Mission Four

Monday, June 25, 1973.

Jocasta rolls in a bit late (which is probably early for her) but looking surprisingly well-rested, and with a rolled-up poster-sized piece of paper tucked in her bag. When everyone arrives, she unrolls it in the center of the meeting room table.

“I was down at South Park the morning, over by the Brannan Street pier, and I saw a handful of these tacked up on a bus stop. Maybe it’s just some kids acting up," she says, “but, uh, maybe not.”

“Well, if so, those kids get around.” Roger unrolls his slightly beaten up alternate. “Construction site for these.”

Roger continues: “These give me the gitchee feeling, like from that sim thing, you know, where my, well, ‘cheval’ is the best word I know, was making those posters with glyphs in them. Somebody gotta take a good look at these, make sure ain’t nothing there.”

“Madre de Dios, were there posters with his VP? Don’t say it’s Dr. King, or this is just too sick.”

I will have Sophie come in at this point actually. She would probably (politely) request that the posters stop circulating for a moment so we can confirm they don't have any overt glyphs on them.

“It's unlikely, because a) the posters themselves are so ragged, any Anunnaki glyph geometry would likely be broken and thus any glyph ineffective and b) we all have SANDMAN training to resist glyphs. But still, it’s better to be safe than sorry.” She covers up each poster about three-quarters of the way with multiple sheets of opaque cardboard and does a quick scan with a loupe. “Want to make sure there's no micro-glyphs, and also no subliminal glyphs.”

“They're clean.” Sophie says after about 2 or 3 minutes.

“Well that’s a relief.”

Sophie says, “Still ... the real worry might be memetics. This is a powerful set of symbols. How long have these been up, do you think? They look really fragile.”

OK Mitch can certainly stumble in and peer tiredly at the posters.

“Whatcha got there, posters?”

I’m just thinking through Archie’s reaction to the posters. I think he stares at them for a couple of beats, then sits down heavily, exhales. Even if there aren’t any glyphs, they’re clearly memetically significant. Archie looks more wistful than you might expect from a guy who’s voted for Nixon three times.

If Sophie has uncovered the posters, Archie picks up the “Peace Hope Unity” one and stares at it some more. If not, he just looks over at the half-covered poster from his chair. Either way, he starts speaking aloud, not really talking to anybody in particular.

“I never bought his transformation into some kind of ... flower child. Quoting poetry, the mop of hair, coming out against the war. That wasn’t the real Bobby Kennedy. Somebody cooked all that up for him. Somebody like me, I suppose.”

“I mean, when Jack was president, Bobby was his enforcer, his leg breaker, for crying out loud! But, then, that’s the name of the game, isn’t it? There’s who he was, and there's what people saw in him, and never the twain shall meet. No different than his brother in all that.”

Now coming around towards the part he wants to get off his chest: “Melanie took Jane to see him speak at Berkeley, campaigning in the primary, not two weeks before he died. Like I say, I never bought his second act, but Jane hung on every word. For her it was like going to see the Beatles. And then when they killed him … ”

Archie realizes he's mostly talking to himself, falls silent, then pulls himself out of his reverie. Down to business. “Right. Where did you both find these exactly? Could you tell how long they’d been up? Not since the election, surely.”

“People can change, Arch.”

Mitch sighs heavily.

“This is new, I think. It reads as new. The first ripple in the pond. Something that seems like it might be good, at first, to build anticipation, and then, I don’t know. It’s always a poison pill, every time. Taking things you liked and making you feel dumb for having liked them. He’ll suddenly be here — " Mitch points unnecessarily at RFK. “But he’s Marduk eating babies and making you feel like the broad liberal-centrist consensus is that baby-eating is a regrettable necessity in this modern world of sputniks and n-bombs … Sorry, sorry. I, uh, I went on a bad trip this weekend.”

He clears his throat forcefully, forestalling interruption. “Anyway they’re, you know, they’re the detritus of an event, one that hasn’t happened yet probably. I say that because they’re so new. Probably there’s some hippie arts collective that makes depressing posters now, who last week they were all in a band, or something. I don’t know. I’m just guessing. It doesn’t matter."

“Strange memories on this nervous morning in Livermore. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime.” Marshall observes, smiling to himself.

Sophie says, “I should take a look at my press clipping services, see if any agitprop related to this ‘Kennedy ‘72’ meme has been reported the past few days. If it is merely some sort of hippie art project, maybe it’s been reported in the Sunday papers. I’ve … fallen a bit behind with keeping up with the clippings lately, I confess.”

“What about getting some eyes on the ground in the city? If this is a reverberation from a temblor, maybe there's a pattern. Two locations make a line, but if there's more, it might give us an idea of where this is focused.”

Yeah, Archie’s first thought is to send some of the team (hopefully Mitch, to leverage that Serendipity) into the city, fanning out from the two poster sites to see if there are any more, to see if anybody knows anything about who's been putting them up.

But if Mitch is visibly in rough shape or a bad mood, Archie will try to ask him about it when there's a quiet moment. “Ah, is everything OK, Mitchell? You said you took a trip this weekend, and it didn’t go well? Or by ‘trip’ did you mean … er, well. Is everything OK?”

Marshall subtly rolls his eyes at Archie’s coach-like fatherly attempt to comfort Mitch.

Roger looks concerned, for all kinds of reasons, but he’s trying to put together what Mitch said.

“So, this is a retro-thing? Like the bar names in Oakland? Just like that was a trap made for the Oaktown boys to love, this is for SF? Man, these diabolos are bad mutherf— sorry, Archie.”

Mitch affects the dissatisfied expression of someone who wishes he hadn’t spoken.

“Yeah, no. I went up to Shasta this weekend, visiting friends. Climbed up to the summit and … it wasn’t as much fun as I’d hoped. Did I tell you about Shasta, about last time I was there, with those women?” He scowls some more. “Anyway, yeah. My understanding is that these popped into existence complete with backstory, that’s how it works, right? So somebody here in what we — sorry, here in the real world, somebody here made them. Unless I’m wrong and they just got wished into existence by some jackass demon.” He glances to Sophie and Archie, the figures he vaguely believes to know better than him re: this kind of phenomenon.

“Where’s Charley?”

Charley comes from around the corner, “Oh hey Mitch! What’s that about a demon?”

"Demons are jerks."