MIT/Dr. Cool Investigation - Sun, Oct 27, 2019

The session opened with the team at breakfast on Saturday morning, October 26, after the previous night’s events near MIT.

• Boston had been seven hours away, and the SUV had been full of evidence that nothing electronic could be trusted.
• Pitzerelli had gone silent.
• Vicki King had vanished.
• The team had driven east toward MIT because that was where the trail pointed.
• Justin had examined the devices during the drive while Philomena drove.
• A phone still in its packaging, never powered on, was opened and did not contain a Picky Eater chip.
• Frank gave Justin his own phone, and Justin found a tiny stamped wafer inside it, matching the one they had found in Audra Powell’s network server.
• The team understood that powering a compromised device on was what summoned the thing, though they did not understand how.
• Philomena had meditated, reading the world against her own memory, and found it whole.
• Somewhere past Newton, a car roughly 200 meters ahead of them shimmered as it crossed an invisible line.
• Philomena slammed on the brakes.
• The driver behind them did not react quickly enough and hit them.
• Philomena took the airbag in the face.
• Frank pulled a gun on the man from the other vehicle when he emerged yelling, then showed his FBI credentials.
• Highway patrol arrived in response to a 911 call, but Frank’s credentials held and the troopers left them alone.
• Three members of the team could see the membrane stretched across the interstate.
• Justin could not see it.
• McCarter tied himself to a rope and pushed his fingertips through the membrane to test it.
• The rope dropped empty.
• McCarter emerged somewhere quieter, in a version of Cambridge with manicured streets and a maglev gliding overhead.
• Police in that reality told him he could not sleep beneath the tracks and suggested he knew what was going on and what would happen if they found him there.
• McCarter walked to MIT.
• Back on the highway, the team destroyed every phone and laptop by crushing them under the SUV’s tires.
• As Philomena flattened the third-to-last device, the barrier disappeared from her vision.
• As Frank finished destroying the last of the devices, the barrier disappeared from his view as well.
• The team retained memories of the original McCarter dead on the asphalt.
• Their memories of the new McCarter vanished along with him when he went through the barrier.
• They drove the rest of the way to MIT, found the Simons Building, home of the Mathematics Department, locked until Monday, and checked into the Marriott to sleep.
• In the alternate Simons Building, the Mathematics Department never closed.
• McCarter found a door labeled “Offices of the Revealer” in Gothic script.
• A receptionist waited behind the door at 3 a.m., ready for visitors.
• She told McCarter that Dr. Cool was not there anymore and had ascended.
• She said Vicki King could tell him more.
• In another office down the hall, McCarter found a too-young Vicki King sitting pleasantly and smiling at nothing.
• She welcomed him to a place called the Office of Pre-Revelatory Mathematics.
• When McCarter’s mind refused the lie, the room flickered out and he found himself alone in a different dark office.
• By morning, the team was eating breakfast at the Marriott when McCarter reappeared.
• The Mathematics Department would not open until Monday, and nobody was sure which version of Cambridge they were in.

At breakfast, the Handler began with Philomena.

• Philomena made a Sanity roll and succeeded with a 15.
• She had not slept well.
• She had fitful sleep and thought she may have had nightmares, though she did not remember them clearly.
• She felt rested enough, and strong coffee or tea would help her function for the day.

Frank also made a Sanity roll and succeeded.

• Like Philomena, he had not slept terribly well.
• The lack of sleep was not severe enough to become a major topic of conversation.
• Frank noted that he did not know what reality he was in, which was reason enough for poor sleep.

Justin slept well.

• He had been very tired.
• The Handler reminded the three characters who had slept that they could recover 1d6 Willpower.
• Injured characters could also make Constitution checks to recover a hit point.
• Frank was not injured.
• Philomena failed her healing check and did not recover a hit point.

The team clarified their memories of McCarter.

• They remembered having another Matthew with them when they woke.
• Based on previous experience, if they remembered him, that likely meant he had returned.
• Their earlier conclusion had been that they should find him, though they had no way to do so.
• McCarter had ultimately found them by walking around to hotels in the area during the early morning.

A little after 9 a.m., McCarter entered the Marriott breakfast area.

• He was checking his fourth breakfast buffet of the morning.
• He saw the others sitting at a table in the corner.
• He tried to act casual, grabbing food while approaching them.
• He had not slept and was likely hungry.
• Frank greeted him by asking if he had had a good night.

McCarter debriefed the team about what happened after he crossed the barrier.

• He said he seemed to have crossed into another timeline again.
• It was not his original timeline, but instead appeared to be Dr. Cool’s timeline.
• In that world, Dr. Cool seemed to be an academic at MIT and a highly revered figure.
• Cool appeared to have made something people were calling a mathematical “revelation.”
• Cool was no longer present at the university.
• McCarter encountered a version of Vicki King there.
• Vicki and the receptionist were both working very late into the night and seemed uncanny.
• McCarter tried to gather as much information as possible.
• He then found himself back in the team’s world.
• After returning, he broke into Dr. Cool’s office in the normal MIT building.
• He could not make heads or tails of what he found there.
• He believed he was spotted while exiting.
• He thought someone realized there had been a break-in and would report it.
• He said that if the team returned to campus, he might need some sort of disguise.

The team discussed whether destroying the phones had affected McCarter’s return.

• McCarter asked what time he came back.
• The others had destroyed the devices within roughly twenty minutes of his disappearance, around 2:30 a.m.
• McCarter returned around sunrise.
• The timing did not clearly line up because time might move differently across realities.
• McCarter said that in Dr. Cool’s office, everything was dusty and seemed unused for a long time.
• The Handler confirmed that after McCarter returned and found Cool’s office, it was very dusty and did not appear to have been used in a long time.

The team reviewed the implications of electronics and reality shifts.

• McCarter still had his phone battery removed.
• He also still had his reality-anchor “hockey puck,” which was not a cell phone and had supposedly been shielded.
• The team had smashed all phones and laptops that had been turned on.
• They understood that taking out a battery was not sufficient once a device had already been powered on and acquired a Picky Eater chip.
• Frank summarized the apparent rule: once a device is turned on, the chip appears.
• The team thought that if a person did not have a chip tied to them, they might not be pulled into another reality.
• They also admitted they did not know exactly what anchored a Picky Eater effect to a person.

McCarter made a Sanity roll after returning.

• He had already passed his breaking point and noted that he needed to reset it.
• He failed the roll with a 53 over 50.
• He did not lose Sanity from the roll.
• He became consciously aware of a disturbing sensation.
• It felt like a rope around his waist or a hook in him.
• It felt as though something was tugging or pulling him.
• He felt as if he was always half a step away from slipping off a precipice.
• The sensation was disorienting.
• At first, he wondered if it was an inner-ear or balance issue.
• He realized it was not physical balance; instead, it felt like he could blink at any moment and no longer be in the same world.

Justin asked whether McCarter had brought any objects back from the other world.

• McCarter had not.
• McCarter regretted not grabbing a notebook from Cool’s office before fleeing, but he had panicked.
• Justin wondered if items tied to McCarter would travel with him to the other reality, while items attached to the team might remain behind.
• He proposed making a rope with bells or labels bearing everyone’s names or initials so the group could tell if someone vanished while traveling.
• The team discussed the limitation that if McCarter vanished while holding something, it might travel with him.
• Justin wanted a method to reveal when a person had crossed into another reality.

The team considered what to do on Saturday, since the Mathematics Department would not officially open until Monday.

• Philomena suggested visiting Boston and seeing the sights.
• The team instead focused on investigating Dr. Cool.
• They considered an official approach: going to campus police or campus security, presenting FBI credentials, and demanding access to Cool’s office.
• They also considered pretending to investigate the break-in McCarter had caused.
• Frank pointed out that Cool had apparently not been in his office for a long time.
• Justin suggested locating tax records or another source that might reveal Cool’s home address.
• The team wanted a timeline for Cool’s disappearance and a possible home address.
• They wanted to investigate Cool’s home because his office might contain little useful information or might have already been searched too quickly by McCarter.
• McCarter said Cool’s home might contain something more comprehensible than the office.

The team reviewed public information about Dr. Wesley Cool.

• The Handler assumed they had looked up public information before smashing their devices.
• Wesley Cool was a professor at MIT who began teaching in the Department of Mathematics in 2007.
• Before MIT, he taught philosophy at several state schools.
• Cool was highly regarded in mathematics.
• He had conquered two of Hilbert’s problems, from David Hilbert’s list of 23 unsolved problems proposed in 1900.
• Cool’s philosophy work was less well regarded.
• His philosophical work dealt with phenomenology, consciousness, subjective experience, and simulation theory.
• Reviewers often criticized his philosophical writing as derivative of Deleuze and Guattari.
• His faculty profile boasted numerous academic publications in both philosophy and mathematics.
• The team inferred that he had pursued both mathematics and philosophy, though he began his teaching career in philosophy.
• MIT listed him as current faculty but on sabbatical.
• The last courses he taught were in 2016.
• That timing aligned with Vicki King previously saying she was working on a project at MIT in the 2015 to early 2016 period.
• The 2016 timing also aligned with the earlier event involving Charles Bauer from the Theater Arts Department.
• Cool had old web material listing research and graduate students in mathematics.
• The team found no indication that he had a computer science or computer engineering lab.
• They also found no obvious DARPA or defense funding sources connected to his papers.
• Justin asked whether Cool had a large research group or seemed well funded.
• The answer was that his mathematics reputation was strong, but there was no obvious sign of major defense funding or a large technical operation.

Frank used a hotel landline to contact Pitzerelli.

• Because the team had destroyed their phones, they relied on the hotel phone.
• Frank called Pitzerelli’s number.
• The line rang until just before voicemail, then someone picked up in silence.
• Frank used a code phrase to identify himself.
• Pitzerelli asked whether everything was okay and assumed the line was not secure.
• Frank told her the line was not secure and that things were not okay.
• He said the team could not trust devices anymore.
• He asked for the home address of Professor Wesley Cool of MIT’s Mathematics Department.
• Pitzerelli said she had not heard from Frank in a while and did not know what was happening with the group.
• Frank was almost glad to hear that, because it confirmed that the earlier Pitzerelli contact had likely not been the same person.
• Frank told her that the issue was “the thing” and where it was, which was why they could not trust devices.
• He said they could not get out of it or away from it.
• Pitzerelli did not fully understand but agreed to look into Wesley Cool.
• She said she could call the hotel number back in less than an hour.
• About forty minutes later, she called back.
• She gave Frank Wesley Cool’s Cambridge address and Social Security number.
• Frank asked for Cool’s latest tax filing.
• Pitzerelli reported that Cool’s latest taxes were from 2015, paid in February 2016.
• There was some kind of ongoing IRS processing or investigation queue, but it kept being shunted to the back of the list.
• This matched the expectation that Cool had effectively vanished or stopped normal activity around 2016.
• Frank thanked Pitzerelli and said he hoped to contact her later that day, though it might not be from the same number.
• Pitzerelli said they would rotate to the next code phrase and she would pick up.

The team decided to investigate Cool’s home.

• Cool’s address was roughly two miles from campus.
• The team discussed whether to walk or drive.
• They were concerned about crossing another barrier while traveling.
• They decided they could not walk down the road roped together without drawing attention.
• Justin suggested implementing the rope policy once they reached the end of Cool’s street.
• Frank noted they had seen the membrane the last time and could try to look for it before driving through.
• The team planned to drive slowly, park away from the target, and approach on foot.

On the way to Cool’s home, McCarter saw the barrier again.

• As the team drove away from MIT and put distance between themselves and the campus, McCarter looked behind them.
• He saw a shimmering wall receding behind the vehicle.
• The team appeared to have passed through it again.
• They had not seen it while approaching; McCarter only saw it behind them.
• McCarter told the others to stop and pointed out the barrier.
• The others looked but could not see it.
• Only McCarter could see the wall at this point.
• McCarter checked how many people were in the car.
• There were four people total, the expected number.
• There was no extra McCarter or missing team member.

The team tried to estimate the barrier’s position.

• Justin and McCarter discussed whether the barrier was centered around something.
• They considered the midpoint between the barrier crossing on I-90 and the current barrier crossing.
• McCarter made an INT × 5 check and succeeded.
• Using a road map, he estimated that MIT’s campus seemed close to the middle of the affected area.
• With only two data points, they could not determine the precise center.
• Their best guess was that the dome was centered somewhere on or near central MIT campus.
• Cool’s condo appeared to be outside the shimmering field, since they were only about halfway there when McCarter saw the wall behind them.

The team continued to Cool’s condo.

• They parked a few blocks away and walked in.
• They avoided driveways when possible, partly because driveways had become associated with danger in previous investigations.
• They found Cool’s unit, 14B, among a set of upscale condominiums.
• The condos looked nice, with maintained grounds.
• Frank suggested knocking first.
• There was no obvious pile of mail or eviction notice outside.
• Because it was a condo, it was difficult to judge care from the exterior alone.

Frank and Justin inspected the exterior of Cool’s condo.

• Frank made an Alertness or Search check and succeeded with an 80.
• Justin achieved a critical success with an 11.
• At first glance, Cool’s condo looked like the neighboring units.
• They then noticed small signs of neglect.
• Dirt and grime had built up around the mat, suggesting nobody had swept there in a long time.
• The windows were dirty.
• The property looked slightly less cared for than neighboring units.
• Justin noticed the mail slot.
• He opened it and looked inside.
• He saw a very large mound of mail inside the front door.

Justin picked the lock and the team entered Cool’s condo.

• Justin pretended to tie his shoe while picking the lock.
• The lock was not particularly secure.
• With his locksmithing skill, Justin opened it without needing a roll.
• The team entered.
• The condo was quiet.
• No lights were on.
• It was dusty.
• The interior had two stories, a small dining room, and upscale features such as granite countertops and newer appliances, likely from around 2010.
• Aside from dust and the mail piled inside the front door, the condo was clean and neatly kept.
• They heard no sounds indicating anyone else was inside.

The team searched Cool’s condo.

• McCarter tactically cleared the building.
• He succeeded on his Search check with a 48 under 50.
• The team confirmed no one was present.
• Frank and McCarter found a laptop upstairs in a small office that had probably been a second bedroom.
• The master bedroom had a made bed and was tidy but dusty.
• The small office contained a desk, a reading nook, bookshelves, papers, and the laptop.
• The laptop was sitting on the desk.
• It did not appear to be powered on.
• It was plugged in.
• The bookshelves and papers contained mathematics and philosophy texts.
• The team found a personal ledger in Cool’s neat handwriting.
• The ledger listed expenses.
• Around 2013, it showed a substantial outflow labeled “Thoth.”
• Philomena recognized the significance because, during a previous meditative ritual, she had interpreted the Picky Eater circuit as resembling a divination rune recorded in the Book of Thoth.
• The payment was an outflow, meaning Cool spent a significant sum on something associated with Thoth.
• The team inferred the purchase likely involved an occult text.
• The ledger entry included the name and address of a bookseller in London.
• The bookseller specialized in rare occult texts.
• Philomena had interacted with the bookseller before.
• The bookseller was an unsettling individual who had made her uneasy in person.

The team discussed Thoth and Cool’s intellectual path.

• Frank did not know what Thoth was.
• Philomena and others recognized Thoth as an Egyptian god associated with wisdom and magic.
• The team connected Thoth to Cool’s sudden rise from a middling philosophy professor to an acclaimed mathematician.
• Philomena wondered whether Cool intended to dissolve the barriers between realities or whether the deterioration between realities was an unintended consequence.
• Frank believed the consequences were probably unintended and that Cool was likely looking for a reality that made him famous or for some other personal objective.

The team examined Cool’s handwritten notes at the condo.

• The notes were not his formal research notes.
• They appeared to be idle thoughts, doodles, and brainstorming written at home in the evenings.
• Justin made a Mathematics roll with a 10 under 40.
• He recognized that much of the material was beyond him.
• From the parts he understood and the freehand notes surrounding the mathematics, Justin concluded that Cool was trying to mathematically encode consciousness.
• The notes seemed related to Cool’s work, but they were not the main technical research.
• They appeared to be evening sketches and thoughts connected to the broader project.

Philomena interpreted the occult and philosophical material in the condo.

• Philomena made an Occult check and succeeded with an 8 under 76.
• She found one of Cool’s notebooks, probably from about five years earlier, containing notes on the Upanishads.
• Cool had written about the idea that gods are functions of the human mind.
• The notes suggested that the mind provides form and the universe takes shape around it.
• Cool wrote that human experience and the divine infinite are separated by a gulf beyond human comprehension.
• He identified that gulf as the source of monsters.
• The idea was that human thought, trying to encompass what it cannot understand, creates monsters.
• Philomena interpreted this as the inception of Cool’s ideas.
• Cool seemed to be blending philosophy and mathematics, with the mathematics serving as the method to realize the ideas.

The team considered where the technology came from.

• Philomena noted that Cool was the mathematics and philosophy person, but the technological implementation had to come from elsewhere.
• The team remembered Vicki King’s computer science background.
• Cool had an improperly intimate relationship with Vicki King.
• Vicki had been involved in the technical side.
• The team also recognized that Cool was a professor at MIT and had access to technically skilled people.
• The condo notes did not identify who built the technology, but the team suspected Vicki and others.

The Handler summarized more of Cool’s occult reasoning from the condo notes.

• Cool wrote about reality flickering into being from nothingness, formed by thought.
• He quoted or referenced passages from the Book of Thoth.
• He wrote that the initiate must glimpse the abyss without annihilation.
• He described opening a way into a metaphorical chamber of darkness.
• He wrote that one must find the heart of the abyss, true nothingness.
• From that place, he believed the human mind could manifest anything.
• His idea was that all possibilities could become real if someone could reach the heart of the abyss where nothing is real.
• Cool appeared excited by this idea.
• He also referenced Abd al-Hazred and the Necronomicon.
• Cool wrote of a guide from the Necronomicon that could take him to the abyss.
• He referred to “he who guardeth the gateway.”
• Philomena knew the Book of Thoth and the Necronomicon by reputation.
• The two works were separate: one Egyptian and one Arabic, with different histories.

Justin examined the laptop before anyone turned it on.

• The laptop was plugged in but off.
• Justin wanted to carefully disassemble it to look for a Picky Eater chip while preserving its functionality.
• He removed the back panel and examined the components with his microscope.
• He found a chip on a board.
• The chip was labeled “Picky Eater 1.0.”
• In very small script, it said it was the invention of Dr. Wesley Cool.
• Justin removed the chip and smashed it thoroughly.
• Frank approvingly thought Justin had the right Delta Green mentality: destroy the dangerous thing rather than preserve it.
• The team noted that this was likely not the chip currently maintaining the larger dome because the laptop was off and outside the bubble.
• They also noted that the laptop could potentially be examined later for information after the chip was removed.

The team discussed what might be running the active Picky Eater effect.

• Frank wondered whether MIT had a supercomputer on campus or nearby.
• The team considered that if someone were creating a world-generating system, installing it on the most powerful available computer would make sense.
• The Handler mentioned the Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center, though it was not on campus.
• The team also considered that the active system might not require that much computing power.
• They remembered McCarter had been told by the alternate-world receptionist that Cool had invented an upgraded replacement for Picky Eater.
• She had called it the Atheraphone.
• The team considered whether they needed to enter the alternate reality and find that device there.
• Frank noted that if destroying the system on either side worked, they might need to locate and destroy the Atheraphone wherever it existed.
• McCarter said the people at the alternate university had been very helpful, as long as one did not sneak around at night.
• Justin suggested the Marriott lobby as a rendezvous point if the team became dimensionally separated.

The team decided to return to MIT and investigate Cool’s office.

• They planned to watch for the shimmering barrier on the way back.
• When they reached the location where McCarter had seen it before, he saw the barrier again.
• In daylight, the surface was easier for him to make out.
• It appeared to be a large curved dome.
• McCarter pointed it out, but the others still could not see it.
• The team decided to park and walk through the barrier together rather than drive through.
• They held hands as they approached, with McCarter placed between Justin and Frank so that if he vanished, the absence would be obvious.
• They left Cool’s laptop in the car.

McCarter touched and crossed the barrier.

• He saw the field shimmering in front of him as he approached.
• When he touched the surface, he made a Sanity roll and succeeded with a 7.
• He held himself together but experienced a disturbing vision and sensation.
• A bloody, meaty flavor filled his mouth, with a heavy chemical taste.
• He had a vision of being a cow eating from a trough.
• Behind him, a machine was grinding him and feeding the raw meat back into the trough.
• He heard metal grinding and clanking.
• He felt a panicked sensation that he was dying but had to consume in order to survive.
• The vision passed, and he found himself walking down the sidewalk.
• The others saw him stumble and shake his head.
• He was disoriented for a moment but shook it off.
• The memory of the sensation remained clear.
• He had no idea what to make of it.
• Everyone remained present.
• There were four members of the group, the expected number.
• When McCarter turned around, he no longer saw the barrier behind them.

The team retrieved the car and drove to MIT.

• They were a little over a kilometer from campus after crossing the barrier.
• Philomena walked back, picked up the vehicle, and drove forward to collect the others.
• They drove onto MIT’s campus around late Saturday morning or lunchtime.

The team went to the Simons Building, Building 2, home of the Mathematics Department.

• The building was still closed for the weekend.
• The posted hours said it would be closed.
• The team concluded they would need a key, keycard, or official assistance.
• They considered breaking in but decided to try the official approach first.
• They went to campus police or security to ask for access.

At campus police, Frank presented the investigation as an official matter.

• A ranking officer, later named Ray McKinley, asked whether they needed access to one of the buildings.
• Frank said they were on an investigation and needed to get into Professor Cool’s office.
• McKinley asked whether they had a warrant, because the office was a personal space.
• Frank tried to argue federal jurisdiction, national security, and the impossibility of showing the warrant because of classified implications.
• The attempt did not go well.
• McKinley said that without a warrant, he needed to talk to the administration office before opening the door.
• He then mentioned there had been a break-in in that building overnight and asked whether it was related to their case.
• Frank immediately said it was related now.
• Frank said they needed to be in that room because of what they were trying to find, and if anything had been stolen, it was a much bigger national security issue.
• Philomena reinforced that the break-in gave them probable cause to examine the office because evidence might have been stolen.
• McKinley accepted the reasoning and agreed to take them there.

On the way to Cool’s office, Frank questioned McKinley about the break-in.

• McKinley said there was no useful surveillance footage.
• A janitor had seen the man who broke in.
• The intruder had been hiding in the office.
• The office window had been broken.
• Campus police did not know how the intruder got into the building.
• One camera caught the back of the intruder.
• The description was a Caucasian man of roughly McCarter’s height, wearing dark clothes.
• The camera saw only the back of him.
• The intruder left through the fire exit.
• Campus police did not believe anything was obviously stolen.
• McKinley had not contacted Cool because Cool was on sabbatical and he did not have a phone number for him.
• McKinley expected to talk to the department head on Monday.
• Frank challenged how McKinley could know nothing was stolen without talking to Cool.
• McKinley admitted it was only that nothing was obviously missing and the office did not seem heavily searched.
• Campus police had already processed the scene and considered it released.
• The broken window had not yet been repaired.
• McKinley opened the office door by reaching through the broken window and stepping back.
• He told the team the office was theirs and waited in the hallway.

The team searched Cool’s office.

• The office was packed with material.
• Everyone made Search checks.
• Philomena rolled a critical success with a 1.
• McCarter rolled a critical failure with a 99.
• Frank barely missed his roll.
• Justin searched effectively.
• Because of McCarter’s critical failure, the Handler asked him to make an Alertness check.
• McCarter failed the Alertness check with a 74.
• Justin found a rolling file cabinet under Cool’s desk.
• While going through the bottom drawer, he noticed a false bottom.
• The false bottom was not extremely well hidden, but it accounted for a couple of missing inches.
• Justin found a suitable shim, removed the false bottom, and discovered a locked metal box.
• The box was a few inches deep and weighed roughly five or six pounds.
• Justin positioned himself so people passing the office would not see him picking the lock.
• The lock was small and not particularly sturdy.
• Justin picked it open.

Inside the locked metal box, the team found an old book.

• The book had no title on the cover.
• Philomena opened it carefully.
• After flipping through the first several pages, she identified it as an English translation of at least a portion of the Book of Thoth.
• The book was likely connected to the “Thoth” purchase in Cool’s ledger.
• Philomena took charge of examining it.

The team found more substantial research material in Cool’s office.

• Unlike the condo notes, the office contained detailed notes, research logs, and project logs.
• The material appeared to document Cool’s project in much more depth.
• Early in the notes, Cool referred to the device as a “consciousness renderer.”
• He eventually named it Picky Eater.
• The notes were densely packed with mathematics.
• The team recognized that without a skilled mathematician, much of it would remain difficult or impossible to understand.
• There were many notebooks and published works.
• The team realized they would need several banker’s boxes to haul the material away if they wanted to preserve and analyze it properly.

The team examined the computer in Cool’s office.

• McCarter had previously noted that the computer case felt too light.
• Justin opened the case.
• It was basically empty.
• It contained a power supply but no motherboard, no hard drive, and no chips.
• The team could not tell whether the parts had been removed normally or had vanished due to the reality effect.
• Frank noted that if someone had transported the computer, removing just the motherboard seemed odd.
• Justin suggested that leaving an empty case might preserve the appearance that a university-owned computer was still present.
• The team concluded there was no active Picky Eater chip in the office computer.
• The active system had to be somewhere else, possibly using the removed components or another machine.

The team spent several hours reading and comparing notes in Cool’s office.

• By around 5 p.m., McCarter still had not slept since returning to this world.
• He rolled 1d6 and lost 4 Willpower.
• His Willpower dropped to 6 out of 13.
• He began taking a −20 penalty due to exhaustion unless he used a stimulant.
• Officer McKinley watched the team for about thirty minutes, then decided to leave them to their work.
• He gave them a phone number and asked them to call when they were done.
• He asked Frank for his phone number.
• Frank gave him his number, though his phone battery was dead or unavailable.

From the research notes, the team learned the broad structure of Cool’s project.

• Cool came up with the idea and much of the theoretical underpinning for what became Picky Eater.
• He believed there were reality-altering or reality-defining shapes described in the Book of Thoth.
• He wanted to control and stabilize those shapes.
• He developed the idea of inscribing the shapes into a circuit.
• He did not personally have the technical knowledge to create the chip.
• He also needed software to control the system.
• These ideas developed over time.

The notes identified Dr. Rajneesh Amardeep as a collaborator.

• Amardeep was in the Electrical Engineering Department.
• He appears to have worked with Cool to create or design the chip according to Cool’s non-technical specifications.
• The notes did not yet make clear how Cool persuaded Amardeep to participate.
• The Amardeep collaboration appeared to be early in the process.

The notes identified several computer science graduate students who worked on the software.

• The names included Michelle Jordan, Vicki King, Nora Bridget, and Kim Bowyer.
• Frank recognized the names Nora Bridget and Kim Bowyer from the Persistent Vigil matter.
• Frank also recognized Vicki King from the current investigation.
• The repeated names confirmed that the project connected directly to earlier events and people.
• The team noted that all of Cool’s graduate students appeared to be women.
• Frank observed that Cool had a type.
• Cool’s notes suggested he compartmentalized the software work.
• He gave the students partial requirements rather than the full picture.
• He told them it was some kind of security software.
• He claimed the work was for a secret project and that he could not give them the full picture.
• In this limited sense, he was telling the truth.

The notes also identified Dr. Jacqueline Chung.

• Chung was a professor in the Philosophy Department.
• Cool appears to have shared some of his ideas with her.
• He ultimately dismissed her feedback.
• His notes included chauvinistic language about her.
• The team concluded this fit the pattern of Cool’s character and his apparent treatment of women around him.

Frank connected Nora Bridget and Kim Bowyer to Persistent Vigil.

• Cool’s dated notes showed that Bowyer and Bridget worked on the project from early 2015 until fall 2015.
• That roughly aligned with when they were hired by Persistent Vigil.
• The team concluded they may have been hired away from Cool’s project.
• This strengthened the connection between Cool’s work and the later Persistent Vigil events.

Philomena and the team extracted more occult implications from Cool’s research.

• Cool had not only material from the Book of Thoth, but also texts dealing with the Book of Thoth.
• He wrote about prophecy and perceiving the gods.
• He had read widely in occult sources and appeared to have real knowledge of them.
• Cool pointed to ancient Greek texts that equated Thoth with Hermes.
• He focused on Hermes as a herald of the gods and mediator between the world of the living and other worlds.
• He traced Hermes backward into older conceptions, including ancient Pan.
• He tried to locate the earliest source of ideas about Thoth and related figures.
• He linked Thoth-Hermes as revealer and psychopomp to Set, god of the underworld.
• He pieced together ancient text that purportedly described ritual and sorcery to invoke and constrain gods of the underworld.
• He included Sanskrit material, specifically “yuj” or “yog,” meaning harness or control and related to the discipline of yoga.
• His chain of associations eventually produced “Yog-Sothoth.”
• He wrote of a cycle: imperative becomes prayer, prayer becomes deity, deity grants comprehension.
• He wrote the phrase “a key to the gate whereby the spheres meet.”
• Philomena made an Unnatural check and got 25, close to success but not enough.
• She thought she had seen this name or variations of it before in ancient human material.
• She understood that Cool was not the first person to tread these paths.
• His research was part of an esoteric body of occult scholarship.

Frank made a Sanity-related check while reviewing the notes.

• The Handler first called for a Sanity roll, then clarified that Frank was adapted to helplessness and would automatically succeed.
• Frank still lost 1 Sanity.
• The trigger was a folded campus email printout in one of Cool’s notebooks.
• The email correspondence was between Wesley Cool and Anthony Cooper.
• This revealed a direct connection between Cool’s work and Cooper’s work.

The Cool-Cooper correspondence revealed how the two projects intersected.

• Cooper originally contacted Cool to ask about two graduate students who had worked for him: Kim Bowyer and Nora Bridget.
• Cooper wanted Cool’s assessment of their capabilities and knowledge.
• Cool responded with faint praise and dismissive language, suggesting they had only contributed under his eye and guidance.
• Over the correspondence, Cool and Cooper developed a rapport.
• They eventually began discussing Cool’s project and concepts Cool was struggling with.
• Cool’s project was not functioning properly.
• Cool believed there were elements or pieces he did not understand.
• Cooper helped Cool understand parts of the problem.
• The Handler clarified that it was collaborative: Cool and Cooper helped each other understand.
• They both developed ideas around the “Watcher on High.”
• Cool approached the Watcher from the perspective of consciousness creating reality.
• Cool wondered whether all of reality might be created by some greater consciousness.
• Cooper viewed the Watcher as something outside his own existence and as the source of all truth.
• Cooper wanted to communicate with it.

Frank considered the human implications of Cool and Cooper’s collaboration.

• He made a HUMINT check and failed with a 76.
• Even so, the Handler stated that Frank understood that if Cool and Cooper had not crossed paths, neither would likely have accomplished what they did.
• Cooper had been following Persistent Vigil.
• When Bridget and Bowyer appeared at Persistent Vigil and proved to be very sharp computer scientists, Cooper investigated their background.
• That investigation led him to Wesley Cool.
• Through coincidence or synchronicity, Cool and Cooper were working on similar problems from different angles.
• Cooper had a backdoor into Persistent Vigil and was familiar with what they were doing.

The team clarified the relationship between Cooper’s work, Persistent Vigil, and Picky Eater.

• Cooper worked on the Gorgon Stare project.
• In the Reno events, there had been a ritual worked on the ground and observation through a compromised drone running Cooper’s software.
• Cooper wanted to talk to the Watcher on High.
• He knew it was beyond his world and needed a bridge to reach it.
• That was what he had been trying to make.
• Persistent Vigil was likely a side effect or byproduct of Cooper’s research rather than his primary goal.
• Cooper probably did not intend for other people to take steps into alternate worlds.
• Crossing worlds required a great deal of knowledge.
• Other very smart people working alongside him figured things out before his work was complete.
• Cool and Cooper did not necessarily share the same technology.
• They shared ideas and solved parallel problems.
• The drone technology and Picky Eater worked differently.
• Picky Eater seemed more advanced or more user-friendly in terms of crossing realities.

Before the session ended, the Handler added one more connection involving Charles Bauer.

• The team had asked whether there was any connection to the theater professor.
• In Cool’s notes, after the project began working, Cool wrote that it seemed to actually work.
• He also wrote, “Important, non-existence at issue.”
• He then wrote that he needed a tester.
• The notes identified Charles Bauer as that tester.
• There was also a line that said “Vicki.”
• This confirmed that Bauer’s involvement was not incidental.
• Cool used Bauer as a test subject.
• Vicki King was also directly implicated in that stage of the work.
• The team concluded Cool was responsible for far more than they had already suspected.

By the end of the session, the team had several clear investigative conclusions.

• Wesley Cool bought an occult text or related material associated with the Book of Thoth from a London rare bookseller around 2013.
• Cool’s work began as a fusion of occult philosophy, phenomenology, simulation theory, mathematics, and the idea that consciousness can shape reality.
• Cool believed the Book of Thoth and related traditions described reality-defining forms that could be stabilized and controlled.
• He developed the theoretical basis for Picky Eater but needed help from technical collaborators.
• Dr. Rajneesh Amardeep helped design or create the chip.
• Michelle Jordan, Vicki King, Nora Bridget, and Kim Bowyer helped with the software.
• Cool compartmentalized the project and hid the full purpose from the software contributors.
• Nora Bridget and Kim Bowyer later moved to Persistent Vigil.
• Anthony Cooper discovered Cool through Bridget and Bowyer and began corresponding with him.
• Cool and Cooper helped each other solve pieces of their respective unnatural projects.
• Cool’s project involved creating or stabilizing a way for consciousness to alter or select reality.
• Cooper’s project involved reaching or communicating with the Watcher on High.
• The two projects converged around the idea of a gateway, bridge, or observer connecting worlds.
• Cool tested the working system on Charles Bauer.
• Vicki King was connected to the operational stage of the system.
• Cool’s active system was not in his home laptop, since Justin removed and destroyed an old Picky Eater 1.0 chip there.
• Cool’s active system was not in his office computer, which had been stripped of motherboard, drives, and chips.
• The current Picky Eater or Atheraphone system was likely somewhere else, possibly on or near MIT’s campus and possibly in another reality.
• McCarter remained especially affected by the reality distortion and was the only one who could currently see the dome.
• The apparent dome seemed centered near MIT’s campus.
• The team still needed to locate Dr. Cool, the active system, or both.