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.