10. The World behind the World

Previously—In episode 9, Captain Sepulveda and FBI station chief John Spillers go for a short walk. Their conversation is cordial—mostly smalltalk about the new Sikorski helicopters recently shipped to Ramey Air Force base. Deeper into their walk, Spillers suggests moving over to a tall tree in the distance. When this happens, Sepulveda catches a glimpse of something he can’t explain—Spillers’ face seems to wobble and move, capturing and bending the light in a way that acts as a kind of blurring filter. At Area J, we find out that Jesus Santiago has somehow become aware of the activities of Dr. Vandyck and her colleagues—that he can sense the presence of their aperture sessions. When the other operators at Area J learn about this, Vandyck’s FOJIP presentation breaks down into chaos.

Part 1: The Forest

When Sepulveda opened his eyes, he saw Spillers’ staring at him calmly from twelve inches away—three bluish green veins bulging in the man’s forehead like tiny snakes in a can. The man must have been looking down at him—maybe from a kneeling crouched position, because behind his blond hair was treetop foliage. The captain realized that what he was looking at behind Spillers head was actually up. It was sky. He wanted to say something, but his tongue felt like cracked leather. And there was a stabbing pain down by his left trouser pocket—something hard, like a knuckle driving into his left buttock. He must have been on his back—lying down on the ground. He focused his eyes on Spillers again. That blurry light he had seen earlier, around the edges of his face was now gone. Something else though, was off. The air around him was noticeably cooler. As soon as this registered, he sat up straight, fully alert.

To his right was a limestone parapet wall—a thirty foot high outcropping that burst through the ground, pock marked with holes—not quite sheer, but steep enough to make it impossible to hike up. At its highest point, there were young palm trees whose leaves dangled over the edge—likely on a small plateau that perhaps led to another outcropping or a drop. The forest was filled with these irregular hilltops. He looked down by his hands and flexed his fingers into the ground. It was a hard carpet of deadfall and small rocks. To his left, he noticed a patchwork of gnarled roots that thickened as they snaked further away from him—about the length of a school bus—all the way to the trunk of a tree so thick, if it were hollowed out, you could drive a jeep through it. As his eyes moved up, along the trunk of that tree, he realized that whatever it was that jabbed into his hip, was part of its root system. He swept his eyes left and right, noticing at various spots in the dirt, firehose-sized tendrils of tangled up wood, at times knotted together to form what looked to be unfinished sculptures of men’s torsos. Further in, closer to the trunk, the roots became taller and less tangled—anchored into the ground like the flying buttresses of the Notre Dame cathedral. The tops of these buttress roots were smooth and wide enough to run along—like wooden ramps. This behemoth was the tree Sepulveda had grown accustomed to staring at from his office window a quarter mile away. Seeing it up close at this distance, it seemed to be on the verge of coming alive.

Spillers stood up, and backed up a few steps. “Don’t worry captain. You’re fine. You started rubbing your eyes, then lost your balance. You were unconscious for a few seconds.”

Sepulveda remembered bits and pieces of things he had mentioned—things about the helicopters—and felt a rush of heat in his face. He looked away, pretending to be interested in the large buttress roots of the tree, but continued spying Spillers from the sides of his eyes. The man stood less than six feet away. His hands were no longer in his pockets, his forward stoop gone, and there were no more facial tics. The moment this dawned on him, other changes became noticeable. The expression on Spillers’ face no longer seemed like two dimensional wallpaper on a fresco. His face moved as though it were attached to sinew and muscle—into a real man. Sepulveda cocked his head to the right an inch. There was something else in or on Spillers’ face—a soft smooth sheen, like it had been airbrushed. Sepulveda’s eyes went big. That gauzy light had returned, and was now licking at the edge of Spillers’ jaws and ears—causing boundary lines to crumble away and reappear like billions of tiny iron filings being rearranged by unseen magnets. It was happening right in front of his eyes.

“It’s late.” Spillers said, smiling.

Sepulveda felt a pulling pressure in his sinuses—the kind of scalding tears you choke back when you swallow too much horse radish. He closed his eyes tightly and dug the back of his hand into them, trying to massage away whatever was trapped there. When he opened them, Spillers was gone and the warm airy light of the forest was replaced by the cool still air of dusk. And when Spillers spoke again, it seemed to be coming from a few inches behind him and to the left. “Listen to me captain. I know you’re disoriented. That’s expected.”

Sepulveda moved his head left and right a few times, then looked up at the sky, expecting to see powder blue and white. He saw only a backdrop of dark cobalt blue and black. Suspended in the air, partially obscured by tree branches, was a crescent moon. He brought his left hand up to look at his watch. Everything he focused on was blurry. He stared at it for several seconds before tapping the face with his right index finger, unable to name a single component.

Spillers spoke in a voice that comported the same gauziness of his airbrushed face. “What’s important right now is for you to conserve your attention.”

Sepulveda wanted to speak, to scream out, to somehow object to this absurd turn of events and register his strong disapproval—but discovered to his shock, he couldn’t remember how to make words. His hand went up to the top of his chest and lingered there, as he tried to remember the name for the thing he touched. Still sitting on the ground, he stared at his right hand, then his left, then turned them over, and inspected his palms as though drilling holes with his eyes. He took a few deep breaths and slapped at his face a few times. Unable to comprehend why he had lost the ability to speak, and angered further by his inability to express what he was experiencing or why he was bewildered, he leaned to his left, as though to stand, but lost his balance and fell backward.

Spillers was nowhere. “Captain—focus your attention on my voice.”

Sepulveda’s legs, like his vocal cords were not cooperating. His hands were perfectly fine though. He used them to rub and pinch at his thighs—to wake them up. The feeling was like being at the beach, punching at your legs through a foot of sand that had been heaped on top of your lower body. He felt his stomach drop, and turned to look where Spillers’ voice had last been.

“Where are we?” he croaked.

Spillers laughed. “You’ve found your intent! Good. Right now, you and I are part of the same intent.”

Sepulveda had no idea what the gringo was talking about—only muttered the word “What—” before Spillers cut him off and spoke more sternly. “We don’t have much time. Right now, part of you is in building one at your desk, going about your business like any normal day—probably shuffling papers. You might even be having coffee or using the bathroom at the moment. But another part—a more important part—is here with me. You are here. And there. At the same time.”

Sepulveda narrowed his eyes down to slits and rubbed his fingers together. A question came out of him. “And you—you’re with Ramler?” As the words exited his mouth, his brain marveled at how easily he accepted the proposition that he and Spillers were simultaneously in two places at once. A small part of him wanted to think it through—to identify all the reasons why and how this hallucination had been engineered—perhaps using that part of his brain that supposedly shuffled papers back at building one. But another part—the one punching at his legs—kept him fixed on Spillers’ voice.

“Listen to me Sepulveda,” Spillers said. “I’m not with Ramler. I’m laying down on a cot in a detainment cell in building two.”

Sepulveda shook his head and shouted. “Ok, but where are you standing? Right now?” He turned to look back at the massive trunk of the ceiba. “Behind the tree? I don’t see you.”

“Get a hold of yourself. If you don’t calm down, this will unravel.”

Sepulveda felt his stomach loosen. All at once, he trained his full attention outward, on his environment. He noticed the unbroken stillness and quietness of the forest. He had been to this area before. There should have been a thrum of chirping and croaking from birds, frogs, and beetles. The complete absence of wind amplified the wrongness of the silence. As he thought on what Spillers might have meant when he said unravel, there was a distant sound from above—whistling air, followed by the rustling of tall grass being flattened, then a groan. His eyes shot up and to the right, to a spot high up on the plateau above the rocky parapet. From somewhere up there, hidden from his line of sight, twigs were snapping.

Sepulveda lowered his voice. “What is that?” he asked, looking back and forth from the tree trunk to the limestone wall. By his estimate, he was twenty feet away from the rock wall and forty feet away from the tree trunk.

Spillers’ disembodied voice barked at him quietly. “You need to stand up.” Sepulveda turned his head left and right, trying to get a glimpse of Spillers, whose voice seemed to be coming from a spot at the back of his neck, just below his shirt collar. “Sepulveda, I need you to focus your attention. Really focus it.”

The captain snapped his head forward, whispering back, “OK,” then placed both palms down on the ground. “OK—but what’s making that noise?”

After a short pause…“Garcia.”

Sepulveda wondered if Garcia was FBI or Air Force. As soon as he formed that thought, Spillers interrupted. “I’ll explain later. For now, you have to get on your feet.”

A light wind picked up, and began moving some of the smaller bits of dry deadfall. Sepulveda ran his hands down the sides of his legs, which still seemed buried under a foot of beach sand. “Mr. Spillers, I’m going to need a hand.”

“I can’t help you. This, you have to do yourself.”

Hijo de puta cabrón. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t read. He could barely speak. Sepulveda rubbed angrily at his legs again, then brought his watch up to his face. He bit down hard and looked left and right. From high above, there was the sound of small rocks being pushed aside. Spillers hissed at him now. “Get off your ass. Or Garcia will kill you!”

The small part of Sepulveda that was safely shuffling papers inside building one erupted in blather. You should have brought the ‘45. It was even loaded. This is fucking insane. It’s not real. One of the fucking gringos drugged you. That son of a bitch Ramler rubbed something on the ‘45—before he put it back on the desk. Could be, could be... maybe that’s how they drugged you—through the skin—some kind of classified FBI powder that makes you see shit.

He spent half a minute replaying events inside his office, trying to remember if he had touched the gun after Ramler had held it. Finally, his thoughts went back to Garcia. Maybe he was working with Spillers and Ramler. If so, did he ride in from San Juan with Spillers? Was he armed? What kind of training did he have? If he wasn’t with Spillers, how could he even get on base—let alone inside the Grass Cutting Area. It didn’t make sense. All that noise up on the plateau was probably just a goddamn monkey.

Sepulveda thought back to some newspaper stories about Rhesus monkeys that escaped from a lab—somewhere around Ponce. It was far from the base, but monkeys are smart. They could have probably followed the river north, and hopped over the fence by staying up in the trees. It was probably a monkey.

The captain felt the wind whip against his neck, and snapped his head up to scan the edge of the limestone outcropping. All he could make out up at the top where that first noise had come from, were the tips of palm leaves swaying. He slowed down his breathing and focused his eyes. After a short while, he heard the groaning again, followed by the rustling of grass and then that strange whistling. It sounded moist. He turned his head to try and track it, but it trailed off. After a short silence, he heard another noise. His eyes shot up, focusing on a small spot at the outcropping where a handful of dirt and pebbles began to crumble loose and fall away. A moment later, a hand appeared there, followed by two dots of yellow. Sepulveda flexed his eyebrows and strained his eyes. The light of the moon cast everything in hues of blue and grey—everything except those tiny circles of yellow. Could they be eyes? Sepulveda turned wooden—just focused on breathing through his nose with his mouth closed, barely moving his diaphragm. He watched as those yellow orbs moved left, then right. A minute later, some more loose dirt and rocks came spilling down. Whatever it was up there had stood up, revealing more than just yellow—the silhouette of a body, probably six feet tall—with wide hips and a thick back.

This was not a rhesus monkey. In the bluish hue of the moon, Sepulveda could make out the outline of what looked to be a greasy matted down beard. But then the shape turned so that an entire side of it caught the full brunt of the moon. It was a man. Or it used to be. Below the yellow orbs, where there should have been a nose and mouth, there was a glistening cavity—like a rotted out meat strawberry had been partially cored. Set far back into that hole, embedded in the folds of meat, were half a dozen teeth. Sepulveda wondered if this was Garcia. Unable to look away from that hole, he swallowed hard, then rubbed and pinched at his thighs. The wind picked up again, sending a rush of brittle palm leaves flying by low to the ground. Garcia’s yellowed eyes panned from right to left, following the sound of leaves, and stopped right where Sepulveda sat on the ground. With the same gut-level acceptance of Spillers’ ludicrous suggestion that both of them were simultaneously in two places, he became absolutely convinced—this was actually happening.

And then a voice from behind whispered, “Stand up you idiot!”

Sepulveda threw his arms sideways as though hurling a beach ball, and half barrel-rolled to his right, flopping on to his belly as he did so. He began low crawling, pounding at the dirt—forearm over forearm. He made it ten feet before he heard a thunderous crash not far behind his starting point. His elbows moved faster, punching into the ground like ski poles now, so fast and so hard, he thought he could have knocked men unconscious. Then he heard a rapid succession of footsteps, followed by a low pitched gurgling, and air whistling past a heaving moist curtain of meat. As he belly crawled along the floor of the forest, trampling over leaves and roots, he felt something hard and round roll against his stomach. Just as he wondered what it was he might have crawled on top of, he felt one hand close around his ankle, then another high up in between his shoulder blades, gathering up the fabric of his shirt, squeezing into a pistol grip. Both hands pressed into him hard, pinning him and sending his face into the dirt. Sepulveda blinked several times and blew air forcefully out of his nose. Through half-opened eyes, he caught a glimpse of a strange kind of brass moccasin, and felt the man switch his stance and the angle of his body so that his head came down very low—so close to Sepulveda’s, he could feel the warm exhaust lapping at him. The smell was a jammy reduction of rot and fruity sweetness—as though somewhere deep inside that meat hole, there were vast honeycomb networks of putrefying jellies and jams—the end result of a man who was gradually gelatinizing from the inside out. The air hitting Sepulveda was the aerosol form of that gelatin—warm fetid droplets condensing and beading up as they tickled against the tiny hairs along his neck and ears. If it weren’t for the panic overtaking him, Sepulveda would have retched. He looked around for a rock or a sharp stick—anything. There was nothing useful within reach—just the unrelenting pressure, smearing his face into the ground.

He wondered if this is how he would die—like a block of cheese passing through a grater. At some point, he became aware that the toes inside his right boot were clenching up. Instantly, he commanded the toes of his left foot to do the same. It dawned on him he might have a chance. Not exactly a fighting chance—just a chance to have a chance. With both sets of toes balled up inside his combat boots, he pressed his hands against the ground with his full force, wriggling his shoulders back and forth. Garcia exhaled a plume of fetid air and dug his fingers deeper into Sepulveda’s ankle and neck, clamping him to the ground even tighter. Spitting out a mouthful of dead grass and dirt, Sepulveda felt his chance beginning to evaporate—could sense that he was about to be carried away in a rip current of panic. So he went limp, making a show of trying to buck and resist and yell, meanwhile catching his breath and regulating his breathing. From above and behind, he heard the sound of whistling air accelerate—felt the blasts of warm air coming out of Garcia’s hole like angry truck exhaust. Sepulveda stopped resisting, but continued heaving his chest up and down as though spent. A line of drool that must have spilled on to his back during the mock struggle was now soaking through his shirt. Sepulveda continued flexing his toes into fists inside his boots.

Just as he felt Garcia loosen his hands to re-grip the fabric around his pants and shirt, Sepulveda exploded up on to his right knee and elbows, bringing his chest a few inches off the ground. Garcia’s reaction was immediate. He must have weighed at least two hundred pounds, and was now driving his entire body weight down at an angle, like a spear—that warm hole pressing into Sepulveda’s rib cage. He felt his elbows widen and his arms began to shake.

He looked down, in between his legs and saw—there, tangled up in the laces of his right boot—that strange thing he had crawled on top of—some kind of star shaped hammer. He reached for it, but was short by a foot. Garcia let out a groan and dug his moccasins in to the ground to renew the downward pressure. Sweat dripped into Sepulveda’s eyes. The muscles in his upper chest and forearms were starting to fail. It was the kind of dangerous fatigue he knew from the boxing ring—when sixteen ounce gloves suddenly turned into buckets of lead, and no force on earth could bring your hands back up to face level to shield you from the beating you were about to receive.

Sepulveda needed to make something happen fast. If he couldn’t bring his hand to the stick, he could try to bring the stick to his hand. Moving his right shin inward like a windshield wiper, he kicked the strange object closer. His right hand was within inches of reaching it now. Propped up on his head, he walked his right foot closer in toward his outstretched hand, bit by bit, flexing his toe and heel as though square dancing while folded up in Garcia’s arms. The stick was so close—he lunged forward, barely touching it at the tapered neck with his fingertips. It turned a few times, rolling stupidly in front of him like a tiny turnbuckle. With his head bent down, still looking in between his legs, he opened both his eyes to their maximum aperture, believing this would cause his hand to flex and elongate even further. He managed to grab a hold of it in his index and middle fingers, like a pair of tweezers.

Garcia must have lost his footing because he nearly let go of both grips. With that tiny lessening of pressure, the captain kicked his foot an inch closer and closed his fist around the stick. There was a scramble. Sepulveda rolled away, somersaulting sideways twice over his shoulder. During one turn, he felt the stick twirl in his hand, and for a moment, thought he would lose it. But when he stood up, he felt the lower part with the sisal clamped to his right palm. Panting, and back stepping, he settled into a boxer’s stance, left foot forward. Garcia was no longer there. Three arm lengths away was John Spillers, smiling from ear to ear. His suit was unruffled.

“Captain.”

He looked at Spillers, then down at his own fatigues—saw the fronts streaked with dirt and grass. In that instant, he wished he could summon the energy to beat Spillers to death. Breathing heavily and drenched in sweat, he let his arms go limp, but held tightly to the stick. He was too tired to rub at his eyes, so instead examined the object in his hand. Its handle was amber colored and smooth, tapering slightly in the middle, like the neck of a claw hammer. Up at the top, was a single smooth speckled grey stone, shaped like a pinwheel—or a tiny six blade propeller. In the center of the pinwheel was a hole the handle passed through, so that it poked out the other end. The wood was worn and porous at that spot. Sepulveda guessed some kind of glue held it all together because there was nothing he could see keeping the stone in place. Down the shaft around the lower part was a short band of sisal—probably intended to give the thing tack for its operator. The sisal was wound tightly, and had worn down to the thickness of kite string.

Spillers didn’t move from his spot. “The object you’re holding. It’s a macana.”

Sepulveda knit his brow. The blurry light had returned. And something else—staring into Spillers’ face now activated that same disorientation he had felt earlier when looking at his own watch, unable to decipher the symbols. It was exhausting, like trying to follow a single snowflake with your eye in the middle of a flurry.

Spillers tilted his head to the left. “Look closely,” he said. And then the skin around the edges of his chin and cheeks rippled. His eyes tilted upwards at the ends to the shape of almonds. And suddenly, he was shorter than before. His clothes were different, but Sepulveda couldn’t catalog in words what was different about them. He just knew what it all meant—knew it in his body. His face went from pale white to burnt walnut. His hair turned bright white and his neck and forehead became furrowed with deep grooves. Sepulveda felt a rush of air escape his body—a sign he took to mean he had again lost the ability to speak. The face he was now looking at was familiar. He knew it from the photograph he had held earlier this morning, tossed in with a stack of paperwork back at building one.

The walnut colored man spoke. “Captain Sepulveda. My name is Jesus Santiago. In a few hours, we will meet again when you interrogate me at building two.”

Sepulveda yawned and squeezed at the stick in his hand. He felt he was supposed to be angry, but couldn’t remember why. He chased that thought for a while, then looked up. “Where are we?”

The walnut colored man chuckled. “We’re in the world behind the world. You need to understand what’s coming next.”

Part 2: The Control Plane

In the small galley kitchen of Area J, Vandyck’s hands are shaking. She doesn’t care—just looks up at the stainless steel keypad and punches in six six Enter, then sags back and looks at her reflection in the glass. She wants Esteberger to say Don’t worry too much Vandyck. This is the control plane. The humans can’t cross the barrier. But he says nothing.

She turns halfway toward him, not bothering to make eye contact, then turns back, replying as though he had voiced the words she had imagined him saying. “I know you’re trying to be helpful right now Esteberger, but there’s every reason in the world to be worried right about fucking now.” She turned again to stare at her reflection in the frosted amber glass of the thermo unit now heating her coffee, then pressed her lips, wondering if her tone was too sharp. Esteberger was a good man, but she hadn’t slept in days. She had spent every waking second preparing the way points for the FOJIP presentation, and now, it had all gone to shit. The minute the directors and managers saw Santiago speaking into the aperture, addressing Vandyck by name—as if he could see right into Area J—the room came apart like a bomb had gone off. It was supposed to be a one way mirror. Humans shouldn’t be able to peer back.

“How long until Spillers finds out about us?” she said with her back still turned to Esteberger. “And what’s to say he won’t figure out how to somehow pass through the barrier that separates us? To… I don’t know… build his own crude version of an aperture and use it to travel here and pop all of our heads and stuff our brains back in?” She pictured Spillers placing his hands around her head, interlocking those spider crab fingers together, lacing them over her eyes, squeezing like he had with Ramler—until her brains came shooting out of her ears. She opened the thermo unit door, and pulled out her coffee. “I mean, what’s to say—”

She trailed off, deep in thought about how she might be able to salvage the presentation—convince the department heads and managers to look at this whole Spillers business with fresh eyes—to just consider for a moment that maybe the event stream wasn’t just a mathematical construct; that it was like a living thing—maybe even had intent—and maybe, just maybe, the emergence of Spillers and Santiago were really just the initial salvos in some kind of dialogue it was trying to have with anyone out there with the eyes and ears to listen.

“Esteberger, you want a cup of coffee?” When he didn’t answer, she turned and saw he was gone.

Part 3: JTF Alpha

Back at building one, inside the locked office labeled el visitante, Ramler held the phone to his ear. “Copy that sir.” He nodded, then rested the handset back on to its cradle. He stared at it awhile, wondering if he had just abetted a steep uptick in complexity. Things these past few weeks were unusually cluttered up in his head—hard to keep track of. Lots of small things—flavors and smells not making sense—not being able to recall why a person’s face looked familiar. He often found himself trying to remember what he had done all afternoon. Strangest of all, when he was alone and things got very quiet, he had an overwhelming feeling that it had just stopped raining—and that he had become a sieve, slowly hemorrhaging information he couldn’t make sense of. And his imaginary switchboard operator—that fat man with the floor globe and law books—was nowhere.

He looked up from the phone at Spillers, who stood by the window, hands in his pockets, staring out at the big tree. Ramler, who hated long periods of silence relayed what he had learned on the phone. “Sir, S3 confirms that JTF-Alpha took off from Benning a couple hours ago. Their jump ETA is…” he looked at his watch. “at this point… less than 45 mikes. They should be at the ammunition depot at or around the time of the scheduled interrogation with Santiago.”

“Good, good. And who’s in charge?”

Ramler stiffened his eyebrows, unsure of why Spillers would even ask that question. To provoke him? “Dawkins sir.”

Spillers smiled. “You don’t approve?”

“Not my place sir.” Ramler said.

Spillers continued gazing out the window. “Please. Ramler, I want to know your thoughts on this.”

Ramler pushed the phone aside, then sat down on a corner of the desk. “Back at selection sir—in Panama—” he trailed off, struggling for the right words. “Sir, I believe in what we’re doing here. For what it’s worth, I believe in you. But in my opinion, Dawkins is a… he’s a pile-up of unintended consequences.”

Spillers laughed. “Thank you for that Ramler. I will do my best to ensure we do not reap the whirlwind.” Spillers turned away from the window to face Ramler, and repeated, “the whirlwind.”

Ramler stood up as though intending to go wash his hands, but instead, sat down in the chair, laid his head on the desk, and fell instantly asleep. Spillers stared down at his feet and exhaled through his nose. “Sometimes, unintended consequences can be a good thing.” he said, walking over to Ramler’s spot at the desk.

Dawkins was a gifted soldier—one of the finest UDT divers the Navy had ever produced—but impossible to manage. During a rotation at Fort Sherman, he killed a prostitute in Cristobal while on R&R—a misunderstanding on the inside of a brothel over some details involving a blowjob. She refused. Dawkins broke the woman’s jaw, then strangled her.

Two Panamanians came charging into the room with knives drawn. Dawkins, who wasn’t fully dressed, dispatched these men with their own weapons, put the rest of his clothes on, and jumped out the window down to street level. Two more men chased him for three blocks until they cornered him in an alley. He gouged one man’s eyes out with his thumbs and fractured his skull. That one lived. Dawkins slashed the other man’s throat, cutting so deeply with his Ka-bar, the man’s head nearly came detached. When he heard the military police sirens, he ran to the beach and swam two miles across Limon Bay back to Fort Sherman—just hopped the barbed wire, and walked directly to the PX, where he purchased a bag of gummy bears, a liter of beer, and the current issue of Scamp magazine. Two hours later, he was found by the fireguard in the latrine of his barracks—shirtless and drunk, scalp all lathered up with shaving cream, a straight razor to his head and a sink full of hair. His pants and boots were still wet from seawater. When Dawkins was shipped back to Little Creek, Virginia, the Navy, of course, wanted to kick him out. Spillers interviewed him in the brig, and knew within minutes—this man was too good to pass up. He was the cudgel. Ramler was the scalpel.

Spillers shuffled his feet, blinked a few times, and stroked Ramler’s hair. If things worked out today, he could do a full reset—retire Dawkins. He’d keep Ramler of course. The man was one of a kind. The finish line was in sight.