The key was a wireless connection, allowing Rhian direct control through her terminal that sat on the small desk under the lounger, ordinarily she could get most of the work done on the Viphone itself but, well, this wasn't a normal job. Placing the small rectangle of glass and metal down she flicked her wrist to turn on the terminal, the bluish light flooded her pale flesh, giving the young woman a strange almost translucent quality.
Photos, videos, mental maps, a few notes, besides that singular image, that symbol, it seemed a perfectly ordinary sort of Viphone that anyone might have. Suffice to say that Rhian did not actually get too many "normal" Viphones coming in, more often than not the final images were rather horrifying, sad, or some combination of the two. But here it seemed like the man had simply stopped existing at a certain point.
John could be described as handsome, Rhian had to admit he and the real Kelia made a cute couple when they were together. But what had happened to her? She could asked the AI but she would be evasive at best.
"Kelia do you remember anything from before this point?" she asked as carefully as she could manage, pointing to a few images, seemingly the area where it seemed like images of the real Kelia stopped appearing.
"...." The AI's lack of response told her about as much as she needed to know, it seemed all the messages had been wiped clean, which wasn't unusual after a breakup. The part that scared her, however, was that the symbol apparently had shown up in his time-line just a few weeks before the split, more than 3 months ago.
This guy had been seeing the symbol for months before Rhian, but what about her brother? She clicked the image of the symbol again, her heart jumping a little as it blew up to fill the screen, as if it was charging right at her, why could such a simple thing fill her with such a feeling of dread?
It was clearly meant to be an eye. A swirl of black coming together, twisting on itself and forming an eye like shape in the negative space, shed called that from the moment she saw it, but beyond that she could see no deeper meaning no secret hidden in plain sight, just a mildly creepy symbol, yet the power it apparently held....
Rhian blinked several times as she realized her head was lulling about a bit, vision blurred and sleep almost seemed to reach out and grasp her. She closed the image and turned from the terminal. She was no closer to an answer than she had been before.
"How... Was John the last time you saw him?" she asked out loud.
"look I can either further invade your husband's privacy or you can just tell me about him."
There was a long moment of silence before the AI responded, the voice came from the phone but echoed as if she were sitting across from Rhian at the little table where she took her meals.
"he wasn't sleeping very much, his vitals would always become so very erratic when he did, I urged him to go to a doctor but he refused. He was otherwise pretty normal I'd say, he went out with friends he went to work, he seemed to just power through it, but my John was also so tough and strong an-"
" OK, OK so he wasn't sleeping, did he complain about anything or suggest why?" Rhian interjected. The AI seemed rather wistful at times and she didn't want to get Kelia on any tangents that weren't important.
"Dreams? That would explain why he couldn't sleep, he didn't talk to me much then if I'm honest... He kept to himself mostly only really making use of me when he was on his own." Rhian felt a bit of a cringe at her wording, after all even if she believed other wise, the AI was not a female human, Simply a collection of highly sophisticate algorithms and coding, but she didn't point it out as she'd probably upset the being enough already.
"so he was having the dreams too, that's a start, it proves there's something to this and that I'm not just losing my mind, or at the very least I'm not the ONLY one losing my mind."
She sighed and ran her fingers along the table, should she seek this man out? That would be a dangerous game, she kept herself safe by not asking questions, the people she worked for were dangerous and while yes a lot of their clients were likely to be simply people looking to start anew, their reasoning for wanting such a break from their personalized technology was not always as wholesome as trying to move on after a bad breakup or loss.
".... Where do you both live?" Rhian asked, careful word choices again. Kelia was silent for a moment "I'll show you, but you have to bring me along."
Rhian sighed, that was to be expected.... She gazed blearily at the digital clock on her desk, 4:30...was that am or pm? Time had lost a lot of meaning, she only really knew when she left the house and even then it was usually just based on tempature.
"fine, let's go."