The Offices of Thalia Trimble, Private Eye - vol 2

"If you belong then the truth will reveal itself." The line goes dead.

Marshall is glad to hear that you have another lead. He goes to the car and turns on the AC while you make the call.

After pressing number 2, the line rings five times before an audio recording starts.

You hear footsteps echoing down a hallway. A door with a push bar is loudly opened. "Sorry. I guess I’m a little late." It is a familiar voice but you’re not quite able to place it.

"No problem. Have a seat. Please continue Jerry." A man goes back into the story he was telling before the interruption. His voice gets louder as the person who opened the door, the familiar voice, gets closer to Jerry and takes a seat near him.

"--layer by layer we built it. I’ve worked construction for damn near 10 years. It takes us anywhere from 5-9 months to put a house up. It is a time consuming process. Now I realize this is a dream and things are all wonky, but it doesn’t make it less crazy to see a machine print out all the materials and then have a small crew assemble the entire two story house in 24 hours. I’ll say that again. Twenty. Four. Hours. Imagine that."

"Thank you, Jerry. Ma’am? Would you mind introducing yourself and telling us about the dream you reported?"

The woman clears her throat. She seems a little timid to start. "Zoe. My name is Zoe. I had a dream where I was in the city. Not Chicago. Not any city I recognized, to be honest. It kind of seemed like a composite of many different cities actually. I could recognize bits and pieces from all over. Landmarks. Styles of architecture. I was walking down the street when I saw a kid spray painting graffiti on the side of a building.

"It read ‘We traded freedom for security and received neither.’ Next thing I know, the sky, it was mid day, but the sky goes dark. Like someone had flipped a switch. The kid tries to run but these things come flying out of holes in the sky. They launch this wire around his legs and the kid falls to the ground.

"I don’t see what they do with him next. A hand is on my shoulder. I spin around and see this... thing. Not quite human but a close imitation of it. It is wearing a uniform sort of like a police officer. It asks me if there is going to be a problem. Before I can respond it punches me in the stomach and I keel over. I feel wires wrap around my hands and legs and I’m being dragged down the street..."

"Oh my god," Jerry breaks the silence.

"Thank you for sharing, Zoe. You too Jerry. Why don’t we take a break?"

The line goes dead.

Thalia stands frozen, the receiver still pressed to her ear long after the recording has ended. She hadn't recognized Zoe's voice at first, not until she'd gotten halfway through her story.

And what a story. If she were having dreams like that, Thalia would be dead grateful to locate people who were having similar ones. She places the receiver back on the hook absently, thinking about Jamal and his inventions, wondering if the inspiration for them originated from something in his subconscious that he never becomes aware of, because he's channeling it all into his creative work.

She looks over her shoulder again at the art studio, thinking about Amanda and her art. About all the disturbing artworks being created in the world, all the science fiction novels that describe strange and horrifying futures and alternative realities and histories. Were any of these more than just the product of a creative mind's imagination? Were some works of creativity a way for a human's subconscious mind to cope with unremembered but disturbing dream content?

Leaving the phone booth - there are other options she'd like to try, but this case isn't going to solve itself - and gets into Marshall's rental. Giving him an assessing look, she asks, "How are you feeling? Do you need to go rest up in your hotel room for a while, or are you okay to continue? Also, I can drive, if you want."

Marshall waves you off and puts the car into gear. "I'm feeling better. You get any more useful information out of David and Linda in there? Never mind. I don't want to know. Where are we heading?" Marshall is about to pull into traffic but stops and puts the car back into park. "I don't know what happened back there, but it didn't seem to hit you nearly as hard as it hit me. I don't want to go back to the hotel but maybe it would be good if you took the wheel and... looked into whatever leads you have on your own for a bit. Do you mind dropping me off at the records department? I want to do a little digging on this Futel company. There has to be a permit for this booth's installation, right?" Marshall gets out of the car and prepares to switch seats with you.

Nodding, Thalia says, "Sounds good to me. That will give us something concrete to follow, at least. I'll give you directions. Once I drop you off, I'm going to go talk to Jamal. What I heard on this latest call was a recording of a meeting where Zoe was describing one of her dreams."

After she drops off Marshall, Thalia slides into the driver's seat. Arriving at Jamal's place, she's happy to see that he's still feeling upbeat - and hopes that she's not about to bring him back down. Noticing that he's wearing his "work clothes," she asks, "So, what are you working on today? Building me a car of the future, I hope."

The troubled look returns to Marshall’s face. "Now I find myself hoping that this all really is just an elaborate hoax." You know he doesn’t believe it is. Loomis keeps quiet until you drop him off. Before he gets out of the car he lets you know that he’ll call you tonight to give an update on anything he finds out.

---

Jamal laughs. "I’m afraid I’m still waiting on that deal to come through. Don’t worry, Thalia, we’ll have you up and running as soon as I can get a chunk of metal attached to four wheels in here to modify. I think you will be plenty pleased with this gizmo though." He pushes scraps of metal and wires aside to unveil the blueprints below them. There are plenty of notes added, scratched out, and re-written. As far as you can make out, it appears to be some sort of earpiece.

It isn’t exactly small. A bit of plastic wraps around the the back of the outer ear and there is a small speaker that sits inside the ear itself. You couldn’t use it for anything stealthy. "I know, I know. It doesn’t look like much, but get this: unlimited range and no need to charge batteries. Do I have your attention now? But it's a ways off from being complete. What are you up to today?"

Thalia grumbles about Jamal's lack of progress on her car, mostly because he clearly expects her to and she enjoys the game as much as he does. It also helps to set the tone of normality, which she wants to preserve as long as possible.

She looks over the new earpiece with a skeptical eye, but she raises her eyebrows at the revelations about unlimited range and no charging of batteries. Trying on the earpiece, which feels a little weird, but she supposes she could get used to it, she just shakes her head a little. "Oh, you know me. Nose to the grindstone, as usual. Hey, tell me something - where do you get the ideas for stuff like this? I could probably daydream all day for six months without coming up with an invention concept like this."

"I wish I could take credit for the idea behind this one, but I’ve got to give a tip of the hat to Mr. Nikola Tesla." Jamal absently taps his pencil on the blueprint while he elaborates. You are very used to having conversations with him like this; he is only half paying attention and his eyes are glued to what he is working on.

"He had this idea to develop a wireless worldwide transmission system 120 years ago. He built this facility topped off by the Wardenclyffe Tower. It would bounce signals right off the upper atmosphere of the earth. Eventually he realized the project could be even bigger. He could provide clean and practically free energy to the world using this system. Naturally his financiers were none too pleased about this. How do you make money with an invention like that? So the project was abandoned and he eventually sold off the tower for scrap metal.

"This device will work under similar principles but on a much smaller scale. Sometimes being a good tinkerer isn’t about coming up with new ideas, but putting a good spin on old ones." He stops tapping the pencil and turns to you with a smile and a laugh.

"Get this though. I haven’t thought about the old Tesla Tower in forever. First read about it in high school and probably not since then. Out of nowhere I had this dream last night that I was standing at the base of the tower with Tesla himself. He took me inside and we used the tower to send a message... to Zoe. Funny how the unconscious mind works, right?"

"Yeah, funny." Thalia returns his smile, though not the laugh. "Do you have dreams like that often? Ones that spark an idea for an invention? Sorry, I've just had dreams on my mind a lot lately."

Jamal gives you a ‘get out of here’ look. "I wish things came that easy. No, I honestly cannot recall a single other time that a dream sparked a new design for me before. All my inventions are the results of a lot of hard work. You aren’t out there solving mysteries by taking a nap are you?" Jamal can see that you aren’t joking around quite as much as he expected. "You been having trouble sleeping, Thalia?"

Thalia chuckles. "I'll let you know. After the day I've had so far, I just might start having trouble sleeping." She smiles, then sighs. "No, a case just took me to my mom's old neighborhood this morning. You know, where her studio used to be. It's put me a little out of sorts, I guess.

"I did run into something kind of weird, though. Have you heard of something called the San Espero Dream Survey? Some outfit looking for people who've had a particular type of weird dreams, usually involving... I don't know. Advanced technology and stuff. That's what made me think to ask you about whether you often get ideas for inventions through dreams."

When you mention your mother, Jamal stops messing around with the blueprints and fully commits himself to the conversation. He nods along when you ask if he knows where the studio was. His serious face morphs back into restrained laughter when you bring up the Dream Survey.

"Thalia... is it really weird that a San Espero Dream Survey would get a lot of responses about dreams filled with strange advanced tech? One third of the city are aspiring actors, another third are mad scientists, and the last third are waiting tables on the other 66.6 percent. We literally have a sentient AI automaton patrolling the streets for our safety. I’ve seen like 3 flying cars this week alone. This city is basically the world of tomorrow, today!" And no; I absolutely will not be building you a flying car."

He turns back to his desk and picks up a pencil to jot down some notes. "You should really get in touch with your parents more often. They miss you, Thalia."

Thalia allows Jamal to make gentle fun of her over the advanced tech dream question, in part because it helps keep him from asking if the case she's working has anything to do with Zoe, and in part because it's just enjoyable to see him laugh, even at her expense.

"You will build me a flying car," she insists. "You say no right now, but you know I'll wear you down eventually. I mean, who know? Maybe having a flying car would save my life someday. Did you ever think of that?"

His reference to her parents brings Thalia up short. It probably shouldn't; Jamal's mother died he and Thalia had met, and his father had been out of the picture for years before that. Thalia had commissioned her mother to do a Christmas present portrait of Jamal's mom from a photo a while back, and she and Jamal had taken to each other.

"I know they do, and you don't need to give me a guilt trip about it. You know exactly what I've been dealing with lately, with the Lawson case and assisting Dylan with the Lloyd evidence." It comes out more harshly than she intended, and she busies herself studying some piece of equipment she couldn't put a name to if she had a week to do it and a full supply of encyclopedias and technical manuals at her fingertips.

Jamal turns around and gives you a raised eyebrow. There is some hesitation before he speaks as he wonders if saying what he is about to say will be beneficial or set you off. "I’m not giving you a guilt trip; you’re doing it to yourself. I haven’t spoken to your parents since you invited me to Thanksgivings at their place. I just had a sneaking suspicion that you haven’t been in touch with them all that more often than I have.

"It doesn’t hurt to pick up the phone every so often. Maybe if I had done that with Zoe she wouldn’t be in whatever mess she is currently in. Now I’m not saying that your folks are about to up and vanish because you didn’t call them, but I think when they are gone you’ll look back and regret the times you were too busy to talk to them and put it off."

A number of different responses to all of this leap to Thalia's mind, most of them hot-headed and inappropriate. She doesn't even let them get near the tip of her tongue.

Instead, she waits a few beats before saying, "I honestly don't think that Zoe's disappearance has anything to do with you not keeping in better touch with her, Jamal. Zoe is her own person, with her own life and experiences. Separation and self-reliance are part of what people go to college to experience, after all. Don't let your frustration and worry lead you to blame yourself for things that have nothing to do with you."

She waits for a moment, trying to come up with a safe way to bring up the dream she'd heard Zoe describing on the recording. "Speaking of her college experience, do you know whether Zoe was taking anything like... I don't know, a creative writing class? One of the people Marshall interviewed made a reference to a story he'd heard from her. Something about a kid writing graffiti on a building, and then a bunch of things coming out of holes in the sky and launching wires around the graffiti artist's legs? She ever tell you something like that?"

Jamal thinks on it for a minute. "I can't recall her ever writing anything. Sure, she's artistic, but not like that. She is studying architectural design. Maybe that is something she discussed in jest with a classmate? A way to protect the buildings they plan to one day create. She certainly never discussed anything like that with me, nor have I known her to spin stories." Jamal shrugs his shoulders.