This has enabled us to solve a riddle that bedeviled our minds from the very beginning of Magnus’s siege at the Walmart.
Clearly, Magnus made the rounds of the Viking world and recruited a sort of all-star team of marauders who were willing to follow his lead.
And on one level it makes sense for them to raid a Walmart, which to them would be a poorly guarded storehouse of near-infinite wealth.
But beyond that it makes no sense at all. They must either stay in the present, or return to the past via the ATTO.
If they stay in the present, they will inevitably be caught, tried, and put in prison. Magnus must know this.
If they return to the past, they’ll do so naked and empty-handed. Why, therefore, go to the effort of sacking a Walmart and gathering loot they can’t take with them? Magnus must understand this too.
According to the “over the fence” gang—Julie, Felix, and Esme—the answer was pieced together yesterday afternoon by the DOSECOPS people who have access to surveillance camera footage from the Walmart.
As soon as they had the electronics department fortified behind plywood and blue tarps, and their hostages secured (except for the one unfortunate who was rolled out into the parking lot after being blood-eagled), Magnus raided the pharmacy section and secured a large amount of lidocaine, which is a topical anesthetic.
In the meanwhile, some of the hostages were being chained to computers in the electronics section and put to work downloading information on certain topics. To make a long story short, it appears that during his sojourn in the present day, Magnus became aware of the fact that the New World contained an amount of gold and silver that was beyond the dreams of the most avaricious Vikings. Their longships were perfectly capable of making the voyage across the Atlantic by hopping from Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland and thence down the coast. What they lacked was information: nautical charts showing the way, and land maps of Mexico and Peru and other gold-rich areas. And so this is the sort of information that the hostages were put to work downloading and printing out on paper.
Magnus’s Vikings then took turns lying facedown on the floor. Lidocaine was smeared on their bare backs and the treasure maps carved into their skin using hobby knives from the store’s art supply section.
This procedure has apparently been going on all night. When the DOSECOPS people understood what was going on, they cut power to the building. But the Vikings were ready for that with candles and lamps from the camping section, and by then they had already printed out everything they needed on paper. The ATTO has its own built-in power supply capable of running for days; Frank made sure of that. One of DODO’s spy drones has been circling above the store and has been picking up bursts of GLAAMR suggesting that some of the Vikings are already being Sent back. So they must have a witch among them who is ensconced in the ATTO doing the Sending and god only knows what else.
All of this information is several hours old, and I’m writing it late Saturday morning. The television news shows no change in status at the Walmart, which of course doesn’t reflect what might be happening within the ATTO; the police haven’t raided yet, no hostages have been released; it is a standoff.
It appears that what is going to happen—or already has happened, many centuries ago, on this or some other Strand—is that Magnus’s band of “all-star” berserkers will end up in tenth-century Scandinavia with detailed maps carved into their backs showing them how to traverse the Atlantic and Caribbean and sack the Americas for their unimaginable wealth of precious metals, then bring it all back to Scandinavia, or anywhere else they feel like living.
It is difficult to see how this could be stopped. DODO could Send some DOers even further back in time to try to change history to somehow foil Magnus’s plan, but two can play at that game—Magnus can just as well Send people further back yet to intercept the DOers, and so on.
Needless to say, any Strand on which Magnus’s plan succeeds will have a very different future from the one we are living in. Tristan is of the opinion that DODO spy planes are probably flying high above Mexico City and Cuzco at this moment, looking for signs of GLAAMR indicating the temporal equivalent of a nuclear strike.
We all wish Melisande were among us to help us think it all through. Unfortunately she remains marooned. Mortimer, logging in to ODIN through Esme’s phone, has been able to pull up some message traffic confirming that Gráinne Sent Mel to Victorian London in the summer of 1851—only weeks before the eclipse that marked the end of magic. By that time, the few remaining witches who could do magic at all were much enfeebled, especially in London, as that’s where the Great Exhibition was, and thus there was an immense concentration of magic-dampening technology all amassed in one place. So there is great concern that even if Mel were able to land on her feet in that DTAP and make contact with a practicing witch, it would be too late to get her back. In any case, there is little we can do except try to provide a place for her to land. If she materializes in one of the existing ODECs, she’ll immediately be in Gráinne’s power. So we need to build or obtain an ODEC of our own. Frank, who has spent the last couple of years designing and constructing room-temperature ODECs, is of course the leading authority in the world when it comes to that. He seems to have had a premonition of what was to come (or perhaps he received a warning from the future?), for he has for the last few weeks been laying plans to improvise a room-temperature ODEC in our cellar. Many of the parts, he says, can be obtained from Home Depot, but others are highly specialized, including room-temperature superconductors that are easy to obtain with the resources of DODO at one’s back but almost impossible for mere civilians to acquire.
UPDATE, WRITTEN LATE SATURDAY
Television reveals that the siege has been lifted. The Walmart was stormed by SWAT teams after several hours had gone by with no sign of activity. The hostages were found bound and gagged with duct tape but otherwise unharmed. No arrests have been made; police are claiming that the perpetrators made their escape from the building by crawling along a sewer line, or some such nonsense.
On the television footage, which is all shot from a distance, using drones and helicopters with long lenses, it’s possible to see two different groups of officers inside the Walmart: the local police SWAT team, which is roaming all over the store, and DODO’s EFOT squad (whose existence we’ve all just learned about this weekend—sort of DOSECOPS on steroids), which has surrounded the tractor-trailer rig and is not allowing anyone else near it. Apparently the tractor and trailer were so badly damaged as to be unusable. Now, however, another tractor-trailer has showed up in the parking lot, as well as some sort of enormous forklift from Massport that is capable of picking the ATTO off of the one and transferring it to the other. I’m sure that the ATTO is about to disappear into the bowels of the military-industrial complex, never to be seen again.
Exchange of posts on “ATTO Operations”
ODIN channel
DAY 1949 (SUNDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING, YEAR 5)
Note: Posts recovered from a telephone belonging to Julie Lee, who had access to ODIN until the following day.
Post from MAJ Isobel Sloane, 00:16:
Here is yet another update—hopefully the last—from the Walmart. The obstructions that had been preventing the forklift from getting into the building were finally cleared away about an hour ago. We’ve had to work around the police crime scene teams. Since there is no particular urgency, we have taken a “go along, get along” approach, which is why it has been so slow. They were irritated by our insistence on padlocking the ATTO the moment we arrived and keeping people out of it, but thanks to some calls from on high (kudos to LTG Frink, I suppose) they eventually got the message that the ATTO was a no-go area on national security grounds.
The forklift is now maneuvering into position alongside the tractor-trailer and getting ready to move the ATTO.
Reply from LTG Octavian Frink, 00:21:
Thank you, MAJ Sloane, despite the late hour I am monitoring from my office at the
Pentagon. What is the status of the ATTO itself? Has it suffered any damage?
From MAJ Sloane, 00:30:
It took superficial damage—one good reason for housing it in a beefy steel shipping container. From the fact that Magnus’s team were successfully Sent into it and later Homed, we have ample evidence that it remains fully operational. The external status lights all show green.
BTW I don’t know if you have video feed on this, but the forklift has removed it from the ruined rig now and is taking it into the parking lot. Should have it on the good rig in a couple of minutes.
From LTG Frink, 00:35:
Do we know how Magnus’s personnel were Homed?
From MAJ Sloane, 00:37:
Haven’t had time to do a full after-action report. Will analyze it. Presumably they had their own MUON in the ATTO and she Homed them one by one after they had the maps cut in their backs.
From LTG Frink, 00:40:
Is Dr. Blevins awake and monitoring this? I feel the need of some expert opinions. My understanding is that MUONs cannot Send or Home themselves; some other MUON must do it for them.
From MAJ Sloane, 00:45:
ATTO is now on the good rig and the truck driver is conducting routine inspection prior to departure. I’ll ride shotgun with him. There is a security concern around possibility of media vehicles tailing us back to DODO HQ and so remainder of ETOF squads/vehicles will block streets and run interference until we are clear of the area.
From LTG Frink, 00:49:
I have confirmed with staff here that air space has been shut down, so you don’t have to worry about media choppers. Drone frequencies being jammed.
From MAJ Sloane, 00:51:
LOL I see drones falling out of the sky all over the place. Very satisfying.
From LTG Frink, 00:52:
I have not seen a response to my query about MUONs being able to self-Send. Dr. Blevins must be out of commission.
From MAJ Sloane, 00:55:
Not an expert but my understanding is that they can’t self-Send.
From LTG Frink, 00:56:
In that case, when Magnus’s MUON had finished Homing all of Magnus’s other personnel, what did she do? Remain in the ATTO? She would be marooned in the present day, correct?
From MAJ Sloane, 01:01:
General sitrep: truck driver reports good to go, have deployed DO-SECOPS personnel/vehicles for traffic management detail.
In answer to LTG Frink’s last question, hostile MUON did not remain in the ATTO.
From LTG Frink, 01:02:
How do you know that?
From MAJ Sloane, 01:03:
Well, when we first entered the store at conclusion of the hostage situation, I went into the ATTO to check it. It was empty. We then padlocked the door. It has remained padlocked since.
From LTG Frink, 01:05:
I would like you to double-check it before departure.
From MAJ Sloane, 01:05:
Roger wilco. Stand by.
From LTG Frink, 01:15:
Has anyone on site heard from MAJ Sloane? I would like a sitrep. It has been ten minutes.
From MAJ Sloane, 01:19:
Sorry for delay, it was a mess in there. Everything is fine, proceeding to DODO HQ, will report in upon arrival.
From LTG Frink, 02:03:
It is very late and I want to turn in but would like positive confirmation that the ATTO is safe and sound at DODO HQ before I shut this damned thing off. I have not heard a sitrep in something like forty-five minutes. What is status? Major Sloane?
From LTG Frink, 02:05:
Major Sloane? Are you monitoring this channel?
Will someone else on this channel please supply Major Sloane’s phone number?
From 1LT Jesperson, 02:07:
She is not answering her phone. It went off the network after she checked the ATTO. It may have fallen out of her pocket there. ATTO is electromagnetically shielded.
From LTG Frink, 02:10:
So we have no way of tracking or communicating with Major Sloane?
From 1LT Jesperson, 02:11:
Correct.
From LTG Frink, 02:12:
Lieutenant Jesperson, where are you exactly?
From 1LT Jesperson, 02:13:
Down in DOSECOPS C4.
From LTG Frink, 02:14:
Has the ATTO arrived?
From 1LT Jesperson, 02:15:
Negative. DOSECOPS personnel standing by to receive it.
From LTG Frink, 02:16:
Patch me through to ranking DOSECOPS officer in escort vehicle.
From 1LT Jesperson, 02:18:
Escort vehicles already arrived.
From LTG Frink, 02:19:
Escort vehicles arrived without the vehicle they were escorting? How many?
From 1LT Jesperson, 02:19:
Both of them.
From LTG Frink, 02:20:
We only had two escort vehicles? What is remainder of DOSECOPS staff doing? Christmas shopping?
From 1LT Jesperson, 02:23:
Staking out the East-Oda residence, as per Dr. Blevins’s orders.
From LTG Frink, 02:25:
I am pulling him out of slumberland right now. Am I to understand that we have lost the ATTO? Does anyone know where the ATTO is?
From Dr. Roger Blevins, 02:36:
Okie, unsettling news that we have temporarily lost track of the precise whereabouts of ATTO, but Boston’s a small town, we’ll find it in a jiffy once we get local police involved.
From LTG Frink, 02:41:
FOR FUCKS SAKE WE CANNOT GET LOCAL COPS INVOLVED! We have to track this down with national security resources.
From Dr. Blevins, 02:45:
Sorry, a bit groggy, not thinking straight. Of course you’re right, Okie. But those resources are considerable as you know and how far could it have gone?
From LTG Frink, 02:49:
In an hour and a half? Approximately a hundred miles.
In case you are too groggy to remember Mr. Reinhardt’s 7th grade geometry lessons, that implies a search area of 31,142 square miles.
Has it not occurred to any of you that if a MUON stayed behind in that thing, she could have played with people’s minds? And that Magnus could by now have Sent more hostiles into it?
From 1LT Jesperson, 02:52:
General Frink, Dr. Blevins, all of this traffic is going out on the ATTO Operations channel which has wide distribution inside of DODO. Suggesting we switch over to DOSECOPS RESTRICTED channel. Please acknowledge.
From LTG Frink, 02:53:
Yes.
From Dr. Blevins, 02:53:
[message thread ends here] Acknowledged.
Post by Felix Dorn on
“General” GRIMNIR channel
DAY 1949
As you all know, I’m not one for writing long reports, but Tristan is twisting my arm to jot down some notes on what I observed during my last couple of days at DODO. He wants this on the record so we can document and explain our actions if this all comes to light eventually.
During the last week or so I began to see message traffic on the “Deutsch” ODIN channel, which is simply a channel that is used by German-speaking staff members like me for general discussion.
To make a long story short, it was obvious from these messages that a DEDE to Prussia was being planned on short notice and that its date was unusually late—I could guess from some of the references that it was going to be the late 1840s or even the early 1850s.
DEDEs of that nature are extremely unusual because magic had already become very weak by that time and so there is a risk of the DOer ending up trapped in the past (as Mel seems to be now unfortunately). We don’t even have any legit KCWs post about 1845 and so these DOers on the message threads were asking questions about some sketchy witches that we’d been in contact with circa 1840, wondering if they were still alive ten years later.
The DOers asking these questions were tough guys. Fighters and Snake Eaters. Not the
kind of people you would send on a scouting or intel-gathering type of mission.
I started asking around, buying people beers, chewing the fat with the Chronotron staff, trying to get to the bottom of it. The whole thing just seemed weird to me, especially combined with Mel’s very unusual DEDE in 1850 San Francisco and the one that had been planned for Tristan. As context you have to remember that the operational wing of DODO has been pretty much in mothballs for the last few months—we’ve been winding up ops in different theaters but not starting anything new. This felt like something new, but also something very weird.
What I learned was that Blevins had been asking a lot of questions about Berkowski, the photographer who took the daguerreotype of the July 1851 solar eclipse that put a stake through the heart of magic. And not just about him but about Daguerre and Niépce and Schulze and some of the other inventors who worked on early forms of photography. Blevins had set up a small private channel on the ODIN system to discuss his interest in this topic and had invited three of the Chronotron geeks but was otherwise keeping it under wraps. I was able to talk to one of those guys about it. He said it had been started a little after Halloween and that Gráinne was definitely in the loop, driving some of the questions and the discussion.
Erszebet has come over to our side now and has confirmed, just in the last few hours, that Gráinne has pretty much seized control of Blevins’s mind by repeatedly using some pretty hard-ass magic on him during their many hours in the ATTO together.
What this all adds up to is that Gráinne is looking for a way to roll it all back. She wants to change history so that photography, and other magic-jamming technologies, were never developed in the first place. Maybe it begins with assassinating Berkowski, which would push back the end date by a few years, but that’s just the beginning of what she wants to do. She wants to morph our entire historical timeline into one where science and technology never advanced out of the late medieval age and magic still flourishes. To avoid Shear, she’ll have to do it one small change at a time. That implies a program that is going to be executed patiently over a long period of time, using the full resources of the Chronotron and the ODECs (until there are no more Chronotrons or ODECs because duh, to quote Mortimer). And that in turn means she has to control the organization from the top down. Blevins she has in her pocket. Mel and Tristan had to be gotten out of the way by other means.
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Page 60