Life is a dream Act 1

Life is a dream, dreaming of your life

Genre & Author: A work of modern Sydney fiction by Tobias Nixon
Warning: Novel contains use of profanities (swearing); 1337 words & TLAs
Rating: MA 15+

Act 1: The house of bits n’ pieces

Scene 1: A taste of the future 

Life is a dream, dreaming of your life.

Half asleep, moments earlier, that single sentence had held so much truth. Now though it was like just another piece of cheap logic. Such a richness and sense of purpose bereft of the sense of urgency and truth for which my dream world empowered it.

I drowsily half roll over in bed. From my right eye I see yesterday’s dead tree copy of SMH* lying crumpled on the floor, a photo of a crazed killer, some guy the paper has labelled the city basher. The waking world is full of vileness; I close my sleepy mind to it and think back to the dream.

A simple statement, a statement of life. My life. The life of one introvert corporate programmer, Thomas Daniels. The one that happens whenever I closed my eyes. The world so real and yet so imagined. A life without a life. Truth takes its hand at the wheels of justice, but the law of life precludes fools and cheats.

My imagination is my enemy. I love it so when I am asleep, wrapped tightly within my dreams, yet blame my constant state of inertia on it when waking to this “real world” every morn. The dreaming is so complete, mostly I am in complete control, it is better in every respect I know.

Slow tender moments shattered. Bleak thoughts that will not end. The snow of blissful ignorance, more often brought on by external dependencies on drugs of choice and addiction. My world melts each night, a place within a place for which I am reborn. I think back to the images of collateral damage that linger. Chunks of dream rise bubbling from my shadow mind.

A charnel house. A narrow corridor, forced ever onwards to the end. To a sharp right corner. To a list of bins full of blood and horror. The room of missing limbs, a place for all the ghosts that never felt peace in death. Victims of war, victims of tragedy and natural destruction. The morbid scene is truly graphic. Each bin is teaming with an endless array of arms, legs, heads, and torsos.

The walls are red with a splash of white specks here and there. I can hardly clamber past these tall overflowing bins, but that’s what I do. To get to the end. The chopping table is a thing to disturb the mind with f3ar. Horrible scythe like blades are set at regular intervals along its surface. A power saw retracts within the wall at the far end of the table. Always the palatable sense of urgency and fear that they will return at any moment.


I am safe from the murderers that feed this place, it’s place within this reality only exists so long as the human scum feed it’s rubbish bins. No the things I fear are the keepers of this place. The bonders that live out of our reality but within it. There single dream sense is attuned to the smell of fear. Like sharks in a bay of blood, these creatures pack feed on those lost or drowned souls that of accident or wit end up within these lonely corridors. The smell of f3ar pervades each pool of shadow. Yet despite the environment you can NEVER show an ounce of the stuff.

I am not innocent. I do not come here, through some accident of imagination, or perhaps a stray spoke in the wheel of fate. One day it occurred to me that if some ghosts were bound to places; houses, graveyards or shipwrecks, perhaps some ghosts were bound within their own long dead dreams. So I imagined a place like that. That night was the first time I saw the charnel house within the realm of my dreams.

You will never see a human get chopped up in there. A fact that should disturb you. How do they get there? Maybe you have inferred it from what I have told you already, the living dead appear here whenever someone dies in circumstances of the most horrific destruction. Plane and car crashes, train and boat wrecks, war, assassination, genocide, earthquake, tsunami are all a small subset of the completely valid ways you may take to end up here. But only if you don’t want to let go.

Apart from never showing f3ar I had previously learnt the symbol name of the shadow scourge. Unable to vocalise it (even had I known the ancient tongue) I was however prepared to form it into a large burning symbol that with practise I could hurl at the things whenever they arrived. It was this symbol that kept me safe. It was the only thing they would not approach.

I had found it on a strange stone cube, soon after stumbling into this place on my first visit. By accident I’d opened a door with a person’s name scrawled and hacked with a fresh coat of blood into the door. The name was written in modern Japanese kanji. I didn’t know Japanese but within the dreaming that didn’t matter. Just tap the global dark pool of latent subconscious talents. The language was in current use so the name conversion was instantaneous.

Kenji Harido. Japanese central banker. Doyen of currency appreciation. Victim of extortion. Noble warrior. Pride before dishonour. Where blackmail fails death entails. Yakuza sword strokes decorated his otherwise pristine naked ghost body as it lay on a large grey stone cube.  It was the far side where the burning symbol was written. All the other sides I would later discover contained things relating to the victim. One side was this place (the underside); the four “naked sides” told his story: his lifetime achievements, his disappointments, his name and other personal details, and the way he died. The top was for the victim. The back was for the collector. It was always the same.

Kenji was reported dead twenty four hours later, in the exact way expressed on the stone cube. A proponent of banking reforms his death sent a clear message to others trying to dismantle the centuries old corruption endemic within Japanese financial markets. The only message that made sense to me was someone had died in the same excruciating way I’d already witnessed.

Why were my dreams bringing me back to this place? It wasn’t a place I wanted to visit very often. The images stayed with you for days afterwards. The place was just too graphic. As I lay now in bed I remembered. More shadow scourge than I’d seen. A new door coated in fresh blood, but the name not yet scrawled. The scourge were preparing for a feast.

Tomorrow night would be the only chance to find out whoever was due for the cold slab. I had to go back there, damn. First I had to get to work. Jumping out of bed I started a day that would end like any other.

Scene 2: To find a killer

Another dream, another night. The coldness in the room was not from some imaginary wind, but rather the chill that forms inside you when shit gets too real for your rationality to control. Logic dictated that I run and never come back.  Logic be damned, if there was a life to save then I would do it. I dreamed of the house of bits n’ pieces once more.

Drifting through rooms, down corridors so narrow I felt I should have to squeeze through. Looking for a door, freshly marked. Where was the kill room? I looked around the hallway I was in, a ghost suddenly went screaming past me, a human like cry of unholy pain. No doubt looking for the exit I thought... sadness descended upon me, for there was nothing that could be done for that one.

Let me tell you a story about being a ghost. Ghosts don’t like to let go. Ghosts are only ghosts because they want to be. Huh? Who’d want to be a disembodied entity forever doomed to traverse the waking world as a wrath of fantasy. To watch as your world era is transformed, unable to help, the ones you left, left to perish, knowing that you are trapped and that they are already within the grasp of golden wonder, what some fools call paradise.

Ghosts are ghosts because they can’t let go. All humanity is bombarded with one simple lesson, made complex by our natures and the incurable condition of never learning from it until it’s far, far too late. Ghosts are ghosts that were humans once. The great lesson of humanity is that stimuli arise, muddy the mind with emotional attachment and must then be released. At least that’s what is supposed to happen. Almost immediately upon growing up, the human mind muddies itself with attachments and thoughts, emotions and the general chains that make up humanities shittiness are not released. Like ever. It just builds up.

Surprisingly while life deals almost every human being a crippling blow that they are too ignorant to learn from, too stupid to do anything about; when presented with their death, an entirely new experience un-muddied by their minds web, the vast majority pass uneventfully into it’s gaping black maw. 

The only light I have ever heard of from the few ghosts that talk is the one given off by the soul reaper. It is visible so you don’t run into it by mistake presumably, if your some higher level state of entity capable of riding the inter-dimensional lines that run in a mobius strip beyond the edges of time.

And how do you escape these narrow suffocating corridors if you ever trip within its bounds? What to do with the cursed shadow scourge that haunt it’s walls? If they catch you they will kill you for real. Being human there is no defence against them. 

They are bilateral extensions within the dream realm of big grim himself. Humanities death ripping in early. A few sharpened teeth from the black maw that grew a bit longer than the rest. Those teeth are not waiting after death, the mouth is just the front door to the realm beyond. Perhaps.

So that is the first chunk. A place of pain and torture, built from emotions that have no place left within our reality to go. Perhaps the original house was pulled down, maybe the war field has been reshaped with concrete. Whatever. If you’re a ghost that’s not stuck to something on earth your headed here. Built from souls whose destruction lingers. Defended by the shadow scourge. A place to visit the day you are sure you wish to die. Your friends or family will find you... later.


A sleeper who never wakes. A mind that drifts in a sea of fear, thoughts mere plankton for the shadow feast. In these days of life support what was probably intended to only be some minutes of misery, is variously lengthened to hours, days, weeks or even decades of the most indescribable mental torture known to man. Pray then that you’re well meaning family pull the plug on your harmless comatose body. Cos’ peaceful it ain’t. Scraping each thought from your brain. Taking it, repurposing it, changing it, and adding every sick, Freddy Krueger-esque fantasy you can’t try to imagine into it. Thoughts and emotions mere paint dye for a tapestry so vile, the devil has several on pre-order for his new residence. Of course that is a joke, there is no devil. Only a gaping maw that devours the life force lent out to you from the start.

So that is the second bit; the sick twisted nature of the place. A place made to create in a way that is completely beyond the typical understanding of energy dependant organic beings; a complex tapestry of suffering which the shadow scourge can use as a source of food. Food made from the rarefied and disparate energies that exist between life and death. 

Back to the dream last night. It had been strange for two reasons. The dream had a room with a stone cube. The writing was in English, not unusual in of itself, except that the cubes surfaces spoke of a young Aussie, a brilliant musician slain by a serial killer in Sydney’s CBD. I kept thinking back, scribbling madly on my pad. Basically writing down anything I could still remember.

Finally exhausted by journaling my recollection of the dream I get out of bed and head off to work.

As I sit down at my desk in the fishbowl, the IT hub of Techred, Coutil and Banks’ martin place offices, I fire up the browser and check the news. Sure enough the breaking news section is covering a story about a missing world class musician, by the name of Samuel Matthews. The information on the cube matched! The poor man had by my limited understanding of how the cubes worked probably no more than ten or twelve hours remaining on this earth.

Could he be saved? Where the hell was he? There had been more on the stone. Vital clues if I could only use them somehow. 

His death was preceded by a long drawn out torture of peak brutality. Given the length of time the killer would need a house. Hmmm that didn’t exactly narrow things down. The stone tableau had spoken of achievements. Oddly the last one had been a private performance of the entire Ring cycle to a single individual, it even stated that this had been Samuel’s greatest ever rendition. The man’s name was Frank Siccalori. 

So, Samuel gave his greatest performance, less than twenty four hours before he died. By which point he was already missing. Hadn’t there been reports recently of a serial killer in Europe that had already wacked several leading performers? The press were calling him the Virtuoso killer. Could this be the Virtuoso killer? A globe trotting serial killer targeting the artistic elite of our society. Social terrorism, bizarrely by someone that apparently appreciated much of the beauty of a virtuoso.

All I had was a name. A name that had to be stopped. Faceless in a sea of madness. His reign of terror in absolute terms, mean more than mine. One life for a hundred. The killer was going exponential. Choice was just the fear of a lesser man. It was time to turn to my other talent. Time to do a spot of hacking.

Scene 3: Search & Rescue

I woke from the dream in a sweat. Beads of salty water trickled down the contour of my chin, down my neck and onto my chest. I had a hardened mind, trained by long hours of mediation. Right now a solid line of fear vibrated like a galactic constant in the background. I’d been out for only five minutes, but it had felt like an eternity. 

The words that escaped my lips were unconscious, “No!! Don’t kill him.”

The dream had been a vibrant re-run of what would happen if I didn’t find Samuel Matthews. His body lay shattered on a stone tableau. His corpse had been cut so many times that the parts lay in ruin. A room soaked in blood. Nightmares like this reflected eerily against the sobering wall that was my current emotional state of mind.

My face was mashed against a dell keyboard in need of a good clean. The view of the desk was too close. I pulled back as my vision slowly returned to normal. Ever so slowly the blurred outline of the LCD monitor emerged from the square of light. My minds language centre switched to code.

I’d been running a couple of hacking programs non-stop from my workstation for the last five hours. As the last of the analysis programs had swung into action, there output was screaming down the screen matrix style - I had modified the source code to do this, purely as it looked rather cool. 

I had taken a quick power nap. I shouldn’t have. Replays in your head of what would happen were unneeded motivation.

A quick message to a virtual friend and I had the confirmation of a certain Mr Siccalori arriving weeks earlier in Sydney. On this occasion my friend assured me, the immigration database apparently had yielded no further secrets.

After several traces, I located a dormant Trojan virus lying asleep within the Telstra network. Cracking its protection was a piece of cake. The author hadn’t even changed the core source code released to the net. Fire and forget by a script kiddie with more luck than sense? No matter it was an asset ready to exploit. Activating it, I injected a self-destruct-on-completion routine into its core assembly; I then set it the task of searching the directory records for any instance of the name.  

Sure enough the name came up exactly once, on an ISP pre-paid wireless package. No address, no fixed IP to trace back from the exchange. But I had the source IP last used to connect, not more than twenty minutes ago.

With luck the murderer would still be online. Ping command. IP reachable. This meant the IP address was active, his machine was on. Next came the less certain part of the venture. Opening up a remote shell session, executing the password cracking tool; I literally had no idea how long it would take to brute force my way into this son of a bitch’s machine. For all I knew I could be one attempt away and he could power down his machine. This was where the bulk of the time today had been spent. Watching columns of failed attempts.

The process could be accelerated if you knew which words or numbers the person liked. Luckily it appeared that the killer was still on Windows XP, an older operating system, for which I had the necessary rainbow tables required to drastically speed up the process. The rainbow tables contained pre computed hashes of different passwords. The hashes could be used to recognise patterns in the encrypted value on the disk.

It was as I awoke from the dream that I had a thought about password cracking. Hoping the dream of Samuel was not just coincidence, I added his full name to the search algorithm. The user had been online for over two hours, this might be my only window of opportunity today. I crossed my fingers, smiling, as, several minutes later the remote session at last reported successful login with the user’s account, which he had stupidly given local admin rights to.

A dramatic keyboard mashing of the ENTER key, and had I initiated the final program; a file search that checked for files and emails with certain types of information such as addresses. No address yet, but my algo** was a 1337 piece of code and had found an encrypted zip file marked leasing agreement.

Another 50 minutes cracking the AES 256 bit standard encryption on the zip package. Inside a Word file that also had a password. Laughing I opened an Office specific cracking program. Ten seconds later the word file was password free. Now to see what was inside. 

Meanwhile another application was busy copying as much of the user directory as it could before the connection went down. Another app was silently installing an app that would prevent Windows from closing down. Of course that wouldn’t stop someone from ripping the power or network cables out. Just slow them down a bit. Bingo I now had an address in Sydney’s inner west.

I logged onto the companies server farm. The array was normally used for extremely cpu intensive tasks that needed to be completed within the same day to determine whether a particular transaction represented good value according the companies complex financial modelling. 

Here it was, there was no turning back now. If there really was someone trapped about to die I had to do this. Even if there was I’d never be able to explain why I diverted mission critical backend infrastructure towards software cracking. There were ends to this story that had no beginning. Well at least not without an ending that concluded with yours truly spending most of his thirties in a psyche ward.

I punched in the password to my admin account launching the master scheduling app. At a click existing jobs were paused, another couple of clicks and small purpose built script I had written was launching my custom decryption application and pointing it to the collection of files that I had been harvesting from the targets desktop PC.

In some server backroom, the array of multi cored servers started chewing through the datastream at 10 Terrabytes per second. Even so it would be at least an hour before the application finished, and resumed regular operations.

At least I could avoid cursory examination. I prayed there were no large transactions planned for this afternoon. Another script was busy deleting all the logs replacing them with faked ones that represented a snapshot I’d taken before running any apps.

I set the app to send my HTC an email with the results when it finished, then killed the remote session to the server array and logged off my workstation. Grabbing my jacket from behind the chair, I headed towards the lift, to the road below and a taxi that would take me a block or so from 15 Loftus Street, Rushcutters bay.

The taxi dropped me at the bottom of the street, when perhaps in hindsight it should have dropped me at the top. The street is probably the steepest in Sydney, if not Australia. Halfway up and I was sweating, shaking as two lean runners raced by chatting happily as they loped uphill.

The address was a luxurious studio filled with fine art.. I knew this because the door was open. No killer leaves an open door. I wandered around the place looking at the photos on the mantel piece. Family, friends, achievements. All really normal stuff. The photos were of a happy looking... musician. Oh shit. This wasn’t the killers house. This was probably his next victim.

The killer must have at least some hacking skills. He was tracing his victims through their real estate agents. Cunning bastard. The agents probably had unencrypted networks, open offices, physical access and completely comprising the network via injection of Trojans would be a cake walk for a motivated individual. Meanwhile they were trusted with alot of customer information. Just what scum like this needed.

I was stuck. My hacking, might be detected by the killer (and there was every reason to believe that it would be, if he was even half decent a simple network trace app setup with notifications would detect it). I was going to have to wait for him to attack his next victim. That implied that Samuel would already be dead. Sh1t.

The phone hummed in my pocket. I pulled it out and unlocked it. The app had finished its decryption run and sent me the results. Two files met the search criteria of the algo. The second on looked promising and I opened the attachment. The file contained a list properties for lease.

Perhaps a list the old Frank had compiled when first arriving in the city? The list was fairly long but consistent, in that all the places had a cellar featured. Several were listed as sound proofed. Focusing on those I picked the closest, most centrally located, a large terrace in Paddington, and raced out to the road. By my own calculations I had about one hour before things became irreversible.

I’d asked the taxi to wait and he had the car parked where I’d left him at the bottom of Loftus. Running in giant leaps down the hill I pulled up next to it jumped in, slammed the door hard and yelled at the driver to step on it. To get him going I casually flicked a hundred dollar bill in his direction. I’ve never seen a taxi driver break more traffic laws in my life. It probably helped that the rest of his days wages had been promised on arrival.  A man’s life was at stake. Now was no time to compromise.

I had the taxi pull over just short of the five ways roundabout in Paddington. The terrace was metres away, yet the shops nearby provided excellent cover. I had to assume the guy had setup surveillance on the entrance.

I still had thirty minutes but no idea how to mount a rescue operation. Guessing the guy would be keeping his victim in the basement and was probably there right now torturing him was a safe bet.

I walked up to the front door, and jammed a metal wedge into the hinge. Being a slightly built man with small arms I had to get this right first time. The wedge should provide what my biceps couldn’t. I pulled the foot long Steel mallet out of my jacket pocket. With a mighty swing I bashed it with all the might I could muster against the wedge. It was a trick I’d seen on YouTube.

Keeping the hammer tightly in my left hand as the door swung open; I charged silently inside. The floor plan included in the Agency leasing  document showed the cellar had a small stairway in the narrow hallway directly to the left on entering the house. I walked up and tried the closed door. It opened faintly with a smooth action that scared me more than a creaky door ever could. For some reason it was just like the motion of opening a door in the house of bits n’ pieces. Creepy coincidences were awesome. Less so when serial killer lay waiting just beyond your line of sight.

The staircase was well lit, the stairs carpeted. Noiselessly I descended, just as well because my heart was beating at close to two hundred beats a minute. The drum roll of blood and adrenaline, had me goosing at shadows. God why couldn’t someone hardcore like my mate Davis Lockyer be here. That guy probably did stuff like this for fun. I must be fucken stupid, why hadn’t I asked him to come with me? 

No time for backing out; men didn’t let other men die with dishonour. Good men didn’t walk away from bad situations. I knew I was at a crossroads, as I stood halfway on the stairwell, the last step before it was too late to turn back.

I descended down to the cellar. As I approached the exit, I crouched down low keeping to the side of the stairwell. Frank was there, looking at his handy work. All I could see of Samuel was a man tied down to a table, drenched in blood from cuts and wounds all over his body.

I felt Frank turning. He had to turn. Only he didn’t. His movements were towards a table containing his tools of the trade. His hands moved slowly guided by the eyes of his victim. He reached for a cruel looking serrated scalpel. It looked wicked.

The victim moaned now. Uncontrollably. The moan became a scream as Frank stepped in towards the table.  I walked ever so slowly towards him, every iota of my brain listening to the sound of my footfalls. The journey seemed to take years. With five metres still to go I stepped on a piece of rubbish left on the floor.

“Oh sh1t!” I said, as at that sound Frank then spun suddenly, his dark eyes gleaming with a mixture of anger, hatred and fear.

Instinctively I threw the heavy steel in my hand. It spun through the air, end on end towards Frank. He was slow to dodge. It was an all or nothing throw (my only weapon) aimed straight for his head.

Even so he managed to move aside as it glanced him on the temple, still knocking him from his feet. I ran over wondering what on earth I would do next. I had never been in a single fight in my entire life, well not counting the internet anyways.

Blood ran from the side of his head, he groggily tried to rise. I grabbed the steel and bashed him over the back of the head again, knocking him unconscious. His body slumped back down.

I moved over to the table and pulled Samuel from it. He could hardly stand, but leaving him there on that platform of horrors was hardly an option. Instead I held him close, hugging him. Blood soaked both of us, but he seemed to relax. Compared to what I’d seen in my dreams, he was positively healthy. I pulled the mobile and dialled the ambos, followed in quick succession by the cops. 

It was only as I put the mobile back in my pocket that the tears began. His cheeks were drenched. His body wracked with shudders of emotion.

“I couldn’t... Nothing would make him stop!” 

Samuel looked into my eyes, pleading, demanding, frightened and lost all at once.

“It’s over now, your safe.” I comforted him. 

“Everything feels like an out of control dream.” He sighed, “I hate him so much.”

“I know mate, I know.”

But I didn’t. No one did.

Scene 4: Beers @Chambers

Killer captured, victim saved. The dream faded as it had begun, the inside of charnel house drawing the eye to fresh horror. The killer’s body would never find its way here. They rarely saw themselves as victims; they were too pathological to be ghosts.

That one was riding straight to hell. I had had my fill; there was only so much even I could take of it. I had gone back one last time out of curiosity, to check the room that the ghost of Sam should have found himself in. Instead I found a door ajar, the stone cube within shattered. Oddly the stone looked to have been shattered from within. A single large purple tentacle, with thousands of small scythe like appendages grovelled from a small circular hole in the centre of where the stone should have been. 

That was enough of it for me, I left. I had a thought once that being inside that house; it would be enough to make a serial killer uneasy. Certainly there was ample content to make such an imagination run riot. A place to check into from time to time, perhaps to find another “Sam”. I awoke from the killing rooms feeling completely ruthless. It was a lasting effect of spending time there.

I had a message waiting on the HTC. It was time to bounce. 

The friends of Samuel Matthews wanted to catch up. It had been a couple of days and he was ready to check out of St Vincent’s. There was little the doctors could do for him anyway. In this age, wounds to the mind were still very poorly understood. 

Samuel would always be scarred now, but he was also one tough hombre. Not the sort to let a beat down keep a good man down. His boys were taking him for a drink at the Chambers bar in the city and wanted me to come along. I messaged back that I’d see them after work.

When I pushed through the door at Chambers, they had occupied the couches closest to the street window. Recessed down below street level, the chambers was a ambient little bar running along the south side of martin place.

They looked comfortable and relaxed. Lounging and chatting like successful city suits. The boys roared upon spotting me, and several called me over.

“Thomas! What are you drinking?” – “One Fifty lashes”

“Good man, so are we, here’s a spare schooner.” – “Thanks... ?”

“Sorry rude of me, I’m Nathaniel James. This is big Rusty Greenheart, little Sam you have met”

At which point everyone raised their schooners to Samuel, giving him a cheers. He looked to be at peak happiness, his smile was contagious.

“And this is our resident Richie rich, Mr Angus Goodman.” Wooah, I thought, I’d seen this guy in the social pages, he was all over the scene; attending A-list parties and fucking the best socialites.

Nathaniel continues to chat along happily talking mainly about himself, and some of the many adventures this tight krew have shared. I’m a listener, and sit silently, happy to be part of their circle. The more I listen the more relaxed I get. I slink back into the part of the couch I share with Samuel.

Suddenly the leader, Nathaniel jumps up from his couch to the left of me. He steps into the open area in front of me, hands free he puts tight hooks around my shirt ripping me from my seat. His giant chiselled six foot four frame has no problems lifting me completely from my feet. All the good humour of moments before is gone. The group sit silently staring at me, all that is except Sam who sits sullenly looking at the others.

“I have one question for you. How the fuck did you know where our buddy was?”

I knew straight away the story I had told the cops wouldn’t wash with these guys. They had spoken with Sam, and probably didn’t understand any of what I had told him.

“Look Nathaniel just leave him alone, he saved me.”

Nathaniel turns to Sam with savage lines of fury burning across his nose, cheeks and neck.

“My friend, he told you he saw you in a dream, woke up then went and saved you. He told the cops he had just happened to be going for a morning walk and heard a scream. He’s lucky the cops are so stupid, they don’t question why the guy lives 40 km from where he takes that stroll, or that the walls to the dungeon that freak had were sound proof above street level. Yeah! I got a couple of questions to ask this... Thomas. Starting with how the FUCK did you know?”

I realise this is a water shed moment but their blood has already boiled over. Tell the truth and get flogged or lie and walk away?

“I saw your friend in a dream. I can see fragments of reality in my dream, Nathaniel.” There it was as simple as I could put it.

The punch when it came was stiff, strong and straight to the gut. Oh and it really hurt. I double over and then come back up. Gasping.

“I told you guys. This scum is a mate of that bloke that did Sam in. I say we run him down to the cop shop right now... After we take him outside and teach him a lesson.”

“NO!!!” bellowed Sam. It didn’t matter I thought.  The others had blood in their eyes. Red rimmed with anger.

“Let me explain” I said weakly.

“Ok. Go for it shitbag.” This guy Nathaniel was really getting worked up. Moments earlier when we sat down I’d actually thought this guy is cool, he is the one out of the group I’d most likely be friends with. Now though his eyes were focused on me. He looked really mean. As in scary looking, drunk freak I’m going to fucken kill mean.

“I saw Sam lying on a stone cube in the House of Bits n’ pieces.” As openings go it probably wasn’t that intelligent. 

I continued, “In my dreams I sometimes see I house. In that house are the ghosts of people that have recently died. Every so often, in one of the rooms, a new body will shimmer on a stone cube. The cube holds a person yet to die, both on earth, and then in the house. It is a type of foretelling. This one time I managed to read the symbols on the cube, they told me barely enough it would seem, to save your friend in time.”

“Thankyou” whispered Sam, looking right at me for the first time since I had entered. 

The look of horror that the victim has; seemed for one moment to recede almost completely from Sam’s face, except that it then returned just as quickly.

“Man that is the craziest shit I have never heard of.” Nathaniel said it, looking out the window at the street. 

He had released me sat back down on the couch with the others. But he didn’t look at me, and he looked completely unconvinced.

“Seriously mate, what are you smoking?”

That guy Angus cut me down unimpressed.

“Yeah... wow.” A third echoed sarcastically. I was no longer listening, lost thinking of how impossible it was to explain something that seemed so simple to me.  

This wasn’t working, these guys thoughts were solidifying now around a single concept. How much damage to do before dumping me with the police. Revenge spoiled with anger amongst their brows.

An empty schooner and a wild idea. Blood rushing through my temples. I pick up the schooner and smash is dramatically with my left hand against the table. Everyone focuses but no one moves, I’m one against many. Too quickly for any reaction I draw the serrated edge down against my right wrist. Estimated time to death by arterial exsanguination; approximately 1 hour. More than enough time.

I had everyone’s attention now.

“I mean what I said, I don’t care if you believe it but its the truth. Do you think any sane rational person would do this? I’ve run out of ways to make you believe and I really don’t want to get set upon by a pack of wild dogs.”

I reached out and grabbed a nearby couch cover, wrapping it quickly and efficiently around the wound. They all stared at me now, like a crazy person with a gun. You just give respect.

I looked up and reached out a hand to Nathaniel.

I said “Will you suspend your disbelief for 5 minutes? I will try and show you what I mean.”

He nodded so I said “Just relax, try and relax, and then to go to sleep.”

He nodded again, this time lying right back into the couch relaxing. I moved and sat down next to him lying back as well. I had never tried this before. It was as impossible as seeing the future, but right now I didn’t seem to have a lot of choice.

Before I fall asleep I need to scare the others. Help them to understand their reality has changed, is changing, will change from here on in.

“Everyone else needs to protect us. If we aren’t awake in fifteen minutes you need to take both of us back to the hospital and ensure we get a shot of adrenaline each. By no means allow us to be separated at any point. In either case we could each face instant death.”

I didn’t tell them that as soon as I released Nathaniel he would wake up. Or that I could control my dreamscape and wake up at any point. I didn’t tell them because I wanted them scared, not as payback, but because it was one of the rare human emotions that provided a gateway past the logic trap directly to the unknown. Human beings were normally so sure of themselves. So sure of the blindness they all shared, that new belief was easily negated, especially in groups.

I placed my left hand above Nathaniel’s right and drifted quickly into the dreaming void. I’d never tried it before but somehow I knew I could do it. It was not the same as a dream, at least not for me. As soon as I felt Nathaniel’s etheric shell next to me I latched onto it instinctively. The feeling was like pulling a giant stone egg between my legs up a very, very steep hill. It was almost impossible. Eventually I felt the egg started to loosen, soften. I pushed it towards a room I’d imagined, one with a wall that said in giant bright red neon letters “Hi Nathaniel it’s your friend Thomas.” It was stupid, simple and effective. Once Nathaniel the egg saw it, once he was pushed fully inside the room, he started to melt even more. 

I saw a loose golden outlined shape, vaguely human standing next to me. Three white doves flew through the wall and perched on his shoulders and his head. A pit of snakes opened up in front of him. Symbols flashed across the wall, fighting with my self-imposed mental block on the regular imagery of his dreamscape. His own dream mind was fighting the temporary bounds that I had imposed via the dream bridge. The ancient Tibetans had been right; you couldn’t share another’s dreams. They’d just failed to set out the fact that you could influence them. Or perhaps they had deliberately left that bit out.

While we were out a situation had developed amongst the remaining trio. The security at Chambers had come over to investigate two guys they had seen confronting each other. As soon as the thick burly black teed roid munchers came over an air of menace began to permeate the zone.  

“What the fuck your buddies doing asleep huh? Get them to wake up now. No sleeping!” – said the burly looking white boy with the thick brown beard.

“These guys are good friends, but they both suffer from epilepsy. Right now their both fitting. We have to leave them where they are.” said Angus.

The other bouncer was looking around distrustingly and spotted the blood from the wrist cut and the broken schooner glass. He pointed at it.

“What’s this? You boys been fighting? Let’s grab these two vagrants Thommo” 

The bouncer motions to his bouncer mate.

The trio stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the two sleepers. Angus speaks again.

“Don’t take another step forward.” 

“Or you’re going to do what champ?” The bouncer questions menacingly.

Rusty folds his arms across a massive chest, his head never moved. His eyes say volumes.

“How the fuck do you explain this mess champ?” The bouncer was unmoved, itching now for violence.

Angus’s face muscles don’t move. He is world class when it comes to board room antics.

“The glass was dropped; the one on the right accidentally made the cut. The guys are brothers and started fitting at the sight of the blood. If you move either of them there’s a fair chance you’ll kill one of them. Now that I have warned you, if you still do it that’s premeditated manslaughter. Guys sure that’s what you want to do?” answered Angus smoothly.

The two bouncers shared their single brain cell, deep in conference for several seconds. Then reaching a mutual decision they retreated not even looking at the krew. They could be seen calling in the paramedics.

Lost in the dream world with Nathaniel we whirled through a rainbow kaleidoscope of tropically coloured clouds. When we finally drop out of reality we are apparently in Angus’s luxurious city pad. The most beautiful melody I have ever heard performed is echoing softly around the room. As I squint my sleepy eyes I see Sam playing the piano. 

His friends smile knowingly at me,

“Samuel is world class virtuoso. Just relax and enjoy.” 

The music is incredibly uplifting, drifting in on the warm soft Sydney breeze that floated through the apartment.

*SMH: Sydney morning herald newspaper

**Algo: short for; Algorithm, a core piece of code within an application.

Chapter 9

A test of rebirth – A test of time

Chapter 9 by Tobias Nixon

Blue Tiger Headquarters, 12:00:21, Hong Kong, China (P.R.C.)

The Ninja Master is sitting silently, apparently meditating, in the stone alcove of the small temple that is part of this fortress. Built into the side of a mountain, it had originally been a Buddhist temple that taught gung fu to the locals. His gaze is fixed on a large wooden carving of an encircled hexagram. Yellow smoke pours from a candle lit directly below the wall piece.

His mind is blank the spirit on his shoulder taps him lightly and he feels the touch like a man standing at the centre of an earthquake. The touch is heavy, the reverberations almost too much to control. As they settle his mind follows the powerful spirit. A silver trail like a cord of thick rope chases away in the distance. It is the way he imagines himself when travelling in his spirit body.

He meets the ancient master at the place they always do, atop Hung Kwong Hai mountain in central china. Amongst these mountains there is a hidden temple, the final earthly abode of Blue Tiger’s ancient master. Both men now sit opposite each other, choosing to float cross legged one metre in the air. Red light leaked from the Ninja Master’s eyes, a similar purple glow from the ancient ones.

The two of them spirit talk.

“How will you get this LU-bomb into America?” The ancient one enquired.

“Where they least suspect it, through legitimate shipping channels. Crate it up in a standard shipping container. Refrigerated so the uranium in the bomb doesn’t show up with an unusual thermal signature. We’ll leverage contacts in the North-West so we expedite its movement through customs and onto a truck. From there it’s a couple of hours drive to a disused garage in lower Manhattan.  Ground zero will be the yard out the front of the shop.” Said the Ninja Master.


“Aren’t you worried that customs will open the shipping container at some point?”

“It’s a risk, but the reality is that they only open one in ten.  Of course you’re right in that they are the biggest risk to this operation. That’s why we have invested significantly in insuring there are plenty of officials on the take. It wasn’t hard, the usual approaches were made; money first, dirty secrets second, family if they turned out to be a fucking priest.”

“When does it arrive?”

“It arrives on the 27^th of June, and should have cleared customs and be in place by the 4^th of July. Two days from now.”

“Good. Good. As I have asked you before though, do you want to poke the most powerful tiger in the world, straight in the eyeball? Make sure you understand the consequences of each action exactly. You must now realise they will come after you with everything. What are you going to do then?”

“And if they do? Blue Tiger are ninjas; we will just blend back into the shadows, waiting for the shit storm to fly right by us. The best they can do is wipe out all numerous front operations; delink us from our local markets in HK, Singapore and Taiwan. Our “puppets of state” strategy from three years ago worked out well. Spies in the US state department have discovered they still think our head quarters are at the old location. Lok Fung Ng, and his second man, Shi Te Tang do a convincing job of issuing our instructions.”

“So we have a proxy to bear the brunt of the inevitable attack that will follow. Of course you do not honestly believe that the US will not go after us because we are located inside China? They will hunt down and destroy everything they can find. You are talking about civilian casualties on a massive scale. If they want they could even use it as an excuse to start a war with China. A war that neither of country wants, and which America cannot afford.”

“Of course, all those things are possible, but then this was never about trying to blow up America. This is about an insurance policy. This is about our endgame for the people of Somalia. This is the last piece of the puzzle to gaining the political power and legitimacy that our clan craves.”

“Hmmm, as you say an insurance policy then. So explain to me again, in what way can alerting the Americans to the existence of a nuclear bomb on their doorstep, possibly achieve that?”


“We are going to tell them there is one. We’ll even hang the customs guys out to dry for proof. We won’t tell them where its located. Just show them some video of the bomb, and a video of the good scientist that made it talking about how it could wipe out half their eastern seaboard cities.”

“The Americans will be hamstrung initially. In the short-term they will be unable to act against us. This will certainly up the ante, and of course you must also realise that there will be no hiding once this starts? They will not stop, day and night until they believe that every last Blue Tiger clan member is wiped out. We must act swiftly and leverage the power of the situation that is presented to us.”

“Exactly! In reality the bomb will be a dud. The “LU” crystal will never leave Somalia. Construction of a massive power station capable of supplying all their needs, will give Blue Tiger social legitimacy in this country. We cannot exist within China alone. The party is deluded each year they grow bolder with radical elements. The socially progressive faction that has driven China to greatness is now subservient to factions that are driven by a level of greed that will see the country returned to the twisted oligopolies of the past.”


“So why not go build this somewhere else where a government can soak up the massive capital expenditure? Why Somalia? It’s a war zone and a famine state.”


“That’s exactly why we chose Somalia. The mood of public opinion. By the time the world see’s the “good” we are doing, the Americans will be unable to act. Until then we need the L-Bomb as insurance.”

Level 2 of the Power Station, 20:00:02, Northern Mogadishu.

Much later, several floors higher, and one hundred bombs later our intrepid adventurers were gliding in to the main turbine room number two. This was the last of the rooms on this level with a significant heat signature. Beyond was the main entrance to the building, a complex corridor of mesh wiring, barbed wire wrapped around large stakes, five inch steel blast doors and enough semtex to blow the shit out of half the city.


The message was clear enough, the place was booby trapped to the hilt. The only question was what message? The chances of anything recognisable being left within the blast zone was remote at best. It almost seemed to the men that the terrorists were testing them. The only viable entrance was the one they had chosen, the one that they had found out about.


What if they hadn’t found out about it at all? What if the bastards wanted them to find the tunnel, take the route less trodden, to what purpose?  If they had gone for a full frontal assault there would have been no bodies to hold triumphantly in front of the screaming masses. No evidence of American interference. No the options were limited at best; provide a suitable explanation to the government forces in control of the city, or if things went to plan...


No time to think the team were moving within the final room now. The devices instantly seemed more sophisticated. At a command from Aimee both men froze. One of the Americans had spotted a tell on the far wall that strangely was not registering with the suits analysis. A small dark protrusion now un-mistakable, had earlier escaped detection in the field sweep performed with an extended robotic arm prior to entering the room. Suddenly red laser light filled the room. A grid erupted silently in the air. The two men stood helplessly as the lasers crisscrossed their position. Oddly none of the neon tripwires intersected the men’s positions, coincidence or not? Or not thought Dusty.


“Commander” Dusty eye texted to Aimee, “We appear to be in a spot of bother. Nothing to worry about should be out of it in a Jiffy.”

“Don’t move a muscle, either of you.” Aimee looked worriedly back at the Captain of the SAS who was sitting cross-legged next to her right shoulder on the flat blue roof. “They won’t do anything stupid will they Captain?”

“Not on your life Commander” the Captain replied formally. “What do you suggest we do next?”

“I don’t like it, but I think we have very few choices at this point. I want you to lead the rest of the SAS into position outside the door to the second turbine room. We need to disable that sensor, whatever it is, and clear that room. Analysis seems to indicate that the LU crystal is coming from the centre of the room at best twenty metres from their current position. We cannot risk allowing it to slip through our fingers.”

“I understand Ma’am. Ghost squad, get ready.” He said it more for the benefit of the Americans that were not currently looking over their ePads.

On each device the SAS suits were showing a computer generated assault plan. The descent time, position of entry (via the hole that Easy-E had cut earlier) landing spot, and path to door were all shown in exacting detail. Total time for fast descent entry eight seconds. The first SAS soldier had already deployed a grapple next to the manhole cut by Easy. He didn’t check, he just latched a rope with a self locking carabineer and jumped through the hole. The next man followed so closely he looked like he was jumping on the head of his colleague. The captain went last stepping gracefully from the ledge, into the abyss below.

The team landed and deployed in seven and half seconds, simulation be damned. Once in position they waited for the order to begin disabling the room, starting with the strange black sensor. There Captain calmly ducked low then sprang at the open doorway. He executed two perfect somersaults, and then to his credit nailed an Olympic level landing to finish in the square of laser trip lights that surrounded the section of wall with the embedded device. He rose and immediately deployed the XO series arm given to him as squad leader. The arm extended over the device, active micro probes extended further if by mere fractions of an inch. Each probe transmitted live imaging data in a relay program. That program contacted a controller algorithm which in turn loaded a deactivation search protocol. Six seconds later the probes retreated having found a way to turn this thing off. Five multi jointed fingers replaced them, in appearance each was like a tiny blue metal rod, while in behaviour giving much the same appearance as a human hand.


The arm expertly tweaked what resembled on closer inspection a matchbox size spetnatz era space craft capsule. The jet black surface suddenly shined silver, and the arm beeped audibly.

“Fuck!” screeched the Captain softly.

At that very moment the four walls of the room began to split cleanly apart at the four corners. Less than a second later they came crashing down to the ground. The noise they made was ear shattering. The suits filtered it out without missing a beat. As the dust rose, the squad reacted quickly performing a broad spectrum scan and moving to form a defensive position behind the two still unmoving recon members.

The lasers that had previously shot out from the walls now crisscrossed the entire room. The ghost squad was now trapped in their entirety. Invisible suits mattered not in this labyrinthine maze of glistening ruby fractals.

A slight mist slowly surfaced the entire room. Rising to obscure ground level, troop without field scanners would have been blind. Instead each SAS trooper saw the scenery changing, as machine bays rose from the ground.

With no pause for good theatrics the complex web of red lasers began to shift in seemingly random patterns. Estimated time to hitting a “ghost”? One to two seconds at best. Aimee blanched her silent observation up until now bowling along nice with the tension. Now however things were starting to look somewhat grimmer.

The Captain must have caught her mood, for smiling to himself, he eye texted into the ePad general band chat room –                Never fear, the SAS are here.

With anyone else it would have read cheeserly. With the good Captain it was matter a fact. SAS never backed down.

Arms deployed from each suit once more. This time the fingers of each hand were loaded with special mirrors. The suit computers had calculated a group defence using just the outer three members to reflect up all the beams intersecting the group and their path forward to the device.

Well this was true to an extent. The computer couldn’t account for additional traps. The Captain was slowly moving his way towards the remaining members. The two recon members plus another joined him. Together they made their way toward what was the centre of the room.

No sooner had they progressed passed the area that was free of the deflected laser tripwires, than three small black cylinders rose from the ground. Each advancing trooper had his robot arm already deployed with the laser reflector attachment. It was probably all that saved them.

With a hiss and an explosion of hot gas from the base of each cylinder the weapons roared to life. They each shot out beams of blue laser light, each beam was designed not to provide a low energy tripwire, but as a high intensity stream that could cut through five inch steel plate armour. The beams were an array of vicious photons emitting extreme heat and light. The gases forced from the base filled the room with a bass like rumble, which echoed out towards the buildings walls.

The men were beaten back noticeably by the onslaught. Only the captain, being untargeted by the blue lasers was able to continue. The others duck or dodge as they might, were barely able to lose the tracking signature of the lasers. They could not continue any closer due to the power of the laser cutters. In fact two of the three were being gradually forced back. The third foolishly advanced closer, and was cut nearly in half as the laser first overloaded the arm’s reflection mechanism then proceeded straight down the middle of trooper’s body. The result was not pleasant. Each half fell down to the side, the men to either side of their downed buddy yelling, “NO!!”

The laser immediately continued its deadly arc, ignoring the advancing captain, and ganging up on the one of the two remaining members of the recon squad. The captain looked back on his under siege unit, the man being targeted suit would overload in seconds with the combined power of the two laser towers.

The Captain made a decision, the mission objective was worthless if he lost his squad achieving it. He stopped moving carefully forward, with his active field scanner, and pivoted hard to his left towards the nearest laser tower. The arm over his right shoulder became a crude yet effective battering ram,  as his spin ended it spun out like a spinning back fist that had somehow started from the middle of the back. The force of the metal hand hitting the electronic tower was ear piercing. The metal tore apart with the first blow, the electronics inside were shredded apart by a fist free now to tear it apart. The innards were soon scattered in a loose wreckage around the base of the device.

The two remaining lasers must have been co-ordinated by a CPU somewhere with multiple sensor types. The Captain had gone invisible as he destroyed the first laser tower, but the remaining two instantly locked onto him and began the attack. The Captain should have been destroyed. However as the “suit” overloaded and the invisibility failed what appeared when the invisibility faltered was not the Captain but a small device on the ground that resembled a small turtle with metallic spider legs. Atop its back was the Captains invisibility component, reconfigured to output the heat signature of a human. It advanced impotently on the laser’s and was quickly cut to pieces.

Even as the lasers attacked the turtle-spider drone, the Captain calmly marched towards the rear of second tower. The two members of the recon squad similarly attacked the final tower. Even as their metal fists descended on the electronic sentinels to wreck with vengeance these killing things, each tower made desperate counter measures. The two teams ducked quickly as a wide arc sprayed from the top of each tower in a semi circular arc. The beams missed and the towers were quickly destroyed.

The three men advanced on the centre of the room. A raised dais of metal plates folding in towards the centre sat right in the middle. Around it cables snaked over and into the middle of it. Three leather couches decorated the outside of the large raised circle. In the middle of the dais a red triangle vibrated. On closer inspection the leather couches were actually computer server bays sitting horizontally and covered with leather rugs. A icey breeze blew up from below the red triangular hatch.

The captain advanced towards the dais. “Commander Blackbear, I assume you would like me to investigate the hatch?”

“Yes. But get a trooper to connect up to the nearest server rack, I want to know what sort of information we can retrieve.”

  “Excellent! Dusty deploy your electronic scavenging. Go!”

Dusty moved up next to the nearest server rack and several cables that looked like small harpoons shot out of his arms punching through the walls of the server rack and injecting smaller cables that raced among the motherboard architecture looking for ports and slots to connect to.

Data began to stream back to Aimee from the suit. The LU Crystal appeared to be housed below the red triangular hatch. At least the servers were programmed to protect an object with the same dimensions. As Aimee continued to examine the data streaming past on her ePad an un-easy feeling began to rise in the pit of her stomach. She changed the filter on the search program to provide a report of the power output from the now defunct laser stations and the supply of energy coming from the hidden recess below the dais.

As she suspected the energy readings were not consistent with a super powerful source such as the LU crystal, but rather a more modest set of diesel generators that appeared to be located at the rear of the building.

“Sarge! Send one of the men over the side and take out those two generators around the back, the rest of you haul ass downstairs to the ground level and wait outside the entrance, for further orders.”

“Yes ma’am.” The SEAL members clipped onto a metal rappelling hook that had been driven into the roof of the building hours earlier by Easy-E. Sarge led the men over the edge two stories down to the ground, each man rappelling face first at break neck speed.

Easy-E went over the opposite edge landing to one side of the generators. Two casual shots through the sides of each metal container disabled the machines. The hum of the engines and thick acrid smell of burning diesel, was replaced with silence and thick oily smoke plumes. Having completed his objective, Easy-E began to move around the perimeter of the building looking for signs of any enemy stationed on overwatch.

The SAS inside the building were trapped. As soon as the generators cut out, what appeared to be an emergency routine suddenly activated. The room went pitch black then red lights came on. A siren started to whirl noisily somewhere far from there.

The SAS were unaffected by the dark, HD night vision was just an integrated subroutine in their suits. But what their suits were reporting was much worse than the dark. Each member’s feet were snagged in solid steel rings, which had clicked into place in sync with the confusion. Additional layers of rings had engaged soon after leaving team members stuck to the floor. The armour plates on the leg seemed to shield them, but several suits were reporting elevated levels of integral damage.

Aimee looked down at a near holographic layout design of the building below. Each floor was mapped in detail from the suit recon. Surprisingly the main generators taken out by Easy, were not the most predictable place to put them. Now that she thought about it that meant they probably weren’t the main generators.


Aimee looked up at the night sky. As she had turned her head the rush of events in this deadly battle had turned south, now looking down again the way forward felt clearer. Thoughts gradually started to unwind in time to the battle. They would get something back, if that was they got out of this mess.

“Sarge. You still at the front entrance?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m sending you co-ords for a blue beta attack.”

She looked below to the ground beyond the front of the building, but heard rather than saw the massive blast erupt from inside. It was a pinpoint rail strike by four warriors in perfect harmony. The shots so closely circled that you couldn’t tell fire patterns even with the US military grade image analysis package that displayed in their visors. The result was that the ground just below the Dias seemed to sink and four floors below, a massive fuel generator exploded.

The various traps disabled the SAS began to roam about looking for a control box, and a controller. Although they suspected remote control offsite, this level of sophistication may have required onsite interference. The US team below had already started smashing their way in past the dormant traps on the ground floor. Someone gave a shout from the far corner, however by the time everyone arrived all they had was the fleeting image of a set of legs disappearing down a sloping metal hatchway on the side of the building. Easy-E was dispatched to investigate the area, and recorded further footage of someone running, quickly consumed by the night and the buildings.

Buildings and Alleys, 24:00:00, Northern Mogadishu

God! Allah! Praise is to him. But still, how did he just escape those men? The insanity of this rush through madness was not lost on him. He knew he must have been given some kind blessings, and he now knew his enemies strengths. Truly today was a great day if only he could survive it. His rush took place through a thoroughfare of various shops that seemed to spill out from small multi storey terraces.

Through side streets and back streets, across a narrow dirt covered strip between two buildings, now he knew little by little he was home free. For starters he’d been moving for the last five minutes through terrain that no spy satellite could track. On top of that the area was controlled by loyal gangsters who would fold in around his entry, making pursuit next to impossible. That was unless you could withstand point blank attacks from RPGs.

In this lawless zone, he was as much a commander now as a man of science. As the scientist entered a nearby alcove a burly man, wearing a full length robes waited for him to pass and then stepped in front of the door blocking the passage. The scientist continued down a flight of steps inside the small building, down into a basement section. Here he was met by a secure vault door, with iris and fingerprint sensors embedded on the door panel. He entered a pass code on the num pad then titled forward to complete eye and finger authentication.

As soon as the door opened up the Guards on the other side stepped aside to allow him access to the narrow passage way. Once inside he would continue his work on the LU crystal. According to applications that he knew blue tiger had installed on the LU crystal field detection servers he was making good progress towards a connecting the LU as a power source to the grid. He wondered though if they knew how good that progress really was. He estimated he would have a window of two to three weeks before they realised the project was complete. More than enough time.