The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

Post from Dr. Melisande Stokes:

Welcome back from vacation, everyone. I am assuming you have all seen Esme Overkleeft’s incident report. It sounds like Magnus knows too much. Should we consider bringing him forward?

Reply from Macy Stoll:

Please keep in mind that the Anachron Management Team, which bears the brunt of looking after all of these people who are brought forward, is currently operating at capacity. Some Anachrons are easier to handle than others. If this Magnus is so burning with curiosity that he would traverse half the known world to pursue this matter, then he’ll cause just as much trouble for us here if we bring him forward.

From LTC Tristan Lyons:

Respectfully, Macy, if we bring him forward we will at least have some oversight re: his troublemaking. If that requires additional resources for the Anachron Management Team, then there are channels for requesting same.

From Dr. Roger Blevins:

Magnus’s psych profile suggests he will probably be considered a “nut job” (possessed by demons, etc.) by anyone in his era. While he might cause problems, they don’t warrant us spending the resources on housing him here for the rest of his life. He isn’t sophisticated enough to figure the whole thing out—or to be useful to us if he’s here. It’s not worth the resources to bring him.

From LTC Lyons:

Respectfully, I can vouch for Magnus’s abilities, having fought beside him on several occasions in Constantinople DTAPs. Contrary to Dr. Blevins’s assessment, I cannot think of a better soldier to help train DOers who will be operating in the Viking/Norman world. I should have proposed recruiting him already. My department has a number of physically active DOers who are currently in turnaround. If we bring him forward I’ll be his minder until we’ve taken proper measure of him.

From Dr. Stokes:

Just bumped into Esme in the cafeteria—she had to do one more Strand on DTAP 1205 Collinet, and says Imblen reports that Magnus has now advanced his theory.

Given that Tristan of Dintagel of legend came to Normandy as a fortune-seeker, and then (as Magnus sees it) almost certainly came forward in time, he is evidence that time travel is an excellent way to seek one’s fortune. Apparently Magnus would like to employ the same method. He is asking Imblen what fee she would accept to Send him in one direction or another. She has reverted to typical witch maneuvers of requesting impossible-to-get things (in this case myrrh from the cradle of Baby Jesus). He threatened her—highly unusual behavior toward a witch—and she had to render him mute for an hour to put him in his place.

Esme hasn’t had time yet to file a full report, but I’ll link in this thread when she does. Please reconsider bringing Magnus forward.

From Dr. Blevins:

Anyone stupid enough to threaten an active witch will never get his head around what is really going on here.

But since he is now a threat to one of our human assets, and Tristan seems to think he can contain him, I’ll (dispassionately) second Melisande’s suggestion to bring him forward.

From LTG Octavian K. Frink:

Have been monitoring this thread.

Bring Magnus forward. Even if he doesn’t figure anything out, we’re dealing with the specter of Diachronic Shear if he says something to somebody more clever than he is. If we keep him busy as a combat instructor he’ll probably think he’s died and gone to Valhalla.

Private message from LTC Lyons to Dr. Stokes:

Don’t correct him about Valhalla, Stokes. I know you want to. Don’t.

GRÁINNE’S

FINAL LETTER

to GRACE O’MALLEY

PART 1

Summer Solstice, 1603

Faith and Auspiciousness to Your Grace!

It’s a very long letter I’ll be writing you this day, and the last one ever, for certain this time. I’ve been to the future and back again, so I have, and am about to go again—and this time, I am quite certain there’ll be no returning. So you’ll never know the end of my story, Your Grace, but now in your closing weeks, before you cease to draw breath, it’s a remarkable adventure I’m leaving you to dwell upon, that you might not forget your little Gráinne as the veils lower between the worlds to receive you.

So to get on with the telling:

Rose Sent me forward, to the same place we have both so oft sent Tristan and the others. I arrived in a place so shocking that I doubt our fair language has words harsh and perverse enough to do it justice. As Tristan had already revealed to me, in this future day there’s only a small, airless chamber where magic’s working, with just enough room for two people, barely larger than a garderobe it is. The walls are slick and peculiar, like tiles made of painted wood. And no smells in it at all, not a one. How can that be?

But ’tis nothing compared to what happens when the door of the chamber opes. ’Twould take me half a lifetime to describe to you the wonders and the horrors of the future world. The garderobe, what they call the ODEC, is housed within a large chamber—a strange room with mechanical monstrosities and a dreadful buzz in the air as if lightning were always just about to strike, a sound they are all indifferent to, much as I became indifferent to the odors of Southwark. And this chamber in turn is inside a vast building, which is on a street full of vast buildings, in a city of streets with vast buildings. Larger than cathedrals some of them, but without ornament or even shape. Like building blocks for giants, so they are. No imagination or love of beauty at all.

Everything functions without human or magical assistance, but I confess most breathlessly that whatever power keeps humanity and its many mechanical servants humming . . . it is far more dazzling than any magic I have ever seen performed.

And I tell you straight out: suspicious this makes me, for what is the cause to bring magic back when it has been replaced by something clearly more serviceable? So the first riddle I put my mind to was this: in a world where carriages travel without beasts to pull them, and food is effortlessly abundant, and there is ample light to sunder any darkness, from all manner of peculiar torches, none of them given to burning down a place even if it is all wood, and where all and sundry wear grander clothes than most anyone in London and an astonishing variety what’s more . . . something there must be, some commodity or advantage, that magic can attain but mankind cannot yet. Nothing material can it be, for no magic I ever knew summoned such luxuries for royalty as everyday folk here take as commonplace.

The environs are not the point of my tale so I shall omit most of the gobsmacking details, but please know I will happily discourse upon it if you’re requesting it of me, Your Grace. To the Kingdom of Heaven I know you are bound soon, but it might not contain half the wonders of yon twenty-first century.

So to get to the telling at last:

Greeted I was by the lady-in-waiting of the ODEC—the first woman ever I met of that time, in that time, and wasn’t she strangely dressed! With teeth every bit as fine as Tristan’s. When I gave her courtesy, why, she was astonished, for isn’t my name one of glorious renown in the future? It is, sure. She proffered me a thick white cotton shift with a belt sewn into it, from a pile of them beside the door, and then a set of absurdly short stockings from another pile (socks, she called them), instructed me to don it all, and asked me to wait—as if I’d anywhere to go now that I’d arrived. Then she spoke directly to her desk, so she did, asking it to send her Lieutenant Colonel Lyons on account of Gráinne had arrived from London.

Within moments there he was, my handsome fella, looking at me through a wall made of the most perfect glass that can be imagined—so smooth and flawless as to be invisible. He looked ever so bizarre in the weeds he must wear in that future time, monotone and snug but shapeless, not glorifying his marvelous shape and yet neither hiding it for modesty as priests are wont to do. ’Twas incredibly dull he looked. After giving me a look up and down, he nodded as if to say “Sure that be Gráinne” and then went to a door in the glass wall, out of my view.

Meanwhile I was hustled away by another young man with gorgeous teeth, who smelled like something I might like to lick (but refrained), escorting me out of the room of the ODEC, he did, under horrible illumination that buzzed fiendishly and made everyone look dead, along a corridor covered in some kind of short, stubby pelt, very firmly set upon the boards, and then into a room tiled with a marvelous substance such as my stockinged feet had never felt before—it both gave way and yet slightly gripped the stocking. This room was blindingly bright and cold, everything made of metal like an armory, but even brighter somehow, as if everything were the color of a new sword—whole walls like silver. Most peculiar it was. At this point, Your Grace, I wouldn’t be lying to say that I was that fatigued and weak, as if all my humors were being slowly drained from me. It occurred to me that a good slumber would be most agreeable. As if he were reading my thoughts, the young man led me to a peculiar piece of furniture, something between a couch and a throne, a sort of upright divan I suppose it was. ’Twas soft and padded and strewn about with blankets and in other ways most inviting for one about to swoon.

But then Tristan came into the room, and that brought me back to my senses.

“God ye good morrow,” myself said gaily. “There’s no need to be looking so surprised, Tristan, sure Rose is attending to my duties in Southwark, and I’d a mind to see for myself the Great Work I am helping build with my journeyman’s efforts. I know you were wanting me to come, so I thought I’d better leg it to you quick as I could.”

“You’re two weeks early,” he said.

“’Twas a change of scene I was wanting, all them natural philosophers were growing dull enough to dry snot. Isn’t it right glad you are to see me, so? Sorry my togemans are so homely, they’re all your maid had to offer me. ’Tisn’t even my knees these stockings reach to, I never knew how tawdry your costume was in this era.”

“Listen to me,” Tristan said in the stoic soldierly way of his, which was grand with me as the whole point of coming here was to hear what he had to say. Besides which, I was growing weaker almost every minute. “There are things in the air here that can kill you just from what you breathe or touch. There is an entire protocol you must go through,” and then he went about using lots of words what sounded Latin and of many syllables, and I wasn’t especially interested in them as I was suddenly fain to sit in the divan. Happily ’twas exactly there he placed me, and talking without pause he was, saying he would have to talk to his superiors while I was going through the ordeal he was about to put me through.

A woman dressed all in white appeared in this room, like a religious acolyte of some pagan creed, and didn’t she and the young man begin to work with some alarming mechanical objects, the which seemed to be alive all on their own, with mysterious eyes and lights and noises and movements, full of hoses and tubes they were, transparent like fine glass but bendable like straw, most confounding. And they were bringing these monsters close to me, and I saw all manner of needles at the ends of the tubes. The woman was introduced to me as a physician (truly! A woman physician!) and the young man as her “nurse,” and they explained in a most unmusical and peculiar kind of English that they had to pump me full of medicine to prevent the invisible airborne humours from imbalancing my own. They had nothing practical there, no leeches or poultices or charms or herbs, nothing but these strange mechanical curiosities. The fellow explained they had to stick needles into my arm to fill me with the medicine—in the form of potion it was—and sure it was the closest I have ever come to panicking. Only Tristan’s familiar presence kept me from something near hysteria, and Your Grace knows I am not easily unnerved.

Things were so clean, you could smell the cleanliness, cleaner than soap it was, and very cold to the spirit. The needles did not hurt, and were bound to my arms and the backs of my hands with some kind of sticking tape, and I felt a cold drowsy feeling in my veins, as if someone were binding me with a spell of lethargy. These first moments of my arrival, to speak true, were not even the slightest bit resembling what I imagined.

“You’ll be getting treatment over the course of the next few days,” says the physician, “and you’ll be quarantined in this room for two weeks.”

“And I’ll have to bring Blevins in to see you,” says Tristan, as if aggrieved he were, although of course secretly Blevins was exactly the man I wanted. “Gráinne, I’m shocked you did this without consulting me first.”

“Sure you haven’t been back to see me in weeks,” says I. “How could I consult you if you weren’t there to consult?”

“There have been plenty of agents back in your time,” says he. “You could have given one of them a message.”

“But then I’d miss seeing that look on your face.” I grin. “’Tis all grand, Tristan, we’ll have a grand time of it.”

Unconvinced he looked, and none too happy, but away he went anyhow. Now I was alone. Or so I thought.

The light, which shone impossibly steady right out of the ceiling, was dimmed so that it was perhaps as bright as a cloudy morn—before that it had been as bright as midsummers at noon—and then it dimmed even more so that it resembled nearly sunset, but without the proper kinds of shadows or color. All wrong and strange it was. It’s quite overwhelmed I was finding myself, Your Grace, and I was not at all sure after all that I was really prepared for my adventure. Wasn’t I certain I would need to be finding someone who had my back.

And suddenly I realized I was not alone. As far as one might spit (well, as far as I might spit anyhow, which is farther than some) was a curtain dividing the room, suspended cleverly from a sort of track attached to the ceiling. A hand reached out from its other side and swept it out of the way, revealing another divan-throne, and upon that didn’t there sit a man now with long brown hair, dressed in the same ungainly togemans I was wearing—white robe and insensibly short stockings. And needles sticking out of his arms, so he had, attached to tubes. A sinewy strength he had, rare amongst the city folk of London, even the soldiers, and honestly even Tristan, who is quite the specimen, looked merely bulky in compare. Every visible inch of skin on this fellow’s body was taut. Handsome he was, but not so handsome as Tristan. There was no way to know his rank as he had nothing about him but what I did, that being what we were given to hide our nakedness. He held himself like a soldier and a leader. Common sense declared he, like myself, had recently arrived from elsewhere. Looking him over, as much as I could be seeing of him, it seemed clear to me that he would offer excellent protection, not to mention an excellent fuck, and so I took it upon myself to make friends with him.

“Good day to you,” I said. “Do you speak English?”

It was a queer look he gave me, and then didn’t he answer not in the Queen’s English but in a peculiar patois of Anglo-Norman French. I’m knowing enough French to get along in a whorehouse, but that is the French of our day. His was of an earlier age. But plenty of time we had, and little else to occupy it, and so as the hours went by we explained ourselves to each other.

He is Magnus, from a village in Normandy. He had spent much of his life a-roaming, fighting for the Emperor’s guard in Constantinople. ’Twas all the way forward from the year 1205 or so Magnus had come (he wasn’t much for calendars, he was more of a map fella), and he had been Sent hither to his great surprise and without his leave, as he had begun to sort out that something peculiar was happening with the world. Lest his understanding trigger lomadh (he had a different word for it, but understood it perfectly, as he’d seen it with his own eyes), Tristan and his company had brought him forward, so they had, for everybody’s safety. He had arrived three days before me.

Now this fella, I thought, was one to have on your side if you were feeling weak as a kitten, which I was, being deprived of all magic. So chat him up I did, and between us didn’t we share nuggets of information. He had little to add to my knowledge, of course, as he was no part of Tristan’s company. He hadn’t a strategy as I did, given he didn’t know he would be coming here until moments before it happened. I kept my counsel but was friendly enough. Surely he’s not so evolved as we, in that it’s obsessed he is with gold and such, like all those accursed Norman-type peoples who have run riot over our fair island . . . but he’s canny, that lad. Straight off I sensed that.

The next day the weakness came over me something terrible and I had fevers and aches. As Magnus and I lay there getting potions pumped into our bodies to balance our humors, another physician-type woman came into the room and went straight to Magnus and let him know, by pantomime gestures, that he should be baring his left shoulder. This he did, and immediately she took exception to something on it. It seemed a simple birthmark to me. He looked askance at her interest, and no wonder, for perhaps here as ever people are eager to see marks of the devil upon a body, and especially upon a stranger. He tensed, but the woman did not seem to notice.

“I see why they called me in . . . that does look a little suspicious,” she said, off-hand as all that.

He tensed more.

From her breast pocket the woman removed an object no larger than a playing card. Colored light shone from one face of it, as if ’twere a stained glass window. She let her fingers play over it for a few moments, then spoke: “I’ll be removing that mole for a biopsy.”

After the briefest of pauses, the object—which I later learned is called a phone—spoke to Magnus in his own dialect. Or tried to, anyway, as “biopsy” ain’t a word to those people, any more than it is to you and me—but as best I could discern, it strung a few words together that approximated the idea, which was that she was going to lop the thing off for a closer look.

I could see well enough that this wasn’t Magnus’s first phone-chat, for he was in no way as astonished as I. He rattled something off, and after a few moments the phone translated: “Going to cut it off me?” Magnus was wary but not worried.

To her gentleman attendant she said something about “lie doe cain” which the phone dutifully attempted to translate, but botched it somehow—forgive me, Your Grace, but I was half delirious, and this bit was a sort of comedy of errors involving the phone and the various dialects. Magnus had a lot of questions—not of a suspicious nature, you’ll understand, but simple hunger to know. It was laboriously explained that “lie doe cain” is a potion, not magical in nature (since magic has no purchase in this time and place) but once injected into his shoulder with a wee needle, deadened the pain so that the woman sliced that birthmark off Magnus’s shoulder without him even needing a swig of whiskey! He watched this in fascination and wonder, like a child seeing a magician at his tricks. The assistant bandaged it neatly enough, and said to him, through the phone, “That might hurt after the lie doe cain wears off.”

Utterly baffled was Magnus, and he reached across to prod the bandage. “No pain?” he said.

“Don’t touch it,” she said with brisk compassion. “No touch.”

“No pain,” he repeated. “No nothing!”

The doctor had been dousing her hands with a sort of ointment they use, scented like bad gin. It is a ritual with them.

“Anesthetic,” she said slowly, and repeated it several times, syllable for syllable. “Makes it numb.”

“But how? Is it magic?”

I shook my head. “There is no magic in this time.” He looked astounded at this news, so now I knew I had some insight to offer him that sure would bind him to me.

The physician now turned her attention to me, and said she’d like to have a look at my skin, all over, as a precaution—for my freckly complexion was of a sort prone to just the sorts of moles she’d lately sliced off of Magnus, and it’s superstitious they are about such things. The assistant shot the curtain across to afford me a bit of privacy, and I pulled up my shift and let the doctor look me over.

“So the lie doe cain is a numbing agent, is it?” I asked the female physician. “Where does it come from? Seems a remarkable ointment.”

She shrugged. “It’s very commonplace in this era. You can buy it at any pharmacy. Do you know what a pharmacy is? You might know it as an apothecary, or chemist.”

“Aye I know it surely, but I doubt he does,” I say. “I’ll explain.”

No eldritch freckles were to be found on my person and so the lady and her assistant packed up their potions and bandages and absented themselves. This was only one such encounter, for don’t these people have a thousand varieties of doctor, each keen to inspect a different bit of you with a different contraption, and it’s shocked you’d be, my lady, if I told you everywhere they looked.

When they were leaving us alone, I brought Magnus up to date on all I knew (besides my own schemes, of course). His pale blue eyes were round as platters a fair bit of the time.

“But you must know,” I told him when I’d said all I knew, “I’ve never left my own age before. Well, not by more than a year or two, for sport. I’ve nothing left to explain, for all the rest will be as new to me as to you.”

After a few days of this, my fevers broke, and my vigor returned as I was growing accustomed to an existence without magic. When it seemed I was fit for conversation, Tristan returned. He had company: one older gentleman and two women, a bit younger than myself. The younger of the two was very beautiful and wore a dress; the other, plainer, and dressed similarly to the men, and the bearing of a scholar did she have about her, like an abbess.

“This is Gráinne,” said Tristan, looking tense about the mouth.

I smiled my charming smile and held out my hand to the gentleman. He stared at me. He was a dignified-enough looking chap, clearly of higher birth from Tristan by the way he carried himself. He had a short, thick mane of grey, swept back as if posing for a statue he was. He reminded me a bit of that right arse Les Holgate who triggered the lomadh and ruined my life. “This is Dr. Roger Blevins,” Tristan says to me, in a heavy-handed sort of way.

“Well met and God save you, milord,” I say, leaning forward from the divan to clasp his hand gingerly (as the back of my hand had all the needles still).

“It is good to meet you—but you have defied protocol in coming here,” he says sternly, with great anger in his eyes. So as usually is the case, I begin to cast a spell to soften him to me . . . and at once I realize, with a dreadful feeling in my guts, that it will not work! Tristan spoke true, there was no magic here at all. No wonder I felt at once so heavy and dull.

“I cry pardon,” I say, trying not to show my dismay. “Things do work best free and easy-like in London, I did not realize how regular in your habits you are here. Isn’t it good I came and learned that?”

The two men exchanged glances and each sighed, in different keys. Blevins made a gesture with his head, and Tristan nodded as if understanding a secret code he was.

“Mel,” he said, a bit wearily, to the plainer of the women. “Meet Gráinne. Gráinne, here is Doctor Melisande Stokes. And here is Erszebet.” That being the fine-looking one in the skirt, with the painted face.

Melisande, without a smile of greeting but a look of some checked amusement in her eye, held out her hand and shook mine. “It’s an honour to meet you, Gráinne. We are very much in your debt. Welcome to America.”

Much quieter is Melisande than I was anticipating her to be. She must be clever in hidden, subtle ways, not the way of educated women in Elizabeth’s court who are falling all over each other to outshine one another. Her light is a secret that she uses as a tool, and sure there is something tough there underneath it, which I do respect well enough. ’Tis clear enough from watching her and Tristan that there should be fire between them, certainly some congress, but just as clear that admitting to it is something you’ll find neither of them doing. Still the attraction hangs in the air almost visibly. I believe when I go back there—now that I have a plan, which shortly I shall tell you of—I must find a way to use that.

And as for Erszebet, their original witch, she is fair indeed, but she is not a happy lass. Her discontentment fairly radiates from her fiery dark eyes, and her face is fashioned, as if from birth, to have a bit of a pout or sneer. And yet strangely charming (excuse the term) I found her to be at once.

Rather than taking my proffered hand to shake, she took it and kissed my knuckles. “I greet you as a sister,” says she. “As I greet all the witches who dwell in my house, and come under my aegis.”

“Now wait a moment,” says Tristan. “We don’t know we’ll be keeping her on as an employee.”

“And I don’t know I’ll be staying,” says I, “if this is how I’m to be spoken of—like as if I weren’t even in the room.”

“Gráinne, don’t you understand, you can’t leave,” said Tristan with some irritation. “Once an historical agent has come forward, they cannot go back, they have too much knowledge of what is here to safely take back.”

“Then staying’s what I’ll do,” I said agreeably.

Now the Blevins is watching all of this back-and-forth with what I’m sure he imagines to be a canny and knowing mien. Ever so stern he was in the beginning, with his talk of protocols, but now doesn’t he change his tune and become the friend and protector of poor Gráinne.

“Did you have in mind making the poor woman a detainee?” says the Blevins, taking a wee step closer to me, as if he’s going to ward off the others’ wicked assaults. “No, we need her abilities in the ATTO. This has been in the works for months, Tristan. Perhaps you missed it, when you were off becoming a hero and a saint, and watching Diachronic Shear in Pera, and vacationing in France; but Gráinne, though she showed up early, came here to work for me. And once we have matters sorted out, she’ll enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as any other anachronic employee.”

During the ensuing silence, while Tristan and Mel are rolling their eyes at this peroration, Erszebet steps in.

“She’s not an employee,” says Erszebet. “She has not signed your nonsense papers. She has only helped you from the generosity of her heart. You have no hold on her. As I know the story, you are deeply in her debt and have made absolutely no attempt to recompense her.” To me, she says, “This is a terrible world and I would not stay if I could leave, but I have obligations I must honor. You do not. If I were you, I would leave at once. If you want to stay, I will do all in my power to make things less wretched for you than they have been for me.”

More sympathy’s what I’d be feeling, if these words came from an unkempt beggar, but here she is wearing a gown as fine as any at Bess’s court might wear, although scandalously short of length the skirt was. So I do wonder a wee bit about how easily she finds things miserable. But she is offering me a place at her table, and I accept with graciousness.

“I will show you everything you need to know to survive in this strange world,” she says firmly, as if in defiance of the men, whom she does not waste even a flicker of her attention on now. “These people think they have set up an initiation into these times, for Anachrons who come forward. What they offer is feeble. I will give you my own attention, as I do every witch. You will be comfortable and safe, and most important, you will understand things. These men do not think witches need to understand much, as if we were just cogs in a bit of machinery, they have no regard for our human rights.”

“Our what?” asks I, as I see it’s Blevins’s turn to be rolling his eyes a bit.

“I will show you how to order take-out and flush a toilet and use Instagram. Although you are older. Perhaps you would prefer Facebook.” A sly smile of pleasure. “I will take you shopping. For clothing. The other Anachrons are not allowed this, but the witches I take whenever I wish. I think you will enjoy that.”

None of the others disagreed with her, which I took to mean that this was Erszebet’s role in greeting all new witches. She’d made a gesture on the word “clothing,” gracefully smoothing her hands down either side of her bodice, so that her meaning would be obvious even to those with no modern English.

Such as Magnus, who had been watching all of this from his divan silently, as a cat gazing into a garden from an open window.

“Clothing,” he echoed, and they all turned toward him. Clearly he had already been introduced before I arrived, as none of them rushed to shake his hand. “Clothing,” he repeated, imitating Erszebet’s gesture upon his own body.

Tristan nodded, and fluently enough he spoke to him, in Magnus’s native tongue. I could make out a smattering of familiar words—chemise, pantaloons, cap. Magnus frowned and unconvinced he looked. He responded to Tristan with a growling answer and sure didn’t that answer include a word we had just learned from the physician: lidocaine.

Tristan looked taken aback. They spoke briefly and then Tristan turned to the others. “He’s curious about the lidocaine Doctor Andrews gave him. Wonders if we are going foraging or raiding for clothes, if we can obtain some.”

The Blevins made an appalled sound in his throat, which developed into a chuckle. “Foraging or raiding?” Then he laughed out loud.

“He’s a medieval Norman warrior, sir,” Tristan said. “There’s no word for ‘shopping’ in his language.”

“Nonsense,” Blevins said. “He’s from circa 1200 and he lived in the most sophisticated city in the world. Even if he was illiterate.”

“Almost everyone was illiterate,” rejoined Melisande. “That’s why being an historical linguist is such a challenge, Dr. Blevins, or don’t you remember? Oral tradition was—”

“Oral tradition is why he got into trouble in the first place,” says the Blevins, and to Tristan he says it, not to Mel. “By recognizing you from such an old story.”

“He put two and two together, and became suspicious that we were time traveling,” Mel agreed, “and that fired his imagination.”

“I’ll give him that much—he has a vivid imagination,” said the Blevins, “and that he imagines himself a Viking.” And over the lovely face of Tristan don’t I see a look of annoyance flare for a moment, then fade away.

Magnus knows perfectly well that they’re talking about him. He can’t make out one word in ten, but “viking” he knows. He’s favoring Blevins with an innocent look that I did not for one moment believe was really innocent. I saw at once what Magnus was about: for his own reasons, whatever they be, he was gulling them all into considering him dull-witted. Seeing he now has the Blevins’s attention, he taps his shoulder, and says with deliberately (it seemed to me) child-like delight, “Viking! Viking!” and makes a fist as if he’s holding an axe, and goes into a little pantomime of laying about himself as if in a battle of legendary times. And then doesn’t he laugh like a toddler.

At this, the Blevins smirks, and says to Tristan, “He’s like that Korean guy we brought from the Silla dynasty.”

“Who, Yeon Hyeokgeose?” says Melisande curtly. “He was developmentally challenged. He was simple.”

“This guy’s pretty simple,” says the Blevins with a quick laugh, and gestures to Magnus as if he was a piece of furniture. And then quick as you like, I realize that Magnus has looked round at the rest of us to see our displeasure at whatever Blevins said (and he might, in hindsight, have even recognized the word simple)—and then realizing he’d just been insulted, doesn’t he smile and chuckle at the Blevins as if they were old friends.

“He is not simple,” Tristan said. “I’ve fought in battle beside him, he is quick-witted and I know his worth.”

“Battle’s not about brains, is it,” says the Blevins. It’s not Magnus he’s looking at when he says it, but Tristan, and I can see well enough from that what sort of history lies between these two men. “Tristan, we’re done here. Gráinne needs to be shown every kindness—whether by Erszebet or the rest of the Sea Cod Staff, it’s no concern of mine—or of yours. We’ll get her into the ATTO as soon as we can. As for Hagar the Horrible here, I suspect he’ll end up a useless drain on our resources and our hospitality. But he seems an amiable sort. Once we’re satisfied he has a decent level of impulse control—enough that we can take him off premises without causing an incident—I’ll wager he’d be susceptible to a shock and awe sort of treatment.”

“It’s going to take a lot to shock him or awe this dude,” Tristan demurred.

“Viking!” echoes Magnus, and wasn’t his face beaming.

“Wait until he gets a load of modern video games,” the Blevins insisted. “We’ll get him some toys to play with, settle him down a little, and then see what he can do for us as a trainer.”

INCIDENT REPORT

AUTHOR: MAJ Isobel Sloane

SUBJECT: Magnus and Gráinne

THEATER: C/COD (present day)

DTAP: Bio-containment ward

FILED: Day 1880 (late September, Year 5)

Pursuant to the Sexual Harassment Policy, information is hereunder presented about a series of incidents in the bio-containment ward involving recently arrived Anachrons Magnus and Gráinne (no last names provided). Technically these do not constitute sexual harassment per se since all activity took place between consenting adults in what they believe to be a private setting. However, DOSECOPS personnel, part of whose job is to continuously monitor the video and audio “feeds” from the room in question, have raised a number of complaints that need to be addressed.

Without getting into overly lurid details, the basic situation is that after a few days during which she complained of fever, chills, aches, and low energy (all typical for newly arrived Anachrons going through the inoculation protocol), Gráinne has bounced back and returned to a level of vitality and vigor that, though it might be normal for her, is exceptional by our standards. Magnus, of course, had a three-day head start on her in this department, and the inoculations never seemed to make much of a dent on him anyway. They are in adjacent beds, separated only by a curtain, twenty-four hours a day. No one else is in the ward, and they are blissfully unaware of the existence of modern surveillance technology. Beginning three days ago and building from there, the two of them have been engaging in a wide range of sexual activities, as often as four times a day. These activities are quite obviously consensual, so there is no issue where that is concerned. Gráinne, as it turns out, exhibits a pattern of loud, prolonged, and repetitive vocalizations while engaging in such activities—in the vernacular, she is what is known as a “screamer.” All of this comes through in full Dolby 7.1 on the security consoles that DOSECOPS personnel are expected to monitor as a condition of their employment. While it may have had some novelty value at first, it is now to the point of posing a serious distraction at best. At worst it is creating an actively hostile work environment, particularly for female employees and for those whose religious convictions make such viewing problematic.

Accordingly, I have muted the audio feeds from the bio-containment ward and encouraged security personnel to leave the cameras off most of the time, making occasional spot checks only. Since Gráinne and Magnus are locked in, escape is physically impossible, and since our long-suffering medical personnel are on the other side of a door, only a few yards away, with access to the no doubt spectacular bio-monitor readout infographics, there is zero chance of either of these two Anachrons suffering any kind of medical emergency without our knowing of it immediately.

These measures, which I unilaterally placed into effect this morning after stumbling into the ops center during a particularly egregious transaction between Magnus and Gráinne, have already lifted morale among security staff and eased a tense situation. Lieutenant [name redacted], who first drew my attention to the problem, has been placed on medical leave and assigned to a counselor.

Exchange of posts by DODO staff

on “Department Heads” ODIN channel

DAY 1881

Post from LTC Tristan Lyons:

Not to nitpick, but Gráinne’s not a “screamer” in my experience.

Reply from Dr. Melisande Stokes:

Could you clarify that please?

From LTC Lyons:

Hahaha, yes, happy to clarify (thanks, Stokes!). During various DEDEs in settings where Gráinne was engaged in sexual activity WITH OTHER PEOPLE, I did not observe the vocalizations mentioned in Sloane’s incident report.

From Dr. Stokes:

Maybe she simply wasn’t enjoying herself—there’s no reason a sex worker would.

From LTC Lyons:

Can someone tell me how to retreat from this minefield? All I’m saying is: archive the recordings even if they’re not being live-monitored.

TRANSCRIPT (EXCERPT)

CONVERSATION BETWEEN GRÁINNE (G)

AND MAGNUS (M)

DAY 1884 (LATE SEPTEMBER, YEAR 5)

NOTES: Video recording was made automatically by a motion-activated security camera system in bio-containment ward at DODO HQ, Cambridge, MA. In the wake of subsequent events, the file was salvaged from a secure server by DODO personnel and transferred to the ad hoc GRIMNIR backup system, where it was later transcribed. Excerpt below begins at approximately 14:12 local time. Subjects are engaged in “missionary position” style coitus with faces in close contact and so audio is of low quality. Dialog is in a mishmash of languages; this is an approximate translation into modern English.

G: I asked Erszebet about “shock and awe.”

M: The words the Pigeon used?

G: (slapping Magnus on the buttock) Blevins, lad. His name is Blevins.

M: What is their meaning?

G: ’Tis a phrase used by soldiers. From one of their sagas. A tactic to break the will of the enemy, so it is.

M: I understand this tactic well and moreover have used it. In fact I am using it now!

[REDACTED]

G: Oh, there’s more. In one of their wars, didn’t they face an enemy that was poor, ill-equipped, with bad weapons and low morale. To make the war be over fast, they used many of their best weapons in a great show of force. This was shock and awe.

M: So Erszebet thinks that the Pigeon means to use this tactic on me. To fuck my mind like I am fucking your pussy.

G: You’re fucking my pussy? I hadn’t noticed.

M: Notice this!

[REDACTED]

G: Be getting your mind off of Erszebet, now.

M: That is difficult.

G: Then close your pretty eyes and pretend it’s her you’re fucking.

M: Okay. Mmm, that’s very nice!

G: (pinches Magnus’s nipple)

M: Bitch!

G: Be paying attention, I’m trying to tell you something important about Blevins.

M: I understand. But if you pinch my nipple again I’ll flip you over and give it to you up the ass and then I’ll be pinching your nipples and pulling your hair and you won’t be able to do a thing about it except moan like an alley cat.

G: That, and reach up underneath to be grabbing you by the ball sack which is what happened when you tried that yesterday.

M: Yes, I remember . . . or was it the day before?

G: In any case the K-Y Jelly is right over there if you mean it.

M: Kind of them to leave that there for us. I was going to kill that doctor when he shoved his finger up my ass but then I realized the possibilities of that substance.

G: Yes, you could fuck me in the ass and not be seeing my face so you could imagine I was Erszebet.

M: She makes me hot.

G: She makes me hot and I’m not even a woman-fucking kind of woman.

M: I’d like to see the two of you doing it!

G: Maybe soon. Growing close aren’t we, she and I. She has much to say to me.

M: About shock and awe?

G: And other things. She saw the death of magic with her own eyes. Lived through it, so she did, poor lass. So we don’t just talk about your concerns, Magnus, but matters of interest to us witches.

M: I know that, I’m not stupid.

G: You just act that way.

M: Yes.

G: Keep it up.

M: I will.

G: Oh, and be keeping that up too!

[REDACTED]

Post by Dr. Roger Blevins on

“Announcements” ODIN channel

DAY 1890 (1 OCTOBER, YEAR 5)

For fear of “putting a jinx” on it, we’re not having a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony this time, but I wanted to announce that ATTO #1—the first of our new, fully mobile ODECs—went “hot” this morning at 0900 sharp. I’m assured that all systems are working normally, and Gráinne—who is now out of quarantine—reports that she is able to perform magical activities inside of it as effectively as she ever could in Elizabethan London.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Oda on another major achievement. It is going on three years since he shifted to “Emeritus” status in the wake of the successful Chronotron launch, and some of you may have mistaken that for a dignified form of retirement. In truth his work on this project has been tireless and relentless, and a testimony to what may be achieved by a gifted mind when given the freedom to pursue its own interests unfettered by bureaucratic restrictions.

Post by Dr. Frank Oda on

“Announcements” ODIN channel

DAY 1890 (1 OCTOBER, YEAR 5)

Thanks to Dr. Blevins and to all those of you who have sent me congratulatory messages and greeted me in person today. In truth it is a bittersweet day, for I actually am now transitioning to full retirement after three years of work on the Ambient Temperature Tactical ODEC (ATTO). My full departure is still a few months away. In the meantime, here is a little more information for those of you who haven’t been following this closely.

“Ambient Temperature” simply means that this ODEC is capable of functioning without being connected to large, expensive, finicky cryogenic systems. To make a long story short, we have achieved this by replacing the traditional superconductors with higher-temp superconductors that can be kept at the required temperature through a combination of clever insulation and solid-state Peltier coolers.

“Tactical” is a reference to the fact that these ODECs, unlike the ones we are used to, are capable of being moved about. For simplicity’s sake, we have constructed the first production run of ATTOs in conventional, unmarked shipping containers. So this finally answers the question that has been on so many people’s minds during the last couple of years: Why is there a shipping container in Loading Bay 3 with technicians in bunny suits going in and out of it?

Finally, “ODEC” simply means that, despite the innovations mentioned above, this is, at the end of the day, just another ODEC, i.e., an environment in which it is possible for MUONs to conduct MAGOPs. On the inside it is somewhat larger than our stationary “strategic” ODECs in the basement, but as far as the MUON is concerned, it is functionally the same.

As to what uses the ATTOs might be put to, I’ll allow readers of this message to use their imaginations. Let’s just say that when we fired up the first ODEC some four years ago and let Erszebet go to work in it, we learned very quickly that most of the things witches are capable of were not actually that useful, from a practical standpoint, as long as they were confined to a fixed volume the size of a phone booth. We settled on Sending and Homing as the two most useful functionalities, and as you know we have constructed a large organization around that. The new ATTOs (of which we have one up and running, three in final production, and six more in the works) can do everything the old ODECs can do, but our ability to move them around the world and disguise them should enable our ever-growing staff of MUONs to practice their craft in a greater diversity of operational modalities, broadening the palette of force projection options available to our strategic leadership team as they consider how most effectively to project American soft power across time and space.

Journal Entry of

Rebecca East-Oda

OCTOBER 2

Temperature 65F—warm, fair, and dry, with slight breeze from the west. Barometer steady. Foliage turning; about nine days from peak (will be a little early this year).

Didn’t make a journal entry yesterday because feared I couldn’t keep emotions in check.

The day comes for every man when he has to retire. There is little point in pretending otherwise. For Frank that day was yesterday; he has already dropped to fifty percent and will taper to full retirement at the end of the year. I am a little apprehensive as to where he will find outlets for his energies when he is spending all of his time at home again, but the East House Trust can certainly put him to work on innumerable repair and improvement projects, at least for a little while.

For the most part, he is going out on a high note with the ATTO. During the years of his first retirement, when he was living in exile from the scientific community, we were both in denial about how bad things were. Going back to productive work at DODO was the best thing in the world for him. All the politics and the mishaps tempered his enjoyment to quite a degree, but the honors he has received within the secret world of black-budget defense technology have meant the world to him.

He announced his retirement yesterday, but his message to his colleagues was butchered by someone in Macy Stoll’s department who heaped on a lot of gibberish at the end. I can only trust that his treasured colleagues saw through it and found it amusing.

LETTER (HANDWRITTEN) ON PERSONAL STATIONERY OF

DR. ROGER BLEVINS TO

LIEUTENANT GENERAL OCTAVIAN K. FRINK

DAY 1905 (MID-OCTOBER, YEAR 5)

Okie,

Hope you’re enjoying the cooler weather down in DC, up here fall is on the way and the colors are starting to peak. Great football weather.

Just wanted to drop you a note letting you know progress with our two newest Anachrons.

Gráinne bounced back from the inoculation protocol in fine form and seems to have picked up an additional infusion of energy and high spirits from spending hours each day in the ATTO, where she has access to magic again. As you know we had a challenging battery of experiments lined up for her, all more or less in the realm of psy-ops, and after a rough patch at the beginning when she didn’t quite see the point of it (systematic experimentation not being a natural fit for a witch!), she buckled down to work and has been generating all sorts of interesting results. Yesterday I went into the ATTO while it was up and running and sat in on some of these procedures as an observer. There is the usual “ODEC mind fog” which nearly all modern people complain about to a greater or lesser extent, but I came away immensely impressed with Gráinne’s talents and her dedication to DODO’s mission. In retrospect, it’s a shame we kept her tucked away in Elizabethan England for so many years. She is clearly our most capable MUON, and if I may say as much without stepping over the boundaries of the sexual harassment policy, a real ornament to DODO. She doesn’t have Erszebet’s drop-dead looks but rather a kind of presence that grows on you.

Anyway, that’s probably enough on that topic—the R&D boffins are working up some numbers on the results of our experiments that you should be able to share with all of those senators who are badgering you for the latest news on the Trapezoid’s so-called “mind control” experiments.

Sometimes it’s a shame you’re not up here in Cambridge with us, as you miss the human side of things. Today I introduced one of our other new Anachrons to some of the wonders of the modern world. This is Magnus, whom you’ll remember as the troublesome Varangian Guard who had to be Sent forward. To judge from the alarmist reports that were flying around prior to that decision, you’d imagine him as some kind of dangerous predatory mastermind. Of course, now that he’s here, he turns out to be nothing of the sort. He’s a simple, amiable chap with a wide-eyed appreciation for everything we share with him. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side, but we think he could be a fine trainer in the Violence(s) Ethnology Department.

To whet his appetite a bit, and air him out, I took him up to Andover for the homecoming game, which as you’ll know from the alumni newsletter we won in a fine come-from-behind effort. This was an excellent fit for his overall mentality. He isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he is enthusiastic, and after some initial confusion he understood the basics of the rules—which he likened to shield-wall combat among the Vikings. He cheered lustily for our side all the way through the game and seemed genuinely moved by the last-minute heroics. I’m able to converse with him in a mixture of Byzantine Greek, Old French, and modern English (knowing lots of half-dead obscure languages continues to have its plusses, even if it doesn’t put me in your pay grade).

This is all somewhat calculated, I’ll admit: since arriving in our age, Magnus hasn’t seen modern people engaged in any sort of rough-and-tumble, and I wanted to impress upon him that we as a people have not gone entirely soft. Message delivered; after the game we went down to the field and chatted with some of the players (I am introducing him as a recently arrived exchange student from Dagestan), and afterwards in the car he made appreciative comments about their size and strength and grit.

Having got that message across, I then proceeded to take him to Walmart en route home.

Imagine a man from the thirteenth century suddenly plucked into the twenty-first . . . and introduced to Walmart of all places!

Beyond the total astonishment of modern life in general, the cornucopia of goods clearly left him gobsmacked, as the Brits say. He has had a childish fixation on lidocaine ever since the dermatologist used it on him, and was delighted to find that there was an entire section of the store stocked not only with that but many other magical potions as well. I showed him a cordless drill—and then the expressions on his face! He almost tired me out with his naive enthusiasm—we covered the entire store. Not just the obvious things like furniture and clothes, but sports equipment, dinnerware . . . He was delighted with things we take for granted—insect repellent! He loved the insect repellent! As well as canned goods; chili mix; hairspray. A refreshing reminder of how amazing the world we live in really is.

If you ever want to be reminded how extraordinary modern life is, if you ever need to slap yourself out of the complacency of taking electricity or Teflon for granted . . . come take an Anachron out on an orientation tour.

Love to Bess and the family. Get your butt up here some time soon for a round of golf. Don’t worry about the bugs—we have insect repellent!

Cheers,

Blev

Post by Macy Stoll on

“Announcements” ODIN channel

DAY 1920 (31 OCTOBER, YEAR 5)

To all employees and contractors:

This is just a final reminder that we are closing early this afternoon at 3 p.m. to make preparations for the annual Halloween party. For those of you who’ve joined DODO in the past year—and I know there are many of you—this is traditionally our biggest social event of the year, comparable to what the Christmas party would be in a less culturally and spatiotemporally diverse organization. In accordance with our usual protocols, we need to make special preparations to welcome your family members and SOs without inadvertently leaking classified information. Thanks to all who have volunteered to help out with that work—by now you should know your assignments.

On a practical level, this means that all access to the basement bio-containment/ODEC complex will be sealed off at 3 p.m. sharp, and a rotating security detail assigned there (we want to make sure DOSECOPS gets to enjoy the festivities too!). The main site for the party will be the cafeteria. Please be sure you have removed all documents of a potentially sensitive nature from that area. We’ll also be allowing visitors to tour the Chronotron on a half-hourly basis, and so IT personnel need to make sure that all documents are stowed away in locked drawers—this includes Post-it notes on monitors and desktops, etc.

Halloween decorations will go up in the cafeteria starting at 4 p.m. and we’ll have the usual trick-or-treat facilities for the little ones.

Also at 4 p.m. we’ll have a briefing in the big conference room for Anachrons who are unfamiliar with our traditions around Halloween and may need some guidance as to what is and is not appropriate behavior—I know this has been a concern in the past, based on some of the anecdotes and incident reports that have been shared with me. Remember, our medical staff would like to enjoy the evening too—let’s not make them work!

Doors open at 5 p.m. for families and SOs.

As you choose your costumes, please try to keep in mind everything our Diversity Policy has to say about stereotypes surrounding witches. Most of you who work here don’t need to be told this, but every year it seems we have some children who show up in costumes that are offensive to certain members of our staff. Remember, the following costume elements are expressly forbidden:

Pointy hats

Green skin

Warts on nose

Brooms

Anyone who shows up in a potentially offensive costume will be gently redirected to Conference Room 12 where we will have a range of alternative costume choices to choose from.

With your assistance I’m sure we can all look forward to another enjoyable and memorable Halloween party. Have fun, everyone!

TRANSCRIPT

SELECTED RADIO TRAFFIC

ON DODO SECURITY FREQUENCIES

DAY 1920 (HALLOWEEN, YEAR 5)

NOTES:

All content transcribed from recordings made during the evening of Halloween and auto-saved to DODO archives. In the wake of subsequent events, files were salvaged from a secure server by DODO personnel and transferred to the ad hoc GRIMNIR backup system, from which they were later decrypted and transcribed. Repetitive content such as routine comm checks has been redacted for clarity.

OTHER NOTES:

—“BACKHOE” is Secret Service code name for Lieutenant General Octavian K. Frink.

—“STYLUS” is Dr. Roger Blevins.

—“DOSECOPS C4” is the communications officer on duty in the Diachronic Operations Security Ops (DOSECOPS) Command, Control, and Communications Center, the hub for security operations beneath DODO’s Cambridge, MA, headquarters.

—“DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL” is the ranking officer on duty there (at the time of these recordings, Major Isobel Sloane).

—“DOSECOP 1,” “DOSECOP 2,” etc. denote specific security officers on site.

—“USSS 1,” USSS 2,” etc. denote United States Secret Service officers visiting the site as part of BACKHOE’s personal security detail.

15:00:00 DOSECOPS C4: All units, this is a reminder that the facility is now officially closed for the day and transitioning to off-hours security protocols. We’re expecting a number of delivery vehicles in the next two hours at Docks 1 and 2, these will be bringing party supplies. Normal screening procedures apply for all incoming cargo, drivers, and entertainment personnel. Doors open for civilian guests in two hours.

15:37:12 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is C4 Actual. I have just received confirmation that Backhoe is coming to the party. He’ll be coming in from Hanscom, exact arrival time TBD. We will be integrating with his Secret Service detail as needed. Officers on duty at Dock 1 should stand by to close it to all civilian traffic and make it ready to receive Backhoe and his entourage; please acknowledge.

15:37:38 DOSECOP 1: Acknowledged, standing by.

16:05:56 DOSECOPS C4: Two vans are now inbound from MUON Residential Facility carrying a total of nineteen MUONs and three support staff, ETA 16:30. We’ll direct them to Docks 1 and 2. Any officers on patrol in that part of the building should stand by to help check credentials, just to avoid a backup and a lot of annoyed MUONs.

16:23:32 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is C4 Actual. I’ve received confirmation from Backhoe’s Secret Service detail that he is on the ground and in a vehicle. ETA is about 17:30 depending on traffic, will update as I have further information.

16:30:00 DOSECOPS C4: All units, this is a reminder that doors will open for civilian ingress in thirty minutes. Officers on internal patrols, now is the time for you to inspect all surfaces for potentially classified documents. All monitors are to be switched off or placed in secure locked mode with Infosec-compliant screen savers.

16:31:45 DOSECOP 1: Dock 1 here. MUON vans have arrived and are backing into the grade-level ramps at Docks 1 and 2.

16:31:55 DOSECOPS C4: Acknowledged. Have officers standing by the side doors of those vans to offer a hand to disembarking MUONs, we have been warned to expect an abundance of high heels, and some of the ladies are new to that kind of footwear. Don’t want to kick off the party with an injury.

16:32:02 DOSECOP 1: Acknowledged. Standing by with stepstools and strong arms.

16:36:38 DOSECOPS C4: Loading dock detail, sitrep please? Looks on the cameras like there’s quite a bottleneck and some hurt feelings.

16:36:54 DOSECOP 1: Roger that, C4. If you’re watching this on the feed you may have noticed that some of the MUONs’ costumes are, uh . . .

16:37:00 DOSECOPS C4: Stop right there before you get into trouble, officer. Yes, the costumes have been receiving close attention from C4 staff and we are aware of their nature. What is the issue?

16:37:10 DOSECOP 1: Some of them didn’t bring their lanyards and badges because of compatibility issues of an aesthetic or stylistic nature with costumes. Procedures dictate . . .

16:37:20 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Understood. This is Actual. I am authorizing you to waive procedures and treat the MUONs as civilians for now. No need to write up incident reports or any of that. Visual ID is sufficient. The one in the red shimmery um . . . whatever you call it is gonna have to take her mask off whether she likes it or not.

16:37:31 DOSECOP 1: Roger that, Actual. Speaking of visual ID, we have two in violation of the diversity policy regs.

16:37:40 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Come again?

16:37:46 DOSECOP 1: Pointy hats and brooms, sir.

16:37:50 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: So, two of the MUONs are attired in a manner that is culturally offensive to MUONs?

16:37:57 DOSECOP 1: According to the regs issued yesterday, yes, sir.

16:38:02 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAl: That’s Ms. Stoll’s problem. Let them in without further delay.

16:50:00 DOSECOPS C4: All units, doors open in ten.

16:50:15 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is C4 Actual. Just an update before all hell breaks loose. Backhoe is still inbound, ETA has been pushed back to 17:45 because he has decided to swing by Stylus’s residence and pick up Stylus and his wife en route. They will all be arriving together. At that time we’ll be clearing Dock 1 for the vehicle carrying Backhoe and Stylus, as well as Dock 2 for the war wagon with Secret Service detail.

16:51:20 DOSECOP 2: Reporting in from Door 1 where we have now two separate minivan loads of costumed rug rats with moms in a high state of combat readiness. They are taking exception to our holding the line on the 1700 hours opening time. Request permission to let them in early.

16:51:30 DOSECOPS C4: Hold the line. We see the moms and concur with your threat assessment. As diversionary tactic we are sending out a juggler on a unicycle. You might want to open the door for him.

16:51:59 DOSECOP 2: Acknowledged, I have unicyclist on visual.

17:00:00 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Okay to open doors to civilian guests. Officers on patrol, divert to entrance zones and help with any bottlenecks—all credentials need to be checked, no exceptions.

17:01:11 DOSECOPS C4: Door 2 personnel, our audio systems picked up a loud bang followed by a scream, please report.

17:01:25 DOSECOP 3: Roger, that was the guy making the balloon animals. Wiener dog underwent explosive decompression, scared a baby.

17:01:34 DOSECOPS C4: Acknowledged.

17:15:00 DOSECOPS C4: All door units, report with numbers.

17:15:15 DOSECOP 3: Door 2 has admitted 41 with approximately three dozen still waiting for credentials check.

17:15:31 DOSECOP 2: Door 1, 79 in, a dozen waiting.

17:15:40 DOSECOP 4: Door 3, 56 in, maybe two dozen outside.

17:16:02 DOSECOP 1: Uh, C4, no one yet except the MUONs but we are expecting two full buses from the SARF [Supervised Anachron Residential Facility] with an estimated total of 70. Should be here in ten.

17:16:12 DOSECOPS C4: Weren’t they supposed to be in the building by 1600? For the Anachron briefing?

17:16:17 DOSECOP 1: Anachrons and their sense of time.

17:16:26 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is C4 Actual, I want those buses processed fast so we can clear the docks for Backhoe’s vehicles. Any officers on internal patrol, if it looks like the surge is abating at the doors, redirect to the loading docks.

...

17:27:43 DOSECOP 1: Here come the SARF buses. Brace for weirdness.

17:50:15 DOSECOPS C4: Patching Secret Service voice frequencies into local DOSECOPS VOIP network. We should all be on the same channel now, literally.

17:50:21 USSS 1: Backhoe vehicle 1, comm check.

17:50:25 DOSECOPS C4: Acknowledged.

17:50:30 USSS 2: Backhoe vehicle 2, comm check.

17:50:35 DOSECOPS C4: Acknowledged.

17:50:42 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: This is DOSECOPS C4 Actual welcoming our Secret Service brothers and sisters to Boston. We are tracking you with an ETA of sixty seconds. Officers in civilian clothes are waiting on the street to wave your vehicles in. Loading docks are clear.

17:50:59 USSS 1: Thank you, C4 Actual, Boston drivers have made quite an impression on us, and we are looking forward to working with you and your staff on a safe, sane Halloween party.

17:52:15 USSS 1: C4, I’m out of the vehicle and having a look-see around the dock area. Everything looks nominal but there is one gentleman wearing a Mongol costume having an argument with your door staff . . .

17:52:25 DOSECOPS C4: It’s not a costume.

17:52:29 USSS 1: Come again?

17:52:33 DOSECOPS C4: He actually is a Mongol.

17:52:40 USSS 1: Oh.

17:52:43 DOSECOPS C4: We’ve patched him into an interpreter over a voice link but the conversation is proceeding slowly.

17:52:53 USSS 1: Is that a real archery set he’s carrying? That is my only concern. That, and the fact that he seems agitated. Is it safe for Backhoe to get out of the car? Oh, never mind, Backhoe just got out of the car.

17:53:01 DOSECOPS C4: Who is the Indian chief? Hard to make out on the security feed.

17:53:09 USSS 1: That is Stylus. Repeat, Stylus is dressed as an Indian chief.

17:53:20 USSS 2: On another note, C4, has the shipping container in the adjoining bay been cleared and secured?

17:53:27 DOSECOPS C4: The rusty green one over in Dock 3?

17:53:31 USSS 2: Roger. Just part of our SOP to check and secure any of those within our perimeter.

17:53:40 DOSECOPS C4: Understood. It’s not a shipping container.

17:53:44 USSS 2: Come again, C4?

17:53:52 DOSECOPS C4: The thing in Dock 3 that looks exactly like a rusty green shipping container is something else. Will explain later. It is extremely secure.

17:54:02 USSS 1: As you can see, Backhoe’s entire delegation is out of the vehicle and waiting behind the Mongol, can we have the interpreter tell him to stand aside please so that we can wave our people through?

17:54:07 DOSECOPS C4: Will pass your request on but it might be more prudent to . . .

17:54:11 USSS 1: Never mind, C4, Stylus is gesturing toward the shipping container, telling the others about it.

17:54:17 DOSECOPS C4: ATTO. It’s called an ATTO. The shipping container.

17:54:31 DOSECOP 1: Genghis Khan has cleared door security, we are open for business to welcome Backhoe. Apologies for delay.

17:54:36 USSS 1: Copy that. Stand by.

17:54:42 DOSECOPS C4: As you can see, Backhoe’s delegation is wandering over toward the ATTO.

17:54:55 DOSECOP 1: Is that Backhoe’s costume?

17:54:59 USSS 1: Affirmative.

17:55:06 DOSECOP 1: He’s dressed as . . . a lieutenant general in the United States Army?

17:55:16 USSS 1: Affirmative. He says it’s the only night of the year when he can wear it in Boston and not be recognized.

Diachronicle

DAY 1920 (HALLOWEEN, YEAR 5)

In which witches will be witches

I SHALL NEVER KNOW IF the Halloween party was, from the start, a monstrous distraction created by Gráinne. It’s true that the higher-ups had offered such a masque the previous two years . . . but now I wonder if perhaps Gráinne, in Year 5, did not use an ODEC to go back in time to the same ODEC two years earlier, slip out and work her wiles on Blevins (i.e., induce him to make the Halloween party an annual event), and then return to the present day—I mean to say, what was the present day before I was marooned in 1851.

In any case, there was a Halloween party and she used elements of it to her advantage. More specifically, she relied upon it as a diversion so that she could begin to use the ATTO to her advantage.

Have I mentioned the ATTO in these scribblings? In simplest terms it was a portable ODEC. Oda-sensei, with his unending genius, sorted out how to make it both portable and larger than the stationary ODECs in the office: it was the size and shape of a shipping container. Blevins was obsessed with it, a cat with catnip, and grew preoccupied with all the great psychological ops/warfare that could be accomplished with a movable magic machine. Both Tristan and I were obviously hesitant (if the reasons for hesitance weren’t obvious then, they sure as shit are by now!).

Erszebet’s attitude toward the ATTO, and the work that could be done in it, vacillated wildly. After five years she was really fucking sick bored with doing no magic but Sending, and so the possibilities offered by the ATTO intrigued her; on the other hand, she resented going through another series of parlor tricks to demonstrate its capabilities, as she had done with us when we first sprang her from the elder-hostel. I wish I could remember now what Gráinne thought of it—I realize with rueful retrospection that she was playing her cards very close to her vest.

But to the events of that evening: Gráinne and Erszebet had both chosen to get all ironically meta about things mock the contemporary image of witches by wearing green body paint and pointy hats (they claimed they were groupies of Wicked, but I know for a fact that neither of them has ever seen it). Anyhow, put off by the extreme security measures, they failed to show up at the loading dock as the rest of us did, to pay political homage, as Blevins and Frink arrived.

Roger Blevins was dressed like a Native American tribal chieftain, lest any of us forget that his cultural insensitivity was boundless. Frink wore his own dress uniform. Macy Stoll, Blevins’s Girl Friday, dressed as a sexy librarian, or tried to, anyhow. Erszebet had costumed Tristan and myself to resemble Boris and Natasha from War and Peace. (Tristan, never having read War and Peace, assumed he was going to be dressed like the Cold War spy from Rocky and Bullwinkle, and was speechless when presented with the garb of a nineteenth-century Russian aristocrat. He did look quite splendid, I confess.) Frank dressed like the George Takei character from Star Trek, and Rebecca dressed like Rebecca, with a lavender wreath or something. Mortimer and Julie Lee were non-human bipeds.

Of course, Blevins immediately wanted to show off the ATTO to Frink. Isobel Sloane, the smart and tough head of DOSECOPS, prudently suggested that they come back in an hour, allowing them to make sure everything was “shipshape.”

Blevins agreed gaily, requesting they then be joined for a demonstration by some witches (whom we were supposed to call MUONs, a term Erszebet found onomatopoetically bovine and thus offensive. Of course.). As most of the witches were in party dress, Major Sloane could not identify them, and asked to solicit Erszebet and/or Gráinne, who were the easiest to find.

Once the two were located they grudgingly agreed to this. Erszebet had thrown a hissy fit when the DOSECOPS approached her, but Rebecca and I found her in the women’s restroom and convinced her this was not a return to the humiliating parlor tricks of the late 1840s. Gráinne was totally shit-faced quite merry and trying to molest Mortimer in the coat closet, which we discovered because Julie had been tracking her all evening in anticipation of just such an event. Gráinne had a thing for Mortimer (or more likely for whatever could only be accessed from his computer. Ah, the sad wisdom of hindsight.).

Anyhow, an hour later, Oda-sensei ceremoniously opened the door to the ATTO, ushered the quintet (two witches, Blevins, Frink, and Mrs. Blevins) inside, and closed the door on them.

The Secret Service detail that had arrived with Frink immediately grew agitated that they could not maintain a radio connection to him while the ATTO was in operation. I rather thrilled at Major Sloane’s attempt to explain the decoherence/multiverse premise to them—it was very satisfying to know that everyone on the DODO team takes an interest in what we are actually doing. The Secret Service official did not grasp it, concerned only with losing contact with the general.

“Don’t worry,” said Isobel Sloane. “Gráinne is so drunk that Erszebet’s the only one doing any magic, and knowing Erszebet she’ll come flouncing out of there in about twenty minutes, bored with all of them.”

And a wry sense of humor to boot? How I wish I’d had the bandwidth taken the time to get to know Major Isobel Sloane a little better. When I think of where I am now, I cannot but wonder if she either contributed to my situation or could possibly have prevented it.

To continue: Erszebet did not, in fact, come flouncing out after twenty minutes, or even after thirty, or even forty-five. The Secret Service folks were beside themselves with anxiety. Major Sloane, and Tristan, and Frank Oda, and myself all attempted to quell their misgivings.

Reader, we should not have quelled them. For there were things happening within that ATTO that can never be undone. If only we had known to be suspicious.

20:08:00 USSS 1: C4, get me Actual.

20:08:10 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: C4 Actual here.

20:08:13 USSS 1: It’s been an hour and not a peep. I am beginning to get concerned messages from people in the Pentagon wanting to know why Backhoe is incommunicado.

20:08:22 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: The Pentagon?

20:08:27 USSS 1: The Trapezoid. Was my transmission garbled?

20:08:33 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Sorry, I was distracted. I thought you said Pentagon.

20:08:40 USSS 1: I’m a little foggy myself with all of the weirdness around here and I may have said the wrong thing. I am referring to the [GARBLED]. The very large building across the Potomac River from DC that is the headquarters of the United States military. Does that help clarify matters?

20:08:51 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: Sure. The Pentagon.

20:08:56 USSS 1: That’s what I’m saying! The [GARBLED]! People at the Pentagon are worried about Backhoe being out of touch for a whole hour.

20:09:12 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: The door locks from the inside. We could force it. It would be expensive to replace and might ruin the evening for our guests.

20:09:30 USSS 1: It is uncharacteristic of Backhoe not to touch base.

20:09:37 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: The environment inside of an ODEC is a little weird and can mess with people’s perception of time.

20:09:44 USSS 1: Oh, that’s reassuring!

20:09:51 USSS 3: Lights on the ATTO door are changing color.

20:09:53 DOSECOPS C4 ACTUAL: We see the door in unlock mode.

20:10:01 USSS 3: Visual on Backhoe. Visual on Stylus. They seem nominal.

20:10:10 USSS 1: Tracking device back online. Informing the Pentagon, they’ll be happy to hear it.

20:10:16 USSS 3: Stylus’s wife now coming out. One witch on her six.

20:10:22 DOSECOPS C4: Any DOSECOPS personnel near the ATTO, that looks like Erszebet. Do we have visual on Gráinne?

20:10:40 DOSECOP 5: Talked to Ms. Karpathy at the base of the ATTO steps. She says Gráinne is inside, feels unwell.

20:10:45 DOSECOPS C4: Copy. A reliable source earlier described her as drunk off her ass and sexually aggressive. Sending a medic.

20:10:58 DOSECOP 5: Ms. Karpathy concurs with that assessment. Says medic unnecessary.

20:11:11 DOSECOPS C4: It is SOP. Even if all she’s doing is lying on the floor unconscious, we need to get her in the recovery position and keep an eye on her.

20:11:15 DOSECOP 5: Copy. Ms. Karpathy is blocking the entrance. Says Gráinne wouldn’t want to be seen in her current condition.

20:11:21 DOSECOPS C4: Copy. Stand down and wait for the medic.

20:14:32 DOSECOP 5: I have visual on the medic.

20:14:40 DOSECOPS C4: We see her too. We see her talking to Ms. Karpathy. Sitrep? Audio garbled.

20:14:50 DOSECOP 5: Ms. Karpathy is reluctantly allowing the medic to enter the ATTO.

20:15:00 DOSECOPS C4: We see that. Why is Ms. Karpathy closing the door?

20:15:05 DOSECOP 5: Too late to ask, but she seems very protective of Gráinne’s privacy. Must be quite a scene in there!

20:15:12 DOSECOPS C4: We’ll send Facilities to clean it up in the morning.

20:18:51 DOSECOPS C4: We show the ATTO door cycling.

20:19:02 DOSECOP 5: Door confirmed open and medic coming out with Ms. Karpathy, as you can see, C4. Will get status.

20:21:14 DOSECOP 5: Medic reports Gráinne passed out and in recovery position, vital signs normal. Ms. Karpathy has volunteered to sit in the ATTO with her until she comes around.

INCIDENT REPORT

AUTHOR: Macy Stoll

SUBJECT: ATTO procedure violation

THEATER: C/COD

OPERATION: Year 5 Halloween Party

DTAP: Cambridge, MA, present day

FILED: Day 1921 (November 1, Year 5)

The ATTO was left powered up overnight. No harm and no casualties are known to have resulted from this incident. This appears to have been an oversight resulting from an impromptu demo that was staged during the party for LTG Frink. Some of our personnel remained in the ATTO following the conclusion of the tour and there seems to have been confusion as to who was responsible for powering the system down at the conclusion of the demo and placing it in a safed condition.

Dr. Oda assures me that the system is designed to run for an indefinite period of time without harm and so I’m sure you’ll all be relieved to know that the ATTO has passed a thorough systems checkup in the wake of this incident.

So, no harm, no foul—but I am writing it up anyway as a “lessons learned” document. Remember, we don’t yet know everything about what can happen inside an operating ODEC and so it is never approved procedure to leave one turned on and unattended.

Post by Macy Stoll to Dr. Roger Blevins

on private ODIN channel, 10:30

DAY 1923 (3 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

Dr. Blevins, Gráinne failed to report to the ATTO for scheduled psy-ops research activities this morning at 0900. Keycard records show she did not report for work this morning, and she did not call in sick or otherwise advise us as to the reason for her absence. Normally this would be handled as a routine HR matter but because of her special status I felt it best to bring it to your attention directly. Shall I check in with the staff at the MUON residence?

Reply from Dr. Blevins, 15:49, same day:

Macy, apologies for the belated response, but I wanted to let you know that I just saw Gráinne in person, looking a little the worse for wear after her activities at the Halloween party, which have already become the stuff of internal DODO legend—all classified, of course. As you can appreciate, the concept of calling in sick is unfamiliar to Anachrons and so I think we can overlook her failure to do so this morning.

GRÁINNE’S

FINAL LETTER

to GRACE O’MALLEY

PART 2

And so, to make a short tale of it, when they were through pumping me with the potions, Erszebet brought a gown like her own for me to wear, the most brilliant colors, I felt like a lady of the court, so I did! And she brought me out into the world of Cambridge (not England’s Cambridge, of course) and showed me the many many things I referred to earlier, which as I said would take half a lifetime to describe proper-like. So in the interest of finishing this before you die, I’ll be staying with the part of this story that’s to do with my plans.

The place is full of rules and regulations, and doesn’t Erszebet just ignore every single one of them, and what can they do about it? There is a reverence that is paid her, and no rules apply to her. She has explained many wondrous things to me, but the most important, of course, is why magic finally stopped working. Without going into the minutiae of it, as I’m sure Your Grace has no patience for it, it comes down to this: those natural philosophers and the rest I have been keeping company with in the shadow of Sir Francis? It is their doing. Those curs and their ilk as the centuries progress. These “scientists” make the world extremely technical in innumerable ways, and it’s not only that science is a new kind of magic that makes ours seem feeble by compare, it’s that their powers’ waxing causes ours to wane. And there is particular a kind of art called photography, which as I guess from the name means “light-writing,” or the setting down of light on paper. The effect is an image like a painting or a drawing, but as real as the real image being copied. It is wondrous—and everywhere. And the cause of magic’s end, so it is.

This means that for magic not to end, there must be no photography. Sure I am there’s other things as well, but that is where it ended, and so that is where the undoing must begin.

The greatest risk of my tenure in the future was to expose my intentions to Erszebet, on the strong suspicion she would care to join me in my endeavors. And so she was, Your Grace—gleefully, almost greedily, did she agree to join my ranks.

“How appalling that I was so beaten down by these horrible Yankees,” she said (not certain am I, what a Yankee is), “that I never thought of doing this thing myself. You are a witch after my own heart, Gráinne, a woman of integrity!” And then we pledged ourselves each to the other in the way of witches, which I must not share even with Your Grace.

And now doesn’t Erszebet Send me back, a few hours or a day at a time, so that I can be seeing to various matters of our mutual interest?

I am in London just now, to set some things in motion. But having done so, and having writ this very long letter to Your Grace, I will be returning to Tristan’s lair, with a plan to undo the undoing of magic. It must be done slowly and cautiously, to avoid lomadh, or as they call it in that era, Diachronic Shear. But it shall be done.

And here be my plan, which is of three parts.

First, I must be getting the money on my side, because after magic wanes money is the most powerful thing on earth (followed by weapons that destroy whole cities in a go, and religion—that never goes away, damn it!—and lastly, female actors who do not wear much clothing). Having little enough need for money in London, I have been but passing familiar with some men of the banking world, but by now I have corrected that, sure. The Gresham family seems to me already to be a waning force, but the Fuggers are savvy enough. I have arrived at an understanding with Athanasius Fugger, the man in our time with the sharp yellow beard. And in the future I have made the friendliest of connections with one Constantine Rudge, who is an important member of the Fuggers’ high councils, and who has been in on DODO from its very beginnings. And in other times and places as well, as Erszebet finds opportunities to Send me, I have sought out other Fuggers. In short, haven’t I predisposed the whole clan to be of assistance to me—or to “any comely Irish witch named Gráinne,” as it is likely to be their descendants that I deal with. They have been told now that an immortal witch has pledged herself to aid the family. And whilst I was in the future, with Erszebet’s assistance haven’t I made a study of whole eras of what happens between then and now, and coming back here, haven’t I whispered into the Fuggers’ ears where they should be adjusting their interests to keep the money flowing their way? Is right I have.

So I have secured myself access to money ahead.

The second necessity of the plan is to be getting rid of human obstacles. Chief among these are Melisande and Tristan. The Blevins is now my poppet, and sure I am he’ll be easy to dispatch in time. Tristan and Melisande I must somehow maroon. Tristan I’ve affection for and cannot bear to hurt directly. But seeing Erszebet’s animus for him, I asked her would she kindly get him out of the way, and she did heartily agree. She herself is warmer toward Melisande, and so we arrived at the conclusion that it’s myself shall be dispatching Melisande.

So that’s the second piece. The third is the Great Undertaking itself. Using the wisdom of the Chronotron and the power of the ODEC, I must send their agents (what they call DOers) back in time to gently unweave that which has led to this madness called photography. In order to avoid lomadh, I must dismantle things gently. But persistently. I will start at the end and unweave backwards through time.

Your Grace, please know that I do all of this not only for magic but for Ireland and love of yourself. I suspect it’s never again that I’ll be on my native soil, and sure my heart is aching for it, but it is a far better thing I do now, than any magic or even spying I have ever done.

My heart is with you as I leave for this great battle.

Yours, Gráinne

Post by Macy Stoll to Dr. Roger Blevins

on private ODIN channel, 23:49

DAY 1923 (3 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

Dr. Blevins,

Sorry for the late-night post, which I understand you are unlikely to see until the morning. I’ve been burning the midnight oil here at the office, collating some records from our internal security systems over the last few weeks, and have uncovered something you need to hear about as soon as possible. Headed for home now to get some shuteye, but I’m hoping that by the time I show up for work tomorrow you’ll have made time in your schedule for a private face-to-face.

LETTER ON PERSONAL STATIONERY OF DR. ROGER

BLEVINS TO LTG OCTAVIAN K. FRINK

DAY 1925 (5 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

Okie—

Can’t say how pleased Bess and I were to have you up here for the Halloween party. As the years go by it’s the old friendships that seem to matter most.

What good luck it was, to boot, that we were able to spend a bit of time in the ATTO watching the two MUONs ply their trade. For years I’ve been bending your ear about all of the things that these women can do beyond just Sending our agents to faraway DTAPs, but there’s nothing like a practical demonstration.

In that vein, I’m writing to recommend we shift the hierarchy of contemporary witches. Now that Gráinne has been here a couple of months, and I’ve had a chance to see her in action, I realize that my earlier misgivings about her reliability are completely unfounded. She is sincerely devoted to our work here. I recommend she be given seniority right below Erszebet—and frankly, if she could keep off the sauce, she might one day replace Erszebet. She’s very gifted at what she does, since she is from an era when magic was strong and she practiced it regularly, which is not true of Erszebet.

More important, however, she is remarkably agreeable to work with, and has none of Erszebet’s attitude—which after nearly five years continues to make her a pain in the neck. It was one thing when Erszebet was the only means to our performing magic, but she’s just a cog in a machine now and yet continues to carry herself as if she were the queen bee. Gráinne has none of that attitude—she’s a terrific team player. She is all about the bigger picture.

I think perhaps because (as she has confessed to me) she worked as a spy for Grace O’Malley in her era, Gráinne understands strategic thinking and even personal sacrifice in a way that Erszebet (and most of the other witches) just don’t.

Of course, demoting Erszebet would have a lot of unfortunate repercussions, so we’d have to finesse this a little by creating a new position for Gráinne—a parallel branch, let’s say, devoted to MAGOPs other than Sending. In ranking based on merit, Gráinne is by far our best witch, and we need to recognize and reward excellence wherever it flourishes.

Just wanted that on the record before the Christmas bonuses get calculated;-)

—Roger

Post by Macy Stoll to Dr. Roger Blevins

on private ODIN channel, 11:12

DAY 1925 (5 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

Dr. Blevins,

Sorry for the repeated pings over the last few days, but I’m frankly a little surprised you haven’t responded yet. I AM NOT KIDDING—it is a matter of the highest urgency that we have a private face-to-face as soon as possible. In the meantime, I suggest in the strongest terms you cancel further sessions in the ATTO with Gráinne.

. . .

Post by Dr. Roger Blevins to LTG Octavian K. Frink

on private ODIN channel, 11:50

DAY 1925 (5 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

Okie,

I just sent you a “snail mail” letter on a personnel matter. This message will probably overtake it—sorry for the confusion.

It has to do with one of our employees whose behavior is causing some concern. Nothing that we can’t handle here, but I wanted to give you a heads-up in case you hear anything from the woman in question.

As you know I’ve been working with Macy for two decades now, and she’s always been my right-hand woman. Loyal and reliable to a fault. Well, it grieves me to tell you that she has been under some considerable stress of late, and has not been herself. I think she’s having a hard time with the way our MUONs outshine her on so many levels, and her self-doubt has been gnawing away at her and made her vengeful and frankly a little paranoid.

In short, if you receive any communications from Macy, please take them with a grain of salt. I’m looking for a way to land this plane, as it were, but there may be some turbulence during the descent.

. . .

Post by Macy Stoll to Dr. Roger Blevins

on private ODIN channel, 22:51

DAY 1927 (7 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

Dr. Blevins,

I am here late again, beside myself. I can’t get over the fact that you won’t talk to me.

The least you could do is pay some attention to my warnings. Looking at tomorrow’s ATTO calendar I see you have a block scheduled with Gráinne at 1000 which segues right into a Gráinne/Erszebet block at 1100.

WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!

I have canceled those ATTO blocks. I consider it a security matter and I have plenty of evidence to back up my decision.

. . .

Post by Macy Stoll to Dr. Frank Oda on private ODIN channel, 08:32

DAY 1928 (8 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

Dr. Oda,

Sorry for the irregular communication but I know you are frequently in the building early, and obviously you are one of the people with the know-how required to power up the ATTO.

I’m making a unilateral decision to restrict access to the ATTO until we get certain important matters sorted out.

If anyone—ANYONE—shows up while I’m not around, requesting even brief “experimental” access to the ATTO, the answer is “no.” If they have a problem with that, send them to me.

Don’t worry, I’m sending the same message to all the other keyholders.

Reply from Dr. Oda, 08:56:

Macy,

I received your message about ATTO access and will comply. As you know, we’re getting ready to move ATTO #1 out of the dock and get it out in the field for mobile tests, beginning just after Thanksgiving. Its place will then be taken by ATTO #2.

From Macy Stoll, 09:01:

Thank you, Dr. Oda, but I’m not sure if I follow your point—remember I am an operations person, not a physicist.

From Dr. Oda, 09:03:

Today was the last day scheduled for normal ATTO research anyway—tomorrow we hoist it onto the tractor-trailer rig and begin prepping it for mobile operations. I can move that schedule up if you are telling me it’s not going to be used today for scheduled research.

From Macy Stoll, 09:07:

That’s exactly what I’m telling you and it’s fine with me if no one uses it today. Shut it down.

Have any of the MUONs been by today?

From Dr. Oda, 09:10:

No, just Magnus, he has a boyish fascination with trucks and equipment and likes to hang around on the loading docks watching in his off time.

. . .

Post by Dr. Roger Blevins to Macy Stoll

on private ODIN channel, 10:15

DAY 1928

Macy, I arrived in the office half an hour ago to find my ATTO schedule canceled without my say-so, everything in disarray, Gráinne and Erszebet up in arms, and according to the security cameras you are camped out in front of the ATTO doors wearing a hard hat and watching them put the thing on some kind of hoist. Your arms are crossed in what seems a very irritable frame of mind. I’m writing you this message because this is a serious matter and I feel we need to establish a paper trail in the event of any subsequent disciplinary action that might be called for.

Follow-up from Dr. Blevins, fifteen minutes later:

I have been talking to Dr. Oda who informed me about your communications with him earlier this morning.

Security is en route to escort you from the premises.

Reply from Macy Stoll, thirty seconds later:

Dr. Blevins,

Hitting “send” on a message I have been keeping in “Drafts” for a few days. Getting this on the record before you lock me out of the ODIN system, which I suspect will be your next move.

I’m sorry it’s come to this.

DRAFT MESSAGE

TOP SECRET

PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL

This message documents what I believe to be a CLEAR AND PRESENT national security threat.

I have incontrovertible evidence that two MUONs, Gráinne and Erszebet, have been colluding to circumvent essential security procedures.

My suspicions were first aroused on Halloween, when (as shown on security camera footage) Gráinne and Erszebet entered the ATTO with Dr. and Mrs. Blevins and LTG Frink. An hour later, all of them emerged except for Gráinne. It was explained that Gráinne had been taken sick, but this was not verified until a DODO medic arrived and entered the ATTO with Erszebet WHEREUPON ERSZEBET CLOSED AND LOCKED THE DOOR! After a few minutes in the FULLY POWERED UP ATTO the medic emerged and confirmed that Gráinne was there, unconscious but stable. Erszebet then went back into the ATTO “to look after Gráinne” and remained in the ATTO until after the conclusion of the party.

Our security system automatically logs all arrivals and departures by means of RFID badges. The system recorded Erszebet and Gráinne departing the building together at 03:37 on 1 November. Gráinne did not show up for work the next day, nor the morning after that (3 November), though Dr. Blevins gave a verbal report of her being on premises the afternoon of 3 November.

Following subsequent suspicious activity I checked security camera footage timestamped 03:37 of 1 November and observed Erszebet leaving the ATTO alone and proceeding to the exit where she waved TWO RFID badges over the sensor—hers and Gráinne’s. Repeat: GRÁINNE DID NOT LEAVE THE ATTO. Her next appearance anywhere on the premises was during the afternoon of 3 November—almost 72 hours after she entered the ATTO during the Halloween party!

All of this evidence supports the theory that Erszebet Sent Gráinne to some other DTAP on Halloween and that Gráinne spent three days on a COMPLETELY UNAUTHORIZED AND IRRESPONSIBLE DEDE OF HER OWN CHOOSING.

Following this lead, I have made an exhaustive study of all of Erszebet’s and Gráinne’s comings and goings since Gráinne emerged from quarantine. I have checked their entrances and exits from the building, tracked their movements on the security cameras, and cross-correlated this with the calendars and logs for the ATTO and the other ODECs. To make a long story short, what happened on Halloween is not a one-time anomaly, but part of a pattern. The evidence clearly supports the following allegations:

– Gráinne has made brief, unauthorized visits to unknown DTAPs on half a dozen occasions in addition to the lengthy absence spanning 31 October–3 November.

– Erszebet has Sent her on all of these occasions, and has covered for Gráinne’s absence by committing ID card fraud.

– Most disturbing of all, I believe that Gráinne and Erszebet have used the ATTO to manipulate the memories and the mental states of non-MUON personnel who were in there with them, using the very “psy-ops” techniques that Gráinne is allegedly “researching.”

– Those who have been so victimized include Dr. Roger Blevins.

This explains the extraordinary and unilateral actions I have taken in changing the ATTO schedule and shutting it down until the conspirators can be apprehended. I realize that these actions will appear shocking to some, but I am confident that I will be vindicated.

Post by Dr. Roger Blevins on

“Announcements” ODIN channel

DAY 1931 (11 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

To all employees and contractors:

I know that some of you have noticed and remarked on Macy Stoll’s recent unplanned absence from work, and so wanted to make a brief announcement before rumors and speculation get out of hand.

As you know I have worked hand-in-glove with Macy for many years. We could not have built DODO into its current form without her loyal and tireless work on the operational side of things.

It is with a heavy heart, therefore, that I announce Macy has decided to resign her position, effective immediately. I realize that this will come as a surprise to many of you, but that’s the way Macy wanted it. She wanted to work at full power and effectiveness until the very end and then make a clean break, rather than slowly fading away over a period of months. She plans to take a few well-earned months off and then seek less stressful opportunities in the non-profit sector.

Needless to say, given all that Macy does for us, this is going to leave a void that will take some time to fill. I’m stepping in for the time being as acting head of C/COD while we recruit a replacement.

In accordance with the usual security procedures, her DODO email and ODIN channels have been “turned off.” Those of you who would like to write personal notes to Macy should leave them in the box at the front desk—we’ll deliver them in a few weeks, once Macy gets back from a long and restful vacation.

Journal Entry of

Rebecca East-Oda

NOVEMBER 13

Temperature 40F, no wind. Barometer rising. Garden: mulch, mulch, and more mulch.

Mei has sent us a cellar-conversion specialist to see about converting the cellar into a “hangout room” for the grandkids so they can be antisocial when they visit during their adolescence. Pointed out that her bedroom worked just fine for her antisocial purposes, but she says they want to set up some kind of gaming center.

Frank has been sulking around the house, as he has been placed on a “time-out” by Blevins, who suddenly informed him that somebody higher up insists he takes his vacation time immediately, because his not taking it is confusing the HR system. Apparently Macy had been covering for him, but now that she has abruptly resigned, the bean-counters are having their way. Never thought I would miss that woman.

While Frank is “on vacation” he is not legally supposed to be on site. He takes phone calls from trucking companies—something to do with acquiring a semi-trailer rig on which to mount the ATTO. Otherwise, he is very much underfoot here again. I like it, now that I’m here more often myself. He is pensive, spending a lot of time by himself. He spent ten hours yesterday in front of the computer in his office, and when I came by later to dust I found evidence of business as usual—incomprehensible sketches and equations on graph paper, and industrial supply catalogs piled on the floor, sticky notes hanging out of them willy-nilly.

It’s probably too late already for Mei’s “hangout room” in the cellar. If I read the signs correctly, by the time she can draw up the plans and mobilize the contractors, Frank will have claimed the space and begun a new experiment there—something to keep him busy in his retirement.

Threw a dinner party last night. Frank brought the leaf down from the attic and put it into the dinner table and we got the second-best chairs out of the basement. Tried as best as possible under these very peculiar circumstances to be all Emily Post about it, inviting people as couples, and setting out place cards.

Frank and I: seated at opposite ends of the table as host and hostess.

Melisande and Tristan: still not a couple, remarkably enough, but resigned to being treated as if they were. Tristan on my right, Melisande on Frank’s left.

Mortimer and Julie (my fellow modern witch, and occasional DOer): very much a couple. Something about her heavily pierced and inked look appealed to Mortimer somehow (although her tattoos evaporated when she was Sent the first time; she has since grown her real eyebrows out). Once I’d gotten past her looks and her language I found her a reasonably good match for Mortimer; she seems to make him happy.

Gráinne and Erszebet: thick as thieves. Erszebet has been the den-mother to all the witches from the start, even her elders, but Gráinne is the first one she has treated as a peer. She seems almost—almost—content in Gráinne’s company. Had never considered Erszebet capable of contentment. Gráinne extremely personable with everyone, so perhaps not a surprise that she can wrest a smile from Erszebet.

Magnus and Constance: I think Magnus had some sort of dalliance with Gráinne when he first arrived, but this seems to have cooled down, and he has lately taken up with Constance Billy, a peaches-and-cream sort of Norman witch from the fourteenth century who was brought forward last year to get her out of some predicament related to the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death. Anyway, she is lovely, she speaks Magnus’s language, and she also speaks modern English now well enough to get along at dinner. I seated him across from Tristan and (breaking Emily Post protocol) next to Constance so that he would be in earshot of two people who could talk to him.

As with all such events it was more work than I had expected and I ended up wondering why I had got myself into it. I was reminded of Frank’s early MIT days when an expectation of a faculty wife was to throw such affairs and extend a welcoming hand to foreign graduate students and their wives and children, who were naturally feeling isolated and lonely. The only difference in this case being that the visitors are foreign not only to our place but to our time. Constance showed up two hours early to help with the cooking, which she understands well. She is younger than I had appreciated, and all aflutter about Magnus, who shows her a lot of attention.

Frank was a bit dubious that I had invited Magnus, whom he saw as a sort of man-child who would require a lot of management at the dinner table. I was therefore braced for all sorts of Asterix and Obelix hijinks when he showed up, but this could not have been further from the case. During his stint as a Varangian Guard at the court of the Byzantine Emperor, Magnus obviously learned how to behave in formal social situations. He was on his best behavior, taking everything in with his quick blue eyes, asking intelligent questions of Tristan and Constance, showing me a degree of courtesy that was almost comically formal. I put the Thanksgiving decorations up last week—the usual kitschy stuff that has been in the family forever—but he took it very seriously and asked many questions (through Constance) until Tristan mercifully took over and gave him the whole download about turkeys, pilgrims, cranberries, the Wampanoag tribe, etc. I don’t speak Norman French, of course, but this apparently segued into questions about DODO’s vacation policy (Magnus understands that no one is expected to work on that Thursday) and Black Friday and Yuletide shopping and all the rest.

During dinner Magnus and Gráinne kept sizing each other up across the table, as though they’d taken each other’s measure and were circling warily, but they seem to have arrived at a decision to stay out of each other’s way. Constance observed apprehensively, Julie was fascinated, Mortimer cheerfully oblivious as usual. Erszebet was down at Frank’s end, seated to his right in the position of honor, a detail she, and only she, would appreciate. She still views him as a sort of highfalutin techno-butler, and patronized him with questions about the plans to mount the ATTO on a truck and drive it around while conducting various experiments. These are now scheduled to begin immediately after Thanksgiving—Blevins has announced that “Black Friday” will not be a holiday for DODO personnel, and everyone is expected to show up for work as usual instead of participating in TV set riots at their local Walmart. Frank answered patiently and thus caught the attention of Magnus, who doesn’t have much modern English vocabulary but does respond to “truck” and “Walmart” and a few other terms like “touchdown,” “iPhone,” and “Google.” Like most other male Anachrons he views the latter as a near-miraculous way of viewing pictures of naked ladies. Between that and his fascination with trucks I suppose I can see why Blevins and others see him as a bit of a simpleton. But it is quite obviously a matter of male jealousy. Magnus is ludicrously hyper-masculine in ways that have been bred and trained out of modern-day men and so they have to deprecate his intelligence.

In any event we got through the evening without any sword- or cat-fights. There was the usual fuss trying to get people to leave so that I could tidy up alone, which I prefer. I had Frank summon the MUON van to get rid of Erszebet, Gráinne, and Constance, and leaned on Mortimer and Julie to give Magnus a lift back to the SARF. I shooed Tristan and Frank out and they went to the basement to drink scotch and speak of Deep Dark Things. Melisande stayed to help clear dishes. She has seemed a little distant lately, and uncharacteristically wistful, so I asked her directly what was going on. Knowing as she does that I’ve decided to step away from DODO in all capacities except witch-work, she confessed she was thinking of leaving too—entirely—sometime in the new year. She attributed this to (a) Blevins’s unending denigrations of her competence and (b) more significantly, the growing shift away from diachronic work (where her expertise is clearly valued) and toward psychological operations (which she not only is not expert on, but which she finds more ethically problematic, as do I). I think however there is also (c): she and Tristan have teetered at the edge of a relationship for so long, and never yet fallen into it, and she is tired of that balancing act. Men are always better at compartmentalizing these things. I don’t especially say that in a laudatory way.

Exchange of posts by DODO staff

on “Anachrons” ODIN channel

DAY 1937 (17 NOVEMBER, YEAR 5)

Post from LTC Tristan Lyons, 08:30:

FFS where is Magnus? He was supposed to be here on the 0800 bus from the SARF for a seminar in Violence(s) Ethnology. This is the third time he’s been late.

Usually he’s a morning person.

Reply from officer on duty at SARF (Supervised Anachron Residential Facility), 08:41:

He was out the door at 0800 sharp but apparently did not get on the bus, which was waiting outside. Will check cameras.

Follow-up from officer on duty at SARF, 08:52:

Front-door security camera footage is ambiguous. We see him exiting the door and going down the front walk toward the bus, but just as he is exiting the frame he appears to juke sideways.

Magnus has always been fascinated by the security cameras and so he probably knows where the coverage areas are. Evidence suggests he proceeded down the walk until he believed he was out of frame, then made his move.

From LTC Lyons, 08:56:

Alerting DOSECOPS and Dr. Blevins (acting head of C/COD). Anyone who sees him or learns anything, pipe up here so we can cancel the alert.

From MAJ Isobel Sloane (ranking DOSECOPS officer on duty), 09:12:

We’ve activated the protocols for AWOL Anachrons. These have been worked out in advance with local police departments and transit police—obviously we want to find the missing Anachron, but we have to treat it as a sensitive matter. We don’t want someone like Magnus ending up in the slammer with a random assortment of criminals.

Currently checking all bus and T routes in the vicinity of the SARF.

From LTC Lyons, 09:20:

Respectfully, MAJ Sloane, Magnus isn’t going to hop on a bus. He can walk faster than most people can run, and he can run faster than cars and buses are capable of moving in Boston traffic. He has been missing now for eighty minutes, and with his level of physical fitness could be anywhere in a ten- or twelve-mile radius of the SARF by this point.

From MAJ Sloane, 09:32:

Acknowledged and understood. Also putting out feelers to local PDs and social service agencies for reports of weird or threatening behavior.

From Dr. Roger Blevins, 10:05:

Just became aware of Magnus’s disappearance. May I suggest sending officers to check local gridirons, sports bars, any place connected with football. I took him to a game last month and he seemed quite interested.

From MAJ Sloane, 10:16:

That’s a useful lead, Dr. Blevins. Anything else in that vein?

From Dr. Blevins, 10:23:

I also took him to Walmart, which he quite enjoyed, but (a) he would have no way of locating a Walmart, and (b) even if he did, the closest one is many miles away.

From officer on duty at SARF, 10:56:

[Redacted], who frequently takes the night shift at the security desk here, told me the other day that Magnus had “borrowed” his iPhone and apparently used the map application. Magnus was also seen using a pen to draw on the palm of his hand.

From MAJ Sloane, 11:01:

Need to wake up [redacted] and have him check the search history on his phone. Sounds like Magnus drew a map.

From Dr. Blevins, 11:05:

Suit yourself, Major Sloane, but I believe you are grossly overestimating Magnus’s mental capacity. He cannot even speak English, much less type search terms into a navigational app.

From LTC Lyons, 12:00:

He’s been gone for four hours. Sitrep?

From MAJ Sloane, 12:01:

Just writing one up. Nothing yet. [Redacted]’s phone didn’t preserve any search history.

From MAJ Sloane, 13:27:

Bingo. We have a report from the Walmart Supercenter in Lexington that a man matching Magnus’s description has been using a computer in the electronics department for a couple of hours. It’s only ten miles—he could have Paul Revered it on foot. Sending all available DOSECOPS units.

From LTC Lyons, 13:30:

Please advise Walmart rent-a-cops not to engage Magnus. I can’t even . . .

From MAJ Sloane, 13:31:

Neither can I. Have already emphasized this to them.

From MAJ Sloane, 14:10:

Plainclothes DOSECOPS personnel made peaceful contact with Magnus and escorted him from the Walmart without incident. Interviewing witnesses. Magnus is in the SUV, should be back in DODO HQ soon. He’s calm and relaxed.

From Dr. Blevins, 14:15:

Any indications Magnus might have divulged classified information to civilians?

From MAJ Sloane, 14:23:

All eyewitness reports so far agree that he said nothing—which stands to reason since he doesn’t speak English! Sounds like he’d brought a Sharpie from the SARF and was using it to draw on his hand and forearm—that’s what freaked out the store management and caused them to call it in.

From MAJ Sloane, 14:39:

Magnus is in the building, being escorted to conference room for debriefing.

From LTC Lyons, 14:42:

Don’t you guys have a lockable room down in DOSECOPS land?

From Dr. Blevins, 14:45:

No need to escalate by placing Magnus in something that looks to him like a prison.

From LTC Lyons, 14:47:

It won’t look to him like a prison—he’s never seen a prison!—it’ll look to him like the nicest, cleanest room he’d ever seen in his life until a few weeks ago.

From MAJ Sloane, 15:05:

Still waiting on the Norman interpreter so we can interview him.

From LTC Lyons, 15:08:

FFS I can do that. No need to wait.

From MAJ Sloane, 15:11:

We are observing him in the meantime. As part of a psych eval. He’s scratching himself with a paper clip.

From LTC Lyons, 15:12:

???

From MAJ Sloane, 15:14:

Just superficial scratches. Not enough to draw blood. Maybe the ink irritated his skin.

From Dr. Blevins, 15:23:

Why are the alarms going off?

From SGT Jones, 15:25:

Major Sloane asked me to notify everyone that we got a report from the Walmart that Magnus has a knife. Apparently they reviewed their security camera footage and saw him taking it from the kitchen section and hiding it in his trousers. He’s had it the whole time.

From LTC Lyons, 15:25:

OMW

From CPT Gomez, 15:26:

Need medic conf rm

From SGT Jones, 15:26:

Facility is in lockdown. All personnel following active shooter protocols.

From CPT Gomez, 15:28:

Need medic Stairwell 2

From LTC Lyons, 15:28:

He’s on ODEC level.

He’s in ODEC 2 with a MUON.

It’s Constance Billy.

He’s gone. Constance shaken but unharmed.

From Dr. Blevins, 15:30:

Gone where? To what DTAP?

From LTC Lyons, 15:32:

Constance says he threatened her with a knife and demanded to be Sent to 912 AD Svelvik. It’s a DTAP she knows pretty well.

From Dr. Blevins, 15:34:

Isn’t that three centuries before his time?

From Dr. Melisande Stokes, 15:40:

912 Svelvik is like Grand Central Station for old-school Vikings.

From LTC Lyons, 15:45:

Magnus has always been fascinated by that era, it doesn’t surprise me that he would choose to go there. He knows he can’t come back, ever, after what he’s done. So he picked the one place where he could live out the rest of his days as his fantasy of a classic Viking.

From Dr. Stokes, 15:48:

Maybe he’ll go discover America:)

From LTC Lyons, 15:50:

Not actually that funny, Stokes.

Magnus’s search history

(recovered from computer on display in

Walmart electronics department)

TRUCK

BOOBS

FREE BOOBS PIX

LIE DOE CAIN

LIE DO CAIN NUMM

NUMB

LIDOCAINE

TOPICAL ANAESTHETICS

SCAR

HOW MAKE SCAR

SCARIFICATION

BLACK FRIDAY

BLACK FRIDAY WALMART

TRUCK BOX

METAL TRUCK BOX

BIG METAL TRUCK BOX PIX

BIG TRUCK PICTURES

TRUCK WITH BIG STEEL BOX

SHIPPING CONTAINER

SHIPPING CONTAINER IMAGE

SHIPPING CONTAINER WIKIPEDIA

SHIPPING CONTAINER DOOR

SHIPPING CONTAINER TRAILER

TRACTOR TRAILER

SEMI TRAILER

18 WHEELER

NAKED WOMAN

NAKED WHITE WOMAN

[redacted]

FUGGER

FUGGERS WHERE LIVE

FUGGER BOSS

GUN

BEST GUN

GUN SHOOT HOW

GUN HOW SHOOT YOUTUBE

REVOLVER HOW SHOOT

SEMIAUTOMATIC HOW SHOOT

SHOTGUN

SHOTGUN HOW LOAD

BULLET ARMOR

GOLD

GOLD WHERE

AMERICA WHY RICH

AMERICA WHY RICH HISTORY

CONQUISTADOR

CONQUISTADOR GOLD MAP

EL DORADO

CIBOLA

TENOCHTITLAN

TENOCHTITLAN MAP

TENOCHTITLAN HARBOR

TENOCHTITLAN CLOSEST PORT

VERA CRUZ

VERA CRUZ HARBOR

VERA CRUZ MAP

VERA CRUZ NAVIGATE EUROPE

GOOGLE MAPS

THE LAY OF WALMART

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: “The Lay of Walmart” comprises two parts. Handwriting analysis confirms that both were written by the same author, self-identified as Tóki Olafsson, a skald originally dwelling in the village of Sverðvík (modern-day Svelvik) on the Oslofjord in the early tenth century. Part 1, written on sheets of birch bark using oak-gall ink, was recovered from a peat bog outside of Sverðvík by a covert DODO archaeological extraction team in the wake of Part 2’s discovery.

The overall style is typical of Norse epic verse of Tóki’s era, though somewhat rough-hewn as many parts seem to have been written in haste. Not all skalds were literate. Tóki was, and seems to have used written documents as an aid to composition and memorization. Of note here is his use of modern English loan words such as “Walmart” and “ditapp,” which is his transliteration of DTAP (Destination Time and Place), a common acronym in the Department of Diachronic Operations.

PART 1

A hearing I ask. A skald am I.

A witch woke me, hurried to my hut,

Summoned me from sleep,

Beseeched me to bear witness,

Record in runes a traveler’s tale.

Tailing her out of town, I heard tell

Of what had happened: a man Sent

From distant time and place,

Magnus, mighty one, subject of sagas,

Treasure-taker, ship-shaker, ring-bearer.

Yet when he came, not as well clad

As the cats the witch kept.

To her home we hastened.

Magnus, blanket-bundled, on a bench,

Sat by the sparking fire, staring

Amused at the flames’ antics.

“Say nothing,” he said, stretching out a hand.

“Hear only, heed me, memorize my words,

O skald, story-stretcher, keeper of epics.

Write them in runes on the morrow.”

“Sent hither was I, just now, naked.

A witch-friend, fair Frankish girl,

Got me away in good order

From a far place, a fat land.

“Walmart is where the thralls

Of that land store up their wealth.

A fat fool took me there,

Thinking he would make me quail,

“Cock-shriveled, cuckolded,

Shamed by the sight of such treasure.

While the memory of that mart remains mine,

I’ll make it yours too, tale-teller.

“We’ll wend our way to other times,

Tell the tale, hiring a host of heroes,

Return as raiders to plunder that place

And carry on viking thenceforward.

“Of the fat land I’ll say little now.

Too many tales to tell of its weird wonders.

Walmart is what I have just seen,

Not so long ago as when you lay sleeping.

“Greater than any Goth village

Is the width of its walls, sheer and strong.

Thrice-gated, though, with glass:

Frail fencing for a treasure-trove!

“For in Fatland, visits from vikings

Are few and far between;

Fear rules fellows, makes men meek,

Glass gates are good enough.

“That barrier breached, all the land’s luxury

Lies ready for reaping.

Here’s what my memory holds

Of how it is sorted.

“Long lanes, laden with loot

Wide ways, well made for waging war

Like the roads of the red-crested Romans

Ordered just so, as warp and weft.

“Too many for merchants to memorize,

Marked, therefore, with runes they can read.

Romans wrote them first. The fat ones stole them,

As well as Arabs’ numerals, arranged below.

“For each district of the treasure-town,

A Roman rune written, raised high

For each lane lying below it,

An Arabic number to know it.

“South face the glass gates; the fat fool

Northward led me, shouldering them aside

Greeting a guard, vested in blue,

Scarcely strength to stand had that old ogre.

“To our right, ranks of clashing carts

Waiting to be wheeled and weighed down

By Fatlanders too frail for fardels.

Sight-seers only, we spurned these.

“Till-keepers’ tables cluttered our view.

Beyond them, still north-questing,

Kiosks and cairns covered the place,

Towers of trifles.

“From there, to the west, lies all the food in the world.

North, a cornucopia of clothing, all colors.

Doubling back south, white witches

Doling out drugs, physicians’ philtres.

“Eastward, though, lies victory for vikings.

Counting the cairns, the merchandise-mounds

Standing in the center of the wide east-west way,

Stop at the sixth. Atop it’s an image:

“A fair lass, tresses flowing,

Like the lush Linndalsfallet,

Where it rushes over rocks,

Teeth shining like Snæfellsjökull.

“Cradled in the lass’s hands, a bottle,

Bewitching brew, beautifying the hair.

Below it, many more such, stacked like soldiers.

That is the landmark that leads you to the left.

“A long lane, laden with loot.

Its rune is like Berkano: the Beginning.

Its number, one score and five.

Let it lead you north. Little more to say,

“For in fewer than five paces

Is what your hand has hungered for

Since you found yourself in Fatland,

Alone and naked: Numberless knives, new and needy.”

Thus the blanket-wearer, who now bated,

Hefting a horn, whetting his whistle.

“More mead, if you are willing, witch.

There’s riches in this tale.”

Ingibjörg was the witch’s name.

South of Sverðvík, alone she abided

Here in this hut, cozy, kept clean,

Cats her companions, dogs her defenders.

“Let none say I don’t serve a guest sweetly.

Here is your horn, more mead for Magnus.

Gladly I’ll listen to more of your story

But the riches you rave of mean ruin for me.

“Here in my hut I am happy.

Grief-bringing gold, land needing labor,

Swords, slaves, silks, swag: to what end

Should, I, Ingibjörg, buy into this business?”

“For that there’s an answer,” said Magnus.

“Gráinne’s grief made her great with rage,

Drove her to desolate ditapps,

Reddened her hands with friends’ blood.

“To you, welcoming witch, I’ll have more to say

When the sun sheds its light on the shore

And cocks crow. Now is night-work,

Telling the tale to Tóki, the skald.”

Drinking deep of the mead, whetting his whistle,

Magnus made the most of it then,

Telling to me, Tóki, tales of Walmart,

Where the weapons were, how to find food.

When the sun shed its light on the shore,

When the cocks crowed, home I hied,

Wrote it in runes, left nothing out,

Then slept soundly.

“Tóki, time to depart!” were the next words I heard.

Magnus and Ingibjörg stood staring.

“Distant ditapps await us. Hardy heroes

Restless to ramble, we’ll sway them to our side!”

Blanket-bound was he still, blowing on blue hands.

“Furs I will fetch you, friend,” said I. “No need

To ride so rude-clad, cold and uncovered.”

“We won’t ride,” said he, “naked will both of us be

“When the witch has her way, and we’re at the ditapp.”

“Sending it’s to be then,” said I, “travel through time,

Dark and dangerous. Ingibjörg’s will

Isn’t what it was when last I heard tell.”

The witch was fur-clad, fierce-faced,

Fingering her skein, but half in this world.

“I have heard tell from the man Magnus

Of a future that is to be feared.

“Alchemists and astronomers, addling

The wits of witches, stripping us of our strength,

Helpless hags they’d make of us. I’ll not have it.

Put away your pen. In a peat bog, bury the bark.

“Let it lie there, a legend

For our friends in the future to find.

The story will stay in your mind, son of Olaf.

Tell it true, when you get to the ditapp.”

Exchange of posts by DODO staff on

“Diachronic Ops-misc” ODIN channel

DAY 1943 (MONDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, YEAR 5)

Post from Dr. Melisande Stokes:

Checking on a DEDE assignment I just got that confuses me. In two days I’m supposed to go to San Francisco 1850 to recruit an immigrant Chinese witch there. It’s listed as a one-day DEDE, so I’ll be home in time for Thanksgiving dinner, supposedly.

Chinese is my weakest language. We have five DOers who are fluent, three of them ethnically Chinese, at least one of those (Julie Lee) not only currently available but also (FWIW) a MUON. I’m curious why I was assigned this DEDE?

Also, regardless of who goes, I’d like to see the Chronotron data on why we need to recruit this witch so close to July 1851. Whether the goal is to bring her forward to work as a contemporary witch, or to do some final magical adjustments in those last few months . . . why not go back several years earlier and recruit her directly from China? I’m sure that data has already been crunched by the Chronotron (cc’ing Dr. Oda and Mortimer for confirmation), but I find this puzzling.

Reply from Mortimer Shore:

Dr. Oda is still “on vacation” (read: getting ready for the ATTO move on Friday). I will look into all this ASAP but I am a little overwhelmed with work right now. My understanding is that Gordon Healey and Mary Case are our data-whisperers there at the moment and they’re both cool. They’re not great at communicating in regular English though. I can ask them to summarize stuff for me and I’ll get back to you about it.

From Dr. Roger Blevins:

Dr. Stokes,

I understand you have reservations about your Wednesday assignment, and out of respect for your senior position within DODO, I am willing to respond to them, although it is against protocol for a DOer to question their mission. While I understand that you would like an explanation, you do not require one to do your job.

I’ve told Mortimer Shore that—as he already knows, of course—he needs to focus his time and energies on projects that actually require his attention, so please do not expect him to follow up on his last offer to you regarding Chronotron data.

Mel, I do realize it must be unnerving to go to a DTAP that is so close to the very end of magic. As Erszebet has recalled on innumerable occasions, she was hardly able to perform magic at all for the last year or so before the eclipse. So I have a proposal that I hope will reassure you: when you go to the San Fran DTAP, Gráinne has offered to go with you, and as soon as you’ve accomplished your DEDE (which if I recall correctly is to recruit a witch from that era), Gráinne will Send you back here immediately. She will then get back here with the help of the KCW—she’s not nearly as unnerved about the timing as you are, and is happy to make the journey if it will help you feel more secure about returning.

So, in short: Don’t worry about it. Just do it. After all, it’s your job.

Exchange of posts by DODO staff

on private ODIN channel

DAYS 1943–1944

(MONDAY AND TUESDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, YEAR 5)

Post from Dr. Melisande Stokes to LTC Tristan Lyons and Mortimer Shore:

Any thoughts on this DEDE? Gráinne seems awfully cozy with Blevins lately. Also, Mortimer, are you being blocked from Chronotron data?

Mel

Reply from LTC Tristan Lyons:

It’s fine, Mel. Gráinne’s resourceful, she’ll get both of you back here safely. She’s hardwired subversive when it comes to authority (I heard the coders classified her Chaotic Neutral)—she’s playing Blevins, survival instinct, force of habit. Erszebet genuinely likes her and Erszebet would not like her if she took the Gráinne/Blevins thing seriously. Gráinne’s got your back.

If you’re still gone on Friday, I’ll have Erszebet Send me back to help you out.

Tristan

From Mortimer Shore:

Hey, Mel, not being blocked, really am swamped with a sudden wave of mundane coding assignments that came unexpectedly from Blevins. Nobody else (except Oda) has the security clearance to do it and he’s busy on ATTO moving.

I agree with Tristan. But heads-up Tristan, you can’t go back to help Mel out because you are about to get a whopper new DEDE—earliest era witch-recruitment we’ve had yet: 20,000 BC Germany. I only know because Erszebet has been surfing the wiki doing research—she needs some kind of reference point to Send you to. I turned her on to the Hohle Fels caves in the Ach Valley. Have fun! LOL

From LTC Lyons:

I haven’t heard anything about that, but I’ll start brushing up on my cave art. Wonder how the hell they expect me to recruit a witch who can Send me back here.

From Mortimer Shore:

That’s why they pay you the big bucks. See you both when you’re back from your Extreme DTAPs lol

Peace out

Mortimer