Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory

Book excerpt: Nicholas Santori, a sound-engineer who specializes in audio recovery, has had troubling dreams all his life. With the anniversary of his daughter’s death, those dreams have gotten worse, threatening the stability of his family and perhaps his own safety. After receiving cryptic messages about his dreams from his clairvoyant son, Nicholas seeks help from an eccentric hypnotherapist with questionable intentions. During regression Nicholas learns that in a former life he was a young girl named Victoria Page, that she was murdered, and that her case was never truly solved. Believing he can end his nightmares if he can solve Victoria’s murder, he finds retired detective Colin Murphy, who’s been obsessed with Victoria’s case since he saw her lying dead seventy years ago in the house where Murphy now lives. Together, they hope to solve the cold case, while someone is desperately trying to stop them. Orullian deftly weaves the two sides of this interconnected story across the twentieth century. From nightmares, to zeppelins, to anechoic chambers, to train heists, to mafia hits, to speakeasies, to heartfelt conversations about loss, Orullian’s propulsive imagining of Dream Theater’s critically acclaimed album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory is by turns thrilling, suspenseful, and poignant.