Jimmy Easton 4 nights no bug — “personal days.”

Start with the log, because Vi did. She ducked into Jimmy’s private RECroom in the Sci-Fi wing, pulled the Dream Recording Monitor, and read it clean: no dream record in four nights. For a man contractually required to dream nightly, that’s not a gap, that’s a headline. Plain English: the studio’s sci-fi star stopped showing up, and the #1 dreamer noticed.

Who is he? The reclusive icon: withdrawn in life, debonair hero in his ‘sona (dream-self), openly spiritual, tarot reader to power players, dream lobbyist with legislation on his résumé, and head of Bow tech and R&D. The only active dreamer making Theos outside Reverie. Fading at the box office as younger Fliers eat his demo — spectacle over substance, say the trades — but still the only Bow Flier who claims his dreams foretell things.

“If I give you the reading, will you leave? I got stuff to do.”

Vi, Bax and an embedded Kara drove to the cottage and got the reading anyway: three cards, rushed. Past: Wheel of Fortune reversed — what seemed good won’t sustain. Present: Five of Wands — close minds pulling one over on you. Future: The Magician — bridge of truth and fiction. Translation per Jimmy, reluctantly: a trust-no-one cocktail.

And the excuse? A dying mother at a special facility — told while the allegedly dying woman’s husband ate a sandwich in the next room. Kara’s eyes lit up like bad news was good news. Vi bought it; this desk doesn’t. Add the Belmont library mod project (immersion pods for REMvi viewing, schoolchildren and all) and the garage-door exit at speed, and you have a Flier with somewhere to be. Plain English: he lied to his oldest friend’s face, and everyone in the room knew it except her.

The famous fortune-dream, for the record: buried alive by sentient prehistoric amphibians; next day, sinkholes ate both neighbors’ properties and skipped his house. Coincidence, say most. Lighthouse, says Vi. Verdict: developing — and bugging nowhere. Play the cottage visit →