Marshall at Granite Peak

M. You two take one of the high-speed elevators back up to the surface and march through what looks to the outsider like an abandoned military base of World War II vintage; rusty Quonset huts and crumbling concrete structures. Wycliffe, a couple of MPs, and Marshall dash across the dusty grounds to a building with a large antenna and one soft red light on its heavy side door. Wycliffe walks up to the door, opens it, and reveals, in a WWII-era military office, its furnishings and even its wall calendar frozen in 1945, a broad-faced heavyset man in a three-piece suit. He's got greying hair and giant, meathook hands: on the wrist of one of these is a shiny WWII-era Marine chronometer. Wycliffe says, "Dr. Redgrave? Dr. Gunn."

Gunn extends his hand. "Doctor. Glad to finally meet you."

B. Marshall will let Gunn take the lead; he wants to get the measure of the man and see what he has to say before volunteering anything.

M. Gunn sort of barrels ahead with why he needed to meet with Marshall face-to-face; he's nothing if not blunt and direct. "In the interests of your questioning being as successful as possible, Dr. Redgrave, I wanted to personally convey that this subject has been through at least two separate rounds of intense interrogation, each aided by direct brain interface. The subject responded to direct appeals to the pleasure and pain centers of his brain much more readily than any attempt at direct electronic scanning or brain-computer interface. His interior narrative has been perturbed by prolonged exposure to ontological uncertainty. During the first round of brain scan aided questioning, he seemed to confuse his own life story with the artistic narrative he'd helped develop for that rock group. But once we brought him back down to earth using basic ego deconstruction—reward-and-punish-aided behavior modification, appealing to his primitive drives and his id, to his senses of abandonment and psychosexual compulsions—his story became easier to decipher."

"He's obviously received training from the Anunnakku personally; the mention of the kulullû in the transcripts we sent you has loomed large in his imagining. He thinks that the aquatic parasite hunched on the back of his Stasi handler is a messiah, for Christ's sake. His mind isn't broken, but it has been warped. To him, the pursuit of professional success and ego reinforcement through sexual conquest, the victory of global Communism, and a devotion to History B are all elements of the same life script." Kind of weird to hear this bluff military doctor talk in terms of "ego deconstruction" and "life script" but it's clear for being a gut doctor in World War II New Guinea fighting parasitic infections, he's learned a lot about psychology and neurobiology as it relates to History B infection since joining SANDMAN after the war. And he tends to look at them in the same paradigm: as nasty, virulent infections.

B. "Is he dangerous, now? Physically, I mean. My colleague, well, one of my colleagues, told me he seemed fairly adept at, uh, karate or whatnot. Basically -- can I be alone with him in the room, do you think, with only minimal restraints?"

M. "He's had his skull cracked open multiple times in the past 72 hours. He's not been violent in any way, even when transporting him to and from the lab. If you'd like a pair of MPs in there with you, of course, we can do that. But I honestly don't expect him to get up to any funny business. I may have said he's not broken mentally or spiritually but physically he's as weak as a kitten right now."

B. Marshall ponders for a second. "Alright, no, I don't think I'll need any MPs. Frankly I don't think I need much time with him at all -- not that I have much time. I just want to ask him a few questions, nothing as uhh sophisticated as your work, Doctor. This may all prove a waste of time, I don't know. But I appreciate, sincerely, the debrief."

Marshall will then turn and start rearranging furniture a bit -- moving chairs so that there's just one chair in front of the desk, specifically, and clearing the desk off of paperwork and the like.

M. Gunn nods, mentioning how he knows that URIEL is under a deadline. They can bring Keiner in whenever you're ready.

B. "Yes, send him in about 10 minutes."

Then Marshall is going to lay out the Tarot cards that Mitch laid out, in the same style -- he quickly sketched it out on a piece of paper at the time, and tried to commit as much of it as he could to memory. He's not going to do a Tarot reading, b/c he can't, but he's going to imitate what Mitch did a bit.

Then he'll just sit behind the desk and wait.

M. So those two MPs that Gunn mentioned assist Keiner in coming into the room. He can walk, but he's not too steady on his feet. He's wearing generic prisoner wear: grey scrubs, essentially. All his European panache and artistic élan is gone. He's got three days of stubble, haunted, black-ringed eyes, and when he sees Marshall behind the desk (I don't think he ever saw him) and how he's dressed he does a tiny double take. The MPs stand there for a moment, waiting to be dismissed. Patches of hair have been shaved on the back of Keiner's head. Stitches, etc.

B. Marshall will have the MPs take whatever manacles or restraints he's wearing off and then motion for Keiner to have a seat, big smile on his face.

M. Keiner very gladly takes the seat. "May... may I have some water?"

B. "Absolutely, man." Marshall will stand up and pour a glass of water, then put it on the desk.

M. Keiner takes it with both hands and almost too-greedily drinks half of it, then puts it on the desk. He briefly looks outside to the desert and sees the sun setting and a tear rolls down his cheek.

B. "So, Keiner -- you're going to think this is a 'good cop' routine, I'm sure, but trust me, it really isn't. I'm just here to ask a few questions. Nothing like what you've been, you know, dealing with."

With that Marshall will pull out a joint and light it, take a deep inhale, and offer it to Keiner.

M. Keiner furrows his brow at the scent of marijuana, wondering just how this could get any more surreal. But a man in desperate straits will do what he must, and he takes the proffered joint and has a polite puff on it, drinking more water immediately after handing it back. He laughs despite himself. "I don't know who you are, or if this is even real, but this is miles better than being down there having my head sawed open. What questions do you have?"

B. Marshall smiles. "OK, so here's the deal. Are you familiar with the Tarot at all?" Marshall gestures to the cards.

M. Keiner says, "Quite familiar, ja."

B. "Great. OK. So, this spread here, a man I know -- a magic man, a real wizard -- he did this reading, here, laid these cards out like this and explained what they meant regarding Mansa, and the performance they're going to be doing tomorrow."

M. Keiner blinks. "The performance is still going ahead?"

B. Marshall smiles. "Yeah. Why does that surprise you?"

M. "I would have assumed you people," he gestures to the door behind which Gunn and the MPs are waiting, "would have canceled it. Burned the tapestry, smashed the records, arrested Moore and Mansa... or had polizei shoot them."

B. "Jeez, God no. This is America, dude.
We have the First Amendment here."

"Anyway."

M. But at that, Keiner sits up a little straighter. "Wait a moment. You can't stop it, can you? You... you need it to happen... so you can be the ones to stop Its coming."

B. Marshall tilts his head. "Look, I'll just say it -- the retro-creation shit is difficult to untangle. We can stop the concert, but can we have stopped it? Tougher problem."

M. "Indeed. E.L. won't let anyone stop him from preaching the Future to his people. You know that, right? I have a feeling that even if he had died, his ghost would have taken the stage. This means so much to him." Keiner's face becomes legitimately sad again. He looks jealously at Marshall's joint.

B. Marshall will observe that and hand him the joint. "Go nuts." He reaches over and takes a more confident drag this time.

"Right. So, that's what brings me here."

"Look ..." Marshall will then go through the Tarot cards in the same order at Mitch, explaining as best he can what each meant according to Mitch's interpretation. Then when he gets to Red Hat, the Seven of Swords, he'll say: "And then there's this guy, Red Hat."

"Who is Red Hat, Keiner?"

M. "He is... sneaking away with the swords," Keiner says, looking at the card. "He's there to clean up the mess. I don't know who this could be. Johann? I can't imagine him preserving anything of the plan, he knew next to nothing other than I wanted to help the Blacks of Oakland and America. He's just not clever enough."

B. "It's not Johann, trust me."

M. "I already told that other doctor that I knew of no other security personnel in the Bay Area to keep an eye on me. I received my orders via encrypted numbers station broadcasts and I hadn't received any new ones for weeks."

B. "I read through some of your interviews with Gunn, and so on. In one of them, you mention a woman who, I don't know, recruited you? Into the cause. What ever became of her?"

M. Keiner's eyes go completely blank, all the light of a casual conversation is gone from his eyes. "Don't speak of her."

B. Marshall smiles. "Dude, with all due respect, you're not really in a position to tell me what to ask you about."

At this point, Marshall is going to start lulling Keiner into a hypnotic state, either using Enthrallment (and taking the Corruption hit) or using Hypnotism, whatever works. Let's start with Hypnotism. He'll do it subtly as possible, initially through gestures and altering the cadence of his voice, asking pointless questions, etc.

M. That's good enough, he clicks into a hypnotized state in five seconds from your using the trigger word.

B. Once he's hypnotized, Marshall will take the glass from his hand and put it on the desk. "Keiner, talk to me to about the woman."

M. "She never told me her name. She told me names were one of the ways that society makes us individuals, one of the ways that they keep the real history at bay. In the future, none of us would need names. So I called her, in my head, the Tutor."

"I thought she was a smack addict when I first met her. Artist type, political. She was so much more extreme than even the Rote Armee Fraktion members I'd met. It became clear she operated as an agent for the DDR's state security apparatus. I didn't realize what her... appeal was until that day she showed me what was truly on her back. I understood why I thought she was a dope fiend as soon as I looked into that Master-Being's poor, sad eyes. His eyes transmit pure pleasure."

B. "When was the last time you saw her, in person?"

M. "During my training in East Berlin. It was left unspoken that if I succeeded on this mission, not only would we be well on our way to ushering our masters back into this world as its rightful rulers, but that I would get to... reunite with her and the god she bore on her back."

(He may be assuming that. In his recollection it feels to him like this is what was promised to him. You're beginning to see what Gunn was talking about vis-a-vis Keiner's delusions.)

B. (Yes, I'm interpreting a lot of this as his feelings / impressions, since that's how hypnotism works, which is perfect.)

Marshall is going to take the photos out of his pocket. He'll show him the picture of Johann. "Do you know this man?"

M. "Yes. That is Johann Xanten."

B. He'll show him a picture of a random man, a random woman, a picture of Moore, a random woman, and ask the same question each time. Then, after the last random woman, he'll show him a picture of Sophie. "Do you know this woman?"

M. He recognizes Moore, saying, "That is E.L. Moore." His reaction to the random people and to Sophie are identical. "I do not know who that is."

B. Marshall puts the pictures away. "I want you to go think about your time here in the United States, the events you attended, the people you met, your time alone and your time in groups, driving places ... I want you to think of a time, carefully now, a time that you felt you were being watched."

"Did you ever have that feeling here, Keiner? A time when you felt someone was observing you, watching you?"

Marshall will completely hide his let-down that Sophie isn't the Woman.

M. Keiner sincerely thinks and tries to remember. It takes him 15, 20 seconds. "I would always keep my eyes leveled at the street whenever I was hanging out in Oakland with Moore and Mansa, for police or FBI, you understand. In my home... in my rented home I felt safe but while I slept... while I slept..." He drifts away for a moment. "You understand how they get into your mind, into your dreams, yes? Each of us has a watcher, and that watcher is in our own minds. There would be times I would dream that I never came to America, that I never agreed to construct Beth-El for them. And every time, oh God, that dream would collapse, and I would see Their world and the threat it would be taken away from me, oh God, oh mein Gott nein, neeeeein!!!" He is obviously having a flashback to some deeply traumatic memory.

Marshall can hear some shuffling from the other room as Keiner begins to scream, "nein."

B. Does Marshall have some way to snap him into a calm state? Like, a command word or the like?

M. Yes, absolutely!

B. Then he'll do that; he'll sharply say a word in Sanskrit to snap him into a calmed state.

M. So Marshall's hunch right now is that they don't need to use watchers for agents they've messed with this much. Obviously, Keiner received some intense restructuring of his subconscious in East Berlin, so much so that if he ever decided to abandon the mission or just enjoy his life in America, he'd be wracked with dream visions of History B (and the absolute pleasure of staring into a frog-demon's eyes) being taken away from him, forever. Much like Gunn found Keiner driven by his basic impulses—pride, fear, lust, pleasure—so too did the Red (King) agents. And they programmed him accordingly.

B. Speaking softly, Marshall moves so that he's right behind Keiner, and puts his hands on his shoulders: "Keiner, listen to me know ... you are at the festival. It is Saturday in America. A beautiful day. Black people everywhere, celebrating Moore, and Mansa, and your art. Do you see it?"

M. "I ..." Marshall can't see this because he's behind him but Keiner's eyes go from watery from fear to watery from bliss. "I do. The banner drops, the scene of Our Oakland is revealed. This is the moment they instructed me for, this is the convergence. The Ikenga will be awoken from his slumber. Instead of invisible, he will be these people's protector and guardian!" A grand smile comes over Keiner's face. Grand. Satisfied. Proud.

B. "And who else is there to witness your triumph?"

M. "Ed. Johann. E.L. The band. A thousand, two thousand Black men, women and children. And a handful of Schweine in blue behind the barricades, fucking pigs. They will feed the Ikenga first. They will be torn apart by the People for his eventual delectation. And that blood will fuel his further manifestation."

"Then, the buildings will begin to change. The broken, deserted vacant lots will become gardens. The polluting cars and trucks will become speedy hover vehicles, powered by music and love. The crowd will grow, it will go into other parts of Oakland now, it will pick up more people. More of our masters' world will take its proper place."

"I want to look in their eyes.
I want to know if they are proud of me."

B. "Is the Ikenga already here, Keiner? Here, but unseen to us?"

M. "Yes, yes, they told me that he has been here all along, that the way had been prepared, but that he is not strong enough to walk the streets visibly, among his people, until the blood had been laid on the pavement for him. That my tapestry will act like Beth-El, but instead of the visit to their world being temporary, the Ikenga's presence in our world will be permanent, it will anchor him, and that with him anchored, the old history will take the place of the new."

He's now conflating his vision of the concert with his East Berlin training; it almost seems to come out in the Tutor's feminine voice: "That Moore is crucial, that the people's faith in him is absolutely vital. That they know, through their study of the way crowds behave, that his creativity, his music, his vision is the linchpin to make the Black people understand their role in bringing our masters back."

B. "You're at your training in East Berlin, Keiner. They are briefing you on your mission. Tell me who is there with you."

M. "My... my Tutor is there. Two men with Russian accents. Strange-looking. Doctor types. A man who speaks German with a Moravian accent comes in later to test me for "latent psi ability," and he finds none while talking to me but so much when I am creating art that the needle, he says, is "off the scale." Two East Germans—I think I recognize them from the Olympic team in '72—train me in judo in a single afternoon. I don't... I don't remember how they do this. I remember headphones and an opaque visor being on my head when they do this. I learn to fall and fight and eventually I flow like water around their blows. I... I don't understand, how did they do this?" He's getting distressed again, it seems like Marshall is bouncing up against some other hypnotism-style instruction here.

B. Marshall will signal to whoever it watching -- he assumes the whole room is wired -- not to come in no matter what happens, unless Keiner attacks him. Then he's going to show Keiner the Seven of Swords and start asking him, repeatedly, "Who is Red Hat, Keiner?" And each time he is going to try delving into a deeper layer of his psyche, pushing him down and down and down into the depths of his least-conscious mind, the lizard brain that observes things without observing them, that sees and intuits things without knowing.

M. Keiner's eyes roll up in his head. "Der zurückgelassene," he says in a monotone voice, "Derjenige, der Moore lehrte." Keiner begins to foam at the mouth. He's having a seizure. "Ul gi dub.ba," he says through gritted teeth in Sumerian. Rough translation: "The man of the Tribe of the Stylus," as he flies off his chair and onto the floor in full grand mal seizure.

B. Marshall will launch into his medical training and attempt to mitigate the seizure, grabbing whatever sedative or other narcotic he can out of his bag. "Keiner! Keiner! Listen to my voice! Stay with me!"

M. The sedative doesn't knock him out completely; Marshall's extensive pharmaceutical experience and judgment of Keiner's physical and psychic well-being manage to provide him with just the dosage to check the seizure and bring him back to a baseline hypnotized state. But that trigger, that set of thoughts... it tapped into something deep in Keiner's training. Something he doesn't consciously remember.

B. What's Marshall's assessment of his ability to proceed? Does he think he'll irretrievably break the man if he continues with a few more questions?

M. In game terms, that was a pretty serious failed Fright Check for Keiner. Another one like that and you might be waving bye-bye to his personality.

What he needs is... healing, honestly. He needs his psyche put back together again.

B. "OK, Keiner ... can you still hear me? Just nod if you can hear my voice."

M. "Ja," he says. After a pause, he follows that up with English again. "Yes."

B. "You spoke in German there, for a moment. You said 'der zurückgelassene' and 'derjenige, der Moore lehrte'" -- Marshall probably mangles that fairly badly but he does his best -- "What does that mean, in English?"

M. Exhausted, Keiner looks at Marshall for the first time with undisguised distaste. "Fucking Americans," he scoffs in his drug- and hypnotism-aided daze. "'The one left behind. The one who taught Moore.' Ostberlin knew that someone had been Moore's tutor in youth, yes? Someone who put the idea in his head of a world ruled by Blacks. Who taught him the music of the Other Side. They did not know exactly who this was, but they knew he still lived. An old man, then. Someone who was adult when Moore was a child. He would press the tool onto the wet clay of reality and rewrite it. A man of the stylus."

B. Marshall nods. If Keiner will let him, he'll help him back into the chair.

M. He does. He's limp and broken.

B. Marshall will bring Keiner out of whatever remains of his hypnotic state, then sit on the edge of the desk. "Keiner, I'll be blunt with you."

"We have Beth-El -- well, I have Beth-El -- and we have the tapestry. We have the record, the anger-record, and we have Johann, and Johann, he is going to work with us now."

"We destroyed Mansa's credibility with the Blacks [OOC apologies for using that term that way, it's what he would say in '73]. But the festival is going to proceed."

"So I'm going to be straight with you -- if you answer me honestly, genuinely, man to man, I can make things here better for you. I know you have no reason to trust me, but it is true. I can do that. But if you lie to me, I'll leave you here with Gunner. Forever. And this will be the last sunset you ever see in America."

"But I'll give you that choice before I ask the last question and head home. Will you answer me honestly?"

M. "Yes. If I can, I will."

B. "Having done all we have done -- what I just described -- is it enough to stop the Ikenga tomorrow?"

M. "Unless there is blood, even the slightest, smallest human sacrifice... any human lives taken at the hands of any other human being at all... yes. With all those elements dispersed, the Ikenga itself will revert to myth and disperse like clouds." And then he cries.

B. Marshall will rest a hand on his shoulder and say namaste, quietly. Then he'll signal for the MPs to come get him.

Marshall's final action items unless you have more is as follows:

(1) Immediately call Livermore and try to get ahold of Archie. He is going to want Archie to use his pull with Stanton to have Stanton use his pull to alleviate some of Keiner's tortures at the hands of Gunn.

(2) Request an immediate transcript of the interview -- he assumes, again, the room was wired, how could it not be? -- that he can take with him on the plane ride back to NoCal.

(3) After speaking with Archie and getting the transcript, call Livermore AGAIN and see if he can get ahold of Mitch.

If he can, explain to Mitch everything Keiner told him about the Old Man and Red Hat and the Tribe of the Stylus, all that shit.

(4) Lastly, when he gets back to Livermore, do a full debrief with the transcript, explaining the bit about the blood, etc.