Metropolis Pt. 2, page 1
ALSO BY PETER ORULLIAN
Novels
The Unremembered
Trial of Intentions
The Sound of Broken Absolutes
Collections
The Vault of Heaven – Story Volume One
Beats of Seven
At the Manger
Concept Album Novelizations
The Astonishing, with John Petrucci of Dream Theater
Wired for Madness, with Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater
The Bell Ringer (Novelization of Symphony North’s concept album)
Forthcoming Collaboration with Brandon Sanderson
Songs of the Dead
Songs of the Dead book 2
Songs of the Dead book 3
PETER ORULLIAN
Based on the album by
DREAM THEATER
Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory
Copyright © 2024 by Dream Theater
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN: 978-1-7338105-5-5
Ebook Edition: October 2024
Cover art by Dave McKean
Cover design by Christian Bentulan
Interior layout and press production by REview Creative
Published by Descant Publishing, LLC PO Box 13017
Mill Creek, WA 98082
www.orullian.com
This book is for
Dream Theater fans
past, present, and future
Acknowledgments
Peter Orullian
Thanks this time belong to:
Dream Theater for their trust and friendship. It was an honor to write this book and help celebrate a genre-defining album.
Mike Myers, Shawn Speakman, Rachelle Longé McGhee, Bret Sable, and all my beta readers for their invaluable feedback and publishing savvy.
And Dave Walbeck, for inviting me to audition for my first band. It’s all his fault, senator.
Author’s Note
Peter Orullian
So much in life is about timing.
Dream Theater fans may remember that I worked with John Petrucci on the novelization of The Astonishing in 2016. After we released that book, I began receiving email from fans asking about a similar treatment for Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory. I loved the idea and put the bug in John’s ear about it. John loved it, too, but the band was on tour, and the guys had commitments beyond that, which made the timing a challenge.
Over the ensuing years, the idea came up repeatedly in my conversations with the band, but the timing was still never right.
Then, in the fall of 2023 it occurred to us that October 26, 2024, would be the 25th anniversary of Scenes from a Memory. Once we realized that, the idea to novelize the record solidified quickly. We still had to navigate the band’s 2024 recording schedule, but we were able to find time for some incredible brainstorming sessions and began expanding on the central story of the album.
One of the early decisions we made was to more fully explore the lives of Victoria, Julian, and Edward, which gave me the idea to write the book in two separate timelines. So, the book alternates between 1999 and 1928. This was a major source of the fun, since it created the opportunity to revisit two really cool periods of time and weave in the vibes and technologies that were emerging in those eras.
Then we talked at length about Metropolis itself. Metropolis is modeled after big American cities like New York and Chicago, much the way Gotham is in the DC Comics universe. Most of the book uses real-world references and actual historical events, like Prohibition, the mob, and Steamboat Willie, to name a few. But, because it’s not exactly our world, some elements are also subtly fantastical, such as the hypnotherapy regressions and embellished audio recovery techniques. I did a fair amount of research to ground these parts of the book in actual methods used in our world, but then extrapolated beyond them to evoke a sense of wonder.
Once all this initial story work was done, I built an extensive outline on which to base our creative sessions and finally began to write the book itself.
Along the way, I’d dash off texts to the guys, asking for opinions on details that cropped up during the writing process. Sometimes they had ready answers, like with the color of Victoria’s hair. Other times the exchanges became opportunities for further brainstorming, which led us even deeper into the story. We explored the ownership of the switchblade found at the murder scene, the nature of Nicholas’s vocation in audio restoration, and several times we carefully examined the lyrics of the songs, plumbing them for more meaning.
Once in a while, I’d get a random text when fiction intersected with real life. On one occasion, John sent me a road sign he saw that read, “Murphy’s Metals”—Murphy is the older man referenced in “Fatal Tragedy” who becomes a prominent character in the novel. Another time we had an exchange about the nature of the spirit carrying on after death. And we laughed when I sent a note that I’d invented a new subgenre of music called “scour metal”—all the rage in Metropolis in 1999.
I love concept albums. They bring together two of my favorite things—music and narrative. When done well, they’re a beautifully concise vehicle for conveying story, while taking the listener on an emotional journey in the way only music can. For all that, they’re a complete and powerful medium all on their own.
But some concept albums have a story big enough for further development—deepening character backstory, examining character relationships, fleshing out the world and environment, adding conflict, humor, suspense, and even romance. Scenes from a Memory is rich with the opportunity to explore all these things, and that’s precisely what we’ve tried to do with this book.
I’m fortunate to know the guys in the band. For that reason alone, I would have poured my heart into this project. But I’m also a huge Dream Theater fan and have been from the beginning. I know how much this album means to us as fans. I wanted this novel to be something the band could be proud of, the fans would enjoy, and something that people who’ve never heard the album could read and maybe even get turned on to the music. I hope I’ve succeeded. And while I did come at this both personally and professionally, I also had a hell of a lot of fun writing this book.
I’m grateful that the time was finally right.
—Peter Orullian, Seattle, Summer 2024
CHAPTER 1
June 30, 1999
NICHOLAS SANTORI pushed up the volume faders on his Sony DMX-R100, driving his studio monitors hard to keep himself awake. The crushing guitar rhythms hit him with a rush of adrenaline. It was 2:37 a.m. He’d been restoring the audio cassette of the first Gates of Absurdity demo for hours and begun drifting to sleep. The guys from Gates would take it personally if they saw him nodding off in the middle of their first track, “Do Not Go Gentle,” but Nick’s fight with sleep wasn’t just tonight—it was every night. The dreams were getting worse.
He inched the volume up even higher. The compression monitor on his Pro Tools software lit up red and the track began to distort. He eased back in his mixing chair. He was exhausted. His studio and the main house sat on a quarter acre in the heart of Farbridge Island. Lately, when he could sleep at all, the studio was where he did it. His wife, Jen, and son, Billy, were asleep in the house.
His detached studio was dead silent from the outside. The live room and isolation booths were dark. These days they usually were. He still recorded and produced the occasional record, but over the past eight years he’d begun specializing in audio restoration. The money was better and he enjoyed it.
Dimmed counter-set ceiling lights bathed the control room in golden hues. The walls were rough wood paneling stained a russet brown. To one side of his mixing console stood a rack of guitars—mostly for him to noodle on when he was waiting for software filters to run on old tracks he was restoring for clients. On the other side was a small TV and a Keith Monks cleaning turntable that he used to clean old records. Against the left wall sat a black leather couch for guys to take a load off during long recording sessions or for clients who didn’t trust him alone with their antique recordings. A snare drum and a couple of large-diaphragm condenser mics lay on the ottoman—tools Nick used to capture the acoustic signature of rooms for certain audio restoration jobs.
The back of the room, though, that’s where the treasure was.
The entire rear wall was covered with shelves displaying the history of recording devices: on the left a phonautograph still fitted with an operable bristle and soot-covered paper; next to it a phonograph, complete with a sheet of tinfoil wrapped around its cylindrical drum; next to that a wax cylinder version of the same; and next to that a gramophone with a blank disc ready for the stylus and vibrating diaphragm; at the far end was an old Ampex Model 200 reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorder. After that, it got less romantic: a modern tape recorder; an old external compact disc burner, though next to it he’d placed a CD copy of Billy Joel’s 52nd Street—the first CD to hit the market; and the original box from his copy of Sound Tools—a precursor to Pro Tools—next to a prototype iPod.
Nick had used them all at one time or another, testing to understand the differences between acoustic recording, electric-based recording, different mediums, all of it. He’d studied sound all his life. He heard nuances other people didn’t seem to hear. It wasn’t just pitch, though he could identify that easily enough, and it was certainly more than volume and dynamics
He wasn’t a great musician himself, but he’d known his calling from the time he’d held his first tape recorder. He wanted to capture that music and language and bring it to life. Sometimes that meant an old, brittle demo cassette like Gates of Absurdity, but just as often it was a jazz trio out of Harlem on an old reel-to-reel tape or a street rapper trying to restore his first beats from damaged session files. He loved the harder jobs, like late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century shellac records, coated with palmitic acid and often cracked and degraded. He even recorded ambient sounds in the city, in the country, and on the waterfront. They all spoke to him in one way or another. And his reputation as “the man with the ear” kept him busy. He’d just always felt like he was helping to capture or recapture a piece of the world so that others could enjoy it.
“Do Not Go Gentle” ended, throwing the control room into sudden silence.
He considered putting on some coffee—try and pull an all-nighter, avoid the dreams altogether, if he could.
But he could barely hold his head up.
He fished his bottle of pills out of his jeans pocket and gave it a shake. One left. He pulled off the bottle top and dumped it into his palm. Five milligrams of prazosin. It was the only thing that helped with the nightmares. He’d started with one milligram, and even five milligrams weren’t doing it anymore. He’d had the dreams since he was a kid, but back then they’d only come a few times a year. Ever since his daughter Emily had died, they’d become more frequent, and more real.
Jimmy at Mendel Plaza had wanted the Gates recovery last Monday. Nick needed to go into the city the next day to deliver it, but first he had to get some sleep. He popped the pill, shuffled over to the couch, pulled the tie out of his hair, letting it fall to his shoulders, and dropped himself onto the cushions. His shoulders and back sank into the old leather. A few hours’ rest, that’s all he needed. But as he laid his head back, he couldn’t close his eyes. The dream had come every night this week. He didn’t think he could take it, especially with no prazosin left.
His eyelids fluttered, his head slipped to the side . . .
He’s standing on a dark street at the top of a hill, his breath clouding in front of his face. A cold, gentle breeze flaps the tails of his coat. On the sides of the road, frosted leaves glitter in the moonlight. Most of the houses are dark, other than the occasional candle shimmering behind shuttered windows.
He hears a sound so soft it might be branches groaning in the breeze. He turns toward the sound, which seems to come from behind two massive elm trees. He hears sobbing, begging, pleading. A child or a woman.
A deeper voice, sharp with anger, barks a command muted by the wind. Nick steps beneath the trees. He can make out a light shining dimly through the leaves above him. Then the leaves begin tearing from their branches, scraping his cheeks and brow.
The weeping rises into a wail. A woman is screaming. Deep thuds echo into the night like someone has fallen hard to the ground.
The screaming becomes more frantic, staccato stabs piercing the night between the woman’s every heaving breath. He hears her crying “No!” over and over again. “No! No!”
“No!” Nick screamed, and sat up on his studio couch.
He gasped for breath. His face and neck were drenched with sweat. His head was pounding. He couldn’t focus on anything, wasn’t even sure where he was. He reached out to steady himself and knocked the snare drum off the ottoman. It buzzed as it hit the floor.
Nick shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, pressing hard and focusing on the pain. Then he opened his eyes again. His first thought—Jen and Billy, were they screaming?
He shot to his feet, tore through the control room to the studio entrance, threw open the inner and outer doors, and raced across a moonlit driveway to the back porch of the house. He slipped on the dew-slick steps and fell hard, but he scrambled back to his feet and staggered into the kitchen.
Everything was quiet, just the ticking of the big cat-eyes clock above the pantry. He hurried down the hall and up the stairs to the second floor, picked up his son’s little-league bat from the floor of the hallway, and slammed into his boy’s bedroom, bat held high. Billy sat bolt upright, his eyes wide. “Dad! What are you doing?”
There was no intruder. No struggle. Billy was shaking, holding his covers to his chest.
“Sit still, Billy,” he told the boy. “I’ll be right back.”
He rushed down the hall to the master bedroom and threw open the door.
Jen screamed, rolled off the bed, and came up with her father’s service revolver. “Nick, stop! It was a dream! Just the dream again!”
He peered into the corners of their bedroom, the window—still shut and locked—and the bathroom. He couldn’t shake the feeling. Billy came to the doorway, sniffling. Jen crawled back on the bed, still breathing hard.
Nick lowered the bat as the dream faded and the real world set in. He sat on the bed beside Jen, who slipped the gun into the bedside table drawer and finger-combed her long blond hair off her face. Billy padded over and stood in front of them, staring with his wide brown eyes.
“I’m sorry, Jen,” Nick said. “I just, I hear the screams . . .”
She put her hand on his knee. “I know, honey. I miss her, too.”
Nick only wished he’d been dreaming about his dead daughter. He’d never corrected Jen’s assumption about it. But this dream was something else, and he didn’t know what.
CHAPTER 2
July 8, 1928
VICTORIA PAGE made her way down the narrow cobblestone alley, her paintbox in one hand, a bundle of wood in the other. The cobblestones smelled of urine and mold, and the summer heat—even at night—made it cling to her skin. She held her breath and strode to the backyard of her tenement building at 87 Orchard Street. Some of the kids were still out playing in the dirt, cracking wood for small fires, throwing stones at rats. She smiled and said hello, then started up the fire stairs to her apartment. She’d only taken in six bits all day, but she’d molded a partial bust of Julian she couldn’t wait to show him.
She stepped through the window into their fifth-floor room. The Flanagan kids were quietly playing a game of jacks somewhere in the corner. The rhythm of the bouncing ball, swiping of jacks, and children laughing never got old. The landlord had subdivided the already cramped three-bedroom apartments into three “living spaces.” She and Julian shared a sink with two other families, and the privy down the hall was communal for all twelve families on the floor. The bedsheet that served as a “wall” between their room and the others flickered with lamplight from the rooms beyond. Their mattress leaned upright against the opposite wall—they took it down at night to sleep. Ordinarily, the apartment smelled like men needing baths and clothes needing laundering, but tonight her nose tingled—Mrs. O’Connell was cooking something with cayenne pepper again. Thank heaven for small favors.
Julian was sleeping, head on the table next to their small stove, a bouquet of daisies cupped loosely in one hand. Victoria stowed Julian’s switchblade, which she always carried when she was on her own, behind their mattress. Then she slid in next to him, ran a hand through his thick black hair, and kissed the back of his head.
“Long day?” she asked.
“Mmmm.” He lifted his head and put an arm around her waist. “We brought in a train full of paintings from Bavarian artists into the city today. Glenn says some go for as much as a thousand. They’re showing at the Broadhurst Museum next month. How about we put on our Sunday best, head over to the railyard, and glom one for ourselves while they’re still up in storage? We could use that kind of cush.”
