"A case to end all cases." "You know what I mean, Dinah?" "I used to think being a private detective was cool." "Like Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe, right?" "But there's nothing cool left to it." "On top of that, both my fridge and my bank account are empty." "Wait." "Okay, Dinah, let's bet." "If it's another suspicious husband, I'm out of this business forever." "Hello?" "Mr." "Ash, I have a job for you." "And you need me to check on your wife, right?" "I'm looking for a computer hacker." "This hacker goes by the alias Trinity." "That's all we know." "Well, it looks like we're still in business, Dinah." "Fine." "And who will I be working for?" "I can't say." "You can't say." "Call me back when you can say." "That's not the way I do business." "It was a pleasure chatting with you." "Before you hang up, take a look at your bank account balance." "I didn't get a good feeling about the case." "But I had no good reason to turn the guy down now." "This Trinity was well-known in hacker circles." "A real artist by the sound of it." "The cops were always one step behind him." "So I knew I could get that close." "Question was, could I get closer?" "I had a few tricks up my sleeve for getting to hackers." "While I was searching, I found something strange." "Other detectives had been on the case too." "And their investigations had all been, shall we say, troubled." "One of the guys killed himself." "Another had disappeared." "Another went crazy." "So I paid the one who was left a visit." "The crazy one." "Trinity doesn't exist, man." "He's not real." "He's a figment." "A cipher." "A jabberwocky." "And who am I?" "Who the hell am I?" "Did I mention he was crazy?" "Chessboards, jabberwocky, Red Queen..." "I started searching all the usual hacker hangouts for someone with an Alice in Wonderland m.o." "Hacker bulletin boards, anonymous mailboxes, chat rooms." "And it was in one of those that I picked up Trinity's trail." ""Six brooks."" ""I'll be there at 2005."" "Of course!" "Crossing the second brook takes her into the woods." "Alice jumps the first brook and..." "And then she boards a train." "Thanks." "Excuse me." "Hey!" "Hey!" "I knew this was some kind of trap." "There's a difference, Mr. Ash, between a trap and a test." "You were testing me?" "You made it." "I'm impressed." "Flattery will get you everywhere." "I'm not here to flatter you, I'm here to save you." "What just happened?" "Mr. Ash, dream of having an eye exam lately?" "Yeah, how'd you know?" "You've stepped to the edge of the looking glass." "So then, that means I wasn't dreaming." "They hired me as a way of getting to you, didn't they?" "Go!" "What the hell is going on here?" "This is really crazy." "Now I understand what happened to those other detectives." "They went nuts." "What are you doing?" "What are you doing, guys?" "Well, I've gotten out of worse jams than this." "I am not gonna let them get you." "What's happening to me?" "I'm sorry." "You didn't make it, Mr. Ash." "I wish I could go with you." "I don't blame you, you know." "Everything that happened, Trinity, it was all my fault." "All that Through the Looking Glass stuff." "Can't get my head around it." "I'm old-fashioned." "There's a difference between a test and a choice." "For what it's worth, I think you could've handled the truth." "It was just a job." "Goodbye, Trinity." "Goodbye." "A case to end all cases."