Zoe Porter's parents were always off on grand adventures. Tibet, Egypt, the Polynesian Islands, it was often a miracle if she saw them more than six weeks out of the year. At least they were always home for Christmas, which were always fabulous times - they would throw lavish parties during which Zoe could stay up as late as she wanted. Of course, she almost inevitably would fall asleep in the study of their town house while waiting for Santa.
One day when she was nine years old, one of her parents' friends presented them with a gift that year, a black marble sculpture of a horse. It was glossy and curvy and beautiful, and Zoe couldn't help but reach out and touch it. The moment she did, she was plunged into a nightmare. Images assaulted her mind, people and places and sounds and smells that her young brain didn't know how to process. She screamed and fainted, sending the gathering into a tizzy. Fortunately, it was the gift-giver himself who assured Zoe's parents that he'd take care of her, scooping her into his arms and carrying her into the study. When she awoke, it was like having an audience with Santa Claus. When he asked her what happened, she tearfully related her vision to him. He told her that it was alright, that he believed she'd seen all those things, and that she was a very special little girl.
That's how Daniel Linderman discovered that the daughter of his dear friends Winston and Jane Porter was Evolved, and gifted with the ability of psychometry.
From that day on, "Uncle Daniel" was an important figure in her life. She didn't see him often, but when she did, he always spoiled her terribly. Toys and later books were frequent gifts from him, usually with incredible histories attached that she learned to access as visions, or as something more than visions, and she would spend hours clutching a doll or a teddy bear or a first edition print of Black Beauty, pouring through the memories that were connected to each gift. Her parents began to worry about her seeming withdrawal, but Linderman assured them their daughter was simply introspective. And she did seem to light up whenever he would stay as a guest.
Zoe's life took a darker turn when she was fourteen, and about to start her high school education. Her parents were both killed in a boating accident, leaving her with a sizable fortune but no living guardian. Daniel Linderman, her dear "Uncle Dan", swooped in and seemed to take care of everything, using his formidable cadre of lawyers to arrange for his assumption of custody of the young woman. And as Linderman was pretty much Daddy Warbucks rich himself, her wealth was put in trust, of which he never took a penny, and upon her twenty-first birthday, Zoe was given full access. But that's skipping ahead.
Linderman arranged for Zoe to be taken from her rather expensive private school and placed her in an even more posh boarding school…in Europe. Zoe's ability made history something she naturally had an affinity for, and she did very well in her secondary education, attending accelerated history courses and gaining admission into the Sorbonne by the time she was 17. By the time she was twenty-eight, she'd gained degrees with specialization in various courses of history. And there was always a pilgrimage at least once a year to America, to spend time with the man who became like a second father, Daniel Linderman.
It was when she turned twenty-eight that she found herself unsure of her direction. All the degrees were in place, but she didn't really want to teach. She could work in almost any museum in the world…could likely even have her pick. She could probably even gain grants to focus on studies for virtually any historical project she could get the paperwork for.
As ever, Uncle Dan had the solution. He invited her to come work for him in his New York archive. Filled with artifacts, objets d'art, and even pieces of modern history and artworks, though young to be curator, he had no doubt of her considerable talent and intelligence - not to mention the gift he had cultivated since its onset, which would provide stunningly accurate recounts of the origins of various items in his collection - not to mention the other potential applications of such a gift. Eager to please her surrogate father, Zoe accepted the position, and took up her place as the NYC Linderman Group Archive curator.
