MASTICATE / NARNIA Interface Incident - Thu, Oct 24, 2019

• Philomena and Matthew studied the blurred occult symbols visible on the surface of the Picky Eater chip.
  • Philomena successfully identified one symbol as a scrying sign originating in the Egyptian Book of Thoth.
  • Matthew recognized that another symbol circumscribed the first, but the details would not come fully into focus.
  • Philomena used an obscure method to sharpen perception and memory, studying digital microscope pictures until she could sketch what she saw in an almost trance-like state.
  • The resulting image included a five-pointed star inset with a flaming eye.
  • Neither Philomena nor Matthew could identify that final composite symbol.
• Pitzarelli checked on Frank’s attempt to get information from FBI cybercrime contact Colin Boone.
  • The FBI did not know where Picky Eater had come from.
  • The Bureau had requested intelligence from the NSA.
  • The Bureau’s evasiveness implied that the NSA knew more than it was sharing.
• Masticate’s handler arranged a meeting with Kim Gibbs, the NSA analyst who had led the inquiry into Picky Eater.
  • Gibbs said the NSA had uncovered limited dark-web chatter about the software.
  • The NSA had obtained a copy of Picky Eater.
  • The NSA ultimately classified it as non-actionable malware.
  • Their reasoning was that it was too obscure, too hardware-dependent, and not worth devoting further resources to.
  • Gibbs also asked whether Masticate was aware of Working Group Narnia, a CIA-associated counterterrorism group that was also asking questions about Picky Eater.
• When Pitzarelli raised Narnia with her superiors, it confirmed that Picky Eater was already on Delta Green’s radar.
  • Masticate and Narnia were both investigating related material.
  • To avoid operational confusion, the Program approved a meeting between the two groups to exchange intelligence.
• The meeting location was the sixth floor of a Manhattan office building, behind the front company Kerber, Wilson, and Associates.
• As the team rode the elevator up to meet Narnia, reality split.
  • Matthew, Frank, and Philomena arrived on the sixth floor and met Fallon Taylor.
  • Justin instead stepped into a museum-like space dedicated to Delta Green’s openly acknowledged war against the unnatural in the twentieth century.
• Fallon Taylor briefed the team on what Narnia knew about the Friday Night Massacre.
  • Narnia had recovered evidence connected to two young men associated with the Global Caliphate of the Peace of God.
  • Cached phone data suggested a world dominated by absolutist theology, where all non-believers had already been exterminated.
  • Taylor’s explanation was that Kavdat Onur and Seyfetin Vedat came from that world and, with no infidels left there, found a new world to continue their jihad against.
• During Taylor’s briefing, he struggled with his VPN, and that prompted the rest of the team to think of Justin.
  • All three simultaneously experienced the disturbing double-memory that Justin had been left behind at the hotel and had also been in the elevator with them.
  • Their minds struggled to reconcile both memories at once.

In the present on the sixth floor, Taylor attempted to continue the briefing while the team became increasingly uneasy about both Justin’s absence and the office itself.

• Taylor explained that Narnia was a team of eight including himself.

• When asked about the rest of the team, he said everyone else was out pursuing leads that morning.

• The group noticed that the office felt wrong.

  • It was too quiet.
  • They had not seen or heard anyone else.
  • It did not feel lived in the way a functioning office should.

• The three agents made Human checks and all failed.

  • They could not read Taylor clearly.
  • The failure heightened the sense that something was off.

• Philomena explicitly asked whether they should meet the rest of Taylor’s team.

  • Taylor repeated that no one else was available and it was just him right now.

• Taylor admitted he was not supposed to be moving sensitive files off the secure VPN, but because the VPN was failing, he used a flash drive to show them material.

  • He said Audra, Narnia’s tech specialist, controlled the file security.
  • He intended to get her help later, but for the moment wanted to share what he had.

Taylor showed the team a video connected to Narnia’s case.

• The footage depicted a small town labeled in Arabic as Dabiq, surrounded by wide plains of dry yellow grass.

• Several hundred armed fighters with Kalashnikov rifles were entrenched behind sandbags.

• Many appeared to be praying.

• The camera panned upward and around the horizon.

  • American forces could be recognized by Frank from the silhouettes of some vehicles and equipment.
  • British and Russian forces were also converging on the town.
  • There were helicopters, tanks, jets, and thousands of soldiers closing in from multiple directions.

• A later angle showed a heavy bomber that Taylor identified as a B-21 Raider, a bomber not yet fielded in combat.

• The bomber dropped a large bomb.

  • Before the bomb could strike, both the plane and the bomb disintegrated into white dust.
  • The same transformation then overtook the invading forces.
  • Soldiers, tanks, and the entire attacking coalition turned to salt.

• The fighters inside Dabiq interpreted the event as a miracle and began cheering, crying, and celebrating.

• Taylor said experts had reviewed the footage and found no clear evidence that it had been manipulated or generated artificially, despite the impossibility of what it showed.

• The file metadata indicated a creation date of May 9, 2021.

  • Taylor pointed out that this was the morning after the holiest night in the Islamic calendar, making the miracle imagery especially charged.

• Frank and Matthew could understand some of the Arabic, but the dialect spoken in the footage was difficult to place.

• Taylor explained that Picky Eater had initially seemed like some kind of secure or private social network through which the two men could communicate with like-minded contacts.

  • He stressed that Audra had been the one examining the software in detail.

• Frank asked whether Narnia had recovered a computer containing Picky Eater.

  • Taylor said they only had the men’s phones.
  • Frank explained that in Masticate’s case the important part seemed to be the computer and a very unusual chip soldered into it.
  • Taylor immediately recognized that as new information.

Justin’s experience diverged sharply from the rest of the group.

• Instead of arriving in Narnia’s office, he found himself in a museum devoted to a public, triumphant Delta Green.

• He searched the exhibits and public information terminals for familiar names.

  • He found Frank Booth listed, older but alive, working in Washington, D.C.

    • Justin noted that Booth appeared far too young for his apparent age if this was the future being presented.

  • He found Pitzarelli working in the office of the director in New York.

  • He found that the current and first public director of Delta Green was Audra Powell.

• As he explored farther, the museum décor changed to wood paneling and gallery lighting.

  • There were historical photographs relating to Delta Green’s war against the Deep Ones.
  • One image showed the remains of some immense creature that had been blown apart.
  • Another showed futuristic special operators in power armor conducting a raid on a hybrid hideout as part of SRT Epsilon.
  • Another exhibit featured Cole Parker as a Delta Green agent standing over rubble while soldiers moved around him.

• At the end of the hall Justin found an exhibit replicating the office of Audra Powell.

  • A plaque identified it as the Office of Audra Powell, First Director of Delta Green.
  • The space was staged like a museum reconstruction rather than a functioning office.
  • A prerecorded audio loop played in which Audra Powell welcomed visitors, thanked them for their interest in Delta Green, and urged them to remain pure and patriotic against “the spawn.”
  • The message presented Delta Green as a long-standing protector of American families and institutions.

• Justin examined the office for useful objects.

  • The desk contained personalized items staged to resemble a real workspace.
  • Unlike the rest of the exhibit, there was a worn, older desktop computer in the room.
  • The computer appeared real rather than decorative.

• The machine was running under the user name “A. Powell.”

  • Justin recognized a Picky Eater icon on the desktop.

  • He opened the case and inspected the internals.

  • Inside he found a professionally manufactured chip labeled Picky Eater.

    • Unlike the crude hardware on McKay’s laptop, this one was neatly manufactured and properly seated as part of the system.

Back in the current office, the rest of the team began testing the strange environment more directly.

• Philomena broke away to contact Justin.

  • She called him.
  • The call went straight to voicemail because his device was not reachable.
  • She texted him, but there was no indication that the message had actually been delivered.

• Philomena checked the break room.

  • The refrigerator was empty except for a single container of leftover chow mein labeled with Fallon’s name.
  • It was mid-morning.
  • The room contained basic paper plates and plastic utensils.
  • In a cabinet she found personalized mugs that looked as though they belonged to staff, but they were dusty, suggesting long disuse.

• While moving through the hall looking for the bathroom, Philomena deliberately tried office doors.

  • As she did so, she experienced an intense wave of terror.

  • The Handler described the sensation as like a dog trying to flee danger on slick linoleum, scrabbling wildly and going nowhere while panicking.

  • Philomena forced the feeling down at a cost of 2 Willpower.

  • She opened one office and found:

    • the lights were off until motion activated;
    • a desk and powered-off computer;
    • a faint smell of old ozone and burnt electronics.

Matthew reacted to the contradiction around Justin by deciding to test the elevator.

• He asked to step away and go back down to the first floor.

• Fallon Taylor, confused, watched him do it.

• Before Matthew left, Taylor quietly asked the others whether he was okay.

  • Frank answered that none of them were okay.

  • Frank also told Taylor that they suspected they might be dealing with some sort of dimension-hopping technology.

  • Frank further told Taylor that the office felt as though no one but Taylor had been there for a very long time.

  • Frank succeeded on a Human check while watching Taylor react.

    • The look on Taylor’s face convinced him that the panic was genuine.
    • Frank had clearly broken through Taylor’s remaining confidence in the situation.

• Matthew rode the elevator down to the lobby.

  • He searched the first floor for Justin.
  • Justin was nowhere to be found.
  • Matthew then rode the elevator back up.

Taylor became increasingly unstable and began physically checking the offices.

• He armed himself with his service weapon.

• He started opening doors one by one and looking into rooms.

• Frank and Philomena both drew their own weapons once Taylor armed himself.

• The team followed him as he cleared the hallway.

• Taylor’s muttering suggested he was trying to reconcile memories of having worked with people who no longer seemed to exist.

  • He said things like they had had coffee and dinner and that none of it made sense.

• The offices he checked all appeared abandoned.

  • Dust lay on desks.
  • One room had an old coffee cup with mold growing in it.
  • The main difference among the rooms was that all the computers were off except one.

• In the final and larger office, the computer was still on and audibly working hard.

  • Taylor identified it as Audra’s office and Audra’s computer.

Frank and Philomena examined Audra’s office and computer while Taylor struggled to understand what was happening.

• Frank removed the computer’s side panel.

  • At first he did not see the same crude modification they had found on McKay’s machine.
  • On closer inspection he found another Picky Eater-labeled chip installed inside.

• Frank opened Picky Eater on the machine.

  • The interface resembled a browser or communication platform.

  • It also displayed a list of computers or systems with names and computer icons.

  • Fallon Taylor recognized the names immediately.

    • The list consisted of everyone on his team except himself.
    • This realization horrified him.

• Taylor suggested they simply shut the system down.

  • Frank tried closing Picky Eater.

    • The window minimized to the system tray, leaving the program still running.
    • There was no exit option in its menu.

  • Frank attempted to shut the machine down through Windows.

    • It powered off and then immediately rebooted.

  • Frank finally unplugged the machine.

    • That actually seemed to stop it.

• Frank also used the system to search for Audra Powell.

  • Fallon Taylor explained that Audra was probably not using her real name.
  • He said she had presented herself as Department of Justice but hinted at intelligence ties, likely CIA.
  • He described her as deeply committed and someone who had never seemed to doubt the mission.
  • When Frank asked whether she had ambitions, Taylor responded that she never wavered in believing the work mattered.

• Frank checked the search history and prior activity on the machine.

  • Most of the visible searches were related to their case.
  • There were searches about Picky Eater and about the Global Caliphate material.
  • There was nothing obvious in the history suggesting that Audra had been explicitly researching alternate histories or public Delta Green timelines.

While the others examined Audra’s machine, Matthew’s elevator trip went wrong.

• When the elevator reached the upper floor, Matthew became intensely disoriented.

• As the doors opened, he saw two men in dark clothes appear directly in front of him and hurry away down a navy-blue hallway.

  • One had a medical-looking satchel across his shoulder.
  • Both had holstered weapons.

• Matthew drew his gun and followed them stealthily.

• During the pursuit he experienced another overwhelming wrongness.

  • He failed a POW x5 test.
  • The Handler described the sensation as like being a fish trapped in a bathtub coated with Vaseline while the water drained away, leaving him sliding, suffocating, and unable to orient himself.
  • He had to stop and brace himself against the wall.

• One of the two men noticed him and turned.

  • The man began going for his weapon.
  • Matthew chose not to shoot first.
  • Instead he shouted, “Freeze. Are you with Taylor?”
  • The man halted before fully drawing.

Justin, still in the museum/future environment, was discovered by security.

• As he examined the Picky Eater machine in Audra Powell’s museum office, a security guard in uniform with a green triangle insignia entered and aimed a sidearm at him.

• The guard ordered Justin to stand, keep his hands where they could be seen, and explain how he had gotten into a secure government facility.

• Justin replied that he had taken the elevator and initially treated the place as if it were a museum.

• The guard radioed for “code green” and requested immediate genetic testing.

• Justin searched public information for what that meant.

  • The test was a quick blood test.
  • It was used to identify hybrids.
  • Anyone identified as a hybrid was normally killed quickly and violently.

• Justin attempted to humanize himself and buy time.

  • He said he had a medical condition and needed his medication.
  • He asked permission to take it from his bag.
  • He succeeded on a Persuade roll by a very narrow margin.
  • The guard suspiciously took the bag from him, searched it, then threw it back and allowed him to take the medication.
  • Justin swallowed the pills.
  • He told the guard his name was on the prescription bottles.

• Justin also attempted to name-drop Frank Booth and Pitzarelli.

  • The guard dismissed him with the slur “gills,” clearly treating him as a possible Deep One hybrid rather than a legitimate intruder.

The two diverging threads collided when Matthew’s voice carried into Justin’s location.

• Justin heard Matthew and called out, asking whether it was McCarter.

• The security personnel immediately realized there was a second intruder.

• A second armed man with the medical satchel stacked on the corner and prepared to engage Matthew.

• Matthew asked where Taylor, Philomena, and Frank were.

• Justin shouted that these were Delta Green agents and tried to calm the situation by insisting they were on the same team.

• The security personnel did not accept that explanation.

  • They told Matthew that if he wanted to talk to Director Powell, she was downstairs.
  • They ordered him to put down his weapon.

• Matthew complied.

  • He lowered the gun and slowly set it down.
  • He identified himself as Agent Matthew McCarter of Working Group Masticate.
  • He named Antonia Pitzarelli as his supervisor.

• The security team took both Justin and Matthew into custody.

  • They were zip-tied.
  • Matthew’s weapon was confiscated.
  • Both were forced down into positions that resembled an execution posture.

Immediately after Frank unplugged Audra’s computer in the current office, Justin and Matthew reappeared.

• They manifested outside Audra’s office on their knees, still zip-tied behind their backs.

• Fallon Taylor did not disappear when they returned.

• Frank, Philomena, and Taylor all had to make Sanity checks upon seeing the bound pair suddenly appear.

  • They each lost 1 Sanity.

• Justin urgently announced that he had taken his medication, wanting that fact known before its effects overtook him.

• Philomena cut Justin free.

• Before cutting Matthew loose, she deliberately leaned in and sniffed his hair in order to unsettle him, then cut him free as well.

• Justin gave a hurried explanation before the medication impaired him.

  • He said he had gone into another dimension or timeline.
  • He identified the year there as 2054.
  • In that timeline Delta Green was public.
  • Audra Powell was in charge.
  • Security had found him there and detained both him and Matthew.
  • As he continued, his speech began to slur and then stopped.

Almost immediately after the group regrouped, the situation escalated again.

• A fire alarm began sounding through the building.

• The offices around them were still empty.

• Frank concluded they should follow Justin.

• Justin began moving with a sense of purpose through the building.

  • He passed the elevator without stopping.
  • As he went by, he brushed the elevator button with one finger.
  • He headed instead for the emergency stairwell.

• Fallon Taylor hesitated and wanted to keep searching the offices.

  • Frank tried to persuade him to come and failed badly.
  • Philomena then tried and succeeded.
  • Taylor finally agreed to follow, though he said he wanted to make sure they had not missed anything.
  • He rationalized to himself that the building was probably not actually burning.

The group descended through the stairwell with Justin in the lead.

• As they moved downward, more and more civilians joined the stairwell from lower floors.

• Around the fourth floor heading toward the third, they heard shouting below.

• They then heard a couple of gunshots.

  • The shots were individual shots, not automatic fire.

• People below slammed the door shut and held it.

• Witnesses at the door said:

  • someone had been shot in the lobby;
  • a woman had fired on people coming out;
  • at least one person was lying on the ground bleeding.

• Justin pushed aggressively through the crowd toward the lower exit.

  • At one point he started shoving a large man who looked ready to hit him.
  • Frank intervened with his handgun visible.
  • Taylor reinforced the effort by displaying his FBI badge and ordering people to let law enforcement through.
  • That was enough to get the crowd moving aside.

The group entered the lobby and found the source of the gunfire.

• Across the lobby stood a woman in a sharp charcoal-gray skirt suit, professional in appearance, with shoulder-length styled hair.

• Her back was partly turned as she scanned for targets.

• She was holding a gun.

• She shouted, “How did you fucking do it? How’d you turn it all back? You fuckers! I killed you once, I’ll fucking kill you again!”

• She then fired at someone taking cover behind planters elsewhere in the lobby.

• Frank asked Fallon whether the woman was Powell.

  • Taylor was not fully certain, but gave a cautious nod suggesting he thought it was.

• Philomena indicated that Powell ought to be taken alive if possible.

• Frank instead called out first.

  • He shouted that they were with the Program and needed to talk.
  • Powell immediately turned toward him with her weapon up and was clearly not in a rational negotiating state.

• Frank fired first.

  • He had already had time to aim and took the attack with the bonus for that.
  • He rolled a critical success.
  • He inflicted 16 damage.
  • His burst struck center mass, with multiple rounds into Powell’s vital areas.
  • She dropped immediately and did not move again.
  • Blood spread rapidly beneath her body.

After Powell fell, the team secured the scene as best they could.

• Philomena went directly to the body.

  • She searched Powell for identification and anything unusual.

  • She found an official badge marked with the green triangle insignia identifying the woman as Director Audra Powell of Delta Green National Headquarters.

  • She pocketed the badge.

  • She also checked Powell’s slim wallet.

    • The money was recognizable as U.S. currency but the designs differed from normal U.S. bills.

• Justin looked at the body and realized she was much older than the woman in the museum photographs.

  • The version in the photographs had looked to be in her mid- to late thirties.
  • The woman Frank had just shot looked to be in her mid-sixties.

• Fallon Taylor reached the body and told the team to secure anything people should not see.

  • He treated the dead woman’s identity and possessions as something that needed containment.

• Frank went looking for other victims in the lobby instead of focusing on Powell.

  • He found two other people who had been shot.

    • One appeared wounded but not gravely so and likely to survive with pressure and medical treatment.
    • One appeared seriously wounded and in need of urgent medical care.

  • Frank directly instructed a bystander to apply pressure to the serious wound and told him that the victim’s life was in his hands.

• Frank then found the building receptionist.

  • The receptionist had been shot through the head and was dead.

Emergency response arrived and Taylor improvised a cover story.

• Sirens could already be heard approaching because of the alarm and shooting.

• Police and first responders began entering the building.

• Taylor asked Frank what credentials he could present.

  • Frank responded that he had FBI credentials under the current cover arrangement.
  • Taylor then started taking control of the visible law-enforcement narrative.

• Taylor presented them as people already in the building who had responded to the shooting.

• The scene was chaotic enough that the explanation held.

• The police cleared the area, took statements, and ultimately let the group go.

Once clear of immediate danger, the group tried to make sense of what had happened.

• Frank’s interpretation was that Powell had wanted to become the greatest Delta Green agent who had ever lived.

  • In his view, Picky Eater had given her a world in which Delta Green was public, dominant, and victorious.
  • In that world she had apparently risen to the top as director.

• The group discussed the fact that the alternate world Justin had seen seemed to have Delta Green openly waging war on Deep Ones and hybrids.

• Justin and Matthew confirmed that the museum world and the current office building seemed to be the same structure and floor, but dressed differently.

  • The “museum” appeared to be a memorialized version of the office complex in a future where Delta Green was public.

• The group noted that the Picky Eater chip in the future/museum computer was much more sophisticated and professionally manufactured than the crude chip found in McKay’s laptop.

• They also noted that McKay’s laptop had initially had a burned-out power supply and corrupted firmware.

  • Justin had repaired the laptop earlier in the investigation.
  • They still did not know exactly how or whether its Picky Eater system had been functioning.

• The group realized that the computer upstairs in Audra’s office should not be left there.

  • They discussed the need to go back and recover it later.

• They also noted that Fallon had not been taken into Powell’s alternate reality the way the rest of Narnia apparently had been.

  • The group speculated about where the rest of the team had gone, including the possibility that they had each ended up in their own timelines or variant worlds.