TheStarsAreRight:ClayMorrison

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Recent Events for Clay

Wednesday, 16 March, 1932

Carl Ellis calls Clay Morrison at his Washington, D.C. offices. Long time no hear! Mr. Ellis and Rep. Morrison agree to meet the next day in New York City, at the Drake Hotel. Mr. Morrison is asked to look into the Pentheus Corporation, a holding company that may be "up to no good."

Thursday, 17 March, 1932

Mr. Morrison travels to NYC by train, takes a room at the Drake Hotel, and visits Mr. Ellis. Present are:

   * Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, and their son Robert (age less than six months)
   * Mr. and Mrs. Mueller
   * Boris Valenko
   * Roxanne, girlfriend to Boris
   * Redland Jack
   * Auda

After introductions and social chit-chat, they get down to business over sandwiches and drinks. The main topic of discussion is the Pentheus Corporation. The own farms, oil fields, chemical companies, warehouses, theaters, motion picture distribution firms, and much other stuff. Some of their technical staff (at least) are former NWI employees, and brought strange technology with them. Mr. Ellis believes that Pentheus will use a terrible Event in the near future (a rift in space-time over New York City) to convince hundreds of millions of persons, perhaps a billion persons -- half the population of the Earth -- to sacrifice themselves. The "negotiated future" Record in Tibet was Mr. Ellis's main source of information on Pentheus's plan, until recently.

First to be sacrificed would be prisoners, inmates of asylums, and other "undesirables" -- as of December 31st, 1931 there were 137,516 persons in prisons (state, Federal, and local) within the United States. On the same date, 305,315 persons were patients in state asylums for mental disease, and 76,535 persons in state institutions for epileptics and the feeble-minded. Private asylums hold nearly as many -- to approximate, there are about 800,000 "undesirables" in the United States. If half of the residents of the United States are to be sacrificed, that is 61.5 million persons, of which just over 1% would be "undesirables." Enormous death camps would be set up, for the sacrifices to be herded into, and where they would be devoured or otherwise destroyed by evil entities, supernatural or otherwise. If the best interpretation of Pentheus's plan is to be believed, the supernatural entities will be slated, and the Time of Miracles will proceed without further cataclysms.

How Pentheus learned of the pending disasters, how they developed their plan, what technology is used to predict and control the events, who they actually are, etc. is not firmly established. Mr. Ellis has been in discussions with their board of directors, which seems disturbingly businesslike about this halving of the Earth's population. How every other person on the Earth would be convinced of the need for their death -- as opposed to, say, the death of more "undesirable" foreigners, or ethnic groups -- is not clear. Or how to prevent the choice being "Let's give them Germany (population almost exactly half that of the United States)."

In addition, the Soviet Union was destroyed essentially overnight on January 10th, 1932 ... a scheme by Alexei Vishnaveshki to restore the Romanov dynasty may have succeeded all too well! A ritual that drained the life force from everyone in Russia who did not "love Mother Russia" seems to have been the cause (although diplomats may have been immune). More information is needed! Why the Poles, Finns, Japanese, Turks, etc. have not moved into the depopulated former nation is not clear. Radio broadcasts ceased, international communication ended, and the borders are unguarded. The few foreign embassies still present in Moscow have sent some very strange descriptions of the conditions.

Friday, 18 March, 1932

Rep. Morrison introduces Auda and Mr. Ellis to Nikola Tesla at breakfast at the Hotel New Yorker. Mr. Tesla, fastidious and eccentric, impresses Mr. Ellis; Rep. Morrison later asks Mr. Tesla to look into reports of a "time-space rift" which may be forming over Manhattan.

Mr. Ellis's team meets again with Congressman Morrison for lunch at the Drake Hotel, for more discussions of Pentheus, etc. It seems that the not-actually-murdered William Desmond Taylor (born William Deane-Tanner) may have brought his expertise with strange "mechanical manipulations" of occult forces from NWI to Pentheus. He more recently has been using the name Richard Sands.

The team is offered the use of Rep. Morrison's private (leased, actually) railway car for their trip to Los Angeles.

Clay Morrison spends the rest of the day visiting soup kitchens, Democratic politicians, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

That evening, Mr. Ellis and company visit with the Fey, and make some arrangements.

China and Japan begin peace negotiatons.

Saturday, 19 March, 1932

Attached to the Lackawanna Limited, the private railcar leaves Manhattan at 10 a.m., bound for Chicago and eventually Los Angeles. Rep. Morrison gets off at Slateford Junction, Penn. about 12:30 pm, bound for Washington, and arrives there mid-afternoon.

Sunday, 20 March, 1932

Carl Ellis's group arrives at Chicago's La Salle Street station (333 South Water Street), at 7:35 a.m.; the private car is moved across the city, attached to the Golden State Limited, and departs at 8:30 p.m.

The vernal equinox is today, at 1:54 p.m. Central Standard Time. The airship Graf Zeppelin arrives in South America.