n the words of Chato Cadena, from the fantastic-but-canceled-by-shortsighted-studio-executives television series Kingpin: "I don't believe in ghosts - but I saw one."

The following occurred in Winter of 1992 on an empty road somewhere in the desolate stretch between Los Angeles and Fresno. Good friends who attended University with me at the time know this story already, but for casual acquaintances and readers, this is probably new.

_________

Finals week, UCSD.

Thanks to an unfortunate coincidence between the physics and chemistry departments, I had THREE finals scheduled back-to-back-to-back on the same day. I didn't know it at the time, but students in such situations were allowed to petition a rescheduling of one of their final exams. No matter ... on about four hour's sleep, wired up to my eyeballs on caffeine, I marched to campus with countless facts and formulae precariously crammed in my beleaguered skull ... with bright hopes of swinging some Post-Finals Genuis Effect mojo into the three hours when the knowledge actually mattered. Hours pass, and by the time I turned in the final of my final exams, the morning light that greeted me bled into an inky nightsky.

Having already packed my belongings for the trip back up to SF in the trunk of my car, I stupidly thought "Hey, I'm packed. Why not drive back home tonight?"

So on four hours of sleep over 48 hours, I began the northbound drive from San Diego on the 5 freeway, crossing Los Angeles at midnight. An hour north beyond the Grapevine is a vast expanse of farmland and rural desolation; in the wee hours, the only vehicles on the road are long-distance trucks, rumbling landlocked leviathains ferrying their cargo hinter and yon.

And it was here, miles from civilization, the effects of my fatigue rapidly began catching up with me. Sleep researchers call them micronaps ... lapses of consciousness lasting a few seconds ... during which my wheel would drift over the bumps in the road to a loud BRBRBRBRBRBR (between friends, we refer to this phenomenon as 'brailling') that jerked me awake, only for me to drift off a few minutes later. Dangerous, I know. Did I mentioned I was young and stupid?

An hour or so north of the Grapevine pass, I saw in the corner of my eye a young boy, who couldn't be older than 10, dressed in a black leather jacket too large for his frame, huddled on the side of the road. He has a scared look in his eyes, and shivering from the December air. A runaway, I thought as I approached the boy's position. What's he doing way out here? Kid's probably hungry and been walking for hours. Maybe I should pull ove-

He runs. Across the freeway ... a hard sprint that places him on a collision course with the trajectory of my car. I stomp on my brakes full-stop, and even as I hear my tires screech, I know there was no way I can stop in time. Brace for impact in three-two-one ... but as he crosses the beam of my headlights, he vanishes ... just fades from sight.

For a full five minutes, I sit roadside, gasping for breath ... pulse roaring in my temples while I try to cool my nerves.

Where the hell did he go?

I search the grounds around where the boy stood, walked the line next to the long black stripes on asphalt where my tires left their mark. Nothing.

Did I imagine the whole thing?

No matter. Clearly, I was in no condition to drive and desperately needed rest. I pull into a convenience store parking lot six miles up the road, put my seat back and promptly drop into a dreamless sleep.

And to this day, driving along that stretch of road between Los Angeles and Fresno during nighttime still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Who was that boy? What happened that night?

Your turn.

Tell me a time when you've had a brush with the inexplicable/supernatural.

Note: for new/casual readers, the following may not make much sense unless you have some essential elements of context. Please read: Sandy Ego. Caroline. and Alethia, G.A. before proceeding.

elocity.

A one-word answer to Alethia's question: "So, what happened?"

It's a word that bookmarks entire conversations we had years earlier on the topic, untouched until recent events brought them to the surface. We talked at length about 'velocity matching' in those days, she was the one person whose ambition and drive matched mine, and the future I envisioned for us revolved around us chasing our respective dreams at full speed, fueling and recharging each others' reserves in the quiet moments between, mending battle wounds as they occur. We would offer each other encouragement in moments of doubt and defeat, and a one-person cheering section in moments of triumph.

Instead.

"Velocity," I said as Alethia nodded her understanding. "I kept going and she fell to a different orbit."

"It's strange, you know. Everything I loved about her has died or faded except her physical beauty; I had dinner with a shell holding the ghost of an person I kept loving that was long gone, kept alive frozen in time in my memories."

She leans forward. "Look, if you're going to write about me again, shouldn't you at least start from the beginning of this dream?"

Ah. meta humor.

But fair enough - I guess this would make more sense if I started from the beginning.

December 26th, 2007

I'm at the seaside coffeeshop again, tasting a light salty breeze through its antique stained-glass windows in my nose.

Odd.

My seat - our table is front of me, but my G.A. is not there. She's always early, waiting for me, always with a full spread of files before her that I am forbidden to peek.

I take my seat and wait. It's a strange how tightly we associate certain places and smells with certain personalities, and how the absence of one of those things dramatically alter our experiences of them.

I take my coffee and sit, waiting - slowing noticing details of the place that escaped my attention in previous encounters - the grain of the wood on the table and the scars it accumulated in its time. A scrap of parchment-like paper on the table, folded over once. Why didn't I notice it before?

I unfold it - it had just two lines in fountain-pen style script:

Behind you.

- A

I turned and there she was, sitting behind a silver laptop computer with an evaluative look on her face.

"Christ, you scared me! What are you, Batman now?"

She fixes a quizzical stare at me.

"Oh no. No no no, you're not going to pretend you don't recognize BATMAN now, I know you better than that."

"You got me," she raises her hands in acknowledgment, grinning mischievously. "I've been reading a lot more of your books and graphic novels since I took over your account - I quite like them."

"So."

"So."

Just as I was about to point to her new computer and ask 'what's this?' she spins the laptop around and beats me to the words:

"What's this?"

On the display was my journal post about her.

Her expression was impossible to read - I can't tell if she's upset, amused, or ... something else. A pregnant pause, as she's expecting me to respond.

Crap. Did I just get busted?

"I ... uh ... "

She let the moment hang for a moment longer before bursting into a sly smile.

"Quite amusing. I see you edited out a few things."

Relief. I nod, not saying any more.

"Wise enough to begin, then. So now that we're all caught up, let me ask again: what happened?"

Flashback humor. Great.

"Velocity," I said as Alethia nodded her understanding. "I kept going and she fell to a different orbit."

"It's strange, you know. Everything I loved about her has died or faded except her physical beauty; I had dinner with a shell holding the ghost of an person I kept loving that was long gone, kept alive frozen in time in my memories."

"In her time - in our time, she stood at the precipice of greatness: brilliant mind, fiercely ambitious, intellectual curious, at the nexus of infinite possibilities. She traded it for security with an older man half her IQ and ambition but I hoped, (foolishly now, in retrospect) she would keep that best part of her regardless."

"Oh?"

"Her clinical research during medical school was exceptional - she applied for and won offers for fellowships and residencies at Harvard, Johns Hopkins to practice cutting-edge medicine with the best minds of her generation, but she turned them down for an internal medicine job nearby so it wouldn't disrupt her husband's shitty mid-level management paper-pusher career at some anonymous cubicle."

"Maybe she did it because she loves him?"

I flinch inwardly a little bit at that.

(Ok, maybe not just a little bit.)

"I'm sure she does. But if he loved her, how could he possibly accept such a pointless sacrifice? If it were me, I would sacrifice my career in a heartbeat and start over in another city so she can flex her wings fully."

"But it wasn't you. Wasn't your sacrifice to make or accept."

I sigh and nod.

"Now? Now she now lives in a world of $50,000 kitchen remodelings, comparison-shopping of Lexus SUV mommy-mobiles, overpriced package vacations to Europe. Domesticated. That spark that I loved flickered out years ago."

"I can't help but wonder: if she had stayed with me, would her transformation into this have happened regardless? Or was this ... this entire thing the consequence of her choosing security over me?"

Alethia spread her hands out in a half-shrug.

"So there's nothing left to hold you?"

"No."

"So you are finally free."

"Yes."

She reaches out to hold my hand "Merry Christmas then, darling."

"Likewise."

And then I awoke.

rom time to time, I dream of angels.

I should be more precise: from time to time, in my dreams, I am visited by one angel - a hard-drinking woman of indeterminate age who identifies herself as my guardian angel, whose intense gaze lingers in waking memory like an afterimage in conscious moments. She made appearances in recurring dreams starting close to a decade ago - returning most often in times when there was a love interest in my life.

Alethia first appeared to me in the spring of 1997 ... at the turning point my first heartbreak whose aftermath still echoed in memories years after (and once again, more recently).

The business of transcribing dreams, especially those a decade old, are fraught with its own oddities; in the language of dreams - there is almost no exposition because things simply understood in the dream sound utterly alien to an outside observer - but recent events have brought Alethia back into my near-waking hours, so I thought I would go back to what I meant to write when she first appeared to me.

April, 1997

The seaside coffeeshop allows a light salty breeze through its antique stained-glass windows and in the instant-exposition world of dreams, I already knew who I was seeing.

The woman seated alone in the shop wore a white shirt and dark denim trousers - hair back in a loose ponytail - leafing through manila files. She looks vaguely Eurasian, with reddish tones in an otherwise black mane of straight shoulder-length hair. Her face had an androgynous beauty to it - willowy frame nearly my height, topped by a face of hard lines and angles - with brown-hazel eyes that can bore into a man's soul and miss nothing in its sweep.

Sharpshooter's eyes.

Upon seeing me, she motions to the empty seat across her and I settle in.

"Huh." I began, after a pause "I guess I was expecting someone-"

"Taller?" She interrupts with an impish insouciance. "Male?"

I laugh. "Ok, ok - I didn't really know what to expect. I know WHAT you are but up until now, never really imagined any particular form - but now that you're here, I can't imagine any other that would be fitting."

Silence. Her expression is curious ... playful, waiting for me to speak again.

"So ... what do I call you?"

She puts the folders down, smiling. "I'm sorry, this must all be very confusing for you. Here," and at that, she presents a translucent business card, shimmering with ever-changing colors like the surface of a soap bubble; the card's printing is in an elegant, undecipherable glyph, vaguely reminiscent of Hebrew.

The only thing I can read is the single word below where the name on a business card should appear; the line right under a long string of symbols, in san-serif font around quotes:

"Alethia,"

she says, extending her hand to shake mine. "My true name is unpronounceable in any human language, but 'Alethia' is a good approximation. You know what I am - but I am still working on getting to know you, since I've taken on your case two months ago after you drove your most recent G.A. to early retirement."

She flips through her files casually then props her head on steepled hands. "You seem to have a knack for driving your G.A.s to resign their posts or requisition 'less stressful' assignments."

"Resignations? Retirement? Christ, I have a thousand questions I want to ask, but you've just given me another set of things I'm dying to know."

Alethia takes out a flask and pours what looks to be a liqueur into her coffee.

The heat lifts the aroma of the drink to my nose and the smell is unmistakable. Kahlua.

Say whatever else you will - my guardian angel has excellent taste.

"Rookie G.A.s don't have much choice in who they get assigned. The hapless schmucks that drew you? Lightweights. That, and let's just say you have a way of being extremely hard those closest to you."

I must have given an incredulous look in response, because she pauses and looks at me with her steady gunslinger's stare.

"True, yes?"

I begin a retort, then think better of it, and acknowledge her point with a nod.

She leans forward. "Me? I volunteer for the hard cases that others give up on."

"Hard cases? So what - you're like, The Cleaner of guardian angels?"

She raises an eyebrow. "The Cleaner?"

"Did you ever see La Femme Nikit- nevermind."

Her quizzical expression remained fixed on me. She's expecting an answer of some sort beyond a dismissive 'never mind.'

"Human movie." I continued, after a pause. "Blood, bullets, a story of redemption over a pile of villains' bodies. You'd like it." I say, realizing at that moment I actually have no idea what a centuries-old ethereal being would actually enjoy.

Alethia smiles warmly. "I don't watch a lot of your movies, but I do love those kinds of stories. Your hunch about me is quite right."

"Just lucky."

"Your intuition about others is your gift. False modesty doesn't suit you."

She goes back to her files. "Impressive. You know, most humans take several decades to rack up a rap sheet this length. I can see why your former G.A.s turned in their early resignations."

I drink from my cup. "Does this happen a lot? G.A.s resigning from the posts, I mean? And how many did I go through before you came along?"

She shook her head and held up four fingers as she took another sip from her fortified coffee.

Questions pour from me like rain. "So what's your role in my life exactly? How does this all work? Are you always around? Does everybody get assigned a G.A.? Why is there so much misery and pain in the world if so many of you running interference on behalf of your human charges?"

We palaver, and it turns out my estimate of a thousand questions was a wild overestimation - but prompted a fascinating exchange nonetheless. My questions about God. My apostasy. Heartbreaks and triumphs. She ducks thrice as many questions as she answers, speaking in measured tones, a bare hint of amusement at my incessant curiosity - confirming something about me that she gathered through tertiary sources and crystallized into fact by our dialogue.

I learn from our animated conversation she is an old soldier in a millennia-spanning war for souls, a war that is going rather badly for her side in recent centuries. Even in this, she maintains her comportment - steel in her soul, a smile on her face.

"Tell me - how long did my last G.A. last on the job?"

"Three months."

I snort. "So how long do they give you, before you quit?"

Her eyes shifted from playful to serious in an instant - voice lowered as she leans forward: "I've been at this job for over two thousand years. Two thousand years - and I have not quit an assignment the entire time. Others will do what they do - but as for me, I will not leave you nor forsake you, not for so long as you live. "

"My role is not to make your life easier. It is to forge you into someone worthy of your potential. You were right about my liking stories of redemption -I've built my career shepherd those like you - those born with great promise, saddled by tragedies and scars, to realize flourishing lives whose gifts touch lives across generations. I will warn you now: there will be times you will not like me or what I do, and I am prepared to accept that. There are things I know that I will share if I think it can help, and other pieces of information I can't or won't let you know. But I will never lie to you. I will never fail you."

"I volunteered to be assigned to you because I saw what others missed - that yours is a life sown with the seeds of greatness, and the seeds of destruction. My job is to weed out the the latter so the former can flourish; My job is to see you, all of you - for what you are, what you can be."

I nod. I look at the table - the letters on the tab of the manila folders Alethia was leafing through, and realized with a bolt of clarity that they were initials of ex-girlfriends.

And ... my then-current love interest.

I reach for her folder and she slaps my hand and slammed the folder shut. "HEY! Do you know how many rules I am breaking by just meeting with you like this? Did we not just cover this?"

A moment.

"I won't mollycoddle you or shelter you from every disappointment; only through adversity can you learn resilience. There is steel in the soul of every great man, forged in sorrow, tempered through the fires of tragedy and heartbreak that would break lesser men. I've dedicated my life to building great men - and I will be damned if I fail with you."

I take it in - I take it all in, and lean back.

"Alethia. It's a beautiful name. You know, if I ever have a daughter, I'd like to name her aft-"

"Oh, you will."

"Cool - wait ... what? WHEN? With WHO?"

"Oops. Said too much. Don't you have an early class to go to? Someone you need to say a few things to?"

And then I awoke.

Damn it.

Old habits die hard - even in dreams.

(to be continued)

arker.

That was the first thing I noticed about my older brother when we sat down at the coffee shop - his skin tone was not fully of Han Chinese stock, but rather the coppery hue of someone from Southeast Asia. Indonesia, Fiji ... it's hard to place precisely his ethnicity, and the reunion was strange in so many ways.

I'm dreaming again of course - high-intensity R.E.M.-sleep that sends my imagination into overdrive nearly every morning. It's strange, how the mind accept the reality within the dream-world, however removed from our actual lives, as 'real' in the moment while the dream is in motion. There are a few persistent locations I've revisited multiple times in my dreams - familiar spots that (far as I know) do not exist in the real world but remain very real to me for seeing it so many times, in so many dreams. Familiar, comfortable places where I palaver with old faces, and sometimes new.

Darker. He's a half-sibling from my father, and after a long separation by events beyond either of our control, we were finally seated in front of each other after nearly two decades apart. Oddly enough, during this conversation I begin to 'remember' shared stories of our imagined childhood together - being teased by other kids ( within the east-Asian community, dark skin is associated with 'lower class' and 'cheap labor.' I guess some things - right or wrong - aren't all that different across the Pacific) for having a dark-skinned older brother, now feeling guilty for being ashamed of him. Children are cruel everywhere, but I felt a wave of intense guilt for playing along with the jeering schoolyard bullies instead of siding with my own flesh and blood.

He waves it off dismissively, with a rueful smile. We're family - we witness each other in our worst moments, and it's easy to condemn petty, vicious and thoughtless actions that punctuate our interactions ... if we don't have the character to forgive each other, what is the point? We talk about the precious few shared memories before our lives diverged across two continents, life-stories that took arcs both similar yet different as he wrestled with his own demons and enjoyed his own triumphs while I did the same.

I don't ask about his mother - I suppose at some level I don't really want to know - and he doesn't volunteer anything. There's an unspoken code that perhaps all twenty-year-separated-siblings agree to abide by, the cautious intimacy that comes with shared bloodlines and separate childhoods. At 40, he's old enough that adolescence is a distant memory, and we are able to laugh about events that seem so momentous to our teenage selves - and we talk in the sort of relaxed familiarity about our parallel lives in different worlds.

"It's good to see you again after all this time. Let's not wait another twenty years to do this again."

"I think I can promise that."

We embrace ...

and then I awoke.

Strange. Strange to exchange such an intense, intimate moment with someone who doesn't exist ... a wisp of imagination coalesing into a face and voice.

He said, "Go where you have to
For I belong to you until my dying day."
So like a fool, blue caravan
I believed him and I walked away.

Oh my blue blue caravan
The highway is my great wall
For my true love is a man
Who never existed at all
Oh he was a beautiful fiction
I invented to keep out the cold
But now, my blue blue caravan
I can feel my heart growing old

- Vienna Teng, "Blue Caravan"

Time for a 5 mile run along the beach to clear my head.

trange dream this morning that is quite likely a result of the blizzard of Christmas parties I've been attending in the past weeks.

I've worked hard to be good at what Keith Ferrazzi labeled the deep bump - meaningful, high-intensity exchanges that prompt follow-up in a future 1-on-1 conversation.

Listen, engage, write down notes on the back of so-and-so's business card about pertinant details (for those not blessed with photographic memory, this last is absolutely essential).

Skip the conversational macros that dominate standard conference/party chatter "what do you do? how do you know [host]? Isn't this a lovely party/conference?" and go for the stuff that *matters* to the person you are speaking with.

Sleeping in on weekends seem to inspire particularly vivid dreams.

I am at party at an opulent mansion blanketed in fresh snow. Dinner guests are exchanging conversations, and I move with the crowd, turning casual introductions into dialogue, exchanges of contact information, "this isn't the best place to talk about that - let's meet up for lunch next week to discuss this further ..."

Active listening, engaging, remembering details. I'm holding six business cards and mental notes of six conversations I need to continue in the following week when I notice ... HIM. The Networking Nightmare Guy, with the too-loud laugh, shoving his business card into the hands of others and not listening to a damn word anyone else says. How did this clown get invited to a classy soiree like this? For the love of God, why is he wearing his bluetooth headset at a party? He pushes his card into my hand along with a overly-aggressive handshake before saying his name.

I look down at the card and see his grinning mug covering half the card. A Realtor. I wish I could I was surprised.

I nod politely - no point in being rude or uncivil - and move on.

He *follows* me. He must have seen me engage with a few people in 'deep bump' dialogue and is looking to attach himself like a remora fish, trawling my wake for scraps. I send mental 'go away' commands in vain, as he tags along while I greeted an old friend and began to chat with her.

Go away, go away, go away.

Clearly, my psychic powers are as underdeveloped in my dream-world as in my real-world self. Oh, for the power of Jesse Custer right about now.

During a lull in conversation, I flinched as I felt this guy sieze the opportunity to wedge in

"And if you ever need to buy or sell a property ... " as he pushes a card into my friend's hand.

All right, that's it.

I'm going to put my drink down and break party protocol and tell this guy to shove off ...

And then I awoke.

In cool light of midmorning reflection, the venue, faces and other elements of the dream appear to be a patchwork composite of recent events - some amplified, others softened.

On habit, I opened my molskine notepad to jot down follow up notes on the six converations before I crossed paths with Realtor Guy, only to realize with a rueful laugh they were all from a dream.

Silly rabbit.

Dreams are for kids.

reams are the stuff of subconscious - unspoken thoughts crystallized into scenes, dialogues and exchanges. What these dreams reveal I am uncertain, but as usual, I'll transcribe the odder ones for posterity.

Sleeping in on weekends, it seems, provokes the most vivid dreams.

I find myself a houseguest of a absurdly opulent eight-car-garage home on the edge of a deep river. The house was shared with four others - three strangers, and - most oddly - an ex, who regarded me with stiff, detached indifference. The tension was thick when we are in the same room, but the others seem to be unaware of our history.

I've visited this massive house before in other dreams - and the layout is as familiar as is my assigned guest room, facing the water from a second-story view. Deja vu.

We were gathered steal a well-guarded set of objects from some unnamed cult/religious order - a heavy set of beads, a square cross ... and one final object whose specific identity dance at the edge of my waking memory. My roommates are efficient, taciturn and utterly professional - but the inclusion of the ex nagged at me. Why?

What the hell is she doing here?

Having done most of the reconnaissance through social-engineering and conning myself a copy of essential keys, security codes and the layout of out target days earlier, the team set on their assigned diversionary missions, leaving me with the task of the actual heist.

Bag, duplicate keys, lockpicks, false identities, check.

Small sidearm in case things go completely to hell - check. The full magazine of hollowpoint ammunition is small comfort considering the sort of iron the sentinels would be packing, but it was the best we could manage.

If things go well, I won't need it. If I did, I'm probably dead anyway.

Penetrating each level of security proved to be in increasing levels of difficulty - the art of looking like you belonged while trespassing tests one's skills at bluffing, improvisational dialogue and summoning that mild indignation that a legitimate tenant would express at security guards who've stopped and questioned one's identity.

"I know you're just doing your job, sir - but if you don't know who I am ..."

And then, I'm in.

Inner sanctum. I have seconds to break out my passkey and bypass the security on the vault. Quickly load the essential items and get out, before they complete the check on my identity, before the sentinals I've fast-talked moments earlier realize they've been had.

Tick tock, tick tock. Done.

As I walked the corridor with my pulse pounding in my skull and the stolen goods secure in my knapsack, questions swirled in my mind. Why would my ex be assigned to this team?

Would she deliberately blunder her part of the operation and bring security on my head?

Why does every set of eyeballs seem to swivel on my movements?

I feel a heavy, muscular hand drop on my shoulder ...

And then I awake.

Strange.

reams in recent days have been particularly vivid. In a peculiar shift from my baseline, dreams in the past weeks have been more intense and feature substantially more violence than I remember. Serial dreams - sequential episodes that stitch together over the course of multiple nights to form story arcs that can span a week or more. It's times like this I wish I had a real-life version of the device in Strange Days.

Insomnia is keeping me from sleeping, so I will transcribe my most recent dream until the need to sleep passes me again. What you read might not make sense, but hey.

I'm a freelance operative on the winning side of a decade-long war in some far future, far enough that my body is packed with bioware that gives me fine-tuned control over my autonomic functions. I can drop my pulse to a minimum crawl and enter hibernation mode to conserve energy, or dial up my adrenal glands to redline and be combat-ready in the space of six heartbeats. Pain-management nanowires alert me to any damage I may sustain, without crippling my reflexes - but fighting is a tertiary function of this body.

I have a vague idea the dollar cost of all the machinery that hums beneath my skin, but the figure is an abstraction, a sum orders of magnitude more than I can ever expect to earn in this lifetime. But then, nobody buys their own milspec bioware. Anyone who can afford the astronomical costs isn't going to be interested in putting himself in situations where such abilities are needed. But if you've got the bucks and an itch to wage your own war - no government can stand in your way. Outfit the right volunteers with state-of-the-art bioware and you can bankroll your own special forces team. Those born with ability but no advantage find employ as their centurions, offering their bodies in exchange for hard coin.

Combat-spec bioware optimizes you to be an effective killing machine - soft targets like eyeballs are replaced with shatterproof monochrome lenses that can take a 12-gauge shotgun blast from five feet away. Dense fiberweb armoring replaces skin over elbows and other weak surfaces. They barely look human ... and thanks to synaptic surgery designed to burn out counterproductive traits like empathy, they really aren't. Imagine a jackal with a 140 IQ. Add the ability to shoot a one-inch group with a sidearm at 50 yards while tending to a gaping wound in your gut.

My Psyops-spec bodyware runs in the opposite direction. Intelligence-gathering means blending in, so everything above dermal level must be organic. Evaluation and analysis bioware pipe into my optic and aural nerves to extract data; in a crowded room, it can monitor heart rates, skin temperatures, iris dilations and other variables of over 100 individuals within line of sight. With training, I can actually track about two dozen sets of vital signs before losing my place.

The Negotiator
I'm in a bar for a meeting. There's just enough money to buy a veneer of class, but the decor is a hodge-podge clash of different design styles. I've arrived ahead of schedule so I can watch my quarry make his appearance, and in the meantime, I amuse myself scanning the crowd. The din of dozens of dialogues, between friends, business partners, lovers ... or those angling to become one of the above.

• That guy in the corner has no idea he's wasting his time buying drinks for the pretty Eurasian girl in the blue dress. He's so intent on impressing her, he doesn't notice the older gay man sneaking quick peeks at his face when he's looking the other away. I snicker inwardly.
  
  
• Blue Suit at the booth is selling something to the silver-haired couple seated opposite of him. I can't hear what he's saying, but the stress-levels in his voice means he's lying about something important. The couple doesn't notice. He hands them some documents and a pen, looking noticably relieved that he got away with whatever sleight-of-tongue he was attempting. Score one for bad salesmanship.
  
  
• There's an argument brewing between the well-dressed man and woman on the opposite side of the room. The natural flow of conversation is truncated in their exchange, a series of stacatto interruptions and counter-interruptions. The pitch of their voices grew about a half-octave in just the ten minutes I've been observing, and I expect a full-scale fight in -

There he is. Taller than I expected, with a goatee and shock of dark-blonde hair. We're negotiating for his organization's cooperation in a major campaign, but he is a wily opportunist who knows he can be a formidable enemy or a valuable ally.

We palaver.

With the gear I'm packing, reading surface thoughts of unmodified humans is absurdly easy, but the arms race in the world of Psyops bioware means that for every detection program out there, there exists a half-dozen countermeasures. Controlled breathing, controlled iris dilation - my counterpart offers a smooth, bland stream of biodata that my pattern-recognition wetware can't pick apart. He can be completely sincere, or signalling a distant gunman whose crosshairs are trained on my skull to end me, and I have no idea.

The topic of our conversation drifts to other fields as our silent duel continue.

Feint and parry.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Hours pass. He expresses knowledge in an obscure field I should know nothing about; as luck would have it, I happen to have substantial expertise. I suppress my excitement and hard-lock my pulse steady at 60BPM and let him talk. Without even realizing it, he's squadered his advantage; he's nowhere nearly as strong as he appeared in our initial assessment. We don't need him, but he wants us to believe we do.

Gotcha.

In the rush of discovery, the strongest temptation is to call him out; I had to forcefully suppress my desire to do so. As a matter of strategy, it's better to let somebody who is trying to snow you think he's getting away with it. Your knowledge of his bluff is your edge, to be saved up and used at an opportune moment of your choosing.

My Psyops instructor drilled the virtue of appearing dumber than we actually were, to " 當傻瓜" [dang1 sha3 gua1] (literally translated, 'playing the idiot'). Better to allow your opponent underestimate your ability than the other way around.

I tap the table with my index finger, signaling my sniper to lower his weapon. He's more valuable to us alive, especially now that I know his weakness.

And with that, I woke up.

But now, the sleepiness is creeping back in the the edges of my conciousness.

Off to bed.

Perchance to dream.

ome of you know I am frequently plagued with strange and disturbing dreams. Most are usually forgotten by the time I dress for work, but others linger in my memory for days or even weeks after.

Maybe the following won't make sense to anyone reading this, but thought I'd just write down everything I can remember for my own reference.

I am at a party ... mixed in with humans were three-foot tall halflings with pointed ears and blue-skinned creatures with ethereal voices. I (along with two other people) are having a conversation with a elderly, elfin-faced woman who describes herself as a pixie ... and as our conversation progress, something about her bothers me.

She was effacatious and charming ... but the more I talked with her, the more uneasy I got. I excuse myself and approach the hostess of the party about this person.

Before I could say a word, she starts: "I've noticed her too. She's never come to any of my gatherings before and nobody here seems to know her. She is not what she claims to be."

She lowers her voice further. "There is something ancient and evil about that one."

I look over and see the pixie has three people eating out of her hand with some story that is beyond my earshot.

So what do we do?

"You were right to sense something was wrong. No pixie ever calls herself that. If she were, she's a 'waif' or something along those lines. I need your help to confirm my suspicions ... if she is what I think she is, we need to get her alone."

And?

The kindly, grandmotherly-looking hostess' voice took a hard edge: "Then we must kill her."

A sense of dread and fear shoots through me. What sort of strange evil infiltrated this innocent party?

"Come with me. I need you to distract her so I can get something." She took me by my arm and put on her 'hostess' smile as she walks back to the pixie and her enthralled audience.

"How are you all enjoying the party dear?" she asks in her charming voice, as she and I clear away the used dishes and goblets at the table.

"Wonderful! You must let me know when you are having another one of these gatherings!" the pixie replies.

"Oh, I shall!" our hostess smiles, as she moves behind her. Swift as a stage magician, she plucks a stray hair from the back of the pixie's crown and tucks it into her sleeve.

"Let's get these dishes to the kitchen, shall we?"

There is a pot already boiling when we get there ... bubbling with strange-smelling reagents and herbs. It's a modern-day cauldron, a giant pot of stainless steel, set atop a gas-burning range beneath an air vent.

"I hate this part."

She lifts up the lid and removes the strand of hair from the pixie. "You might want to turn around for this, dear."

I turn three quarters away as she dropped the hair into the cauldron and feel a flash of light, a smell of something rotten burning.

I hear the hostesses voice, shaking with fear "Oooh no."

... and then I awoke.

What the bloody hell was that all about?

s a science enthusiast and an avowed skeptic, I generally maintain a dim attitude toward mysticism and those who profess 'supernatural' experiences.

Yet one of the most vivid memories from my childhood involves an inexplicable case of dream-precognition; it was an experience that shook me to my core as a twelve-year-old ... and even now, leaves me with disquieting questions about the nature of reality.

Sixth grade, Mister Arney's homeroom. As part of our science class, we were supposed to spend three weeks creating a research report on a topic of our own choosing. Three trips to the library and multiple evenings wrestling with my father's electric typewriter (wow, I feel old just mentioning 'electric typewriter') finally produced my twenty-page science report on Sea Anemones, bound in a clear, professional plastic binder.

The night before our graded projects were to be handed back, I had a dream where I was in the classroom, listening as Mister Arney read off the names of each student - who would then approach his desk and pick up their report. In the dream, I remember carrying my report all the way to my desk on the other side of the room before opening it, whereupon I found in circled red ink in the lower right corner B+

And then I awoke.

Not a bad grade, to be sure - but being Asian, we know this is two marks below what is considered acceptable performance. :) I remember thinking how strange it was to walk all the way around to my desk before opening my report; normally, we look at our grades right at the desk, the moment we get our hands on them.

Convinced that this dream was a premonition of the day's event, I wondered during breakfast whether I could subvert the outcome of the day - somehow break the timeline that results in my getting a 'B+' ... and roll the dice for a better grade than the one I foresaw. During the bus ride to school, I thought "if I open my report to look at my grade at any point OTHER than where I was in the dream, I can jump into an alternate timeline, where I could receive a grade OTHER than that B+" and vowed to open my report the moment I picked it off Mister Arney's desk.

Moment of truth - as usual, there was a cluster of students around our teacher's desk as they were comparing grades and chatting with each other when my name was called. The moment I picked up my report, a classmate (who was seated next to me) struck up a conversation while walking back to our desks on the other side of the room. Momentarily distracted from my mission, I responded - and when we were close to our desks, he asked 'so how did you do on your science report?'

On instinct, I opened up my report at the exact same place as I dreamed ... and felt a sick sensation of deja-vu as I see the grade encircled in red ink on the lower right corner - B+.

It's a spooky experience for a twelve-year-old; in spite of my deliberate efforts to subvert my premonition, I felt like puppet on a string - marching to a pre-scripted tune that I could anticipate, but not change. I've kept this story to myself for many years for fear that people would think I was crazy - and even now, I find my memories of this incident (and other predictive dreams I've had since) as unsetting rebuttals to my anti-mysticism worldview.

Now if only I can order dreams ex-ante, and read the financial statements of small-cap stocks in 2005 ...

ver had a dream in which you were positive you just woke up from ... only to find yourself landing into yet another dream?

Had a bizzare 40-minute nap this afternoon. The last time I remember a nested dream-within-a-dream was when I was around 12 years old ... and that one was only two degrees before I "truely" awakened. Today, well ...

[1] First dream was in my old Pacific Heights apartment in San Francisco, where I was watching the sailboats in the bay at sunset. I remember feeling tired, and getting ready to hit the sack early, only to find myself ...

[2] ... shaken awake by my father. Seems I was "dreaming" as I was napping on the couch back at their house. I had a copy of Garth Ennis' graphic novel Preacher: War in the Sun held loosly in my hands while I "slept," and as he walked away, he was shaking his head, wondering aloud why somebody my age would still be wasting time reading comic books. Just as I got up ...

[3] ... I wipe sleep-boogers from my eyes and blink. I am starboard-side at a window seat on what appears to be a private jet. Sunlight streams through the windows and I turn away from the glare. A pretty woman with shy eyes is seated next to me. "Looks like you dozed off there for a while, sweetheart."

Sweetheart?

She leans over me, points to a magnificent waterfall just a few hundred meters outside my window, and whispered "You should sleep later, or you're going to miss the best view of our honeymoon..."

Honeymoon?

She sighs, nuzzles against my neck and wraps her arms around my shoulders, and I can smell the remnents of some scented shampoo on her hair. I look out the window again, but the waterfall is gone ...

... and then I'm awake. I think.

Yarr. I could care less about [1] or [2] ... but dammit I wish I could reroll tape [3] and play it again to get better a look at her face ... or even just to get her name ...

Yeesh. I really need to get a girlfriend.

Back to work.