Brick

Guest Links

• Daniel’s Website
• Focus Puller
• Daniel’s Instagram

References

• Brick etymology
• Rocky
• Tron
• Wreck-it Ralph
• The Cask of Amontillado
• Brick
• Almost Plausible: Flashlight
• In the Year 2525
• Android Phone Robot
• Clippy
• Almost Plausible: Paper Clip
• Goldilocks Planet
• Gattaca
• Star Trek
  • Data
• Hercule Poirot
• Red Herring
• See Something, Say Something
• Three Laws of Robotics
• Amazon Go
• The All is Lost Moment
• “Cool motive, still murder.”
• Blade Runner
• The Purge
• Keystone Cops
• Demolition Man
  • “Damn, I’m possessed!” Scene
• The Fifth Element
• The truth about the QWERTY keyboard

Corrections

We got just about every date related to Demolition Man incorrect. The film came out in 1993, the opening scene happens in 1996, and the rest of the film is set in 2032.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
He had rough hands and it felt good.

[Daniel]
Yeah, it was like Blade Runner, you know, he just comes in and he’s just like, bold and-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Daniel]
There’s maybe a slap, you never know. It’s crazy.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m on board with this. Yes. She’s used to taking care of everybody else and being in charge. There’s finally a man to take charge of her in the bedroom.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, Story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary ideas and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and here with me, as always, are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
Today is a very special day for Almost Plausible, because for the first time on the podcast, we’re joined by a special guest. He’s a filmmaker and writer with a pretty cinematic backstory himself. It’s Daniel Hess.

[Daniel]
Hey. Thanks for having me.

[Thomas]
Daniel, tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience with film and writing in particular.

[Daniel]
Yeah. So I’ve been in the film world since about 2012. I’ve worked on various short films that have gone on to win some awards at festivals.

[Thomas]
Cool.

[Daniel]
Started writing my first feature at the peak of 2020 with the pandemic, and I’ve just been working with a few indie filmmakers to help get some features off the ground at this point.

[Thomas]
Great. Well, we’re excited to have you on the show. And, Daniel, since you’re the guest, you get to choose today’s topic. What is our movie going to be about?

[Daniel]
So this week will be about a brick.

[Thomas]
Solid choice. On every episode of Almost Plausible, we begin with a pitch session where each of us shares the ideas that we’ve come up with for the episode’s topic, and then we’ll pick the one we like the best and develop it into a story. Daniel, what are the pitches you came up with for a brick?

[Daniel]
Okay, so my first idea was using a brick as a visual metaphor for a crumbling relationship, like seeing, like, a piece of a brick from a house sort of just falling out of the place and the house collapsing and it’s sort of being this whole relationship drama thing. My second idea is a brick is throwing through a window of a house. So like a kid or a young adult throwing a brick through a window of an elderly neighbor or something like that as just acting up, but then ends up getting caught and there’s community service with that person. And then it’s sort of like this coming-of-age drama where it’s like they bond together and have this whole relationship. And my third thought was a future sort of Sci-Fi film where a brick is used as a murder weapon and it’s this whole mystery thing around it because bricks are not used anymore in this future world. So it sort of has maybe like a Blade Runner type of feel to it, like a future-noir type of film.

[Emily]
I like that one.

[Shep]
Of course Emily likes that one. It’s got a murderer in it.

[Thomas]
All right, Shep, why don’t you tell us what you have?

[Shep]
I have a guy murdered by a brick who then haunts it as a ghost. I’m not joking. That is one that I wrote down.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Daniel]
Love it.

[Shep]
Yeah. So I was going through, like, brick stuff. Bricks and media, bricks and songs, songs with bricks in the title, movies or shows with bricks and the themes of bricks and, like, the etymology of brick. Do you know where the word brick comes from?

[Thomas and Daniel]
No.

[Emily]
Enlighten us.

[Shep]
The word brick that we have now comes from a Germanic language. So, like, Middle Dutch around then where it meant tile, but it’s derived from the verb to break.

[Thomas]
Oh, interesting.

[Shep]
So it’s the root of break. So you take a big thing and you break it up into tiles. That’s where we get the word brick from. So it sounds like break almost. And when you break your phone, you’ve bricked it.

[Thomas]
Right!

[Shep]
It’s coming full circle. And I thought that was really interesting.

[Emily]
Interesting.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s really cool.

[Shep]
So I had a pitch. Speaking of breaking things, there’s an alien invasion, and we have Commander Brick Brickerson facing off against the alien invasion, and he somehow bricks the alien fleet. I’m sure you could put a bunch of brick puns in there if someone likes puns.

[Thomas]
Nobody likes puns.

[Shep]
My final pitch was so we had a person as a brick, and we had breaking. So the last one was a brick as a person. So a brick that comes alive. So I was thinking, like, a Golem or a person made of stone, perhaps named Brick or nicknamed Brick. I don’t have much more than that. Just the possibility of a person that is a brick or brick that becomes a person.

[Thomas]
All right, Emily, what do you have?

[Shep]
I bet she has a murder.

[Emily]
Perhaps, you’ll have to wait and see. There might be both murder and ghosts among my pitches.

[Shep]
Oh, my gosh.

[Thomas]
Shock. Surprise.

[Emily]
All right. For my first pitch is a brick person, a person named Brick. He’s a real salt-of-the-earth type of man who becomes a hometown hero as he competes for a world strongman competition. He’s a bricklayer by trade, so everyone calls him Brick Johnson. Brick because he’s solid, strong, and dependable, and Johnson because it’s his last name. That’s what I have for that.

[Shep]
What is the story? I mean, is it about the strongman competition or is it about Brick the person?

[Emily]
It’s about Brick the person competing in it. And it’s one of those split stories where you see both the town rooting for them and they’re invested in this win because it’s a win for everyone. And then you see his story of him going as this small-town hick guy who’s just a bricklayer competing with all these… It’s Rocky, right?

[Shep]
If he has low self-esteem and he doesn’t think of himself as being strong, even though he is physically strong, maybe he’s emotionally or psychologically weak through the fault of some trauma in his past. And, like, competing in the strongman competition is not only just an honor for the town, but also him working through that.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. Okay, so far so good.

[Emily]
All right. So second pitch is very Tron-esque. I’m going to just kind of preface it with that. A young person is sucked into a video game system and the world of the game is falling apart and it’s being systematically destroyed by a virus. The gamer can save the world by finding and replacing this golden brick, Tetris type piece into the home structure of the game world. And we find out that the culprit behind the virus is a group of do-gooder moms known as Moms Against Gaming In Computers and that’s all I have so far.

[Daniel]
I like that. That’s good.

[Shep]
Can we come up with a better acronym for the-

[Emily]
No, because I wanted it to be M.A.G.I.C.

[Daniel]
Against-

[Shep]
I get it Now.

[Daniel]
Magic.

[Emily]
Like I said, that one’s very Tron-esque.

[Daniel]
Right?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You had me at Tron, which was the first thing that you said, so I was on board from the get go. I liked the going into computer games stuff. I like Tron. I like Wreck-It Ralph.

[Thomas]
I think for brick, it makes sense as well. I mean, bricks are a very common element in a lot of video games.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. I was like, video game bricks is like a thing. And then here comes my ghost story. While restoring an old farmhouse, a young man finds some mysterious markings on the bricks in the home’s huge central hearth. But even more mysterious is one of those bricks is missing, breaking the intricate design. Later, while clearing out the old onsite cemetery, he finds a gravestone with another mysterious pattern. He accidentally knocks it loose and finds the missing brick. He returns it to the hearth and opens a portal that releases an elemental spirit, which wreaks havoc over the property and in his life. So he has to find a way to re-trap the elemental and restore balance to the property and himself.

[Shep]
How much of it is about bricks?

[Emily]
Well, the brick is essential to releasing the elemental. And I was thinking it would be essential because that one brick was missing. So you have to find which is the right brick to close the portal to trap it back in. So I was going to make it super important. I’ve got a couple more. So the next one is a small town is having a ceremony to place the final brick on the new courthouse to find out there’s a controversy over where the building was placed, and part of the town is completely just unaware of what’s going on. They’re just excited about this fancy new building and this fun town picnic/party thing. And another group knows the nefarious dealings behind getting this courthouse erected, and they’re trying to tear down the building before the last brick is placed. And then my final one will be shocking to the two of you. A seemingly normal, single, middle aged, straight CIS white man is really a violent serial killer that uses a brick to bash in his victim skulls. He then uses each brick to seal himself into the wall of his basement because it’s the only way to stop the demon inside him.

[Shep]
I’m shocked.

[Daniel]
There we go.

[Thomas]
When he seals himself in, does he take with him a cask of Amontillado?

[Emily]
Now that’s too on the nose.

[Shep]
For the love of God, Thomas!

[Emily]
That’s all I got for us.

[Thomas]
All right, well, I don’t have very many, and what I have is very, like, high level. There’s not a lot of detail in mind. You’ll be surprised to hear how original some of these are. My first, a brick from a building that burned down is haunted by a ghost that died in the fire.

[Shep]
Oh, my gosh.

[Thomas]
Never heard that one before. So I was thinking the building could be either a theater or something like that. And the ghost could be a famous celebrity or something along those lines.

[Shep]
Someone who was famous. Get someone whose career is dead, and they need this as, like, a little boost.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. There you go. My next idea, a brick with a note on it crashes through someone’s window, and that starts the story. And ideally, the brick would be important later on as well.

[Shep]
Elderly neighbors.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Another very original story there. People sell bricks as fundraisers, so usually, like, a name will be etched into the brick and you’ll see it in a pathway or something like that. So that was just an idea that I had had or a concept that I knew about that I thought could make an interesting story if we fleshed that out. And my last idea is a guy who’s building something large, like, really big, like, impossibly large, and he’s building it out of bricks. So a wall or a path or a building or something along those lines. It’s one of those “This guy must be nuts. Why is he doing this?” kind of projects. Just some dude somewhere building a thing, and it’s breathtaking in scale.

[Shep]
It’s twice as big as the Great Wall of China.

[Thomas]
Right?

[Shep]
He’s just building it in the desert somewhere, and it’s bonkers.

[Thomas]
Something like that.

[Shep]
But then the Huns come and the wall stops them. So who’s crazy now?

[Daniel]
Every time.

[Thomas]
All right, that’s what I have. Is there a story that’s immediately jumping out at anybody?

[Daniel]
I like the video game one. I thought that was interesting. I’m also surprised that nobody went, like, the next step to that movie Brick. It’s like a movie about somebody watching the movie Brick.

[Shep]
So it’s a meta-

[Daniel]
It’s like a meta. Yeah.

[Shep]
I mean, I like the movie Brick.

[Daniel]
It’s a good movie.

[Shep]
Yeah, I agree. Rian Johnson’s first film.

[Thomas]
I like the future Sci-Fi one with the brick as a murder weapon.

[Emily]
I like that one. I think that one’s really cool.

[Thomas]
It’s a cool idea, the sort of anachronistic murder weapon.

[Emily]
So I’m assuming in this world, they don’t have buildings made out of brick. Those are all gone now. We just don’t have that, it’s steel or whatever. So where did the brick come from? Where did they find it?

[Daniel]
Exactly.

[Shep]
So is this going to be a mystery? Because we’ve tried to write mysteries in an hour before. I like mysteries.

[Daniel]
I mean, that’s how I saw it.

[Emily]
There’s four of us this time, so maybe we’ll get through it faster.

[Thomas]
Well, and if we’re going to try to tackle something that typically is very detail oriented, then maybe let’s aim for fewer details, try to take a higher view of the story.

[Emily]
Yeah, we can do it Flashlight style.

[Daniel]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. Is this the one that we’re going to go with? The sooner we start, the more time we have.

[Emily]
This is true. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s be decisive,

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Okay, so, far, far future, because there aren’t bricks anymore.

[Thomas]
It’s like 2038, not Hollywood far future. Like actual far future.

[Emily]
All right.

[Thomas]
So when does our film take place? Definitely well in the future, like-

[Shep]
Well into the future.

[Emily]
2227, I don’t know.

[Thomas]

2525. And then we can get that awesome song in there.

[Emily]
Yes, the song.

[Daniel]
There you go.

[Shep]
There are brick buildings that exist today that are hundreds of years old. So it’s tough.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Shep]
It’s going to be tough. Maybe it can’t even be on Earth. Maybe humanity has expanded to the stars and this is some other planet.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Daniel]
There you go.

[Emily]
Oh, that makes it even better, because that’s definitely more believable.

[Thomas]
Why is there a brick on this planet in the first place?

[Shep]
There have never been bricks on this planet.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Now it’s even more of a mystery. Well, I like that. Well, the reason I was asking is I want whoever is investigating to have an android partner.

[Emily]
Okay. Now, is he short and green and kind of stocky?

[Shep]
What? What are you referencing?

[Emily]
The android robot for your phones.

[Shep]
Oh. No. No. No no no no no.

[Daniel]
Gonna be like the Microsoft assist guy. Like Clippy.

[Thomas]
Clippy!

[Shep]
We already did Paper Clip.

[Thomas]
“I see you’re investigating a murder.”

[Shep]
How come we didn’t have Clippy investigating a murder? I see that- Oh, man, that one writes itself.

[Emily]
I had Clippy as the murderer. That’s why.

[Shep]
That’s the twist.

[Thomas]
So is this a planet in our solar system or like, way the hell off somewhere else?

[Emily]
Well, obviously way the hell off somewhere else. It’s another Goldilocks planet somewhere else. We finally reached Interstellar.

[Shep]
Well, I mean, we could colonize the upper atmosphere of Venus where the temperature is the right temperature and it’s about the right pressure. It just has to be very high up. Which raises the question, where did the brick come from? Because you literally couldn’t have made it out of the earth of that planet because you can’t reach it because it’s way too hot down there. So if you’re in a bunch of cloud-cities, then everything there is stuff that you brought there. So someone brought a brick to Venus.

[Thomas]
It’d be interesting to see a scene where somebody’s going through the logs or something of various spaceship flights to Venus from Earth and looking for discrepancies in weight because there’s clearly an undeclared piece of cargo.

[Emily]
What’s the significance of the brick to the murderer? Because if they brought it all the way to Venus, then it means something to them, right?

[Shep]
Right. So whoever got murdered perhaps got murdered for a reason, maybe something they did on Earth.

[Thomas]
Right. Perhaps they’ve murdered somebody or were the cause of a person’s death.

[Shep]
They didn’t maintain their slum-house skyscraper building in New York and it eventually collapsed and killed a bunch of people. And this is a brick from that building, and it’s haunted by the ghost of one of the people.

[Thomas]
Well, this sounds like a video game I want to play. So we have the murderer and the victim, and there’s some sort of a connection there, we know. We have the investigator and their android partner.

[Shep]
Classic sci-fi staple.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
What other characters do we need?

[Emily]
A government official trying to quiet the investigation, not make it too public, too loud, too noticeable. Because they don’t want to ruin the reputation of this fancy settlement on Venus.

[Thomas]
“How did this brick get here? The security is clearly broken if somebody can bring a brick and murder a person with it. This should never have happened.” So, yeah, there’s some official who’s trying to cover all this up or play it way down, so that, one, people aren’t panicking, and two, this sort of thing doesn’t… nobody tries to attempt something like this again.

[Shep]
Right. It was someone sneaking a brick into the cloud-city was the problem, not the murder, but the fact that they could.

[Thomas and Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
I mean, it’s probably not the cloud-city’s first murder, depending on how old the cloud-city is.

[Emily]
No, but they haven’t had one in a long time because they only let the right people in.

[Thomas]
Sure. Sort of a Gattaca situation.

[Daniel]
You got to go a little utopian with it.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Daniel]
Yeah, shake it up.

[Emily]
Like all the dirty, violent people have been left on Earth.

[Thomas]
How does the investigator figure out who the murderer is? Do they figure out the connection based off of the victim’s past?

[Emily]
Yes, they have to figure it out that way. And the first part of the movie can just be the mystery of what the murder weapon was. Maybe they don’t have it. They just have some clay residue on the victim and the square shape in their skull, right? And they’re like, “What the fuck would do this? This is weird.” And then somebody has to figure out, “Oh, is it brick? Well, we don’t have brick buildings.” Or would the robot know that right away?

[Shep]
The robot knows whatever you want it to know.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s whatever is convenient for the plot.

[Thomas]
Why would you program the android to know what a brick is?

[Shep]
I mean, it has a database of information, I’m sure, but…

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Well, I don’t know. Is it like Star Trek computer type robot? Is it Data?

[Thomas]
Maybe the investigator shouldn’t be there. He’s not one of the Gattaca people. He’s one of the slummy people, but he’s a really good investigator. Not that he’s a slummy person, but he doesn’t meet the upper crust type of clientele that whatever Cloud Corporation is looking for to populate Venus, but they need him because he’s good at it.

[Daniel]
I was going to say I like that because then it’s like your audience surrogate, right? He’s coming to this place for the first time, just like the audience is.

[Shep]
Yeah. So Rich Cloud-City only has those android detectives because there isn’t a lot of crime, and maybe there’s cameras everywhere, and people are always monitored, so things are easy to solve, and then this murder happens, and they can’t figure out how it happened. Their conclusion is it’s impossible for this person to have been murdered. It makes no sense. So they find this human detective and they bring him on board. That’s why he’s partnered with the android guy, because the android guy was the thing investigating the murder. And so it needs that human intuition to come in and go, “Oh, he was actually killed by a brick.” “What’s a brick?” “Well, on Earth, they used to make buildings out of this clay material, which doesn’t exist here.”

[Thomas]
One of the things I really like about what you were just saying, Shep, is typically what we see is the lead investigator is the human, and it’s the android partner. And in this case, the lead investigator is the android, and the human is the partner that tags along with them.

[Shep]
Yeah. Also, probably the victim was in Rich Cloud-City under a different identity, trying to hide from their crimes.

[Daniel]
There you go.

[Shep]
So that’s an additional roadblock in the investigation is they can’t make the connection between the victim and the building collapsing on Earth, if that’s what it was.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because this is a totally different name.

[Thomas]
So does the human investigator immediately recognize that it’s a brick? Is he presented with the clay chunks that they pulled out of the victim’s skull and understands right away? “Oh, well, yeah. Look at the impact pattern. Look at this… clay… bits.”

[Shep]
There’s like even a computer model of a brick, like a 3D thing. It just appears to be some square rectangular made of clay. Matches nothing in our database.

[Thomas]
“Clearly this is a brick.” The android is like “A what now?”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah. I think he can know what it is right away. That would make sense.

[Thomas]
That even could be, maybe, how he proves himself. Like the android thinks “This is bullshit. I’m so much smarter. I can think so much faster. I can process things so much more efficiently. Why are you bringing a human in here?”

[Emily]
I like the android has those feelings that we typically see in human detectives that are like “It has no soul. It doesn’t know.”

[Shep]
It’s not emotional about it. It’s just logical.

[Thomas and Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
It is inefficient to bring a human into this.

[Thomas]
And then the very first thing he does is immediately identifies what the mystery murder object is. And so the android is like “Hmm.” So I feel like there are two main branches of the investigation. How did the murder weapon get to the cloud-city? And who is the murderer, and why?

[Emily]
Well, if you figure out one, then you figure out the other, obviously.

[Thomas]
The brick, does it belong to the person, the head honcho? This is like a brick from a building that he built on Earth. He’s like a big-time real estate developer guy. He’s the one that created cloud-city. And so he brought this brick from his original building that he built on Earth as a little memorial or memento.

[Shep]
Is he the murderer, or is this a red herring?

[Thomas]
Could go either way.

[Shep]
Yeah. So they know that it’s a brick, and they know that there is a brick on cloud-city.

[Thomas]
Well, I don’t know that they would know that there was a brick on cloud-city, but it’s a thing that could be discovered somehow.

[Shep]
Oh, he could have hidden it, because when he finds out that the murder weapon was a brick, and he knows he has a brick, even though it’s not the brick that was used in the murder, it’s just another brick.

[Thomas]
There’s, like a display case of stuff, and he takes it out of there and hides it.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But when they’re in his office, they see the dust, little bits of clay that have fallen off of this brick that are just sort of sitting in the display case.

[Shep]
And now the brick is missing. So obviously it was the murder weapon (even though it wasn’t).

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s a great little tangent in an investigation.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Who is the murderer? How did they get here? Obviously, the victim, we’ve decided, doesn’t belong here.

[Shep]
What do you mean, the victim doesn’t belong here? This is Rich Cloud-City. He’s living here under an assumed name. But that’s to hide from his crimes. He’s still rich, which is the most important thing.

[Thomas]
Does he want to be in cloud-city, or is he there because he’s hiding from the warrant that’s out for him on Earth?

[Emily]
I think he wants to be there. I think that was kind of the goal of his life anyway.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
His plan was to just take on this new identity and just go about his life as if nothing had happened. Because in his opinion, nothing did happen.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Nothing important happened. Nothing worth thinking about ever again.

[Emily]
No, just a minor inconvenience to his paperwork.

[Shep]
And everybody wants to be in Rich Cloud-City anyway. It’s the perfect city. As they keep telling us over and over again. It’s the perfect city. Every citizen is chosen specifically.

[Thomas]
These damn blimps flying around with the ads on them back on Earth.

[Shep]
Right. Or would they even advertise it? It’s a secret Rich Cloud-City.

[Thomas]
That’s true. Yeah. If you’re rich enough to be there, you already know about it.

[Shep]
Right. Which is why the human detective has never heard of it. When he gets the transfer paperwork for this investigation, he’s like “There is no city with this name.”

[Thomas]
Maybe he’s sent to a spaceport. He’s, like, thinks that he’s going to be investigating something at the spaceport. Like, “Okay, here’s your ride.” And he’s like, “My what now? What are we doing?”

[Emily]
I like the idea that he thinks he’s going to, like the moon or Mars, one of the other colonies. And they’re like, “Well, we’re taking you to Venus.” And he’s like, “There’s no colony on Venus they can’t colonize Venus.”

[Shep]
Oh, I figured there’d be lots of cities on Venus. This is just one of them. But this is for the rich people, because everyone is exclusive.

[Thomas]
I like the idea that this is far enough in the future that we’ve already fucked up Mars. Earth is fucked. Mars is fucked. Venus, ah! So how does the murderer get to Venus?

[Emily]
Supply ship.

[Shep]
Obviously, they’re also traveling under false identity. That’s the big reveal at the end, Poirot-style.

[Thomas]
Are there support staff on Venus who are not the rich people?

[Emily]
No, they have androids for that.

[Daniel]
It’s got to be the AI.

[Thomas]
Yeah, good point.

[Daniel]
Yeah.

[Emily]
But they do need regular deliveries of things.

[Thomas]
Sure. Right. You need resources that you just cannot get on Venus. So there are space truckers.

[Daniel]
Should the murderer be somebody that’s doing the delivery runs? Should it be, like, one person, since it’s so exclusive is there like just one person who does that and that could possibly be the person?

[Thomas]
I guess it depends how many supplies they need.

[Shep]
Yeah. How big is the city?

[Emily]
It’s big enough to keep the gene pool fine and safe, but small enough to create that exclusivity.

[Thomas]
Are we going to say, like, size of a cruise ship?

[Shep]
I’d say much bigger. Much bigger. If this is in the future and population has continued to grow, the top 1% are still going to be millions of people.

[Thomas]
So two cruise ships is what you’re saying?

[Shep]
At least five. Come on.

[Thomas]
So they probably have a bunch of people delivering stuff all the time then.

[Daniel]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Are there people who hide out on these trucks, stowaways who try to sneak into cloud-city?

[Shep]
Sure, but they get caught all the time because, like I said, there’s monitoring cameras everywhere.

[Thomas]
Right. So does this guy figure out “If I hire somebody to take me under the city and I climb up through the trash chute, then I can get in.” Why would they monitor the trash chute?

[Shep]
Why wouldn’t they monitor the trash chute?

[Thomas]
Because we need a way for them to get in. Don’t ruin this for me, Shep.

[Shep]
I think you’ve forgotten what I do here.

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s the whole reason I invited you to be on the show.

[Shep]
Look, if you’re building an exclusive cloud-city, security is going to be top of your mind.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So even the garbage ducts are going to be monitored, so they can’t, they can only sneak in- Okay, go ahead.

[Emily]
The medical staff, yes, they have androids for everything, but they have to have some medical staff come in and this killer, because the killer is not… They’re just related to the person who died in the building. They weren’t involved in the building. So this is like their little sister or something, who is now a doctor or a nurse or something. And they’ve gotten onto the planet by legitimate means-

[Daniel]
I like it.

[Emily]
Through a work program, like a nurse or something. And they’ve worked really hard to get this assignment to this place.

[Shep]
I like that.

[Daniel]
Can we get like a love interest with that route? Like she’s a nurse and then the detective is like one of the first people that he meets or something like that. And so it’s like you’d never, ever think it would be her because you’re like building-

[Shep]
I would absolutely think it’s her. If it’s a love interest in a mystery, I’m like, “Oh, that’s the killer.”

[Daniel]
Damn. Damn.

[Emily]
Femme fatal.

[Daniel]
Damn.

[Emily]
She’s the killer.

[Daniel]
Every time. Yeah, you’re right.

[Thomas]
I think we can do something similar where he ends up meeting or working closely with a woman there. They develop a bit of a relationship. He can’t stay there, though. He is not a citizen of cloud-city. So the heartbreak comes when he is forced to go back to Earth and she’s not going to leave cloud-city.

[Daniel]
It’s true.

[Thomas]
Earth is basically unlivable.

[Shep]
Right. So he’s not from some other city on Venus that’s not as exclusive, he’s from Earth? Why are they bringing in a de-? I misunderstood. I thought that they were just bringing in a human detective because they didn’t have one in that particular city.

[Thomas]
At the time that we were discussing it, I was thinking this was the only city on Venus.

[Daniel]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I kind of like the idea of it being the only city on Venus and being this secret settlement.

[Shep]
If they have the technology, why wouldn’t other rich people make their own Venus cities?

[Thomas]
Well, this is the first one. People are waiting to see how this works out before they invest in building other ones.

[Emily]
Because Elon Musk invested in this one first and Jeff Bezos is still stuck on Mars.

[Shep]
Those are good examples of billionaires that aren’t waiting for the other billionaires to prove that rockets work.

[Thomas]
Good point.

[Shep]
They’re all competing to do the same thing. So I’d like it if there were a rich person’s city on Venus, and then that person went bankrupt and so the city got sold off, and now it’s populated and there’s a bunch of people there and there’s lots of crime there, so lots of detectives.

[Thomas]
That’s a good idea.

[Shep]
So when they need a detective that handles murders, that’s where they go to.

[Thomas]
All right. It sounds like we’ve got a pretty good start for our and actually a decent amount of progress as well for our story here. So we’re going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, we will figure out the rest of our story for a brick.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. We have Daniel Hess joining us still. How are you hanging in there, Dan?

[Daniel]
Good.

[Thomas]
Well, I think you had a good story seed, because I know I’m entertained, and this so far seems like a movie I would want to watch. One thing we still need to figure out, though, is who is the murderer.

[Shep]
I like the red herring because I like red herrings in mysteries where it could have been like the doctor who is the love interest of the detective, the human detective. But it can’t be her-

[Daniel]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
Because that’s done too many times. So who is it? It’s someone else that must appear at least to be in Rich Cloud-City legitimately, because like I said, they’d be monitoring everything everywhere, all the time. So it can’t be a trucker that’s sneaking in. It can’t be someone coming through the garbage chute.

[Thomas]
I was just thinking maybe if we figured out how the brick got there, that might lead to something. I could see somebody doing some sort of a black market order for a brick that gets brought in on a shipment.

[Emily]
What do they need the brick for?

[Thomas]
The murder.

[Emily]
Solely for murder.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s symbolic!

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
But yeah, I could see a black market for things like bricks of heroin or whatever. And also just a brick.

[Emily]
So in that case, I think we have to decide what are some of the rules of this community.

[Thomas]
Well, no bricks are allowed. And-

[Daniel]
Just specifically? No brick.

[Emily]
It’s just a giant HOA. Right?

[Thomas]
Yeah, functionally as a giant HOA in space. On Venus, I guess, not in space.

[Emily]
Yeah. So what are some of the community standards that the android cops are used to busting people on? Like, “Your music was too loud. Your cat got out.”

[Thomas]
Right. It’s probably more code enforcement than actual crimes.

[Emily]
Right. Which is why I think they’d have to bring a human cop in from Earth, because the other Venus communities would just be different code enforcements, not crimes.

[Thomas]
Unless he came from the one that suggested where.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, the defunct one.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So what are we figuring out right now?

[Emily]
But let’s figure out some community standards that they practice by so that we know what the black market is.

[Thomas]
There are probably no weapons.

[Shep]
“What about the underground fighting ring? I want to hunt people for sport.”

[Thomas]
Do that on Mars.

[Emily]
What about, like, animals? Are they allowed to have animals? Because animals are just a big mess. But they’re also cute and cuddly.

[Shep]
They’re cute and cuddly, but resources are limited.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So I could imagine the rule is no pets, and the actuality is lots of pets.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. So there’s a black market for pets. That’s establishing this black market of like, okay, obviously you can get things on the sly here easily.

[Shep]
So if there is a black market for pets, how come the android police have not shut it down?

[Thomas]
Well, because the android lieutenant is dirty and he’s taking bribes. I don’t know.

[Shep]
I mean, I imagine that the android police do what they are programmed to do.

[Emily]
They used to enforce it, but it got overwhelming. So they just took that one off the list of program-

[Thomas]
Or somebody reprogrammed them.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It was too much.

[Shep]
Or they didn’t reprogram them to ignore that rule because that would get caught. They reprogrammed to ignore a certain location in the city. So they aren’t even aware that they don’t patrol this area.

[Emily]
So they just know these animals keep appearing and they have no idea why.

[Shep]
Well, the animals are kept securely indoors, in mansions, wherever.

[Emily]
Okay. They’re hidden away.

[Shep]
If you get caught, you get in trouble.

[Thomas]
Right. You don’t take your dog for a walk.

[Emily]
Right. If you do, your dog ends up over the side.

[Daniel]
Oh, God.

[Emily]
It’s very strict code enforcement.

[Daniel]
I mean, I like the idea of the neutral territory place, right, where the robots or the AI is not monitoring, because then that would obviously leave that rife for an easy murder because they would know that-

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
But also, it’s a place that the human would identify immediately if they know where everyone’s patrolling. They’re like, “This is a spot that nobody is patrolling.”

[Daniel]
Yeah. Like “What’s this?”

[Shep]
And how come? Whereas the androids are programmed to not notice that. Again, the human is showing their value.

[Thomas]
That’s really good.

[Shep]
So is the person murdered in that location?

[Emily]
No they’re murdered in their home. Don’t you think you’d want to be personal like that? Because how are they going to get them to that location?

[Thomas]
I mean, that’s where the black market is. So people are going down there for stuff all the time.

[Shep]
But if he is murdered there, how come the android cops can investigate it, but also don’t go to that area?

[Thomas]
They just don’t patrol that area. If somebody calls and is like, “Yo, there’s a body here, can you come check it out?” It’s not like they’re like, “But that doesn’t exist at all.” They’re aware that that area exists. It’s just that they’ve been programmed to not notice that no one is ever patrolling that spot.

[Shep]
That could be a way that they find out, or the human finds out, is they wanted to canvass the area or talk to people, whatever. And the human’s like, “Next time someone’s patrolling there, let’s go along and ask questions.” And they’re like, “Okay, we’ll schedule that,” and then it doesn’t come up. And then he realizes, “Hey, it’s been a couple of days. What the heck is going on here?”

[Thomas]
He could even ask to talk to the android officers that were on patrol in that area that night, and they check. And nobody was assigned to that area. And it turns out nobody is ever assigned to that area.

[Emily]
That could be part of the corruption piece with the government official wanting to keep things quiet because you want to have that ability to one-up your neighbor, right? So the black market service that sort of need at the same time. So he knows that he’s behind programming them not to patrol that, because everybody needs the black market a little bit.

[Thomas]
It’s probably one of those situations where he has somebody who works for him, who goes and collects for “protection”. So he just gets the money that they take from the shop owners in the area, and maybe they can send the androids in at any time and say, “Oh, there’s illegal activity happening at this shop (who didn’t pay us).”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So it’s not that they don’t ever go in that area. It’s just that they don’t go in that area on their own, as a matter of course, they have to be specifically called to that area or sent to that area. And I like the idea that the head guy is behind it. Oh, that’s even better if the dude is killed in that place because he knows he’s behind that place existing as a sort of black hole and he has a brick.

[Daniel]
Yup.

[Shep]
So everything is pointing to him.

[Emily]
That’s a really good red herring.

[Daniel]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right. He feels super vulnerable.

[Shep]
Oh, does he move the body then? I mean, not him, but does he have the body moved?

[Emily]
To just outside of the area.

[Shep]
To try to hide where the murder took place to try to throw off any investigation into discovering this is where his black market is?

[Daniel]
That’s something.

[Emily]
Because if the androids go in and see the black market in operation, they’re going to be like, “Hey, you can’t have this shit.”

[Thomas]
Well, I think that it’s one of those sorts of things where you just know what to ask for. “I think we might have something like that in the back” or whatever. It’s not all just on display because the androids could come around at any time. You don’t know for certain. They are somewhat autonomous. If they’re called in for something, they might see something and say something. But I think that the guy doesn’t have the body moved because I don’t think he knows about it until after it’s been reported. He finds out about it through an official report, and he’s like, “Oh, that’s weird.” And then as the investigation goes on, he’s like feeling the heat more and more because he finds out “Oh, and the murder weapon was a brick? And it’s in this part of town that I kind of am the slum lord of essentially?”

[Shep]
Yeah. I like everything pointing to the wrong person, which is just a mystery classic.

[Thomas]
So is the human investigator convinced that it’s got to be the head honcho guy and it’s the android who provides the critical piece of information that says, “No, it isn’t.” Or is it the other way around? As the evidence is coming to light, the android is like, “Well, logically, it all points to this person,” and the investigator is like, “Well, I don’t know.”

[Shep]
It could go either way. The human investigator is probably going to go “It’s definitely that person” because that’s where all the evidence is pointing. And in 99% of cases, it’s who you suspect the most. That’s the person.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
So there isn’t a reason to really investigate anyone else.

[Thomas]
What is the supposed motive for the head honcho guy to be the murderer?

[Shep]
Well, we know that they run a black market.

[Thomas]
So it could just be a disagreement to do with that.

[Shep]
Could be that. Could be greed. Perhaps the head honcho discovered that this person got into his city under false pretenses.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
There’s lots of reasons.

[Thomas]
I think that’s probably the strongest. I could see maybe a couple of days after the person gets there, it happens. And immediately they bring somebody in from the outside because the androids have done their very fast investigation that they’re used to doing. So they bring the guy in and then after a couple of days, there’s been an autopsy and all that sort of stuff, and they realize this person is not who they claimed to be.

[Shep]
I mean, if it’s in the future and if they’ve had any sort of implants or anything, they’re going to all be serial numbered.

[Thomas]
Exactly.

[Shep]
So it’s going to lead immediately to who they actually are.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So he’s got a bionic hip or whatever it is, and it has a serial number on it. And of course, he changed his official records, his identity and everything like that. He got a hacker to do it, whatever. But I think most people would overlook contacting or hacking the manufacturer of your artificial limb and updating their records.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Why would you ever bother to do that? Especially because by the time somebody figures it out, you probably don’t need that protection anymore. It’s an unnecessary cost and not a thing most people think about. So, yeah, I think that would be a great way for them to discover that he’s not who he says he is. So, yeah, we have a couple of days into the investigation. We know the brick right away. We discover this thing more and more evidence mounting. We have the means and a motive.

[Daniel]
Can I offer a tangent?

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
Yes, always. Have you not seen that?

[Daniel]
I mean, what about the whole thing just being that this person is trying to illuminate this black market and it’s almost like a setup to be murdered so that this cop would come in and sort of unravel this whole world that these people have created where it’s this whole black market. And really the point is to make that all go away because inevitably, no matter how much money you have or anything like that, you still shouldn’t be above certain privileges and things like that. And that’s kind of the whole point of why the murder kind of started in the first place.

[Shep]
The victim is the victim, like their building collapsed or whatever, but it wasn’t actually their fault. They were blamed for it in the media, in whatever, and they had to flee the planet, basically, and change their identity. But the real perpetrator was someone else, maybe the head honcho guy, although that’s a lot of… But if they had gone to this place, like you said, to illuminate it or to bring it to light, knowing that someone was after them and knowing that if they get murdered, then there will be an investigation, that could be a good final twist there where the actual murderer isn’t the head honcho guy, but the head honcho guy is guilty of faulty building materials or something that caused the building to collapse on Earth and blamed this other rich person that took the fall for them.

[Emily]
So then is the killer just somebody who believes the victim is the perpetrator and they’re just used as a pawn, essentially?

[Shep]
Yes. But used as a pawn by the victim.

[Thomas]
What a wild story in turn.

[Shep]
Yes. Well, all great mysteries have, you know-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Crazy twists.

[Shep]
Crazy twists. So they the victim released information to the later murderer to let them know that, “Hey, the person that you’re after is living in Rich-person Cloud-City on Venus under this assumed name.”

[Daniel]
I was going to say it’s either that or somehow you could even take it further with it being somehow using one of the AI to do the murder.

[Shep]
But that violates the rules of the laws of robotics.

[Daniel]
Yeah, that brings up a whole other can of worms.

[Thomas]
It could be interesting if the victim is somebody who works in an official capacity. And that’s how the murderer was able to gain access to the city legitimately. Because the murderer just updated the files to say, “Yeah, this person can come in, no problem.” And so then they get a notification that says, “Oh, you’ve been selected to come to Venus.”

[Shep]
So not revealing their identity, they’re leaking the information to the would-be murderer. I guess they actually are a murderer, but they’re telling them, “Here’s how you can get in. So I’ve done all the work for you. I found the guy you’re looking for. He’s under this name in this city. And if you send me this amount of money, I’ll get you a passport or whatever to the city.” So when they get that money, they know, “Okay, the murderer is coming to kill me. So now I’m going to send them the pass and I’m going to start hanging out in the black market area until I’m murdered.” Like, they planned the whole thing out.

[Thomas]
Okay, so what is the murderer’s motivation?

[Shep]
The murderer’s motivation is they think that the victim is the one that caused the building collapse and the 1000 deaths or whatever back on Earth.

[Thomas]
And so what is the victim’s motivation for dying?

[Emily]
I was thinking that maybe the victim tangentially had enough fault to feel guilty enough about it. Not only was he going to show who was actually at fault by having this murder occur, but then he would get his punishment as well.

[Shep]
Because they felt guilty. Because maybe they were convinced, they didn’t want to go along with it, but they were convinced that it would be okay and it was a lot of money.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And so they went along with it even though they knew deep down that it was wrong and they shouldn’t do it, but they did it anyway. And then everybody died.

[Daniel]
I think it’s just that, like you’re saying, like, it’s almost that cowardice of like, “I can’t be the one to pull this on to the light, but through this action, I can.” That’s that like redemptive arc for that person.

[Thomas]
How does the investigator figure out this whole convoluted situation?

[Shep]
That’s a problem for the writers.

[Thomas]
Okay, so the investigator figures out the whole convoluted situation. Done, check.

[Shep]
I mean, there’s got to be clues. Maybe the victim left clues somewhere.

[Emily]
Well, I think having the victim and the head honcho guy, having them connected, the investigator can start piecing some things together, like previous business dealings they had together, and then kind of find out more about what actually happened.

[Shep]
Or since the victim knew that they were going to be murdered, perhaps they had a USB drive on them or something, that would be, they think, taken into evidence that has, like, “Here’s my confession, here’s what I did.” But that gets stolen. So the murder looks like a robbery gone wrong because they were robbed. But who would rob them on this city of rich people? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s as much of a mystery as the brick is.

[Thomas]
Nobody would need to rob anyone.

[Shep]
Exactly. But he doesn’t have his wallet on him. He doesn’t have the stuff on him. Where is all that?

[Thomas]
Do they have cash, though? Wouldn’t it all just be like an Amazon Go store?

[Shep]
Well, they have to have some sort of transferable currency-

[Emily]
For there to be a black market.

[Shep]
For there to be a black market.

[Thomas]
Right, but it could be just as simple as like, “Oh, we’re selling you this $500 Ziploc bag. There’s definitely not drugs inside. You’re just buying a bag.” Because there’s legitimate stores with some illegitimate products in the back.

[Daniel]
Could the mystery unsolving bit be like something along the lines of your all-is-lost moment where the detective goes back to Earth and then there’s something at that original location that’s like a tip off, and then that brings them to that final act of like, “I got to get back to the planet” kind of thing or get back to the city.

[Shep]
Yeah, but Earth and Mars are so far apart that it’s months in between.

[Daniel]
Fair enough.

[Shep]
Like, I don’t know if I’d go back to Venus even if I knew the murderer at that point.

[Thomas]
You just send an email.

[Shep]
Yeah, just send an email.

[Daniel]
Let the AI guys know. “Yeah, it’s this guy.”

[Thomas]
“Hey, can you call this person? Let’s get them on a Zoom so I can do the whole Poirot thing.”

[Daniel]
Got to make it dramatic over the Zoom.

[Shep]
Yeah, get everybody on a Zoom call.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Daniel]
“One of you guys in the Zoom call is the murderer.”

[Emily]
So I’m curious if the victim is doing this all as an elaborate way to shed light on who the real asshole was on Earth, what happens to the killer? Because they killed someone.

[Shep]
Yeah. They’re guilty of murder.

[Thomas]
They get thrown over the edge. The next batch of dogs, they’re in there with all of them.

[Emily]
Do we sympathize with them at all, or are they just sort of-

[Shep]
Oh, no, of course we sympathize with them, but it’s the “Cool motive. Still murder.”

[Thomas]
I like that we sympathize with everybody in this.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
The murderer, the victim.

[Shep]
I mean, not the head honcho guy who’s a super asshole.

[Thomas]
Right. And maybe not the android cop.

[Emily]
No, we’ve got to love the android app.

[Thomas]
Is the android cop’s story arc that he learns to love or..?

[Shep]
He learns what bricks are. If it ever comes up again, he’ll remember.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Daniel]
Yeah, he’s like, “That’s it. I got the bricks.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Is there anything else we need to figure out in this story?

[Emily]
Do they get reprogrammed to monitor and shut down the black market, or do they still let that fly?

[Thomas]
It’s a good question.

[Shep]
Well, if they were reprogrammed by the head honcho, who has now been outed as the real perpetrator behind the building collapse-

[Thomas]
So what does happen to everybody? Let’s figure out everyone’s end of the movie state.

[Shep]
Well, how dystopic do you want it to be? Because the building collapse happened on Earth and this is Venus, so jurisdiction doesn’t apply.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Also, everyone here is rich. So what are you going to do about it? That’s right. Nothing. You know about it, but that’s it.

[Emily]
The only thing we see for punishment in the way of the head honcho is just public shame? Not being invited to parties?

[Thomas]
The androids take his brick away.

[Daniel]
I mean, we’re just going to have, like, the detective unravels this, and it’s just like, “Nope, there’s nothing you can do, and you just get sent back.” Like, that dystopic?

[Shep]
I mean, sometimes the bad guy gets away. That’s a thing.

[Daniel]
Yeah, no, I’m fine with that.

[Emily]
I’m fine with that ending, actually. It’s just depressing. This kid from Earth came and killed the guy because he tricked him into doing it. Now he’s dead or in prison and cop’s got to go back to his home.

[Shep]
I like the social shaming ending where it’s all outed and then the head honcho is shunned in his own city where he runs everything, and now nobody wants anything to do with him.

[Emily]
Well, I think that should definitely be part of it.

[Thomas]
It’s almost a form of house arrest.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Daniel]
Yeah, that’s cool.

[Thomas]
So the investigator goes back to wherever he lives.

[Shep]
Slum City.

[Thomas]
Slum City, yeah.

[Emily]
He has to break up with the hot doctor.

[Shep]
Well, they were never really dating.

[Thomas]
There was just tension there.

[Shep]
She’s like, “I just liked you as a friend.”

[Shep]
“You’re cute and all, but-“

[Daniel]
You don’t want to have the hot doctor come back to Earth and be like, “Oh…”

[Shep]
No!

[Daniel]
Okay.

[Shep]
She’s in Rich-person City. If you lived in Rich-person City, would you ever leave? It’s heaven here.

[Daniel]
Hey, man, it’s love. It’s love.

[Shep]
No.

[Emily]
It’s a no strings attached sexual arrangement.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Daniel]
You were fun once.

[Shep]
She is into it because he was so crude and unlike the other guys.

[Thomas]
Yeah, she’s slumming it.

[Emily]
He had rough hands and it felt good.

[Daniel]
Yeah, it was like Blade Runner, you know, he just comes in and he’s just like, bold and-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Daniel]
There’s maybe a slap, you never know. It’s crazy.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m on board with this. Yes. She’s used to taking care of everybody else and being in charge. There’s finally a man to take charge of her in the bedroom.

[Shep]
But it’s not an all the time thing.

[Emily]
No, just a once in a while thing. I mean, she’s still a very independent woman.

[Thomas]
What happens to the murderer?

[Shep]
Oh, they’re guilty. And they, uh, who knows? What do you want to happen to them? Is there capital punishment in the future on Venus?

[Thomas]
Presumably they’re just sent back to Earth, which is pretty fucking awful anyway.

[Daniel]
Yeah. So they make the detective take this person back. It’s just like he knows that this is so messed up, but he’s just stuck in that system.

[Shep]
Oh, there’s no prison in Superrich City, so they send the killer to Slum City to serve out their time there?

[Thomas]
Well, I think because this is a murder. They’re just never coming back.

[Daniel]
Yeah, like I said, I just think it’d be interesting that the detective is the one that has to take this person back to Earth. Right?

[Shep]
He’s not going back to Earth.

[Daniel]
Even though he knows-

[Shep]
Earth is too far away. Who’s going to pay for that plane ticket?

[Emily]
Does he have to go to the Defunct Community?

[Thomas]
Well, that’s where he lives.

[Shep]
That’s where he lives.

[Daniel]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
The prisoner! Where’s the prisoner going?

[Shep]
To Defunct City.

[Daniel]
Okay.

[Emily]
Okay, so the killer is going back to the Defunct City with the detective.

[Shep]
This is a very awkward car ride.

[Daniel]
Yeah, right.

[Emily]
There’s no prison that this person’s going to. They just have to go home.

[Shep]
No, there’s prisons in Defunct City.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
There’s a prison system.

[Emily]
Just not this one.

[Shep]
There’s a whole justice system, whatever. It’s needed there.

[Thomas]
But does this person go into that prison, considering the crime was committed in a totally separate jurisdiction?

[Shep]
I mean, it’s still Venus.

[Thomas]
Sure, but.

[Shep]
It’s the Venus Accords. It’s the charter of the planet. Whatever.

[Emily]
There’s still some sort of federal umbrella.

[Shep]
Right. Murderer, turns out, illegal, the whole planet wide.

[Daniel]
Are we just setting ourselves up for easy sequel bait here where it’s just like, you have this one end on that note. But then it’s like the detective is going to try to unravel the greater mystery in the second one, take down the powers-that-be kind of deal?

[Shep]
I mean, the detective is from Defunct City.

[Daniel]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What power do they have to even go in those circles? They were invited to Rich-person Cloud-City temporarily.

[Thomas]
He finds a loophole in the charter where if you’re deputized once, then it’s permanent. There’s no way to rescind that. So it turns out his access control card still works.

[Shep]
He still gets paid in Rich-person City credits.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Daniel]
Exactly.

[Shep]
But because he’s a cop and they’re all androids, it’s just power credits.

[Daniel]
I just picture it almost like The Purge, right? The first purge was like the very small scale but then as they went, it got larger and kind of took on that social commentary. So that’s what I just feel like this is like step one and then it’s like next step is to illuminate that on a larger scale and then maybe try to end that or something. I’m going way too far here. I’m thinking of second and third movies, so ignore me.

[Thomas]
That’s a problem for the sequel writers to figure out.

[Shep]
Right.

[Daniel]
Exactly.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Daniel]
True.

[Shep]
But you leave the window open for it.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s there.

[Daniel]
Yeah, it’s definitely there.

[Emily]
So we can collect royalties.

[Daniel]
That’s what I’m saying.

[Thomas]
Yeah. There we go.

[Daniel]
“Based on characters created by.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
We still get money out of the deal.

[Daniel]
See?

[Emily]
We don’t have to put any work or get any blame for it.

[Daniel]
I’m just trying to help everybody out.

[Shep]
You got to wait for the first movie to come out to find out which character is the most popular so they know who to build the sequel around.

[Daniel]
Yes.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Shep]
Turns out it was the dog.

[Daniel]
Hey, gets those royalty checks. Let’s do it.

[Emily]
That’s right. I am all about the money. I have no artistic integrity whatsoever.

[Daniel]
I’ll take it.

[Shep]
I’m just picturing the dogs that they tipped over the side just in suits. Spacesuits on the surface.

[Thomas]
They’re trying to eat something, but they’ve got their little dog helmets. All right. Is there anything else we need to figure out, or is that it?

[Shep]
Do we know how the murderer actually gets caught?

[Thomas]
I guess not.

[Shep]
Or does that matter? I mean, that’s one of the detail things that if we were actually going to make a treatment, we’re actually going to flesh it out-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Then we’d have to figure out where we sprinkle the clues in so that they all come together at the end.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a good point. I think there are so many clues that would need to be figured out that it’s sort of beyond the scope of this episode.

[Shep]
Right. Not something we can do well in an hour.

[Thomas]
Right. But we know what, again, those broad strokes we talked about before are. We know who the people are and their role in it. We know how this type of story works. There will be clues that can be interpreted multiple ways. And once you finally get that Keystone clue or whatever, it all kind of comes together.

[Shep]
I like the Keystone in there because the episode is brick.

[Emily]
I know. I think of the same thing.

[Thomas]
And it has cops.

[Daniel]
Keystone cops.

[Shep]
Yeah, it works on multiple levels.

[Daniel]
Exactly. That’s great.

[Thomas]
All right, well, we would love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Was our story built like a brick outhouse or was it a few bricks short of a load. You can let us know via email or social media. Links to those can be found on our website AlmostPlausible.com Before we go, Daniel, what do you have going on that you want people to know about?

[Daniel]
Yeah. So my first novel is actually coming out June 6, 2022. It’s called Focus Puller. I like to think of it as millennial fiction in that it kind of recounts the life of one individual and how he sort of views his past experiences and reflects on all of that. So that will be out on Amazon and hopefully in a few indie bookstores cross country on June 6.

[Thomas]
Very cool. Well, thank you for listening to the show. And a big thank you to Dan Hess for joining us. Emily, Shep, and I will be back next week for another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Shep]
Bye bye.

[Emily]
Bye guys.

[Daniel]
Bye.

[Outro music]

[Emily]
Wait. What year was Demolition Man set?

[Thomas]
1996 or something like that. And the film came out in ’92. Not far enough. Okay, I’m going to go on a small rant here. There’s so much wrong with that movie. But the one thing that drove me crazy the most about that movie, there were plenty of things. The only thing that drove me crazy the most was the first time Wesley Snipes is using a computer, and the keyboard looks nothing like an actual keyboard. None of the buttons are labeled. Why? It’s nine years in the future. Surely! I mean, if this is 20 years past when the movie was supposed to take place and my keyboard looks the same as it did back then, except now it has colorful lights on it.

[Shep]
So the keyboard thing, here’s another rant. Here’s a sub-rant that I’m going to tangent off of your rant. Why are we still using qwerty keyboards? And why are we still using qwerty keyboards in 2547 or whenever the future movies? The Fifth Element takes place in the far future, they’re still using qwerty keyboards.

[Emily]
Because somebody was lied to and said it helped you type faster when in fact it does not. It does the opposite.

[Shep]
Well, it doesn’t do the opposite. That’s another myth that it slows down your typing. What it does is put common keys for their part so that the arms themselves wouldn’t jam the machine.

[Thomas]
On a typewriter.

[Shep]
But that was fixed ten years after it was made. It was fixed in the 1900s. So there was no longer a reason to use qwerty. But anyway.

[Emily]
I learned so much on this show.

[Daniel]
Wow.

[Shep]
Well, so in Demolition Man, he doesn’t even know what he’s typing, if you recall-

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Shep]
He says, “Oh, I’m possessed.”

[Thomas]
He’s surprised he knows how to use it.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That’s true. See, they fixed it with writing.

[Thomas]
So much wrong. So they talk about how there was like a big earthquake in LA that razed the entire city and so they had to rebuild it. And I’m like “Cool cool cool… and the rest of the world?” You explain what happened in LA, what about the rest of the world?

[Shep]
They put up a big, Great Wall of China style brick wall to cut LA off from the rest of the country.

[Daniel]
That’s it.

[Shep]
Like, “They’re all nuts there.”

[Thomas]
They use all the rubble to build a wall. Yeah. Anyway.