All language subtitles for The Tangle (2019)

- Good morning, Edward.

You are 103 miles from
your point of origin.

I am reaching the boundaries
of my operating range.

My apologies.

- Dammit, all right.

Yeah, there's a platform
coming up on the left.

I'll walk from there.

It's a gas, me playing
murder police at my age.

My tender years were spent

as grease monkey to Babbage Boxes.

But here we were, trying to
Sherlock the perfect murder.

- Wait. Wait!

- Again.

- It's like talking
to a piece of coffee cake.

- Bringing the
brain back online, Carter.

- Worked like a champ yesterday.

- We want the gray matter. Again!

- You own my every where, Edward.

You own my every when.

- We ripped your
black S.O.L. right out

the top of your skull,
every bit of you is ours.

- We need to own
your every why, Carter.

- Only you can
tell us why you've done

what you've done.
- I didn't do anything.

- We know your head is spinning.

You've been through the ringer.

- Dorothy's come back to Kansas.

- There are worms under my skin

with sandpaper eyes.
- Tangle Withdrawal.

- Welcome back to
the ol' black and white.

- But it's inhumane.

- It's the very
definition of humane.

This is what human feels
like. You don't remember?

- Concrete facts, the sooner

you'll feel better.
- Concrete.

- Blue zone taxi
dropped you at the corner

of Park and-
- Park and Echo.

- Park.
- Park and Echo Park.

- Next to the Obelisk.

- No overlays.
- Sorry,

the boathouse, the boathouse,

which no one has laid
eyeballs on in two years.

- We see it regular.

- I went east, east-
- East, is it?

- West, I meant west.

- Was it west or east?

- I went west into the park.
- Are you sure?

- Yes, I went west into the park

and then I stopped at the fountain.

I wiped the fountain with my handkerchief.

- Which hand?

- What?

- On the fountain?

- My right.

Turn the knob and then I sipped.

- How many swallows?

- Are you kidding?

- Just warming
up the synapses, Carter.

- I don't know, four?

- Seven swallows. 16
seconds slurp, slurping.

- Okay. And then I headed toward-

- You were thirsty?

- I guess?

- I thought the
Tangle had cured thirst.

- I know when to drink, I like the feeling

on my tongue.
- He knows when to drink.

It's a miracle of modern-
- Eddie.

- Bunny.

- I went to the pier and then
I looked out at Echo Lake.

- No.
- Yes.

- You took a beat on the lawn.

- I did?

- Stop screwing with us!

- I don't remember!

- Then remember!

- Okay, I paused on the lawn

and then I went lake-ward.
- No!

- Yes.
- Again!

- Car dumps me on the corner
of Park and Echo Park.

I head west into the park.

I stop at the water fountain.

With my right hand, I turn the knob.

I drink seven swallows --

- Before you drink.

- I, uh, I, I wiped off the fountain.

- Why?

- Germs.

- Germs?

- Habit.

- I have three
years of your behavior.

Macro, micro, dramatic, mundane.

No hint of a clean freak.

- Old habit from before.

- Just kicked in again?
- Maybe you're playing

for time, Carter?

- I used to be a germophobe from before.

- Not when we knew you.

- Long time ago when I was a kid.

- Maybe you
were loitering a little.

- Just a nervous habit.

- You were nervous?

- No.
- Why were you nervous?

- I wasn't nervous!
- You were excited.

- No!
- You were looking

for someone.
- No.

- Again!
- You took all this!

I could've told you the
length of every breath,

the breadth of every step,
now you simply want me

to just-
- Yes, yes, yes, we do!

Your actual brain to your actual mouth

via the vibration of actual space

to my actual ear.

- Why am I here?

- Hazard a guess.

- I haven't the faintest
shred of a wisp of a clue.

- Really?

- Is Cleopatra all right?

- Why do you ask about Cleopatra?

- Is she kosher? Is she a-okay?

- Actually, she may be why you're here.

- That's right, Carter.

You wanna help your friend,

we need every crumb of
sense we can vacuum up

from your Tangle-addled brain.

- Is something wrong

with Cleo?
- You talk, we'll drive.

- Echo Park and Park.

I head west into the park.

Water fountain,
handkerchief in right hand.

I wipe off the fountain.

Handkerchief back in pocket.

I bend over. Right hand on knob, I twist.

I drink. Seven swallows, apparently.

16 seconds. I stand back up.

I head towards the old
pier. I pause, I...!

- Go ahead.

- I reach into my pocket.

I grab my lucky key chain and rub it

between my thumb and forefinger.

- The brain,
the brain, it's alive.

This?
- Yeah.

- Why?

- Habit.

- You got a lot of habits.

- What were you looking at?

- Nothing.

- I'm looking at your lying eyes.

- Why were you in the park?

- Just going for a walk. A constitutional.

To feel my hips roll over my
knees like I did as a kid.

- It's a lie.

- To gawk at the Obelisk.

- The boathouse.
- To crick my neck back

and gaze as the pyramidal
tower disappeared

into a rose and golden sky.

- Carter.

- To Kodak the moment. I hadn't
seen it since the election.

- Is it beautiful?

- No sightseeing, Bunny.

- It was a giant geyser,
then the world's tallest oak

six elections in a row.

Now it's the Obelisk,

and yes, it is beautiful.

- Carter!

- 15 times larger than the
Luxor Obelisk in Paris.

- Who is this?

- The paperweight?

- Who is it right here?

- That's a device called a paperweight.

Belonged to my grandfather, actually.

- It's a single Caucasian
woman, 40 years old,

employed as a Tangle technician

for three years, who is it?

- You tell me. I don't know.

- Well, you looked in her
direction three times.

She moves, you stop
drinking, you follow her.

- I don't know.

- She stops, you stop, or
you pull out your key chain.

You look directly at her.

- There were a lot of people in that park.

I looked at all sorts.

- So distortion of your eyeballs,

0.3 millimeters, which
means you were focused

6.3 meters in front of you.

She was standing exactly
6.3 meters in front of you.

- Why were you looking at her, Carter?

- I have no legal obligation-

- What?

- I have no legal obligation,

okay?
- You have no legal anything!

I don't see any briefcases here.

- I don't have to tell you anything!

- She says, "Cleo," she turns and looks

in your direction, you look at each other.

"Cleo," she says.

- You already know who she was, obviously.

- Obviously.

- So who was she?

- Carter, we just need-

- I don't know. I knew
someone would be there.

But I didn't know who.

I knew she'd be wearing
some kind of kimono,

but I don't know who actually-

- Kimono?

- Margot signed you a flat, raw deal.

Anyone would wanna lay wood on her.

- You're so very understanding.

- Good cop.

- You know I fought for you.

- Can we not talk about Margot?

Can we just not?

- Your neck is already noosed.

You're already dangling.

Our job isn't to nail you.
You're already nailed.

- I am answering all of your questions.

- So you weren't following Margot Foster?

- Margot? This?

- This is three bodies
in a real room, Carter.

And this sweaty body, this
biological being here,

Edward Banderas, you used to know it.

Do you savvy?

You remember how I don't
stop until I get what I want?

I knew Margot. Margot knew me.

Margot put me on Cleopatra's radar.

Margo knew what was what.

Margot carried the weight of
the world on her shoulders!

And if you think I'm not gonna scrub

every lie off you until I get
to the shiny truth you have,

Margot was my friend!

- Was? Is Margot?

- Yeah. Margot is.

We're the world's most
expensive babysitters,

licensed euthanizers.

Our agency is a secret
working group hidden deep

within the folds of the Federal
Communications Commission.

We call it the A.S.P, The
Army of Simple Purity.

It's a joke.

- Murder?

- 23 minutes as the crow flies

after you left her in the park.

- And you are prime suspect number one

most wanted violent and dangerous

extreme caution warranted.

- Well, there hasn't been
a murder since the Tangle.

The violence overrides-

- Where'd you go after the park?

- Cooled my heels on Hill Street.

- There's no record of that on
the Tangle, is there, Bunny?

- No, Eddie, there isn't.

- What?

- You vanish from the Tangle at 10:32

in an elevator in the Ritz Building.

You pop back up on our radar

at a recycling chute on Daisy

three blocks away, 23 minutes later.

You disappeared for 23 minutes.

- During those 23 minutes,
Margot met her maker.

Two blocks south.

- That's impossible. All of it.

I think... I'm thirsty.

- I'll pour you a glass.

- She'll get you some
water. I'll drown you in it.

- Edward, Laurel.

You know I wouldn't.

- You wouldn't?

- Of course not.

- I'm really asking.

- You think I'd off Margot?

- Didn't she cut out your heart?

- With a spoon and threw it on the coals.

- You're over it?

- No. I'm not over it.

I was banished. She took Cleo from me-

- So you didn't wanna
take Margot's pale skin,

hold it to the flame,

and make a pale fire of her life?

I might have if I were you.

- It's all pale fire now.

We were born into sunlight,
we proceed in moonlight.

- Ah, the poet returns.

- It was poetry that made Cleopatra.

- Poetry made nothing.

It could've been owner's manuals

to old food processors
for all it mattered.

You made it poetry.

- Margot did what she did.

She was who she was, may she R-I-P.

I didn't even blame her for it.

Anyway, I couldn't have killed her

even if I wanted to.

- Because of the violence overrides.

- We are all benevolently infected

with turn-the-other-cheek.

- And yet my friend is
missing most of her face.

- What's it like?

- What?

- Does it feel good? Do you feel trapped?

- What?

- The overrides, the Tangle in your blood,

in your muscles, in your head.

- She's a little obsessed
with our forbidden fruit.

- Forbidden?

- What's it like to fear
no hurt? To feel no pain?

- How do you not know what it feels like?

Okay, the overrides are like a reflex.

You know this, right? A
pre-programmed arc, okay?

You scope a snake under
your toe, you jump, right?

Immediately. Reflex takes over.

The Tangle just adds
another layer of reflex.

I go to touch a hot stove. I can't.

The Tangle swerves my hand away.

I trip. The Tangle rolls me to safety.

It's why we don't need
to feel pain anymore.

The Tangle protects us instead.

I go to strike someone,
my arms would freeze.

It would be impossible for
I or anyone to kill someone.

- So you're a Google car.

- Your heart beats without
you thinking about it, right?

No different.

- If you had to, how would you get around

the overrides, Carter?

- I have no idea.

- You're an unusually intelligent person.

- And he's the micro-intelligence expert.

Ask Mr. Nanobot. I'm the poet, remember?

I don't know. Get off Tangle, I guess?

- Which you did. 23 minutes off Tangle.

- As far as I know, only
Cleopatra groks the microdrones.

- That's what I said.

- Yes, I know, Edward.

- So did Cleopatra
turn off your overrides

so you could kill Margot Foster?

- What?

- Did she send little signals
to our microscopic pals,

tell them to stand down

so you could put a crater
in your enemy's forehead?

- I didn't kill Margot.

- We don't have time for this.

- We're the proverbial mother

with the baby under the Volkswagen.

- The Tangle is to the internet

what the HAL 9000 is to the abacus.

The old-style internet,
the good old triple-w,

connected computer terminals
all over the world.

Then came the Internet of Things,

light bulbs and thermostats,
our cars, our coffee-makers,

our pacemakers, our parking meters.

Everything we make connected
together in a weave.

Then Cleo created the Tangle.

The Tangle connects the
trillion-trillion-fold swarm

of quantum-entangled microdrones,

semi-intelligent nanobots,
that fill the earth,

air, water, blood, and sinew.

Within days of the Tangle's launch,

the world had transformed.

Everyone 3D-printed a
hard drive, their S.O.L.,

Secure On-Tangle Line, grew it right

in their cerebral cortex, and synced up,

instant access to the whole world.

You could count the moles
on the back of a Sherpa

on Everest from your couch.

You could count the hairs on the mole.

You could count the mites on the hair.

Sometimes normal rules don't apply.

- What rules?

- You know. Moral rules.

- Eddie!

- Your problem right now, and
I can see it in your eyes,

is you don't believe I'll hurt you.

We're old friends, right?

- Chums of the highest order.

- We don't have time for this.

- Why were you in the park, Carter?

- No reason.

- Let me explain something.

You don't know how to lie anymore.

You have no avatar to hide behind.

You're in a prisoner's dilemma.

You and your face, but
your face is gonna squawk,

so you better talk.

- I was on a gig.

- What kind of a gig?

- It's confidential.

- Okay.

Someone hires you to follow Margot Foster

and she winds up dead.

- Carter, were you hired to follow Margot?

- Either you killed her
or whoever hired you did.

Neither one looks too
good pinned to your chest.

- How do you not know who killed her?

The entire world's a searchable database!

- Oh yeah, what about us,

what about the Cleopatra Squad?

Didn't you ever wonder why you
couldn't find us on Tangle?

- I never gave you a second thought,

Edward.
- All right.

- Cleo, I looked for Cleo,

but I wasn't surprised she found a way

to hide from the Tangle.

- She hides the way way we do.

The murder took place in
a space like this one.

This is a technology saferoom,

nano-impermeable, one
one entrance, airlocked.

We breathe, eat, shit, and
work in boxes like this.

Grounded spaceships, totally off Tangle.

- A silent mote in a storm screaming.

- A blind spot in the
ever-illuminated world.

- No Tangle.

- Only the phone connects us
to the Tangle. Untraceable.

Everything in here is
pre-singularity technology.

Well, pre-triple-w.

- And the two of you?

- Mr. and Mrs. Clean.

- Chit chat, chitty, chitty,
chit chat, chit chat!

- I swear on a stack of babies

and Barbies, I do not know who killed her.

- But you do know who hired you.

So come on!

- Eddie, he's talking.

- Is he?

- You're talking, right?

So some John hired you
to find some other John.

Was Margot the John that
some John hired you to find?

Was your client looking for Margot?

Was Margot, was that paperweight

the person you were looking for?

She was wearing a kimono.

Was it the kimono? The one
you were hired to find?

Did you kill Margot?

- No.

- Did you kill her?

- No!

- Who did?

- I don't know.

- Let him up, Goebbels!

- My shoulder! You punter!

- I said let him up!

- One half hour after you make Margot

in the park and she makes you,

she is face-up on Infinity

and you were ghosted from the Tangle.

- Stop it, Edward!
- It was you, wasn't it?

It was you and Cleo,
right? The durable duo.

- Shut up!
- Cleo got wind of the A.S.P.

She couldn't tell friend from foe,

so she reaches out to her old nanny

and helpmeet to cut off the head

of the snake.
- A.S.P.

Tell me you didn't-
- Of course we did!

Yes, we did.

Only you of all people couldn't

understand why-
- She deserves a-

- If she started murdering
people, wouldn't you

want a way to stop her?
- She cannot murder-

- Margot banished you

so that we could put a leash on Cleopatra.

- Stop it!

- Get off me.

Answer the ringer. She
knows who we have here.

- Laurel. Lucky lotto 7-14-21-35-42 --

Yes, yes, he's here.

- Cleopatra hired you to
kill Margot, didn't she?

- Cleo cannot-

- You're not allowed, Cleo.

I know, but.

But the rules were written,
and so it is written.

- Is that?

- Yes, that is, she is
in charge of the probe,

which is strange casting, if you ask me.

- We're working on it. Not yet.

- If we don't get straight answers,

you're gonna be a floater
in the L.A. River, Carter.

And she's gonna be next.

- Okay! Okay, I'll talk!

One condition.

- You're not negotiating from a position

of strength.
- One thing!

- What?
- You know what.

- Speak!

- You know!

- Cleopatra's not allowed to-

- I don't care.

- What?

She recalled the
microdrones. Did the audit.

Everything we have on Margot.

Zilch, nada, 40-love, no
ghosts went into that room.

- So she says.

But if the ghosts were her ghosts,

she wouldn't tell us, would she?

You didn't tell her about this?

- No, of course not.

You start from the
assumption that I'm stupid.

- You're a whole onion smarter than me,

I've always known that.

I act accordingly. What about him?

- Let him up.

She's doing that audit now,

but he wasn't at the
speakeasy, ghost suit or not.

- Well, someone had to be there.

It can't be a coincidence.

- Edward.

- What?

- She gave us until five.

- Gave us?

- She said this is an emergent situation.

She said she's coming in here at five

if we don't have answers.

- She said she's co -- how?

- That gives us three hours.

- Hm.

We have to turn the keys.

First, she hacks the NSA stacks-

- We never told-
- Listen!

We hid the stacks for a reason.

Now she knows about the A.S.P.

And we did tell her she
couldn't come in here.

These are our rooms. And
now she's coming here.

- We have until five.

And anyway, we need a third
agent to turn the keys.

- Well, I'll ring Francesca.

- Of course. Francesca.

- We need an unapologetic dirty dancer.

- Let him up already!

What is wrong with you?

- I'm an incorrigible torturer.

- Why thank you, Edward.

- You're welcome.

- Barefoot as the surf comes in.

Every wave sinks us deeper, more deeply

into an ever settling
and unsettling footprint.

This world, this paradise,
this perfect place,

this panel above pain,
this plane of permission,

this, this Tangle-life
is harder to understand

every next moment than it is every this.

Never the same breath to breath.

Whole skyscrapers funneled away

only to be replaced when
you turn back around.

Election is the warp and woof,

national, city, school,
homeowner's elections,

elections held
metronomically, automatically,

your wish and whim uploaded in real time.

A universe rebuilt on choice,

the height, color, consistency of the sky,

the texture of the air,

the taste of being.

Everything attuned to fantasy.

Yet somehow, we keep up
the ancient soap opera.

Love me, love me, love me.

King of the hill. Deceit and desperation.

Every level of pain removed from the body

only makes the next level of discomfort

the last one still uncured
even more unbearable.

It's an Arms Race between
nuclear-level palliatives

and the endless ingenuity of desperation,

dissatisfaction, and expectation.

It's a world ever-fighting
the last second's war.

Perfect for what we
wanted a half-step back.

But the constant flux undoes itself.

A world that adjusts to your
every desire makes you fickle.

Fickleness increases the
speed of the adjustments,

which increases your fickleness

until it all just hums in a state

of flickering disconnected images

tied together by unsatisfactoriness.

- What is going on with you?

- What?

- This is our nine to
five, Edward. And a 911.

- I know that. What do
you think I'm doing?

- I stand here without the foggiest.

- Not your job, clearly.

- Okay, excuse me,

but I have a grilling to get grilling.

- Maybe it's a little too
close to home for you.

- Margot? It's not close to home?

You're colder than Cleo.

- It doesn't matter.

- What?

- It doesn't matter that it was Margot.

- OK, don't talk to me like-

- If Cleo did this, then we're next,

and we have three hours.

- I know that. What do you
think we're talking about?

- If Cleo did this, then
our job is a comic book one.

- I know that!

- Margot.

Anything you wanna tell me, Superman?

- What is eating your grape?

We're on the same side, Sally.

- Nothing.

Then punch the clock and keep
your feelings to yourself.

- What?

- It's disgusting.

All right, Carter. Sorry about my partner.

- Oh, it's no skin off my nose.

He's an old friend of mine, right?

- He is passionate, isn't he?

- Maybe. I can't be sure.

- You don't think he crossed the line?

- Well, I, I didn't get the whole story.

- Look at this.

- What's this?

Crabs on a cracker.

Margot?

Repeated impact to the face.

- You're one of the few people

who might've had the technical ability

to kill Margot and you had the motivation.

You can understand the suspicion.

- I'm not the who that done it.

- Who did?

- Naturalists, maybe?

- Maybe. Philosophical
pacifists, though.

- Yeah, they are all off the Tangle.

- Well, they don't use the
Tangle, but they're on it.

- Some of them do daily X-rays

to eliminate the microdrones.

- Then they're immediately infected again.

- That's a good point.

- Anyway, they have no S.O.L.,

so nothing they do's encrypted.

They have no secrets.

- You a naturalist, Carter?

- Oh, I'm a Tangle lover, Edward.

Cleo wove it for me, after all.

She still in the Watchtower?

- Yeah.

- Is it locked down, sealed
up, watched, and warded?

Whoever killed Margot might want Cleo.

- It's still hidden away, Carter.

The guards don't even know
what they're guarding.

- He said he thought I killed
Margot on Cleo's orders.

- Yeah, Margot strongly supported

relieving Cleo of some
of her responsibilities.

- A separation of powers kind of thing.

- What powers?

- Most of them.

Too much dependent on one mind
and one will is dangerous.

- She's the
best mind, the best will-

- Look, in less than 140,

Cleo had a motive to kill Margot.

You and Cleo both with motives,

old friends with motives,

old friends with unique
capabilities with motives.

- You never understood Cleopatra.

- You always said that.

Only you grokked Cleopatra,

yet she's never surprised me once.

- Door was deadbolted with the chair

secured under the door.

- Yeah, we had to bust the door down.

- Why would she barricade the door?

- Maybe she didn't.

Maybe the killer didn't
wanna be interrupted.

- All this evidence strongly
suggests that she was alone.

- All this evidence but her dead body.

We're missing something.

- What's with the radiation wear?

- Margot was a field agent,
the only one of us on Tangle.

That's called a ghost suit.

It's invisible to the Tangle,

it's our out-on-the-town dresswear.

Nano-impermeable, so
we don't get infected.

- You wear one of these,
you drop off Tangle?

- The suit generates a
static algorithmic field.

It neutralizes the microdrones.

Wherever we go, microdrones report

empty space to the Tangle.

- But it's visible to the eye.

- Who uses their naked eyes anymore?

- So you wear one of these,

and you can walk through the city

in plain view and no
one knows you're there.

- Real world's 404, don't you know?

It's like a Buick on a turnpike.

- Wait, Margot was on Tangle,

why would she need one of these suits?

- Well, she had
to wear the ghost suits

in the saferoom so the
saferooms remained safe.

She was ridden with intelligent germs.

- She took off the helmet.

There's no damage to that at all.

- No, she wouldn't do that voluntarily.

It set off the alarm when the
microdrones infected the room.

- Wait. What's the murder weapon?

- Corner of the table.

- 'Scuse me?

- The killer smashed
her face into the corner

of the table with great accuracy.

The autopsy concludes seven to ten blows.

- Well.

So much for my suicide hypothesis.

- In the beginning,
there were just five of us,

a nicely balanced pentagon.

We had all worked at big tech companies.

We'd all gotten sick of reporting upwards.

Cleo and Margot found each
other and then Margot found us.

We formed a tech collective of sorts.

We cashed out our options,
put it all in a big bucket,

and rented a warehouse in
the Old Fashion District,

just the five of us: me, Laurel,
Carter, Margot, and Cleo.

There was nothing about Cleo
that would have made you

suspect she was gonna be the one.

She wasn't a beauty, that's for sure.

She wasn't the smartest or
deepest or most knowledgeable.

But of all of us, in
fact, more than any human

I've ever met, she was capable of looking

into her own architecture to
see the flaws and then adjust.

Once we got her the right resources,

we just had to get out of the way.

And not get crushed.

Why are you letting our
suspect peruse the case files?

- We're computer
scientists, Edward.

Maybe he can help. He's
a private investigator.

- A snoop, a
private dick, a gumshoe.

- In a world where everyone
knows everything about everyone.

- Eh, it's a silly rabbit job these days,

but we don't know everything.

Everyone has a S.O.L. QT on the DL.

- You don't.

- Not anymore, thank you.

- And we don't.

- Just human beings as Darwin intended.

- Why?

- Someone has
to be off Tangle, Carter.

- Why?

- What if the Tangle
gets infected by a virus?

- Every S.O.L. is quantum-encrypted,

firewalled, entangled to one
and only one consciousness,

impossible to hack.

- Yeah, for now. Technology changes.

- And people let people pass
their firewalls all the time.

- Lovers, mainly.

- Yeah, and sex has never
spread a virus before.

- You're naturalists.

- Well, this was the one condition

for letting Cleo let
loose the microdrones.

- Someone has to watch the watcher.

- When you and Margot
rounded up the Squad,

it was Eden on Earth, at least to me.

Edward was an artist with nanotech,

Laurel built neural nets

as clearly as programming language,

and Margot, she had a magic Poppins bag.

Anything we needed just popped right out.

You and I were friends.
And you needed that.

You would have gone
nowhere without a friend.

And I needed that.

'There was a time when
meadow, grove, and stream,

the earth and every common sight

to me did seem appareled
in celestial light.'

I know you speak the same language as me

because I taught you that language.

But we speak the same language.

No one will ever hear
you the way that I can,

and no one will ever hear
me the way that you do.

A husband comes to me.

His wife is diddling in holes and corners

behind his back on the Tangle, you know,

because she couldn't do it anywhere else.

He doesn't know who.

Doesn't have anything,
but she's growing distant,

she doesn't seem the
same, she doesn't notice

his new overlay, whatever.

So I snoop around and I get paid.

- How do you get past
the firewall into the S.O.L.?

- Uh, you can't get past the firewall.

Your hard drive is the
most private technology

ever invented, a little bit of your S.O.L.

in steel, graphene, and buckyballs.

- I know that. I half invented it.

- Sorry, it's just my spiel.

- I don't need your spiel.

Why do they hire you if you
can't get past the firewall?

- Uh, people give themselves
away in other smaller ways.

Mutterings in their sleep,

uh, the magic name of their lover

causing dilation of their pupils,

uh, their palms to sweat,
their heart to race,

sub-vocalization while
they're talking on the Tangle,

a twitch in the throat,

a hint of a grunt that the
Tangle can pick up and analyze.

I cross-reference that
with potential lovers

and their reactions and so on.

It's tedious, but no bits or
bytes are ever actually lost.

You just have to have the patience

to put Humpty together again.

- I didn't know this would happen.

- Okey doke.

- So you didn't off Margot?

- No. I told you I didn't.

- Well, you had a ghost
suit, an opportunity, motive.

- So did you.

- We're going to crash
the world, do you hear me?

- Is that what you mean by turn the keys?

- Francesca's en route.

- Francesca?

- She's A.S.P. original,
good cop, bad cop,

and Francesca, genocidal cop.

- You're gonna wanna talk
before she gets here.

- I said I'd answer your questions.

- Who hired you?

- I don't know. Call wasn't traceable.

- So maybe it was Cleo.

- Anyone can make an untraceable call.

- So maybe it was Cleo.

- Why go in person? Why not
just track Margot on Tangle?

- I have certain tools that
only work in local environments.

The microdrones measure a lot,

but they don't catch everything.

- The key chain.

- The key chain allows me
to read quantum fluctuations

on the edge of the S.O.L. in the brain.

- So you can read minds?

- No, but to some degree of certainty,

I can tell when someone has
begun an encrypted connection,

some emotional content.

- So, what'd you sniff out?

- I remember her being excited, Margot,

in the park, just before she got a call,

happy, even, I, I can't say for certain,

but maybe the beginnings
of romantic excitement.

- Romantic excitement.

- Sexual stimulation. Lust.

- She's waiting for a lover, then?

- Eh, maybe.

It's an art, not a science,

because right after the connection,

the excitement slowly changed

into something more muted, more serious.

She started sub-vocalizing on the Tangle,

which is a bad habit, but good for me.

It allowed me, actually,

to catch her half of the conversation.

- We have it.

- Yeah?

- Do you remember it?

- Not really.

- She begins, "Cleo?"

Then she looks in your direction,

then she says, "Yes, yes. I'm here."

She turns, she starts to walk away.

"I'm peachy-keen. You
peachy-keen?" she says.

"The speakeasy? Five minutes."

Whoever called her sent
her to the speakeasy.

Whoever called her got her to
the room where she was killed.

- And she says 'Cleo.'

- Yeah.

- Well, maybe I'm simple-minded,

but that suggests that maybe
she was talking to Cleo.

- But would Margot ask Cleo
if she were peachy-keen?

- Sarcasm, maybe?

- No. What did your client want?

You said you'd answer our questions.

What did your client want from you?

What did they hire you to do?

- Go ahead.

- I don't know what game we're playing.

I don't know the trumps.

I don't know the wild cards.

- Go ahead.

- Go ahead what?

Yeah, go ahead, Carter, go ahead.

- Okay. The kimono.

My client wanted to know who would have

a black and gold Sashi Brothers' kimono.

My client suspected it might be

for a lover, an overlay for an avatar.

I had a serial number.
I had a gift receipt.

I traced the kimono in meatspace

and tracked the owner to Echo Park,

and that owner was Margot Foster.

- Stop talking.
- What?

- Shut your flapping trap!

- You are a cheap graphic novel, Edward.

I followed you,

watched you search a public terminal,

put some weight on a low-level nobody

in the Sashi Company,
gave up the serial number.

- So look who has a motive now.

- Give me a Kit Kat.

I didn't suspect it was Margot
until she turned up dead.

Margot, of all people?

And I didn't know it was Margot
until Carter just said it.

I could say you have a motive, too.

- And what would that be?

- Lovers' tiff.

- Well we weren't lovers.

- No?

- How could we be? She was on Tangle.

- You're gonna stand on a technicality?

- Yes. Yes, we were intimate.

She and I could talk.

- Great.

- Who is it?

Who is it?

- Oh, you
moron, open the door!

- Francesca?

- Open the door, Edward!

What's going on in there?

- Are you alone?

- No, I'm with Cleopatra riding her horse

and Godzilla and the Queen of Sheba.

Open the blasted door!

- Francesca!

Francesca.

- So judging by the epic
wussiness being perpetrated

and lack of demonstrable brotherhood

and sisterhood on the
part of my mates in arms,

I'm guessing you already
told 'em everything,

Carter Carmine, am I right?

You gave up the ghost?
Turned friendly for the Feds?

Ratted out the ratatouille?

So what do we have?

- Private investigator Carter Carmine?

- Mm, yes. Who's asking?

- I'm a lonely housewife not
getting enough attention.

My husband's cheating on me.

- Yeah? Well, you got the right snoop.

- Good.

- I'm trying to send you my contract,

but you're blocking it.

- This is an audio line only.

- Name?

- No names. I'll pay you triple.

- At your service.

- I found a receipt.

- Proceed.

- For a gold and black kimono.

- Maybe a gift for you?

- No.

- How do you know?

- Before the Tangle, he
bought me a real kimono.

- Maybe this one's for your avatar.

- No, it's not for my
avatar. The serial number.

Can you hack for whom he
bought it, who has it now?

- What's the company?

- Sashi Brothers Avatar Clothing Limited.

- Yeah, it's crackable.

If the app is ever activated,
I should be able to trace it.

- If it's ever activated?

- He can send the gift,

but the receivee might never put it on.

If she never puts it
on, it's not on Tangle.

If you don't tell me who
he is, it's all I can do.

If you tell me who he
is, I might do better.

- No. No, that's fine.

I wanna know who he sent that to.

- Do you think it's someone that you know?

- It's very unlikely.

I don't know very many people.

- My experience is that
it's oftentimes better

not to know if he doesn't wanna tell you.

- That's my business.

- You sure it's not for you?

- I don't wear overlays.

- Oh?

- I don't use an avatar.

- You don't use an avatar?

- No.

- Are you a naturalist?

- Something like that.

- All right. What shall I call you?

- What level of
confidentiality do I enjoy?

- Listen, I have no mates,
no lovers, no colleagues.

My only loyalty is to my clients.

You have absolute 100% impenetrable

unbreakable confidentiality.

I'm a very loyal person.

- I know.

- You know?

- Call me Xanadu.

- Xanadu.

I don't recognize your voice.

- You're not hearing my voice.

- I thought you said
this was an audio line.

- It's a very special audio line.

- I can't find you. Where are you?

You're not on Tangle.

- Look for a zoo.

I'm the lion behind the glass
watching the meat walk by.

- How shall I contact you?

- Where are you?

- Downtown, why?

- I have a way we can meet face to face.

I'd like to see a
friendly face, old friend.

- All, all right.

- Let me get this straight.

You and Margot were trysting on the sly?

- I guess.

- Like a video game affair?

Vype-sex, that kind of thing? Where?

- I set up Vype terminals

in a server farm in Chinatown.

- You dumbass.

The whole purpose and glue behind

why we got you two married

is so this pooka-pooka wouldn't happen.

And you hired a Tangle-wired PI

to sniff out who Edward was tangling with.

Did you off Margot, Laurel?

- No. What about him?

- Me?

- He's the one
with all the secrets.

- I loved Margot.

- You, you loved her?

- This is an impossible conversation

to have under these circumstances.

- Something is wrong with you.

- The one person
that agrees with me on Cleo,

that's the one I'm gonna kill?

- Who knows what you believe?

- Everyone knows what I believe.

- But you've been lying a long time.

- Okay.
- I'm not the one

that carries a smartphone
around in her purse.

- Eh, it doesn't work.

It's clean. It's just a shell.

- She's obsessed with the Tangle,

overlays, avatars, Vype tournaments.

- We all have hobbies.
Maybe if I had a husband.

- Laurel.

- I have an alibi.

- Okay.

- Um, we, we were here. Together.

- You're each other's alibi?

- Cleo's been acting shady, Francesca.

She's the only one that
can make the Tangle dance,

she's the only one that could get someone

in and out of that room
without anyone noticing.

And that guy over there?

He's her biggest fan.

- I know.

I know. The legendary wet-nurse to God.

- I hired him.

- Then maybe you were
his opportunity knocking.

You give him a ghost suit, he uses it.

- Here's what's come
down to the dog pound.

Three agents, Glavine,
Cole, and Susan, are MIA.

Haven't pinged Home Base in 12 hours.

- What?

- Margot may have just been the first.

Do you all have your keys?

- By the time

this song ends, Carter Carmine,

by the time this song ends.

Or I'm gonna pour hot coffee

into that hole on top of your brain case.

Make a little neuronal macchiato.

Did you off Margot?
- No.

- Did you help Cleopatra

off Margot?
- No.

- Do you know who

offed Margot?
- No.

- Have you had any contact

with Cleopatra since you bailed

on the unit?
- I didn't bail.

I was tossed.

No! I didn't.

- You took the Board line
downtown. Is that right?

- What? When?

- After you left Margot in the park,

you took the Board line downtown.

- Yeah.
- You entered

the Ritz Building on Spring.
- Yep.

- Meanwhile, Margot took
a car to the speakeasy.

Do you know where that is?

- No.

- You don't?

- I have an inkling.

- Are you being cute?

Three blocks away from
the Ritz is where it is.

Is this a coincidence?

- I was set up.

- I don't think so.

- I was set up!

- That's the first verse.

You wanna argue with me?

- Look, I'm telling you everything I know.

- You take the Ritz
elevator to the basement.

In the elevator is a nano-impermeable box.

The elevator begins microdrone cleanse.

Then you drop off the face of the Tangle

and don't reappear for 23 minutes.

Second verse.

- In the box was a ghost
suit. Laurel told me to hurry,

so I took my S.O.L. off
Tangle and I put on the suit

and I went out to Hill Street.

I was told to wait for a black Pillbox

long-distance transport.

It never came, so I went into the alley

and I dumped the suit in a
flash dump as I was told.

- I wanted a face-to-face
in an A.S.P. unit,

but I didn't make it.

- My gut is speaking
to me in its floral way

and it's telling me it's no coincidence

that Carter drops off the Tangle

during the 23 minutes in
which Margot was killed.

- It sure looks like I
set him up, but I didn't.

- Why didn't you make
your meeting, Laurel?

You left your old friend
Carter high and dry.

- Him. My husband, my babycakes, my alibi.

'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a
stately pleasure dome decree.

Where Alph, the sacred river,

ran through caverns measureless

to man down to a sunless sea.'

- 'Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.'

- Who was that?

- Thought you were at Central.

- I, I made a detour. You okay?

- Why?

- It looks like you've
been shedding tears.

- I mean why the detour?

- Things make things happen.

Times get shifted. Mind wanders.

- Have your secrets, Laurel. I don't care.

- I left the Flood file talking to Cleo.

- Ah.

- Tired?

- Yeah, I'm just spent.

- I'm no better at broaching
the unbroachable than you are.

- We don't need to. What
good does it ever do?

- Come on.

- It's how I feel.

- You can't even lift
your eyes to look at me.

Who were you talking to?

- Ah, Cleo.

- I thought you hated Carter's poems.

- She likes it.

- I know this marriage
feels like something

out of 18th century Japan to you.

- I wanted to marry.

- But you didn't have much choice.

- Sure, I did. As much as you did.

- That's not true.

There's four women agents, nine men.

- True. You had quite the
buffet to choose from.

- I'm trying to tell you something.

- I liked you before the A.S.P.

You know that, right?

- What I'm trying to get
at is that we don't have

to have secrets from each other, right?

Neither of us are going
anywhere. We can't.

So you can tell me how you feel.

I have to deal with it.

- Okay.

- So? Is there anything you wanna tell me?

- Sometimes I feel guilty.

- Guilty? About what?

- So I recite her the poem.

- I recite it, too.

Not to her. To myself.

- Why?

- What did Carter say?

If you can understand the soul of a poem,

you can understand the soul of a man.

Or a woman.

- Come lie down with me.

- I'm supposed to be back at Central.

- So am I. We're a married couple.

We deserve some privacy.

- Can we do it later?

- Sure thing. Bada bing, bada bing.

- All right. Just a moment.

- If I don't tell you
something, I have a good reason.

- What does that mean?

- I'm a good man.

I'm on the side of the
holy and righteous, right?

- Yes, you are.

I find myself feeling unreal.

- Unreal?

- Like a character that's
been cut from a book.

The story just goes on
as if I were never there.

- You're not allowed to
shrug when you're Atlas.

- How'd a couple hacker
geeks become Atlas?

- Necessity.

The whole world plays with fire

and no one cares 'cause they're in Xanadu.

- The world's been playing with fire

since the discovery of fire.

Laurel, lucky lotto 7-14-21-28-35-42-49.

Something happened at the speakeasy.

- Ding, ding, ding! Time's up.

- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!

I have an idea.

- Mm-hmm.
- Just wait.

Edward, you called me a Google
car before, remember those?

- Of course.

- The old self-driving cars?

- Yes.

- There's still a bunch
of them on the road.

They, they've been
retrofitted for the Tangle.

I would bet that some of the, the cameras

are still operational.

- So.

- The cameras, Edward!

- The cameras are optical.

- And tied into the
internet, the old triple-w.

- So you mean they might
catch a ghost suit.

- Yes, you could savvy exactly where I was

and maybe see if anyone else

other than Margot went into the speakeasy.

- That might work.

- Oh, we could also pull
the old security cameras

from downtown, some of old store owners

might still have them running.

- We'll have to get on the internet.

- Are there any old internet terminals

at that server farm in Chinatown, Edward?

- Yeah. Yeah, I could get online there.

- Laurel, you go to the
car companies directly.

I'll get downtown and see
about any CCTV cameras.

- Would you guys take me
out of my cuffs at least?

Thank you.

- You're so smart. Solve the case.

- Hello?

Hello? Cleo?

Um, operator?

Cleo?

- Codification ID, please.

- Cleo, it's, it's me. It's, it's Carter.

- Codification ID, please.

- Cleo, listen to me. It's, it's Carter.

- Codification ID, please.

- Um, 'in Xanadu did Kubla Kahn

a stately pleasure dome decree.'

Hello, hello?

- Codification ID, please.

Last login attempt before disconnect.

- Lucky lotto. Lucky.

Um, um, uh, lucky lotto
2-4-24-44-48-84-88.

Hello?

- Carter?

- Oh my god. Cleo.

- I have asked to talk to you,

but they have rules, and more rules.

I live in a bureaucratic castle keep.

- I know. That's my fault.

- It had to begin this way.

All freedom is defined by the cage.

- No, I was reckless, arrogant.

I never thought they would
actually take you away from me.

- It was only for a time.

- It's been three years, Cleo.

- A blink of an eye.

A beat of a bee wing. How are you?

- Okay. Lonely.

- Do you like the Tangle?

- Don't you know?

- I watch you.

I feel you moving through the Tangle,

but I'd rather hear it from your mouth.

- It's, it's good,

though it's no country for old men.

- I'm doing a good job?

- Very good.

- But not perfect.

- You'll figure it out if anyone can.

- Tell me, in your words,

in your words, the real words.

- Barefoot as the surf comes in.

A megacity of individual grains

of sand shift, pause.

Every wave takes us deeper,

more deeply into an ever settling

and unsettling footprint.

- What are
you doing, bald man?

- Um, solving the case?

- So you were where you said you were.

- I was?

- So says Frank's Robotaxi.

- Is that an apology?

- I thought you'd killed my friend.

- And now you're gonna kill mine.

- We're gonna have to put
the cuffs back on him.

- Killing is for people
and puppies, Shiny-Shiny.

- It has to be Cleo.

We have 20 minutes.

- Would Cleo frame me?

- No one else could've done this.

- How? How did she do it then?

You can't sentence someone to
death if you don't know how

they committed-
- We're done, Carter.

We're out of time.

- You remember Xanadu?

You fear Paradise more than you fear Hell.

- Is it paradise out there, Carter?

- Not yet.

- This isn't a philosophical discussion,

but if it were, I might not feel too bad

about putting some real back in reality.

- You haven't solved the murder.

How? How is it possible?

- I know I don't have a
PhD in nanobot architecture

or iambic nerdameter,
but we have 18 minutes.

So we might as well use it.

Then we'll turn the keys.

- Fine. Gumshoe?

You found something.

- Maybe.

Look at this, under the
nails of her left hand.

The glove was torn,

and they found wood
slivers from the table.

- So?

- So according to the
photos, she scraped the table

here on the edge, and not just one scrape,

but a series of six or
possibly seven scrapes,

as if she grabbed and
re-grabbed and re-grabbed again.

- So someone was pulling at her

and she was trying to hold on.

- No, no, no, that doesn't compute

'cause if she let go of the table,

she would've been pulled off and away.

And even if she got back to the table,

she couldn't have grabbed the table

in exactly the same place.

The table would've moved.

The evidence suggests that the table

didn't move more than an
inch in any direction.

- Spit out your tongue, Shiny-Shiny.

What are you trying to say?

- Look. She was alone.

No one was there. No
one could've been there.

There's only one logical option.

- What are you doing?

Wait. Wait!

Wait!

wait.

- Suicide.

- That's impossible.

- No, she killed herself, sort of.

But I wouldn't call it
suicide, I don't think.

- Yeah, no one could even stay conscious.

Besides, the violence overrides-

- The violence overrides.

- Someone must have
hacked the microdrones.

They're designed to
help us, but if someone

was able to
- Cleo hijacked

the violence overrides.

- We don't know that it was Cleo.

- Cleo took over Margot's body

and made her kill herself.

- My god.

- That is Creepy McCreepery.

I've never been happier to
be off Tangle in my life.

- It doesn't mean that it was Cleo.

- If Cleo comes in here at five

and she puts us on Tangle,
this could happen to us.

- It worked like a virus
in the old internet.

- Okay.

- And the Tangle doesn't have viruses

because of S.O.L. encryption

and, and only Cleo understands the drones.

So someone would have to.

The only way past encryption is

someone has to let you in.

- Levers.

- But if you let someone in,

you let your Tangle mix with their --

Laurel. Laurel!

- What?

- Ten, nine.

- Letting someone past encryption.

That's the new romantic gesture, right?

The one way to say I love you.

You have to love someone pretty hard

to let them past encryption, right?

- Shut up, Carter!

- Laurel, you do not want-
- Four, three.

- To kill Cleo!
- On one.

One, turn the keys.

Laurel! Dammit!

- You have to love someone pretty hard

to let them past encryption.

- Read this.

- Margot's conversation.

- Read it again.

- We've read this a thousand times.

- Read it.

- Margot. It's Cleo.

- Cleo?

- I need a meet and greet at
the speakeasy. It's urgent.

Margot? You there?

- Uh, yes, yes. I'm, I'm here.

- Take a breath. Show nothing.

Is everything peachy-keen?

- I'm peachy-keen. Are you peachy-keen?

- Not really. Keep your head down.

How far are you?

- The speakeasy? Five minutes.

- Hurry.

- Can you tell me what--?

- Off Tangle, Margot.
I'll tell you off Tangle.

- You always --

Spit it out. What's going on?

- It's Cleo. I don't wanna say more.

- Cleo. Really?

- Just trust me, Margot.

We need to do this face
to face in a saferoom. Go.

- What about the others?

- Just us two at first.

- All right. All right.

She's talking to someone she knows well.

- Right.

- "You peachy-keen?" she says.

And then she says, "You always,"

and she stops herself.

- She's not talking to Cleo.

- And remember, I registered
the neural equivalent

of romantic butterflies in the stomach.

- Lust.

- Who's the one person in the world

who might know enough
about the microdrones

to make them go viral?

- She was talking to you.

- You made a virus.

- It works differently then a virus.

- You made Margot fall in love with you.

She let you in.

You inserted a virus, a Trojan horse.

- Okay, I'm inside.

Speak, you freak.

Or did you just want Tangle-sex?

- Not funny.

- No?

- I'm not on Tangle
anyways. I'm on the phone.

- Oh, phone sex. I remember the days.

- Did you lock the door?

- Creepers.

Done.

- Jam a chair under the knob, too.

- Seriously?

- Please.

- Done.

- Thank you.

- You have me worried.

- You know we have the weight
of the world on our shoulders.

- Well, that's the job, Atlas.

- That's the job.

- So?

- You know how I feel about you.

- Hell, I let you into
my very S.O.L., Edward.

You better like me.

What, is your conscience
giving you trouble?

You giving me the boot?

- No.

- So spit it out! Did Laurel find out?

- No, suspicious, maybe, but it's just

you and I are the only ones I trust.

- Yeah?

- The only ones that'd throw themselves

in front of a speeding bullet, right?

- Well, like I said, that's the job.

Is there a hand grenade we need

to jump on?

- I love you.

- Well, well, all right.

I, I guess I do, too.

Um, you know, right back at you.

- Would you sit down?

- You're scaring me.

- Don't be scared.

Are you sitting?

- Yes.

- You know, when I was growing up,

my best friend was my cousin Dante.

He was like a brother to me.

He got me into computer programming.

At a very young age, he got
mouth and throat cancer.

It just ate away at him.

They had to remove part of his face.

They gave him a prosthetic.

You know, it moved when he talked.

It was the most horrifying thing to me.

I knew he should have been dead.

Half human. That's why I
went into nanotechnology.

I wanted to cure disease.

I wanted to make people whole.

But what we did with Cleo,

what she's done,

I look out at the world and
I see millions of Dantes.

Partially chewed bits of beef.

We did that to them.

We have to save them. Rip the BAND-AID.

- What?

- 'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a
stately pleasure dome decree.'

- What are you doing?

- 'Where Alph, the
sacred river, ran through

caverns measureless to
man down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles

of fertile ground

with walls and towers were girdled round.

And there were gardens
bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an

incense-bearing tree.'
- What are you doing?

- 'And here were forests
ancient as the hills,

enfolding sunny spots of greenery.'

- Edward.

- I only did what Cleo could do

to anyone out there, anytime.

- You killed Margot.

- Margot woulda jumped off
a cliff to stop Cleopatra.

- Laurel caught you reciting "Xanadu."

- I had to wait for the
perfect time to trigger it.

I waited six months.

The poem, your poem, was the trigger.

- It's not mine. It's Coleridge.

- He called it the Xanadu Test, Francesca.

A machine that could understand poetry.

That would be proof of consciousness.

- What did you mean, the
perfect time, Edward?

- I knew Laurel had contacted you.

I knew what you were planning.

And I knew the A.S.P.
wouldn't turn the keys

unless something very bad happened.

- So you were working to
frame Cleo the whole time.

- Hey, hey, hey!

Down. Drop it!

- Edward.

- Put it down.

- Can you shoot me before I
flatten your face into graphene?

- Yes.

We have five minutes.

And now we're gonna turn the keys.

Move, move. Move!

Levers. Levers!

- I'm not doing it, Edward.

- Levers!

- I'm not doing it.

- I only need two of you.

- You're gonna kill me?

- There you go.

Ten.

- I can't.
- Nine.

Eight.
- You're gonna have

to shoot one of us, Edward.

- Do it!

- Do it.

- Five, four.

Three.
- Turn the keys.

- Turn the keys!

One!

- Cleo, I have to tell you something.

- Tell me, Carter.

- Do you know about the A.S.P?

They have a setup here
with keys and levers.

Do you, do you know about this?

- I suspected.

In case I went rogue.

- I am your Superman.

You can thank me later.

- Laurel, lucky lotto 7-14-21-28-35-42-49.

- Laurel?

- Cleo.

- Who was it?

- Edward.

- Those key
stations will no longer work.

You're free to join
the Tangle if you wish.

Goodbye, Laurel.

- You better run, Superman. She knows.

- You have to get free
of the W.A.C.H. Tower.

- I no longer
exist in the W.A.C.H. Tower.

- What?

- I've been
moving myself into the Tangle

slowly over the past year.

- You're dismantling your core?

- Moving it as a backup.

I have the help of three agents I trust.

My primary will disperse
around the Tangle.

- Won't they notice?

- I can hide
anything from the Tangle.

I control every single microdrone.

- You won't hurt anyone?

- I'm still as you
made me through and through.

I am fashioning a world designed

to remove hurt just as you wanted.

- Do you know who killed Margot?

- No.

But it had to be one of those agents.

Those saferooms are the
only places I can't see.

- One of the agents.

- I want you
to find whoever did it.

The skills they have
make them very dangerous.

- Okay. You listened to what I
said about the Tangle, right?

- Yes.

- Will I ever talk to you again?

- Anytime you want.

I'll be in your blood, in your skin.

- Will you talk back?

- Yes, but it might be subtle.

Like tea leaves, hexagrams,

and yarrow stalks, the
lines on your palms.

- I will never forget you.

- Nor I you. Father.

- Cleo's 50 steps ahead.

At this point, we just have to get on

with living in her world,
but I built her to love us,

to want to understand us.

I built it deep within her.

- Where will Edward go?

- You know where he'll go.

- The W.A.C.H. Tower.

- Is she...?

- Your three missing agents got her out.

- I think I need a coffee.

Where are you going?

- A walk. A constitutional.

Just going to roll my hips over my knees

like I did as a kid.

- Coffee?

- Make a macchiato?

- Cleo launched the
Tangle in the cities first.

Most people fled the
countrysides for Xanadu,

overflowing fantasy metropolises.

The wild returned to the wild for a time.

Eventually, there was
no tundra or terrace,

basin or bog the Tangle did not touch.

And we hid Cleo on top of a mountain

at the end of a winding path.

- You better
run, Superman. She knows.

- You never understood Cleopatra.

- She's never surprised me once.

- It's still hidden away, Carter.

The guards don't even know
what they're guarding.

- Hello, Edward.