The Hieros Gamos

So at the outset of Genevieve's dream, she is in the lobby of the St. Francis as per our normal world. Viv is wearing an outfit substantially more revealing than her Friday night Battlestar Galactica-style kaftan; it looks more like what Queen Minerva was wearing but less science-fiction-y and more sort of... ancient Near-East-y. It's daytime outside, and the traffic is whirring past in a blur; the lobby is full: half of con attendees, half of G-men in dark Fed suits. Viv could swear she sees Jocasta in a men's suit with her finger to her ear trying to listen in on an earpiece, but none of that matters because Viv knows she has a very important date up at her suite. Viv walks into the elevator and presses a button marked with cuneiform characters.

The dream changes scene suddenly; there's no sense of continuity between Viv entering the elevator and arriving here, but it's clear she's on the one of the top floors of the St. Francis-as-ziggurat but again, it's daytime, not night. The air is dusty, hot, perfumed with exotic incenses and spices, and Viv pads along the clay-floored corridor, knowing that she has important business, her stomach fluttering with butterflies, like she's coming up here for some kind of assignation that feels... almost taboo, unlike most of her real-life affairs.

She rounds a corner and then standing before Viv are three delighted priestesses, a slim but wide-hipped girl of about 15, a more matronly figure whose curves send a shiver of delight down Viv's arms and legs, and an older woman, grey hair tied back into a long snaky queue wearing a golden circlet on her head. All are wearing similarly revealing costumes, and all three wear a pendant in opal around their neck on a simple threadbare rope: on the pendant are carved an eight-pointed star and a reed-post, the traditional temple's boundary marker between sacred and profane. Viv seems to know this implicitly in the dream.

"Sister," says the youngest of the three priestesses. "Are you ready to be bathed and anointed and purified for your wedding to the god?"

Genevieve nods solemnly and stands for them to tend to her.

Viv is near but not at the top of the ziggurat; this level seems dedicated to preparing celebrants for the ritual function of the roof, where earth meets sky, where the god meets the goddess. In the antechamber before the final set of stairs (which look alarmingly like the bulkhead steps to the St. Francis roof, completely out of place in this setting; Viv almost intentionally looks away from this anachronism) the three priestesses lead Viv into an area bedecked with colorful cushions, reed poles strung with orange and red streamers, bowls of pomegranates and other weird blood-red fruits Viv's never seen, and most importantly a massive round stone tub.

The three priestesses come to Viv, and Viv knows instinctively that they are ritually re-enacting Inanna's descent into the underworld, where she was stripped of all her clothing, her symbols of power, her outward signs of God hood, and finally her name. Viv gives up all her clothing and the lapis lazuli measuring rod that has appeared dream-like in her hand, to the three priestesses. As this happens, the matronly priestess helps Viv into the tub while the elder takes the clothes away and the younger goes to a nearby lit brazier. From a sack near the brazier she takes a bunch of oozing flower bulbs, which Viv-of-the-dream recognizes as the Flowers of the Uplands— hul gil, the joy plant—and which Viv recognizes as poppies laden with rich sticky opium. The smoke hangs in the air indolently as Viv sinks into the somewhat cool waters of the tub. Viv feels the drug take effect, making her dizzy, dry-mouthed, and unmistakably aroused.

Upon coming up out of the ritual bathing, mostly done by the matronly priestess, Viv is dried and anointed with rich deep musks—myrrh and animal scents—and the matronly priestess kneels down to kiss Viv's feet, between her breasts, and a deep soul kiss of her mouth.

The elder priestess then takes Viv by the wrist roughly, and speaks in a commanding voice. "I now bestow upon you the words of the ancient tongue, eme.sal, that must be spoken to summon the god. This is the point of decision. If you turn back, you will go back to a life brief and grim. If you accept the mantle, if you accept the burden of this vow and this Secret Tongue of Women, you will be like unto us. Wise ones. Touched by his hand. One who sees behind the dark heavy veil."

Viv accepts the mantle... I mean, it's just a dream right?

The elder priestess ties a red ribbon around Viv's bare waist and takes her to the St. Francis bulkhead stairs. Her voice is just as commanding, but quieter now, more urgent, more intimate. "Fear is natural. It is the lightning in our veins, the throbbing heart of the animal in our ribcages. The experience of lying with the god is... fearful. But you have been chosen." She pronounces the words that will summon the god to lie with Viv-the-neophyte priestess: "nam-NIR.PA a'udteĝiba duri." The words cause Viv's head to spin even more profoundly than the opium smoke.

Viv practically stumbles up the stairs to the roof of the ziggurat. Through the haze of opium and Anunnaki source code she can see the city before her: not San Francisco, not even the History B San Francisco, but an ancient Mesopotamian metropolis! At the foot of the ziggurat, garlanded crowds look upward to the roof and give a cheer when they see Viv stumble forth. On the roof is the golden couch from this evening's events, glinting and warm in the sun. Viv shields her eyes. She is the slightest bit scared. But she knows what she is here to do. She speaks the words given to her by her elder.

Viv lounges upon the golden chaise, her eyes looking up at the sun, her body impressing into the solid gold, the ribbon of scarlet spontaneously untying. In a flash of sunlight, a glint of a spectral, luminous illusion—perhaps the broad shoulders of a man surmounted by the head of a massive, shaggy bull? certainly not—flashes before Viv's eyes, but ultimately the feeling she receives upon this putative "visitation" from the god is not a physical one. It is a presence the likes of which Viv has felt while tripping or being transported by orgasm in her mundane life in 1970s California: the presence of what lies beyond: the universal mind-soul, the monad. It is not a god that Genevieve is in union with: it is her God. In a moment of pure ecstasy, Viv—and the universe—comes.

Her eyes blink in the bright Mesopotamian sun, and Genevieve looks down upon the city for the first time, the sparkling sun-dappled remnants of the god's energy dripping off her in fat, luscious drops. As she sees the people in the square before the temple, she sees the bonds of love, of envy, of hate, of fate, that link them all together—families bound by duty, fear, and hope, soldiers tied to the concept of the city-state through the daily bread and salt they are handsomely paid, the priestesses peeking up the stairs tied to Inanna and the temple and temple's grain stores, the fishmongers tied to the fishermen on their long reed boats and the fish in the rivers who eat the worms and insects and grasses who in turn are spawned from the rich mud of the Tigris—all linked in an ever-throbbing, ever-rotating web of being and eating and buying and loving and fucking and dying and living.

MIKE

So yeah, let's test your new power to see if you can find out who shared that dream with Viv.

Two rolls here. The roll to detect the connections is at an 18 (so you only fail on a 17 or 18); the roll to analyze is at your IQ of 16.

lol a crit on the activate roll, holy shit dude

I made Will minus 6 (Dreaming default) rolls for everyone on the roof that night and the only people who made the rolls were Archie and Terence Fucking McKenna 🤣 )

So yeah, you probably definitely shared that dream with Terence Kemp McKenna and Archibald Enoch Ransom. Two very sexy men.

The analysis will tell Viv that some latent ability has been activated in her mind. She can now do in the waking world what the godfucking enabled her to do in the dream.

ROB

Ha ha, Archie will never ever be able to act on any of this intel because he would be too embarrassed