Memory 9: The FBI's Involvement

[wontforbidtherain]

A group: Aphra, Caleb, Charlie Day, Audrey, Miss Dawson, Professor Trumbull, and Neko Koto was walking through a New York street in June. They are met by Agent Spector, who opens with ‘I’ve got bad news’. They discover that Laverne (the cousin Aphra remembers asking around about (Memory 6)) is not the only missing person. On the other hand, it means Spector can help as part of his official duties; and that means the FBI thinks Weird Shit is at the root. Spector notes that some of the missing person cases upstate were linked to sightings of ‘alien monsters’. He gives a description of a being with “claws like crabs and wings like bats” that lives under the mountains and comes out on moonless nights, and residents of upstate New York, Vermont and New Hampshire since before European settlers were.

It sounds familiar to Aphra, but she can’t place it beyond ‘we had a treaty with them’ and ‘all worlds were the same to them and they wanted everyone to be the same way’. It also sounds familiar to Trumbull. Trumbull has a name: the ‘Outer Ones’ and that the Yith have Strong Opinions on them as dilettantes who go to other worlds and talk to species, but don’t learn or record things. She calls them an ‘embarrassment to Nyarlathotep’.

Spector gets pissy about how they didn’t tell him about an alien species that apparently has lived on Earth for at least centuries. Aphra responds that asking her to do so would be like asking Spector to name all the races and ethnicities of ‘humans of the air’ in New York City. And that her education was that of a grade-schooler in her people. Trumbull adds that she only realizes what she remembers when something reminds her of it.

Spector then adds that Barlow is also on the case, and Caleb basically says that Barlow should have been fired for ‘getting a girl killed’. Aphra feels guilty because she was the one who had asked Spector if he could help. Spector defends Barlow and Agent Peters as having the experience, but willing to gamble, and that departmental politics means Barlow is protected from the fallout. And that Spector needs the same protection because he works with civilians like the Marshes, who aren’t that fond of the government. And that even Miss Dawson’s status as a government informant doesn’t help as much as it should.

What Cat Learned:

• Well, the Yith went home. This is clearly the actual Professor Trumbull, who is along for Weird Stuff.
  
• Nyarlathotep — some kind of knowledge god, that Aphra considers part of her pantheon and is also acknowledged by the Yith.
  
• The Outer Ones, which are aliens that live on Earth, but are not known to most humans of the air