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.