| 30th March (Benji) |
| 6th April (DamienW) |
| 27th April (Michael) |
| 4th May (Gab) |
John Raimes recieves a phone call from Davis, a Private Dick associate of his.
Davis:
"Want a job? Usual terms...okay then!
There's this girl who I need tailed, probably the usual jealous lover deal,
but I'm flat out. You can take care of it? Good, good. Here's her
address, description..."
John starts tailing the woman (dirty blond hair, jeans, jacket) from sometime in the morning. She's staying at the 'Bayvue hotel', a rather optimistically named place. Maybe, if you stood on the roof, you could glimpse the ocean...
John waits for her to emerge, choosing to wait in a laundromat across the street, from about 07:30.
Distracted by the rather low-cut top of another laundromat patron, the erstwhile assistant PI almost misses his prey driving off. Hurrying to his motorbike, he takes off after her, as inconspicuosly as he can.
She travels for a while, passing through at least semi-upmarket regions of the city, stopping off at a bakery for some breakfast, which she eats while driving.
After some time, she pulls up, parks, and waits in her car. John stops nearby, and takes up position in a kind of "Smoker's Niche" garden, between two shops - a good place to observer and linger for an indefinite period.
After a while, he notices that she's doing the same things as him - she's on a stakeout. Her attention takes some time to pinpoint, but she turns out to be interested in someone in particular, who unlocks and enters a bookstore: "Circle's edge" It's now about 08:30, and the sign on the bookstore still reads 'closed'.
A few more people enter the store - casually dressed, but probably staff. A scruffy looking anglo man goes into the store but doesn't flip the sign to open. Another anglo fem (vaguely hippy looking) goes in at 8.45 and flips the sign to 'open'. Another fem shows up about 8.55pm. The watching woman paid an extreme amount of attention to the guy, but little to the women who entered the bookshop.
She stays there, watching, until about 9.30
She starts her car and drives off - John resumes his place on her tail, motorbikeling happily along, inconspicously for the most part.
She drives. And drives. And drives some more. And stops, looks at her map. And buys a better map, gets more frustrated, and drives...
Meanwhile, at 11-ish, Jessie gets a call from Mark, his manager at the 7-11 - rather anal, always stressed, but not a bad bloke.
"Abigail didn't front at work today, I don't think she's coming back. At least, if she does, she's fired. Or she'd better talk fast. Anyway, can you cover?"
Jessie agrees to cover work, and rocks up at about midday, after a shower and a shave.
During the day, Jessie catches up on more snoozing, some reshelving, fiddling with things that need fiddling...it's a pretty quiet day.
Mark comes in and recieves a delivery out the back. There's a bunch of shouting, but no sounds of violence - he's disagreeing with the truckie. This ends with the truck driving off, and Mark returning, in a state about there being no cups for the squishie machine. It's a cold-ish day, and it's not _that_ important, but Mark being who he is, he drives off on an epic quest for Squishie Cups.
He returns, by and by, carrying victorious loot and a furtive-yet-grumpy expression, saying "Don't ask! No cups anywhere...delivery company... strike..." Unpacking some cups from the box and loading the machine, they look very similar to a certain fast food chain's cups, right down to the golden arches.
Mark leaves, on another quest of Markish Neutrality.
Three people pull up into the 7-11 car park. (with screeching wheels) Leaving their car, they are dressed in uniforms recognised world-wide... they're here, and they're here for their cups. It turns out that Jessie has actually worked with one of them - Clay - part of the temporary fraternity of greasy fast food workers that power an industrialised society.
Jessie calls Mark, and tells him that they're here, and that they want their box back. Mark is surprised that they bothered, but gives in without a fight, grumbling more.
Beth says that they're about to be hit with an audit, and they don't want their manager getting in trouble and that the boxes are important at this time, but by the way they're rifling through the cups, there's something stashed in there that isn't Macca's compliant. ...Special sauce or no!
Meanwhile, at Jake's work (the Uni Library), someone comes to him with disturbing news - it's the IT lady (Bridget). "Someone's been accessing your borrowing records, and it's not logged in the system normally. Could be some kind of external access, or maybe some high manager."
She's quite friendly, and shares the innate librarian's libertarian streak (at least as far as privacy/information is concerned) and is happy to help Jake figure out the books that they were interested in, and who else they investigated.
They're interested in what one might term 'occult literature', and the people who research such things. This includes Jake, Jessie, John, and Jayde (up to the Hilt!), but there's a few others too - it's not specific to that small group. The investigatory plumbing started 2-4 weeks ago.
Jake thanks the helpful IT staff member, and continues with his daily work - it's very interesting and somewhat unsettling, but there's still books that need shelving...
Returning to John, still trailing Madam X. Who's clearly unclear about her directions. Someone asks her if she wants help, and she snaps out "No!" ...Clearly, she's annoyed at being lost.
Eventually she gets the hang of things, and returns to near where she started (Somewhere not too far from Haight Ashbury.)
She parks, goes down an alleyway, peers around the corner somewhat furtively, then goes around.
Exercising his Private Investigatory powers, John peers through her car window at her map. She has, as he'd hoped, written and highlighted on it: "Sid Anderson", address - Right Here.
...Well, almost right here.
His address is [address]
John "Mr Subtle" Raimes walks down the alley to try and spot her. Promptly tripping over a garbage can, he fails to spot her.
He tries driving down the alley on his 'bike, he looks around the corner and discovers that there's also a 1b/2b.
He returns to near her car, and waits. He is rewarded by the return of Madam X, who's looking a lot grubbier than before.
She returns to "Circle's edge", as does John, and they resume their voyeristic roles...
She doesn't really seem all that interested in the mere passers-by and customers, she seems to be watching for someone in particular. The only real person who sparked her interest was the first entrant into the store - perhaps it's him.
In any case, John's curiousity grows, as does his boredom, and he decides to see what's so interesting about this store anyway - he'll risk losing the tailee for a while.
It is secure in it's bookstore-hood, and he fits in well enough - the clientelle are a varied lot. The catalogue seems to vary between "UFO Nut's delight" and "Happy Hippy Heaven."
There's a newsletter ("The Flock") that catches John's eye while he's looking at the store as does the Kaylee-like girl behind the desk. "Sid" is involved in it's printing - he's active in promoting all this occult wierdness.
John returns to "smoker's niche" park, but Madam X is gone! He's lost her! ...or maybe she's just gone off to get dinner or something - her car is still there.
John grabs a quick bite to eat, watching her car for her return.
It turns out she's been in the bookstore, and emerges carrying a book - it's probably just an excuse or camoflague, as she drops it uninterestedly in her back seat.
She drives back to her hotel, followed by John. Just in case, John takes down the title of the book that's left in her back seat, before taking off for the evening.
Jake, leaving his work, is accosted by two FBI agents - Jack Lawrence and Nathan Wyndham. Their ID badges are surprisingly good, barring the identical serial numbers... Jake "Pattern Man" Montgomery cleverly doesn't point this out to their face.
FBI agents reveal probably more than they want, that they're an occult taskforce... ...erm, that should be a taskforce on the occult, where their field office is. They don't reveal the name of their taskforce, however.
FBI agents tell Jake to call them if he, or the rest of his group, see any suspicious, way-out, terrorist like cult activity. Not like their own, relatively benign cult-like activity, obviously Sir, or we wouldn't be talking like this would we now...
They know about Jake and friends, but they're not involved in anything dodgy anyway, so that's alright then.
Davis (the private eye) gives John a call, John having knocked off by this time, and asks if he could continue to watch the girl tonight - doubletime rates.
No problem, says John, and toddles off to spy.
Jade spends the afternoon/evening at the shop (a corsets-and-leather type boutique), listening to the pirate radio station her co-worker insists is 'Sooo great!'
An Excerpt of her evening:
This is "Driving While Infatuated" by "The Bad Drivers" I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving to youuuuuuu. I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving to youuuuuuu. I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving on throughhhh, the bluuuuue. I'm bluuuuue without youuuuuuu, you know it's truuuuue, that I'm bluuuuue. Without Youuuuuuu, there's no good and truuuuue, my rent is duuuuue, and there's holes in my shoooooooe... I'm driving, I'm driving to youuuuuuu. I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving to youuuuuuu. I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving, I'm driving on throughhhh, the bluuuuue....This goes on. A lot. And won't leave Jade's head.
Later, it's dinnertime for all except John, who's back on stakeout. (About 19:30)
Jake calls and tells Jade and Jessie about the FBI agents, Jessie's going to call their departmental offices and check on their identities. Jade's getting blind drunk trying to expunge traces of "The Bad Drivers" from her braane.
Back to John, who's across the street from the hotel, leafing casually through the newsletter "The Flock"...it seems that Sid is giving a talk tonight.
Around 19:30-20:00, the girl heads on out. She stops at a hardware store, buys something-that-John-can't-make-out (maybe a hammer?) returns to her car, and keeps driving.
She must notice the sometimes not too subtle tailing job, as she tries to execute a handbrake turn from the middle of an intersection, nearly making John tail-end her...
...As previously noted, however, she's not the world's _best_ driver, and the uncontrolled triple-spin in the middle of the intersection thankfully leaves nobody injured. John did fall off his bike after skating around the car, and decides to keep on going, as if she had nothing to do with him.
He heads to the bookstore, figuring that's her destination. John waits for a time, but she doesn't actually look like she's going to front after all.
The only other place that springs to mind is Sid's apartment, so John drives that-a-way.
Sure enough, his powers of deductive reasoning are rewarded by her car, parked outside said apartment. No woman, though. Maybe she's already broken in.
John parks some distance away, and trudges back to the apartment to observe the dimly flickering torchlight in the second-story apartment window.
Climbing a tree nearby, he peers in through what must be the kitchen window - the torchlight is indirect, shining into the corridor inside, so she's probably checking out the bedroom or lounge.
John has a camera (a big, oldtime film jobbie), and is waiting for the opportune moment to catch her image inside the apartment. This is the kind of thing Private Detectives make their bread and butter from...the kind of thing he was born for! ...or not.
The flashlight goes off, and nothing happens for a little while, long enough for John to be slightly worried.
There's movement on the roof. A dimly-silhoutted figure starts decending slowly from the rooftop. Stealthily, John aims the camera, then rends the night with an awesome display of that startling technology, the camera flash.
He illuminates the woman, looking rather surprised. Which is fair enough, because he's also surprised that she's not attached to, say, a rope from the rooftop, but instead is floating about 4 feet off the ground...
John was tailing the strange woman who also turned out to be some type of private investigator. He snapped a photo of her while she was flying down the side of the house. His camera's flash went-off, which startled her, so she did a runner.
After scrambling down the tree and racing to his motorcycle, John tried to get back on her trail but she'd got away.
John searched in the vicinity, then rode back to he bookshop, where a talk was being presented. The local coffee-shop had stayed open late to cater to the crowd that had gathered.
While people were milling-around, John made an extremely thorough search of the crowd, hoping to spot the woman from earlier, but with no luck. A few people, however, caught his attention.
A pair of "men in black" were trying to check-out the crowd but were very conspicuous because they plainly didn't match the demographic of the rest of the crowd. John's keen eyes spotted that they were also carrying concealed guns.
Sid, the owner of the bookshop, was working the crowd.
Also of note was a woman who was tall, wearing jeans and, well, a little bit too "switched-on".
One or two other people seemed a bit unusual, even for thy types you get in this area, so John made a mental note of them.
John decided to search elsewhere, tracking other places he knows the mysterious flying woman had gone earlier that day. Eventually, he reluctantly phoned Davis and admitted he was rumbled. After that he went home and had a drink ? a strong drink ? and mused that the woman was _flying_.
With the details of the FBI agents in his hands, Jessie went to a payphone. Phoning the FBI office in Oakland, he asked to confirm the identity of the two FBI agents that Jake had encountered. When Jessie mentioned that the agents had the same ID number on their badges, the person at the FBI office told him to wait. Undoubtedly, they wanted more time to trace the location of the pay-phone and track Jessie. It looked like they weren't going to forward any more information, but then they invited him to come on down to discuss the matter in person. Before he know it, Jessie is booked-in for an interview with Janet Crowley.
Meanwhile, Jade woke up, hung-over and with _that_ song still stuck in her head! She grumpily noted that her phone is broken, too. Great.
Jessie phoned Jake, who was working at the library, and told him about his call to the FBI.
Jade decided to "consult" her book. She went through her ritual and opened the book, straining at the page for a hint or a hidden message. She concentrated on the words, which revealed with uncharacteristic clarity: "from", "beginning", "to" and "end".
She tried to phone a friend, but then remembered that her phone's busted. So, Jade removed the phone's SIM for later use. Jade remembers Samantha's number, goes to work and phones from there. Perhaps unwisely, Jade convinced Samantha to burn the song onto a CD. She then hopped on her scooter and rode to Samantha's place. When she got there, her friend was half asleep.
"I'm not listening to this again" Samantha screamed, throwing Jade a pair of headphones and running from the room. This time, Jade got to hear the end of the song and, boy, was it crap! The song was so goddamn awful.
Samantha returned, wearing ear-muffs, and said that everyone on the forums was going crazy over it. The theory was that the song contained a subliminal message. One person on the forums said he works for a radio station and got a good quality rip of the song, which is the version now going around.
At work, Jake looked-up his files sees that nobody's been snooping on him since he discovered he was being investigated. Unfortunately, the system was destroying the records while he was reading them. Before long, he'd wiped the evidence from the system's buffers.
John got his film developed. The shots are a bit disappointing, but that was to be expected because of the dark and the flashlight bouncing off the tree. After using a photo-kiosk to edit the photo, John is satisfied that the image of the woman flying is clearer. It's so heavily edited that the photo looks like is could be a forgery ? at best, it's not terribly convincing.
Jessie arrived at the squat, bunker-like FBI building in Oakland, not impressed by its 70s brutalist architecture.
Agent Crowley directed Jessie to a meeting-room for their informal discussion. He gave her a run-down of what he knew, while she compared with a closely-guarded print-out. Was it a transcript of his phonecall?
Janet confirmed that there's a taskforce active in the Bay Area that has been established to investigate local cults.
She showed her badge to Jessie while discussing FBI procedures, and he realised that the badges of the "agents" are nothing like the standard FBI badges. Janet smoothly explained that they could be government agents working in an official capacity and affiliated with the FBI taskforce.
Jessie asked for advice, so Janet confirmed the IDs of the agents. She added that they rarely approach civilians and that he should call the FBI office if he sees them again.
Jade and John arrived at home around the same time and compared their versions of the past 24 hours. The others returned (Jake often takes Friday afternoon off work), so they all compared notes.
The "men in black" Jake saw sound the same as the ones John saw last night at the bookshop.
Jake proposed that they screw with the "agents" by feeding them false information. Others put forward the idea of telling them about the flying woman or playing them a sample of the "brainworm" song.
John asked Jake to find books on witches on broomsticks, fakirs, angels, outer-body experiences and astral flying.
Jake said they should ask at Sid's bookshop for information on flying. The others pointed-out that although Sid's an expert in mysticism and esoteric material, it was his house that got burgled.
Jade offered to jump or climb up onto Sid's roof and investigate it after dark.
Jessie said he wanted to chill-out and shoot some pool.
The rest of the afternoon was quiet.
Later, in a coffee-shop, Jade was forced to flee when the DJ announced that he's going to plat _that_ song "by special request". Another person in the shop had a similar reaction.
That night, on the roof, Jade climbed the same tree that John was up last evening and doesn't discover anything of interest. So, she proceeded to the roof. There, she found scuff-marks on the side of the skylight. She took a few photos with the camera built-in to her (repaired/borrowed?) phone. Then, she opened the skylight. It hinged open and Jade saw that the latch had been broken. She also observed that if she climbed in, the only way to get out would be to climb up a rope - or fly.
There was a familiar painting on a wall (by Waterhouse?), and some photos also decorated what was otherwise a normal looking two-room apartment.
After Jade climbed down from the roof, she shared the photos she took and they confirm John's account. Jade is convinced of the woman's weirdness. She appears to be aged in her mid-30s.
After that excitement, Jade went clubbing. Her exhibitionistic dancing style included pole-dancing and earned her a lot of attention.
Jessie, Clay (his friend from McDonald's), Beth and another friend were having a great night, playing few games in a local pool-hall. Then, Jessie accidentally bumped another man there. It was only an accident, but that momentary contact was enough to give Jessie an impression of the man ? a premonition of fire!
- Jessie's flash does not come true in the immediate future (ie, pool hall does not burn down). - he is unable to follow the fire guy, but gets a number plate.
- Jake goes to the uni with the intent of a) looking for books about
flying and b) continueing his map of baseball statistics to real
world events. He spots a huge mural spraypainted on a loading bay
wall. Its made up of tags, but looking at the tags in the right way,
you can see they make up faces and situations. Mostly they are of
people suffering hardships - hungry, homeless, etc. He spots some
occult-looking glyphs as well. It all seems to be by the same hand.
- John and Jessie are with him. John takes lots of photos.
- John and Jessie get a phone call at exactly the same time
- Davis rings John and says that he is lucky - the client is happy
that the woman John was following has gone to ground. Davis is
suspicious now, but is getting paid anyway, so he's not as pissed.
- the FBI agent (Janet Crowley) that jessie spoke to tells him that
she has been instructed to inform him that the two alleged fbi
agents are official and he should behave toward them accorindingly.
Jessie notes her phrasing and induces that she is being coerced.
- Jayde goes to the gym and meets Ramona, a friend of hers. on the way
back, she notices two suited gentlemen hassling homeless folks in a
park. They match the descriptions of the *cough* FBI agents.
- John takes his photos to get developed. While he's there, the woman
behind the counter clues him into the fact that this is not the 1st
mural. He investigates further.
We all go on a road trip in Jake's car to see the second mural.
The mural is on a sportswear shop this time. About 12 x 17 foot in size and highly detailed. John and I take many photos. Jake spots a pattern in it but isn't sure what it is yet.
Jessie goes off to talk to the other onlookers while Jake struggles to figure it all out...
EUREKA! Jake realises that all the pictures are inter-related in some way.
We decide to go see the first mural tomorrow (what's left of it anyway) as its getting dark. Back to the apartment for food and discussion.
Latter on Jake goes to leave and finds a 30cm diameter ringed 'target' symbol scratched into the brick work with an outer ring of red chalk and a bullseye that's sticky, black and organic looking/smelling, which he discovers by touching it. Jake calls our attention to it and Jessie goes out to scope the street, finding nothing/no one unusual. As the coast seemed clear I decided to take a look around and notice a smoky smell, on further investigation I find a pile of partially burnt paper and plant matter of some kind, on the retaining wall across the alley. Not knowing what else to do we decide to sleep on the matter.
We pile into Jakes car to see if the local hippy bookshop might have any answers about last night's graffiti.
We enter the bookshop and split up, I look around for the symbol in the many leaflets/pamphlets scattered on the bench.
Jessie takes the direct approach and asks a random hippy if she recognises 'this symbol' (holding up a camera phone pic of it), getting no joy there he asks the hippy behind the counter...
"Circles, hmmm there important... it depends on which way there drawn and mmm the colour hmmm... yeah like mmm..." Not much information can be filtered out of her drawl.
John goes upstairs and finds a familiar tall woman (Amanda) talking to Syd about the 'Flock' doing stuff for the Equinox tomorrow and after listening a while he works out the 'Flock' are Syd's gaggle of readers/groupies.
...meanwhile Jessie is being treated to a rambling lecture tour around the shop...
I've found something Yay... Except the next second it's gone, damn so frustrating it's on the tip of my brain...
Jake finds some of the mural symbols in an alchemy book a-ha this has potential, the symbols are different in some ways but simular. According to one book various different cultures/clans claim that certain symbols should be drawn this way not that way and this symbol means this not that...etc.
Ahh that's it. It finally hits me Saturn I've been staring at a photo of Saturn, bullseye and rings: Saturn, unsure about it's significance I go show it to Jake.
Jake says that Saturn has a few meanings -Stability -Stasis/stagnation -Associations with lead??