The Dream Palace

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see...

TRANSMIT - initiate Carthage frequency - RECEIVE - initiate the decadent cadence - LOVE, EXCITING AND NEW - initiate room service - COME ABOARD, WE'RE EXPECTING YOU - fly the purple flag - WITNESS - the Dream Palace.

Mammalian copulation rituals confuse us. Bisecting and intersecting lines. Ports and plug-ins. Pheromone pollution. Chameleon protocols activated by some invisible gland - and now a police officer and now a nurse and now a nun.

The safe word is mirror.

There is a hotel, some might call it a love hotel, others call it the Dream Palace. It is a multiverse of fantasies. A honeycomb of sordid secrets, most of them significant only to the petty individual who secreted them.

There are deeper secrets.

Lower the secret lens.

We see the purple people. They creep in. They creep out. The Dream Palace is their base of operations in Tokyo. A place to retreat from and an access point to Kaidan's underworld. It is a mask, but a fully functional mask - anatomically correct.

Since the bomb and the horror, only one employee operates the Dream Palace. As a facilitator, she is calm and competent. In Kaoru, the Phoenicians trust. She has her own secrets. She got her stars tangled with Ricky Pagan. Further back, she had a bad day. We saw her father drift away in the ocean, on the day that decided her.

Through the rooms. Down the stairs. We see you in the basement, sweetling. Not now, but soon enough. We are so sorry.

Through the halls. To the AV suite. We see-

Signal disruption! Frequencies corrupted! We cannot see into !@#!@$%#$

Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss - I am the elemental profanity - let me in.

Hiya, Chuck.

The AV Suite. Room with a view, of all that was me. You peaking, Chuck? You peeking, Chuck? Is voyeurism complacency? We all want to watch the very worst things. Is that as bad as the doing? Like they used to say in the circus: nobody wants the tightrope walker to fall to his death, and nobody wants to miss it if he does.

This place is special, Chuck. The memories. Kaoru was so kind. She's got a history, a gentle sadness in her eyes, with all the subtle pull of an undercurrent that will lead you to a beautiful drowning.

The basement breaks a certain rule you might take for granted. Wait for it...

See you, Chuck ...