Post-CANNABIS/TOBACCO Briefing
Assuming you've all given complete debriefs to Sophie so she can collate all this information into the pre-existing esmological models she'd put together planning these ops, Sophie will have placed all the relevant big picture intelligence and operational results on the blackboard. On the CANNABIS side is a list of names affected and/or referenced by Jolly in his confession: TRAMMELL CROW/THE OWLS, HOWARD HUNT/RICHARD HELMS/CIA, BETH COLE/SECRET SCHOOLS, a COLD WAR/REALITY WAR box with arrows coming off it leading to NUCLEAR WEAPONS/GLOBAL SUICIDE AS DEFENSE AGAINST ENEMY, KOREAN BRAINWASHING, SOVIETS NOT IN THRALL TO HISTORY B??, ISOCLINE, and JFK ASSASSINATION, and, circled and central to the entire web, near the words JOLLY WEST, the singular abbreviation LSD. The TOBACCO side looks a little different, since there Sophie is really adhering to the "expose CIA misdeeds -> rile up American public opinion -> disable/destroy the Owls" aspect of Sidney Gottlieb opening up the Pandora's Box at Langley since 1947, but even there, outside the esmological flowchart, she has arrows to a few things on the CANNABIS side that Sid mentioned like, oh, there's a couple that lead to KOREAN BRAINWASHING and COLD WAR/REALITY WAR. There's a MK-ULTRA/DOMESTIC PROPAGANDA/COINTELPRO with arrowed lines leading back to Jolly, GEORGE ESTABROOKS (if Archie's vouchsafed that particular element of his flashback) straddling the Korea stuff and NUCLEAR WEAPONS/GLOBAL SUICIDE with a little note about White Sands (if Mitch has vouchsafed his vision atop Mt. Shasta of Estabrooks, Alpha Leonis, and the Ballards at White Sands). The esmological flowchart features one big remaining question: how to separate Project SANDMAN's ostensible purpose—resisting History B's oozing into History A—from The Owls and how they've historically used SANDMAN to feather their nests and assure their dominion over the West and eventual global dominion; here another arrow sprouts off back to COLD WAR/REALITY WAR. "Well, gentlemen," Sophie says to the Club, "does that accurately, if messily, represent the state of play as of right now?" (edited)
Inverarity — 2/22/25, 3:15 PM
Marshall leans back in an office chair, an ice pack on his forehead, eyes closed — it was a turbulent flight back from Texas. “Yes. That is where we find ourselves. But I am, admittedly, at a loss as to how to proceed. The game is so much more complicated when you are playing all sides, plus the referees, all while trying to end the game. I can see why our predecessors gave up.” He sighs. “Still — still, I refuse to let them win. They used me. I will not tolerate that. Even if they defeat us now, I am taking as many of them with us as I can. I have ideas — just ideas, now, and access to a drug that — well — puts me on a certain wavelength. I feel — I have no evidence of this, but I feel — that with this drug, I can manipulate the noosphere directly — redirect the vibe, as it were, or perhaps even sever the vibe from all this entirely. I don’t know. It verges on causality theory and … I don’t know.” He takes the ice pack off his forehead. “Before we head into the jungle — again, and maybe for the last time, for some of us — we should recommit. Are we still in this to win, URIEL? Are we committed to doing what needs to be done? Now is perhaps your last chance to say no.”
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Leonard — 2/22/25, 7:39 PM
“I’m on this path until it ends, Doctor,” Jo replies.
February 23, 2025
MutantsMichael — 2/23/25, 7:18 AM
(Quick reminder of Jocasta's summary from the last scene: [M10I3] Operation CANNABIS, Don… )
February 24, 2025
Dr. Cronk — 2/24/25, 6:33 PM
"I think we're well past the last chance to say no. I don't know when it was, maybe a year ago, maybe more, when we collectively reached a point of no return. The troubling part isn't that, it's our inability to visualize what victory could look like. We have plenty of examples of failure modes, from the Enemy to little redcaps under every rock to... I don't know, something about computers that are telephones and telephones that are computers. There are the Atlanteans in Andy's stories and the sort-of-OZY that was fighting a losing action against them. Stanislaw Lem's story about the future that only exists in the pills the people take. All grim, all doomed. We need to get out from under the doom, I deem."
[6:34 PM]
There ought to be a fireplace, where Mitch can stir coals and cast shadows deeper into the halls, evoking strange shapes and reminding Frodo of songs he'd never heard.
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February 25, 2025
Inverarity — 2/25/25, 7:02 PM
“Agreed … but how, remains the question. Uriel is the one who watches — change, real change — well, I’m not up to date on my Gnosticism, but that’s some other angel’s portfolio, surely.” He removes the ice pack. “Candidly I am too much a part of the system to imagine a world without it. Perhaps we all are, in our own ways.” He pauses briefly to look around the room. “Perhaps I should delve deeper into the noosphere. I went into the jungle and came out with Roger — came out different. Maybe that’s my only way now. I have no idea about these spirits — if they are spirits, and not hyper-sophisticated memes, Jungian archetypes that have been unmoored from the collective unconscious. You all seem to … commune? with them?” He looks to Jocasta. “If we’re seeking allies, what can the spirits do for us? What can we do for them? What do they want for their help?” Jocasta catches just a glimmer of something in Marshall’s eye when he says that.
February 26, 2025
Leonard — 2/26/25, 6:37 PM
"Well, it's not like I'm the leading expert on this sort of thing," Jo laughs. "I was a lapsed Catholic three years ago. But from what I've been able to sense, and from what the people I've been talking to tell me...they mostly just want to be in the world. Each spirit is different, of course; the Panther, he wants to be fed, and he's not picky about what he eats. That helps me because I find myself in situations where someone needs to die, and he's happy to help me kill them, but I wouldn't say he's an entity that's on the side of the angels. The angels, on the other hand..." She smiles. "You get the picture? They want to protect, but they want people to want them to protect them. The household spirits want a household to inhabit. The revelators and visionaries want someone receptive to visions and revelations. The demons want chaos, the devils want souls, the hunters want prey, the fertility spirits want us to fuck. But what all of them want is for us to believe in them and to open the world back up to them. It's not all cartoon deals with Beelezebub where you sign on the dotted line and get wealth or knowledge until they cook up a Twilight Zone scenario to screw you; the people who came up with those stories don't believe in spirits and don't want you to either. You have to listen to them, learn what they need and what they can give...not unlike anyone else you negotiate with. But if there's a bottom line, a through-line, a commonality...it's that they want to live. They want us to see them. They want to share the world with us, to erase that wall between wherever and whatever they are and we are."
February 27, 2025
MutantsMichael — 2/27/25, 2:43 PM
Sophie very quickly scratches onto the right side of the board, where the Church Committee plan with Sidney Gottlieb unfolds, further aspects of our plan to take it directly to the Owls, some of which were talked about during Sophie's report on the Rosebud Reservation back in May: SPIRITS and THE SOULS OF THE DEAD. Along with the Church/Gottlieb offensive around PUBLIC OPINION (with NEWS MEDIA and MASS MEMETICS/RANSOM PRODUCTIONS alongside; Sophie draws a double-headed arrow with a question mark above between SPIRITS and MEMETICS), she scratches amongst our weaponry against the Owls BOHEMIAN CLUB BLACK BOOK, APOCALYPSE OF HISTORY A, and NATIONS IMPERVIOUS TO OWLS' VISION (USSR? CHINA?).
Inverarity — 2/27/25, 3:26 PM
"I do not think we can go so far as to say the Reds are 'impervious' to the Owls' vision. I have a suspicion that their ... well, that they, too, dance on the strings of men like the Owls, though perhaps their 'Owls' have different goals or agendas. If we're dealing with a war of ontologies between and among us," Marshall gestures around the room to indicate "people," "and a war of ontology with the Red Kings, I see now reason why our Owls could not defeat 'their' Owls and achieve hegemony over the whole world."
MutantsMichael — 2/27/25, 3:35 PM
Sophie nods. "Could the Cold War be a memetic war to make the Eastern bloc more like the West and thus more amenable to the Owls' eventual takeover? That would certainly explain much." "At the very least, the Project's party line on whether the Communist bloc is overrun with kulullû-infected apparatchiks is suspect now, after the revelations about ISOCLINE in Los Angeles and..." Sophie tries to be subtle but imperceptibly nods in Archie's direction, "certain Project activities in the aftermath of the Korean conflict." Sophie continues, "It's an intelligence gap. We need more information on the Sovs and the Red Chinese."
Dr. Cronk — 2/27/25, 5:55 PM
Mitch shakes his head. "All politics is local. Whatever our endgame plan is, it must be based in California."
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March 2, 2025
MutantsMichael — 3/2/25, 10:04 AM
Sophie adds THE FACT OF CALIFORNIA and a couple more elements indicating THE OLD BOHEMIANS, REALITY QUAKE 1906, E CLAMPUS VITUS? and THE PRUISTS? to the mess on the blackboard. She also adds REALITY SHARDS? to our list of weaponry and the CWG and INDIGO PROGRAM to the grouping of SANDMAN "survival" programs along with ISOCLINE and SECRET SCHOOLS. The "crazy wall" looks a little something like this now.
