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At about 4:40PM today, I received a call. It was Morgan Rooms — aka @111error — aka the leader of BOS.
Some quick background here that I do think is relevant. I have never been a supporter of the BOS mission, and that’s been hashed out on these boards many, many times over. I have, however, always remained supportive of my friends in BOS — including Morgan himself. When the TMC reveal happened, I Periscoped my very visceral reaction, but I also made it clear on these boards that I always considered him a friend first, and ideology came second. That’s always held true, and I’ve expressed it to him multiple times publicly and privately since.
That said, I can’t remember the last time we discussed anything pertaining to the forces in play with this Experience. Until today.
I picked up the phone without looking who was calling at first, and when I heard Morgan’s voice I was taken aback. Then I noticed he had called from a No Caller ID number.
He sounded exhausted. Almost as if he was unsure that he should be calling in the first place, but he’d hit a point where it was the only option left. He didn’t mince words. “Bryan, we disagree at times about approach, don’t we?”
Yes we do, I said.
“But you know I respect you as an individual.”
I told him I did, and that I hoped he knew the same.
He then asked me if I had ever heard the story of The King, The Mice, and The Cheese. I told him it didn’t sound familiar, but I was sure I was going to feel like a dumbass when I looked it up. (This is the usual level of humor I deploy when Morgan and I used to chat. God, it was good to talk to him. I miss him.)
He told me he was bringing it up because nothing was making any sense lately, “and I’m searching for something that does.” I asked what he’d found.
He said that “Before the charity debacle, and Noah first offered us a hand, he told me a story.” It was a children’s story: The King, The Mice, and The Cheese.
He summed it up briefly for me: There was a king who had a castle with some fine cheese in it. A bunch of mice wanted that cheese, so they went into the castle. It pissed the king off, so he brought in some elephants to get rid of the mice. Only the elephants broke everything, so the king brought the mice back in order to scare off the elephants, and the king and the mice share the cheese for the happy ending. “So: king, cheese, mice, elephant, and then mice again. Simple, right?”
Morgan said he thought Noah had just been drunk at the time — “blissfully full of nostalgia for a time when dad wasn’t making him burn up his doggies.” And Morgan said he thought he understood the message: something along the lines of Noah getting the cheese in the end, and BOS being the elephants that would tear the castle apart.
“I quite liked it actually, but as more and more things go on, it’s seeming a bit off, you know what I mean?”
Yeah, I said. It’s been very confusing. I asked him what he’d begun to realize.
“Very confusing doesn’t even fucking start,” he said. “I mean who knows where the fuck things start and end here. I’m beginning to think that we’re all just the mice. The elephants don’t exist. And the king isn’t who I thought he was at all.”
“Morgan, who do you think the king is?”
“We’re not there yet,” he said. “But be careful. Things aren’t adding up.”
There was then some commotion in the background. When Morgan came back on the line he said he had to go, and asked that I please think about what he said, and “please, please, PLEASE be fucking careful.”
Then he dropped the line.
Some thoughts… as I said, Morgan and I haven’t talked about OSDM, BOS, or any of these things for months, really. And I’ve never heard him sound quite like this. For him to reach out indicates to me that he is actually, genuinely worried.
I also find his story about The King, The Mice, and The Cheese very concerning. The mission of BOS has been his guiding light and principled stand for so long now I can hardly remember a time before it was the case. But it was impossible for me to not hear how he compared BOS to the elephants — the group that would righteously fuck up the king’s castle — only to say that he’s started to suspect the elephants don’t exist at all.
If Horace / OSDM isn’t the king, then the entire playing field we think we’re on is wrong. Everyone’s alliances and enemies would be wrong. Is that what he was trying to say? I don’t know. But I can’t help but think it might be the case.
And I also can’t stop wondering who the mice are in this scenario. The ones that end up sharing the cheese with the King. Are the mice The One? Does @111error want to rejoin this community, having been betrayed by people he thought he understood? I’m hoping somebody can bring some clarity here, because I don’t know precisely what to think.
I just want one thing to be superfuckingclear: @111error, no matter what our disagreements have been and may be, I love you, and I’m your friend. Always have been, and always will be. If you need help, you have it.
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Shit, this is very nerve wracking for sure. Be safe @111error.
Though not gonna lie, it does make me somewhat happy we’re not the only ones noticing things are feeling amiss. Our whole world is about to be turned on its head.
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Well shit. ???♀️
Only thing I do know is I am forever here for you @111error ?
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That children’s story is about compromise over brute force, a group compromising with another because adding another problem on top of an existing problem doesn’t solve it.
If Morgan thinks BOS as the elephants doesn’t exist…I just don’t know where that leaves any of us. Or is he saying he once compromised with Noah but he’s begun to realize their shared goal is a fallacy?
I’m frightened for him. A man with convictions so strong only to have them shaken like that…my instinct is to help him sort this mess out.
That saud: I hear a mighty clatter like a shoe slowly falling.
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It’s also worth thinking about what Briarberg’s place in all this is. That’s been a major shift in the gameboard since Morgan’s initial rebellion. It’s possible that the major question in his mind is – who is he rebelling against? Note that he doesn’t say that there is no king: he says the king isn’t who he thought. Is this because Briarberg has been secretly held all the power, not Horace?
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That’s a great point @daela. So why is Morgan so worried in this case? I’d see him getting angry that he’d wasted energy, but then pivot towards the real enemy.
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Wild theorizing based on little to no actual info:
King = OSDM (or investors? or whoever is actually in charge?)
Cheese = Us/The One
Mice = BOS
Elephants = BriarburgSo the OSDM/Investors/Whoever is the King creates Briarburg to take down the BOS. Jack/Mason infiltrate BOS sowing discontent and concern. If Morgan trusted this guy, can we trust Morgan/BOS? But Mason/Briarburg go off the rails. They’re not worth the trouble. Better to bring the BOS/Morgan into the fold.
Wild speculation.
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This feels like a weird hinting at OSDM and Briarberg being cooperative but competing entities, each working towards the same goal of data, right? OSDM is the king, we’re the cheese.. but then a bunch of mice named Briarberg come in after a hunk of that cheese. But who’s the elephants? BOS?
OSDM has their salty, stinky The One brand data cheese, but then Briarberg moves in and decides they want a piece.
“BOS” is activated by OSDM (well, was activated, last year) to keep all the cheese on OSDM’s platter, even though some of the cheese wanted to roll away to maybe knock the fire over so it burns down the castle.. but then the elephants become real and start destroying the castle.
So in comes Briarberg as the mice, and “scares off” or discredits the elephants.
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Describing all of us as mice seems fitting. We’re all just scrambling around this maze. We’ve been led to believe there’s a way out and that it was constructed by certain people, but maybe that’s all wrong. I’ve got to believe there’s an actual way out though, maybe if we start chewing through the walls.
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Something about this call kept me up thinking way too late last night, and I was hoping everybody here might be able to help me figure it out.
We all know how difficult it can sometimes be to contend with an unexpected phone call. We’re in the middle of a meeting, or it’s hard to hear, but we all do our best to convey what happened to the rest of the community. During this call I had one of those moments when a freakin’ leaf blower started up outside my window right in the middle of the convo. I ended up relocating, but definitely thought I missed or misheard a line from Morgan. It seemed like a conversational transition though, and I’m long-winded enough as it is, so I just cut it from my original post. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, so I’m bringing it to the forums jic. (#neversilent)
Right after Morgan first mentioned The King, The Mice, and The Cheese, he casually said something along the lines of “Noah told you one, too [CUE LEAFBLOWER, so this is likely wrong, but the closest thing it sounded like was:] it was The Big Bad Wolf.” At that point I went to the kitchen so I could hear, and the conversation resumed as described above.
Here’s the problem, and why I thought I’d just heard wrong with the background noise: I don’t remember Noah ever telling me the story of The Big Bad Wolf. (I know he told @lilmsfancpants The Boy Who Cried Wolf, but those aren’t the same thing.) Noah could have told me a story at Seven Grand, as the live band there was insanely loud that night, but I felt pretty confident I’d gotten the gist of what Noah had been trying to say that night.
So, uh, has The Big Bad Wolf shown up in this at all before? Did I mention it before and I’ve simply lost my mind? Does this make sense to anyone as another Noah parable? I don’t want to lead us down any blind alleys, but if it was keeping me up I figured it was worth discussing.
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I watched back through a few of your periscopes, Bryan, to see if it came up and we just didn’t remember, but saw nothing. I did get reminded that Joyce had asked you, myself, and @kevin if we knew of anyone copying OSDM techniques to “harm the experience,” and at the time we assumed she meant other ARGs, or later TMC, but in retrospect, I think she may have been sensing the rise of Briarberg without knowing yet what it was: She assumed the leaks and data issues within OSDM were coming from Stacey or Noah, which is why she asked us if we knew where they were, but i’m wondering now, looking back, if she was very wrong.
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Maybe he just mentioned a Big Bad Wolf because that’s how most of us perceive Horace because we’ve learned a lot about him through Noah. Like, Morgan wasn’t trying to say that Noah told you an actual story, but that Noah has vilified his father to a certain extent in our eyes and so we all assume he’s the end-all-be-all of evil here. Plus, is there even a Big Bad Wolf story? Isn’t it just the Three Little Pigs?
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This seems related to something I’ve been thinking about – how it was Sarah Sinclair who tried to make it very clear that Horace was in charge. She took Brian Erzen for a car ride and warned him that Horace was in control of everything (the first time, I believe, we’d heard the name “Horace” since Tension). She warned him that they are always listening, to stay away from iConfidant. In retrospect, why was it a Sinclair who was the first to paint Horace as the big bad?
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@daela Maybe it’s because they’re all self-important assholes? Even when they’re on the outs with each other, they still want us to believe that the Sinclair name wields some power. They act like big fish regardless of the size of the pond that they’re in.
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This is just theorizing, but…
Noah and Sarah have put a good amount of effort into demonizing Horace. Maybe that’s what Morgan means when he says Noah told us about the Big Bad Wolf. Noah told us about Horace and his role at the top.
But…maybe that’s just a fairy tale. Because Horace isn’t the king after all.
If Horace isn’t the king, why would Noah and Sarah make it seem like he was the king?
Maybe because Noah is secretly the one pulling the strings, and he needed Horace as a scapegoat or a distraction.
There are a few things that would explain – the Sinclairs’ easy defiance of Horace at The System, Noah leaping in to distract us and tell us to “log off” when the Hostess in Black leaked those contracts…
…Or I may just be seeing connections where there are none.
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This is building off something @coryphella was saying in Slack, but I think this can also be read as evidence that Noah has been subtly manipulating people towards certain end goals.
-Morgan took his story as a reinforcement of his BOS beliefs.
-My story was (apparently?) The Big Bad Wolf, and could perhaps be seen as a nudge towards embracing my darker side within.
Thing is, my goal is something that Joyce’s colleague voiced support for DIRECTLY. So it would seem that Noah was actually trying to push people towards OSDM-sanctioned end goals. (This also makes sense because Joyce’s colleague was the prostitute at my original blackmail event.)
Was Morgan trying to tell us that Noah has actually been pulling the strings at Horace’s request, and isn’t as much of a rebel towards his father as he would like us to believe?
Or is Noah actually The King in this scenario?
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Noah did say he convinced his father’s board to remove him as CEO when he was 22. Maybe the truth has been staring us in the face the whole time, and Noah actually has been running the show all along. But that doesn’t sound right to me, or at least it’s not the whole story. Unless I’m completely misunderstanding Morgan’s relationship with Noah, it seems like revelations concerning Noah’s level of power wouldn’t be enough to unsettle Morgan to the extent that comes across in your account of his phone call.
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Pro-tip everyone! If you want to hide spoilers from the activity feed, just use brackets!
This will show in the feed: Hi, everybody!
This will not: [Hi, everybody!]
Thus endeth today’s lesson.
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