to make it as memetically effective as possible, we'll make it a fairy tale, yes? One of humanity's most resilient formats of memetic resistance to the Red Kings, the fairy tale."
"Once upon a time there was an innocent little girl born in a very bad place. Her kingdom was in the thrall of an evil dictator, and the little girl's mother was thrown in a prison, where she gave birth to the little girl and then died. All of the little girl's tribe were imprisoned too, so the baby was protected as best they could ... until the evil kingdom was conquered and vanquished. But the little girl was now an orphan. Her father died in the first purges, so did all her mother and father's people. She went to an orphanage in a very quaint neighboring country and lived the first couple of years of her life there. Eventually, a very nice couple of her tribe adopted the little girl. They lived in one of the good countries who helped conquer the evil kingdom, and the little girl moved there with her new parents.
"She was a quiet girl, and as she grew, she grew ... bookish. But the worlds within books ... those were her succor. They were the safest place she could imagine. Schools too, but books ... those couldn't lie to you. Or at least when they did lie, you could argue with them, dispute their points, scribble whatever notes you wanted in the margins. Whatever you liked. They fired her imagination, and they gave the young girl a home. She never felt at home, even with the loving couple who adopted her."
"So the girl was bright and went off to an academy where her bookishness was recognized by the circle of knights who'd liberated her tribe from bondage. Those knights said, 'You're bright, you're dedicated, you know deeply and profoundly the evil that men do. Why not join us? Join our gleaming circle of chivalry. Use your skills, your knowledge, your talent with languages — the girl had been recognized as a ... strange sort of savant with languages as a very young child — and help us fight evil, all across the world.' And the girl did that. But she didn't know that the charnel house she grew up in ... was only a pale reflection of the real evil out there. Because there weren't just evil men in the world, she soon discovered in her service. There were actual demons."
"Those demons hurt her. And after they'd hurt her she was never the same. And she realized that there was truly no safe place, no refuge, no hiding place beneath a rock or even in a book. It was hard to realize that. It was also hard to realize that often, in order to defeat those demons, the girl's idealized knights had to do some terrible, awful things. And with that? She became a coward. She ran away. She asked the knights if she could lay down her sword and shield and return to her library. And that's where she is today, in a lonely tower, knowing she is a pusillanimous scared little girl who has shamed the memory of her brave, courageous mother. The end." Sophie walks to Mitch's desk and takes out the rest of his small bottle of Wild Turkey and drinks it down to the dregs.
"Anyway," she says wiping her lips. "I can't be scared of Charley. I can't be angry at SANDMAN for doing what they did to her. I want to, but I can't."
⨬ Sophie shivers.
She stands there a little wobbly, uncertain, but grabs onto the back of the chair she was sitting in and, tight-lipped, offers up some seemingly very hesitant advice.
"Well, that's the thing, isn't it. With the privileges that the Kings enjoy with being able to invade, sequester, and compartmentalize our minds ... it could very well be any of us, couldn't it? One of us just babbling into the night because of a meme we happened to read and there just happens to be a Blue Star mic planted nearby. Or another of us blabbing our life story to someone we happened to meet at a bar. How can you suspect one of us over the other when we're all, by dint of human minds being the playthings of the Anunnaki, suspect?"
Sophie says, "I'll tell you why I put it this way. We had an infiltrator in my unit in Israel. Not anything as pedestrian as PLO, as I'd believed in my then-role as MI6 agent, you understand: this traitor was a real servant of the Kings. Thing is, after the mission, after a couple of the greater Shin Bet/MI6 team had gotten themselves blown up, not one of us could agree on which of us betrayed the team. We'd discovered it, in fact: confirmed it up and down the line, but before we could report it in via a secure channel ... the explosion and subsequent temblor was loosed. Our memories were all uncertain after spending time in the temblor zone. Those of us who survived spent weeks in SANDMAN's European equivalent of the lower levels of Granite Peak, a disused mine in the Harz Mountains. A former Nazi base." Sophie laughs cruelly to herself.
"Weeks of intense interrogation where I wasn't sure whether I was being held by NATO forces, or the Stasi, or aliens from outer space. It slowly dawned on me that the betrayer could have even been me! I realized this as I began to piece together that the ... event that had scuttled our mission was something more than mere trauma-derived amnesia from a PLO bombing."
Sophie sighs.
"Ultimately, I must have been cleared by someone high up in SANDMAN, because I was offered membership after those weeks of interrogation. Nothing as sweet as being given Dom Perignon at a backyard barbecue, my recruitment to SANDMAN. But I never found out who the mole was. I guess I've never been cleared for it. Maybe the mole never even found out; maybe he just got a bullet in the back of the head and a one-way trip down a Nazi mineshaft. Or he could have been one of the agents who got killed; that'd be convenient. Or maybe it was me and the past six years have been an enormous long con and I'm going to get the bullet in the back of the head at the Peak when I get there tomorrow morning."
Sophie slings her bag over her shoulder and steps towards the door to the office.
"I told you to protect everyone in URIEL, Archie. But on the other hand ... you also probably shouldn't trust them."
Dr. E. Mansfield Gunn is a World War II veteran of the New Guinea campaign who kept American soldiers alive in some of the nastiest, most disease-ridden jungles in all of Australasia. Brought into CIA after the war, he was a bigwig in MK-ULTRA, mostly doing recruitment in research centers and universities, looking for developments in brain hacking and neurobiology.
Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder traveled behind the Iron Curtain in the late 1960s, posing as "women's magazine" journalists doing research on psychic research. In reality they were working for the CIA to put together a book saying how far ahead the Eastern bloc was in psychic research. In even deeper reality, they were working for SANDMAN to act as both a spur to US military-intelligence psychic research and for their book — Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (Prentice-Hall, 1970) — to act as a useful honeypot for psi active individuals in the United States.
While their primary mission has been one of disinfo and confusing the informational battlefield, they did see some real examples of History B-touched psychic ability in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. They are as close as SANDMAN gets to field experts in psi research.
John Merrick generally just goes by "Merrick." He is a young but capable neurolinguist who works directly for Granite Peak. URIEL first encountered him at Altamont. Later, he was sent as a liaison with a kill team to the University of California, Berkeley, in order to capture or eliminate the Old Man. He acquitted himself admirably during both that operation and during URIEL's subsequent efforts to contain the ontological event at the St. Francis Hotel.
Professor Peters is a reality archaeologist, an elderly gentleman with a stooped posture and thinning gray hair. URIEL met him briefly when he was sent by Granite Peak to investigate the Altamont Object.
Dr. Quarles is a cultural anthropologist who operates on direct assignment from Granite Peak. He assisted Professor Peters at the Altamont dig.
Donna Montanari is the long-suffering administrative assistant to the Director of Granite Peak's Records Department and one of Marshall Redgrave's assets. Intelligent, organized, and above all perceptive, Donna got her start as a stenographer in the Office of Strategic Services before being recruited into Project SANDMAN shortly after the end of the War in Europe. Since then, her advancement within the organization has been stymied by its deep-seated misogyny and belief that a mere "typing pool girl" is not fit for higher position. This has instilled in Donna a touch of bitterness, which she takes out by enjoying the occasional glass of good Sonoma County wine – Dr. Redgrave is kind enough to send her bottles of her favorite vintages – and through minor acts of institutional betrayal, such as providing her good friend Marshall with unauthorized access to the Department's files.
Dr. Ian Stevenson is a Canadian-born American psychiatrist and director of the University of Virginia School of Medicine's Division of Perceptual Studies. He is best known for his research into childhood incidents of inexplicable past-life recall, which he contends is evidence supporting the existence of reincarnation. To date he has investigated approximately 3,000 cases of children expressing ideas, emotions, and memories of past lives. He assembled several of his most compelling case studies in his 1966 book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.
Twenty Cases brought Dr. Stevenson to the attention of Project SANDMAN, which promptly recruited him to work on its nascent INDIGO Program. In that capacity, he served as Charley Helix's advisor with regards to her past-life recall. He is generally regarded as an earnest and well-intentioned researcher.
Dr. Haynes was Charley's assigned caretaker at Granite Peak. She is a severe woman with a businesslike demeanor.
Ambrose O'Connor's official cover is as a CIA officer. He is Roger Martin's handler within SANDMAN Mil-Ops. He's a Wild Bill Donovan type, OSS since World War II, and a bit jaded by '66, '67. And, of course, burdened with the extra Manichean burden of knowing about History B.
"RAVEN" is Charley's birthmother. A former archaeology student from UCLA, RAVEN's real name is unknown at this time. SANDMAN recruited her following a minor ontological incident involving Anasazi remains. Thereafter, she drifted away from field archaeology (though she maintained the profession as a cover) and into real SANDMAN commando/undercover work. She disappeared for about four months in 1965 while infiltrating a roving group of UFO cultists that called themselves the "Solarans." When she reestablished contact with SANDMAN in October 1965, she was three months pregnant. Since giving birth to Charley, she has been assigned to THROWAWAY.
Johann Xanten is a young, bespectacled West German and fledgling music producer. He fell in with Sebastien Keiner, who recruited him as a catspaw to assist in the irruption of the West Oakland Kusarikku at the Mansa block party concert. URIEL picked him up outside Dominoe Records. After an interrogation conducted by Sophie Edelstein, he was sent to Granite Peak for cultivation and possible recruitment.
David Wolf was the researcher and theoretician who helped develop ORACLE and who specialized in computer-assisted esmology and historical prediction. He was also, at one time, Sophie Edelstein's lover.
Catherine Davies was David's colleague, an analyst and "psychonaut" who explored the simulated predictive future generated by ORACLE.
"I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, they do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be."
Elias Simon was a computer programmer, systems modeler, data architect, and one of David and Catherine's fellow researchers.
All three members of GRAIL TABLE were killed during the events of Mission 3. The precise cause of their deaths remains unresolved.
BEHOLD THE DREAD MOUNT SHASTA ⨇
BEHOLD THE DREAD MOUNT SHASTA ⨇
Imperial midst the lesser heights, and, like
Some mighty unimpassioned mind, companionless
And cold. The storms of Heaven may beat in wrath
Against it, but it stands in unpolluted
Grandeur still; and from the rolling mists upheaves
Its tower of pride e’en purer than before.
The wintry showers and white-winged tempests leave
Their frozen tributes on its brow, and it
Doth make of them an everlasting crown.
Thus doth it, day by day and age by age,
Defy each stroke of time: still rising highest
Into Heaven!
John Rollins Ridge, Mount Shasta
The Reverend Master Houn Jiyu-Kennett is a British-born roshi and the first woman to be sanctioned by the Sōtō School to teach Zen Buddhism in the West. After the death of her master Kōho Keidō Chisan Zenji in 1967, Jiyu moved to the United States to do missionary work. In 1969, she founded the Zen Mission Society in San Francisco. In 1970, she established the Shasta Abbey at Mount Shasta. Jiyu is a woman of incredible spiritual and psychic fortitude. However, based on Mitch Hort's read of her aura, she seems to be in failing health.
Peter "Pete" Kraus is an Illuminated drifter turned hiking guide. Mitch Hort and Roger Martin first met him at a Mexican restaurant outside Mount Shasta. Later, Pete got steady work with a local excursions concern, in which capacity he served as Mitch's guide on his hike to the top of Mount Shasta, there to be enthralled by the man Mitch calls the Comte de Saint Germain.
Dr. Nola Van Valer is an elderly woman, wheelchair-bound, with white hair and bright blue eyes. During the Great Depression, she and her husband lived in San Jose, where he worked as a mechanic and she dabbled in Christian Science. As the story goes, she was one day visited by a "strange man" dressed in a long robe who taught her "many things." In the wake of that visitation, she started visiting Mount Shasta, sometimes alone, sometimes with companions. Some of these visits lasted a month or longer.
In 1963, Dr. Van Valer and a small contingent of friends and followers permanently relocated to Mount Shasta, where she founded the Radiant School of Seekers and Servers. This group eventually organized the "Friendly Letter Service," an international esoterica correspondence ring. The formation of the Radiant School and the Friendly Letter Service were quietly encouraged by SANDMAN, which saw Dr. Van Valer's work as a way to intercept and monitor potentially dangerous ontological activities.
Dr. Van Valer met Mitch Hort when he visited Mount Shasta with Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. She immediately recognized him as a fellow Illuminated, a "Lord of Light," and imparted a good deal of wisdom upon him about the so-called "Ascended Masters."
⪨ ASSETS
⪨ ASSETS
Like any good clandestine intelligence operation, URIEL makes liberal use of human assets, law enforcement contacts, and confidential informants. By and large these individuals know nothing about SANDMAN's greater purpose; some do not even know that they are being used (Marshall might call such individuals "useful idiots"). It is the rare person indeed who, knowing the truth of History B, works willingly with the members of URIEL on an ad hoc basis.
Andrew Harris Krane is a science fiction author best known for his Atlantis Rising trilogy. He came to the attention of Operation URIEL in the days leading up to Westercon, which was, in 1973, taking place at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. URIEL surveilled him for a time and eventually determined him to be unwittingly "Illuminated," able to impose his will upon reality in ways not yet determinable.
After discovering Rich Talbot and Carl Fletcher's plan to "use" Krane as a sort of demiurge to transport themselves to the Atlantis Rising universe, Jocasta Menos, acting on orders from Livermore, abducted Krane from the St. Francis. Later, Archie Ransom explained the state of things and the existence of History B to Krane in order to entice him into helping the team stop the temblor event at Westercon. In the end, Krane survived the events at the St. Francis, having witnessed the near-creation of an alternate reality by Mitch Hort, and agreed to become a SANDMAN asset.
⨰ COINTELPRO // Restricted Handling
Father was an engineer, mother homemaker. Younger sister April died three days after birth in 1933; otherwise subject KRANE was an only child. High school Berkeley HS, graduated 1947. 4-F draft classification ineligible for service due to not meeting physical standards on weight (extreme underweight) and nearsightedness. Attended San Francisco State for electrical engineering, did not graduate. Married 1952 to Bethany Kazantzakis, member of Socialist Workers Party. While subject KRANE worked odd jobs in Bay Area in early '50s (record and book stores mostly), accompanied wife to two SWP meetings. KRANE and Kazantzakis divorced 1955. KRANE kept under periodic spot surveillance until 1962 when FBI San Francisco field office discontinued surveillance due to subject's not being involved with further left-wing politics. During 1955-1962, office compiled profile of subject as addicted to pharmaceutical amphetamines (dexedrine). Married secretary Katherine Jones 1963, divorced 1965; has not remarried. Lives alone in Berkeley, Calif. Added to file since 1963 are records of his "political" novels (Arrest, 1963; The Master Operator, 1965; The Arm From The Screen, 1966) with dismissals of any truly subversive content within. File remains open; surveillance discontinued.
Harry Houdini, originally Erik Weisz, later known as Ehrich Weiss, was a Hungarian-born American magician, illusionist, escape artist, and hoax debunker. In his time he was regarded as one of the most famous performers in the world, rivaled only by the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Gloria Swanson. Arrogant, but undeniably brilliant, Houdini was casually affiliated with several of Project SANDMAN's predecessor organizations, including the Duncorne Foundation.
Houdini's greatest trick was only revealed in 1973, when Marshall Redgrave and Mitch Hort discovered that he had orchestrated an elaborate ritual that dispersed his consciousness to various points across the globe at the time of his death on Halloween, 1926. He existed in this purgatorial state, half-conscious, half-dreaming, until he tricked Marshall and Mitch into releasing him during a séance. In so doing, he found himself trapped on a cassette tape smuggled into the séance by D. Scott Rogo.
Through a bit of bureaucratic sleight-of-hand on Marshall's part, the tape remained in URIEL's possession after the events in Colorado. Mitch and Marshall presented the tape to Charley Helix for study; she was able to transfer the contents – that is, Houdini's consciousness – to the computer chip lodged in her brain. Before Mitch destroyed that chip using his pyrokinesis, Charley transferred Houdini to a sophisticated data storage unit that she found at the Ransom residence.
Ed Dooley and the Rev. Lester Kinsolving, News Editor and Religion Editor (respectively) at the San Francisco Examiner. Both were cultivated as assets during URIEL's investigation into the Transamerica bombing, the former by Marshall Redgrave and the latter by Archie Ransom.
Thomas "Tom" Padden and Monte Hall are a pair of special agents with the FBI. They work out of the San Francisco office and were assigned to the Frank DiGiuseppe case after he bombed the Transamerica Pyramid. Jocasta Menos cultivated them as contacts during that investigation. They believe she works for Army Intelligence.
Everett Bumgardner is an officer and analyst with the CIA. He served in Vietnam with Marshall Redgrave in the 1960s; both were charter members of the Phoenix Program. Bumgardner has found himself somewhat rudderless since the conclusion of the war. He has work to do, but none of it piques the interests he honed in Vietnam. Bumgardner and Redgrave fell out of contact soon after Redgrave was recruited into SANDMAN. The two reestablished their friendship following the news coverage of the Frank DiGiuseppe incident.
"I had many conversations with Frenchmen on the way out in front of the Majestic Hotel [in Saigon] sitting enjoying their citron and soda, who told us that if we couldn't do it, you can't do it. This kind of infuriated you."
Everett Bumgardner
"And that is how you have found yourselves here, today, with me, in this place. I named it the Mission. Do you know why? The Spaniards built missions of conversion here in California, yes, but the word — the word “mission” — it comes from the Latin missionem, which roughly translated means 'a release, a setting at liberty, a discharge from service.' Think about that. Think about what that means."
Marshall Redgrave
David "Dave" Rocco is Marshall Redgrave's bodyguard. Born and raised in rural Oregon, he was drafted into the United States Army in 1966 and went on to serve two tours in Vietnam. Dave developed a heroin habit toward the end of his service; upon returning to the States, this turned into a full-blown addiction. By early 1973, Dave was almost destitute, working whatever odd jobs he could find to support his drug and alcohol habits, and contemplating suicide. While listening to the radio one night, however, Dave happened to tune into Marshall's conversation with Frank DiGiuseppe. He decided the next day to seek out this strange "guru." With Marshall's assistance, Dave has now largely cleaned himself up, found purpose, and treats his trauma with a variety of prescription medications.
Sunshine Parker is Marshall's perky young personal assistant.
Three pairs of kids showed up at Marshall's LA pied-à-terre, Karuna, during his trip down to Hollywood for The Tonight Show: Ethan and Jane, Ethan's younger brother Stanley and Ada, and Will and Debra. They were separating from their congregation of "Jesus Freaks" in Orange County, Costa Mesa Calvary, led by pastor Chuck Smith. The kids (specifically Ethan and Jane) flung accusations at the group's leadership. The Jesus People movement has lost quite a bit of steam from its heyday in '71, and Marshall successfully (critically) brought the six kids into his orbit. They're now living at The Mission where they form the core of Marshall's "Special Ones."
During the spring and early summer of 1973, the Special Ones added to their orbit four new members from Northern California. All four of the new recruits were 18 and older, and most of them are college dropouts who left after their first semester. One of them, who's a little bit older at 20, was named Marianne. The others were John, Thom, and Susan, all 18 or 19 and freshman dropouts.
Zeb is a former agent of the Anunnaki, sent to History A in the early 1920s while still seemingly a young man to mentor E.L. Moore and pave the way for the irruption of the Kusarikku in Oakland. He spent the next 50 years weaving himself into the Black community with the aim of fostering Moore's musical abilities. Life in History A was not kind to him; unable to wholly adapt to the alien landscape of mid-century American life, he descended into alcohol abuse and quasi-homelessness. By the time he came to the attention of URIEL, Zeb was a frail old man, whimsical and strange, who spoke in cryptic phrases and fantasized about his life in History B.
Mitch Hort, Roger Martin, and Jocasta Menos abducted Zeb from Moore's home in Oakland on the eve of Mansa's album debut block party. Once at the Barn, Zeb played a song on his guitar for Charley Helix – a catchy tune from History B that was wholly unfamiliar to the team. At Charley's prompting and with Mitch's assistance, Zeb went on to play several more unrecognizable melodies which the team taped on a reel-to-reel recorder. Fearing that his colleagues were now infected with a memetic virus native to History B, Marshall Redgrave hypnotized Mitch, Roger, and Jocasta into forgetting the tunes they heard, but left Charley "untouched," believing her training as an Indigo Child would inure her to any harm associated with Zeb's music.
After URIEL thwarted the irruption of the Kusarikku at the Mansa block party, the team delivered Zeb to the Mission. There, Marshall brainwashed him using the CCRME into believing that he had served in Europe during World War I, and that his memories of History A were merely delusions created by shell shock and years of drug and alcohol abuse. Now, Zeb works at the Mission as a gardener. He can still play a bit of guitar.
〄 Mitch's Circle
〄 Mitch's Circle
Richard Jay Potash, better known by his stage name Ricky Jay, is a magician and magic historian from Brooklyn, New York. Despite his age, Ricky Jay has already baffled the experts with his sleight-of-hand; his proficiency with cards is almost unrivaled. In 1973, he's a recent transplant to the West Coast – a young, insouciant, chubby hippie kid with a kind of hard-edged ironic stage presence that he keeps up even when he's not performing.
Ricky Jay met Mitch and Marshall while attending the Carnival of Knowledge at the Stanley Hotel. He assisted them with their séance to summon Harry Houdini and later struck up a friendship with the equally odd Mitch.
Music industry bigwig Don Kirshner was behind some of the biggest pop hits of the 1960s. As the man who brought his powerful Brill Building team of composers and lyricists to bear on pre-fab groups like The Monkees and The Archies (and their associated TV series), he was in a position to wrangle some of L.A.'s premier studio musicians for his productions, including one young drifter with a guitar named Mitch Hort.
In 1973, Don is producing the new late-night ABC series for ABC In Concert featuring live — not lip-synched — musical performances from the '70s' hottest artists.
Anna Turner is a Bay Area radio producer who got her start as an administrative assistant with NCET, the National Center for Experimental Television. In 1973 she is working on the late-night political roundup at KPFA Radio.
Mitch and Marshall met Anna at the Stanley Hotel during the Carnival of Knowledge. There she participated in their impromptu séance to summon the dispersed consciousness of Harry Houdini. Later, Anna attended Westercon at the St. Francis Hotel, where the irruption of History B caused her to awaken her latent psi abilities. She's been known to meet up with Mitch for pizza and beers on occasion.
Mary-Lynn Turner is a lounge singer at the San Jose Airport Hilton and one of the Illuminated. She stumbled into Mitch at a McDonald's in Palo Alto; the two have since struck up a romance. In her mid-20s, she relocated to California during the "Summer of Love" from a small town in Oklahoma. Currently she is undergoing testing for potential psychic abilities at the Stanford Research Institute.
♛ Mary Lynn's Set
♅ Archie's People
♅ Archie's People
Jack Ogilvy is a veteran ad man and one of Archie's former colleagues. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
John Ritchie is a real estate broker, member of the San Francisco Planning Commission and Landmarks Board, and President of the California Historical Society. In his spare time, he is also the Noble Grand Humbug of the Yerba Buena Lodge of E Clampus Vitus. He knows Archie through the Bay Area Mormon grapevine, though Ritchie's only been a Mormon since 1971, when he went to an event in Utah in 1969 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Golden Spike and became interested in converting afterwards.
Archie Ransom's family lives in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, and consists of his wife Melanie (née Gardner), and two children, Jane (17) and Eddie (14). The couple's third child, a son named Charlie, passed away tragically at the age of 10 in 1965. Though they appear happy enough, the family never really recovered from Charlie’s death.
Melanie was Archie's mission sweetheart. She keeps the home and has some suspicion about Archie's "double life," but she rarely questions him about his work or whereabouts.
Jane is a tall and striking young woman. In 1973 she is a junior-going-on-senior in high school. She has blonde hair that she wears long and straight, befitting the fashion of the times. Her style is hippie-ish, but in a decidedly middle class way.
Eddie is a slightly awkward boy with dark hair and a bowl cut. He dresses like most boys his age: ringer tee-shirts, flared jeans, wears his Dodgers cap indoors (he's still an LA fan and gets no lack of guff from the kids at school who all love the Giants). He is a freshman-going-on-sophomore in high school.
The Ransoms are Mormon. Since Charlie's death, however, they have followed Archie's lead and distanced themselves from the Church, rarely attending services and declining invitations to participate in community events.
Charley Helix was informally adopted by the Ransoms shortly after her assignment to URIEL.
∯ Roger's Community
∯ Roger's Community
"You see your fate, then, and turn down my aid? When you could live, and lead your people? Well I named you fool. Come find me if you want to turn from this, and bring the real dream. But soon."
Padre Juan-Ignacio is one of the associate priests at San Pedro Parish in the Mission District and Roger's confessor. "Father 'Nacio," as he is sometimes called, is on the younger side and concentrates his work mostly among the Spanish congregants. This means he is heavily involved with the Sisters of Mercy, helping run the parish school, but is low on the administrative rung, and so is often relieved to occasionally get to do "priest work."
Personality-wise, Padre Juan-Ignacio is a mystic. That's why Roger can use him as a real confessor. Father 'Nacio is still strictly on the Catholic side of the fence, so Roger has to code-switch strictly to that vocabulary around him. But he can talk of inspiration and visions and minor miracles, and 'Nacio is fascinated. Under the Seal of the Confessional, Roger's told him he's an agent of the government — not a lie.
Pepe and Patrico, mechanics at Pepe's Auto Service, where Roger brings his 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle SS for the love and care it needs.
Slightly younger than Roger, Yolanda is the proprietor of the Botanica Yoruba in the Mission District. She is his go-to source for the material components used in his sacred and not-so-sacred mystical practices.
≵ THE ENEMY
≵ THE ENEMY
"Finally, we may mention some relevant ideas of Sumerian mythology. The gods are characterized by a variety of forms, not all human. They are celestial in origin. In general, each is associated with a different star. In fact, in the earliest Sumerian pictographs, which preceded cuneiform writing, the symbols for god and for star are identical. The cosmos is conceived as a state governed by an apparently representative and democratic assembly of the gods, which made the great decisions on the fates of all beings. Within the assembly there was a smaller group of prominent deities called 'The Seven Gods Who Determine Destinies.'"
"Finally, we may mention some relevant ideas of Sumerian mythology. The gods are characterized by a variety of forms, not all human. They are celestial in origin. In general, each is associated with a different star. In fact, in the earliest Sumerian pictographs, which preceded cuneiform writing, the symbols for god and for star are identical. The cosmos is conceived as a state governed by an apparently representative and democratic assembly of the gods, which made the great decisions on the fates of all beings. Within the assembly there was a smaller group of prominent deities called 'The Seven Gods Who Determine Destinies.'"
Carl Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe
"She who is first among them is more skilled in the healing art, and also surpasses her sisters in beauty. Morgen is her name, and she has learned what useful properties all the herbs contain, so that she can cure the body ills. She knows, too, the art by which to change her shape, and to fly through the air, like Daedalus, on strange wings."
The witch-queen Morgên y Dylwythen Deg, better known as Morgan le Fay, was briefly encountered by certain members of URIEL during their sojourn to Cumbria, England. The team managed to suppress her irruption at great cost; Archie Ransom later deployed a meme in hopes of further containing her influence. Among Project SANDMAN's academics, she is presumed to be a šedu, one of the caste of slave-masters appointed by the Red Kings to oversee humanity.
Charley beheld Morgan in one of her nightmare-visions as looking like her "birth mom but nine feet tall, with great black iridescent raven's wings rising above her graceful bare shoulders."
The "West Oakland Kusarikku" is the nickname given by URIEL to the god-bull whose retro-creation at the Mansa block party concert threatened to destabilize consensus reality. His existence was deduced by Jocasta after she followed what appeared to be a UFO resembling a "float-car" from the Mansa album cover into West Oakland, where her obsession with cryptic symbols (and a sudden attack of synesthesic hallucinations triggered by seeing the UFO) allowed to her to see a repeating set of symbols festooned throughout West Oakland: a bucket and a spade.
Mitch Hort and Marshall Redgrave encountered the "Houdini Kusarikku" at the Stanley Hotel while attending the Carnival of Knowledge. He (it? they?) claimed that Harry Houdini had somehow stolen one of the Anunnaki's most secret and forbidden protocols – the ability to physically transpose himself through solid matter. Such power threatened the stability of both History A and History B, and was deemed so malign that his masters sent him to History A in the early twentieth century in order to destroy Houdini.
By the time the Houdini Kusarriku met Mitch and Marshall in 1973, he was an anemic shell of his original self, weakened by decades of existence in History A and frustrated to confusion by his inability to fulfill his mission. In the end, he gravely wounded Marshall before he and Mitch were able to restore History A and (presumably) dispel him back to his own timeline.
The "Steve Canyon Ekimmû" attached itself to Steve Canyon Program pilot Frank DiGiuseppe while flying a mission in Laos and stayed with him for the next few years until jumping bodies from Frank to his elderly father, Armando. URIEL discovered the ekimmû while it was inhabiting the senior DiGiuseppe. It is believed the Irruptor had completed its programming by "converting" Frank to helping History B by planning a series of terrorist actions, and so leapt to a host (Frank's father) which would not endanger the mission by being physically or mentally harmed by prolonged possession. The Irruptor's presence presumably accelerated the elder DiGiuseppe's illness from lung cancer and also caused the old man neurological problems.
The ekimmû had some mastery of glyphs — Frank exhibited knowledge of SHEG and GU.SHUB, presumably learned while the ekimmû possessed him, and the ekimmû also used NAM.HILI while possessing Armando. The ekimmû was eventually "exorcised" by Archie and its host Armando died immediately following the Irruptor's leaving his body.
The "Old Man" is the nickname given to a kulullû agent by Carl Fletcher. He claimed to have worked alongside and influenced Dr. Ernest Lawrence in the 1920s, and to have manipulated innumerable people and events into place – including the birth of Andrew Krane and Genevieve Abeille – in order to cause the temblor event at the St. Francis Hotel. Carl described him as a man in his 70s, "kind, friendly, avuncular" and clad always in an "old-timey" lab assistant's outfit (and sometimes in a lab coat). He was seemingly incapable of moving from a particular area in the basement of LeConte Hall. That point notwithstanding, his current whereabouts are unknown.
The "Fatty Arbuckle Kusarikku," also known as "Roscoe," manifested during Westercon as the host of a 1920s themed "hot jazz party" at the St. Francis Hotel. Mitch Hort had drinks with him while discussing the nature of the reality and the Red Kings' plans; the two ultimately shared a prophecy while under the influence of the emerging temblor zone. Mitch, Jocasta, and Roger – operating as the loa Agent 00 – were able to destroy him in a hail of bullets and pyrokinesis.
"A curse which is reciprocated will be retaliated against with yet another curse. It is an insult resulting from an insult. It is a curse resulting from a curse. It is the constant renewal of destiny. To accept a verdict is possible; to accept a curse is impossible."
Sumerian Proverb
Sebastian Keiner is a West German artist, agent of the Red Kings, and deep cover asset affiliated with the Stasi. He came to the United States in the role of a visiting scholar at Berkeley, and his work – which included a room-sized box called Beth-El that acted as a sort of gateway to History B – was exhibited at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. He also collaborated with Mansa in creating artwork for two of their albums, including their most recent record, Ikenga.
Keiner possesses a degree of knowledge about History B and a modicum of talent in using the Anunnaki's various mind-control tools, the product of extensive indoctrination and training by the Stasi and the GZ. After he was apprehended by URIEL, he confessed to visiting an alternate world where he would commune with "angels." After his interrogation, URIEL shipped Keiner to Granite Peak.
On the eve of the Mansa block party, Marshall traveled to Granite Peak to interrogate Keiner again, concerned – based on one of Mitch's Tarot readings – that URIEL had left some element of the Annunaki's plot uncovered. He found there that Granite Peak had tortured Keiner to the point of near ego collapse. With a bit of hypnotic prodding, Marshall was able to determine from Keiner's suppressed memories that the Red Kings had long ago dispatched a deep cover agent to History A to assist in their efforts: Zebulon.
Mitch Hort calls the mysterious man he first met at the top of Mount Shasta the Comte de Saint Germain, after the infamous philosopher, artist, alchemist, aristocrat, and (alleged) immortal. To Mitch, he looked like a stumpy little man with bulging eyes and fishy lips, almost frog-like, clad in a weird mix of contemporary cold weather gear and actual furs. On his head he wore a golden crown with a broad area in front, bedecked with crystals and gems. Carved into the front of the crown was the KI.AG glyph, "Love Me."
The Comte's motives and allegiances are murky, though he seems aligned with the Red Kings. In their dealings, the Comte urges Mitch to help track down or locate Mitch's doppelgänger, who has, apparently, absconded with some thing or things that the Red Kings consider valuable.
Carl Fletcher and Rich Talbot were graduate students at UC Berkeley assigned to the Space Sciences Laboratory. Both studied astrophysics, with Carl focusing on cosmology and Rich focusing on engineering. They were ardent fans of Andrew Krane's Atlantis Rising novels, and were partially-witting dupes of a kulullû whom Carl referred to as the "Old Man." With the Old Man's tutelage and direction, they were able to trigger a reality temblor at the St. Francis Hotel during WesterCon.
The event did not go well for them: Rich had his mind and soul obliterated attempting to escape the bounds of the subduction zone, rendering him something like a zombie. Carl was apprehended by Roger Martin and Mitch Hort. Subsequently interrogated by Marshall Redgrave, he revealed all he knew about his plan and the Old Man before his mind snapped under the weight of too many contravening memetic loads. Still, he was able to escape URIEL's bivouac suite while the team was distracted and absconded to the uppermost floors of the hotel. Again apprehended by Roger and Mitch, he was safely evacuated from the building after URIEL contained the temblor event.
Marshall arranged to stage Carl and Rich's suicide, hypnotizing Carl to lead a vacant-eyed Rich to the Golden Gate Bridge, there to plummet to their deaths. Using his contacts at CIA, he had a "lover's suicide" note placed at the pair's apartment in Berkeley, implicating them in a tawdry homosexual love affair.
John Atwood is a detective for the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office. Descended from generations of white Anglo-Saxon California planters, he is the first in his immediate family to buck the "family farm" in order to pursue a white collar career in law enforcement. He is a serious man, well-regarded by his peers, and a staunch Nixon Republican.
Atwood is something approaching obsessed with Marshall Redgrave. The two first met when Atwood was called to the Mission to investigate the death of a patient. The death – and Redgrave himself – struck Atwood as extremely suspicious. Subsequent investigation revealed that the death was truly accidental, and Redgrave was officially cleared of all suspicion after only a few weeks. But Atwood still believes Redgrave is "up to something" – is convinced that strange and illegal conduct is taking place at the Mission – and he is determined to find out what that is.
Edward Louis "E.L." Moore is a Black experimental musician, composer, vocalist, and former leader of Mansa, a 13-person psychedelic funk-soul band based out of Oakland, California. He is affiliated with the Black Panther Party, though less closely in 1973 than he was back in 1968-1969, during which time he was a protégé to Raymond Hewitt. COINTELPRO twice approached Moore in an attempt to cultivate him as a confidential informant. Both times they were rebuffed.
Moore began an informal collaboration with the German-born artist Sebastian Keiner in 1972; the latter designed the album art for Mansa's third album, Mirrored Sky, as well as for Ikenga, their most recent album set for release in March 1973. Whether through Keiner or some other source, Moore seems aware of the existence of History B, commenting in at least one interview that he considers "this history" to be a "lie."
Operation URIEL eventually learned that much of Moore's life had been engineered by a human agent of History B named Zeb who taught Moore how to play music and inspired him to think radically about alternatives to the stultifying kyriarchy of History A. Had that plan come to fruition, Moore's Ikenga album debut block party would have led to violence between the attendees and the police. That violence would have acted as a blood-ritual irruption to reassert History B in the present timeline.
URIEL managed to neuter Moore through a combination of powerful memetics designed by Archie Ransom, psychological manipulation by Roger Martin, esmological controls, the abduction and "re-education" of Zeb, and physical sabotage of the Mansa block party in Oakland. Moore is now on the rise to mainstream prominence, but mostly as a solo act. He is held in disdain by the Black community as a sellout, and his magic is gone.
Franklin "Frank" Roosevelt DiGiuseppe was a former pilot for United States Air Force in Vietnam who became, perhaps unwittingly, an agent of the Anunnaki. He was born in Martinez, California, to Armando and Helena DiGiuseppe. Armando was commercial fisherman, Helena was a housewife. He had one sibling: a brother named Ronald, five years his junior. Due to his Italian ancestry, Frank's father was prohibited from operating fishing boats in California during World War II. Deprived of his fishing boat and livelihood, Frank's father moved his family inland to Modesto, where they lived for four years.
The DiGiuseppe family returned to Pittsburg. California, after the War. Frank attended Pittsburg High School and was a member of the Civil Air Patrol. He graduated from Pittsburg High School in 1958. After that, he became a bush pilot, working in the region of northern California and southern Oregon for a few years. Eventually, he got work flying for several regional airlines.
Frank enlisted in the Air Force in 1964 and graduated as a commissioned lieutenant. In late 1964, he was assigned to reconnaissance and search and rescue missions in Vietnam. In the summer of 1966, he was detached to the 56th Fighter Wing at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Navy Base on the Laotian border. Between 1966 and 1968, Frank served in the joint CIA-USAF Steve Canyon Program. In January 1968, he was honorably discharged, and returned to California.
Starting in 1970, Frank reported to the Veterans Administration complaining of headaches and other neurological problems. Upon an initial interview, it became clear he was dealing with psychological issues having to do with his tour of duty in Vietnam. Initial therapeutic sessions seemed to focus on his disappointment and bewilderment in returning stateside and the associated culture shock with the changes happening in the Bay Area. But upon return visits, it became clear that he was dealing with "gross stress reaction" (post-traumatic stress disorder in modern-day parlance).
As time went on, Frank's visits to his VA counselors became more and more frequent, and the physical and neurological complaints seemed to deepen into acute paranoid schizophrenia. These included feelings of constant surveillance and fear of conspiracy at the highest levels of government. It was clear during each of these later visits he did not trust the authorities treating him but came all the same because he "needed to work." He reported losing jobs as a cabbie and, eventually after he was blackballed by every Bay Area taxi company, as an itinerant auto mechanic because of his outbursts. These frequent visits ended in prescriptions for anti-psychotics (most often Thorazine) and occasional short-to-medium stays in mental hospitals associated with the VA. He stopped coming to the VA in April 1972.
In the intervening year, Frank developed an obsession with the occult, fringe thinking, and various conspiracy theories. He used the power invested in him by the so-called "Steve Canyon Ekimmû" to advance his ultimate goal of "sacrificing" a busload of children in order to open the eyes of the world to the "lie" of History A. Eventually, URIEL was able to track Frank to a school bus depot in San Francisco, where he was run to ground by Roger Martin and Mitch Hort. Frank died when Mitch used his pyrokinetic powers to light him on fire.
Patrick Harold Price is a retired member of the Burbank Police Department, now living in Lake Tahoe. Jocasta's research into Price revealed that he still does business in both Northern and Southern California and is still in touch with the law enforcement community generally (speaks at dinners, visits Burbank regularly, etc.).
A series of local Burbank news clippings of Price's appearances in local Southland newspapers, usually for a quirky story about his trademark "hunches" on cases that have led to high case clearance numbers, and his love of fly fishing, meditation, and "cloud busting," i.e. weather control with the powers of his mind. You know, in '66, '67, '68, the kind of stories they'd do in LA about a "Zen police detective," that kind of thing. Based on Jocasta's research and surveillance, it would seem that Price may possess legitimate psychic or remote viewing abilities.
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