He was in a parked car across the street, a pair of binoculars on the dash and a sub machine gun in the passengers seat. Someone had paid Mr. Hessel quite the amount of funds to observe and report, although the 'off hours' where proving to be longest and most boring part of the assignment. Deciding enough was enough, he carefully leaned the seat back, letting his mind go blank as his eyelids drifted shut....

Like most saturdays the evening shit seemed to go forever. Jordan ussualy enjoyed her work as a waitress, but it depended a lot on what kind of customers she served. This saturday was hell. Along with regular customers a bunch of marines came too. That would not so be too bad, but with thame came some pigheaded chief with two of his gorillas, listening to his every whim. Which was the reason why Jordan did not punch him when he kept touching her butt. She was not looking forward to get trashes later on. This chief did not look like forgetting man.

Luckily her shift was over, Jensen's was closed and she could happily go home. Tomorrow was her free day and she could finally sleep in after hectic week. She took a very long shower and fed her pet Kawaii Lord Byron Merryweather. She then got a glass of vine and sat in the armchair reading with intention of reading. Byron cuddled in her lap and she started petting him. As she read her eyes slowly started falling down, letting her drift into the dreams.

It had been a hard day's work for Venicus as he keyed himself into his apartment building. As he trudged up the stairs he reminisced about his days as in the Special Forces, but a simple injury took that dream away from him. Plopping his bag onto a chair, he removed his uniform from the machine shop before stepping into the shower. A few minutes later, he stepped out to dry himself off before slipping on a pair of boxers and curling up into his bed. Flipping towards one side, he pressed a few buttons on a device next to his bed which then started emitting music. With a slight smile he closed his eyes and drifted off into dreamland.

It had been a normal day for Tweak Three Seven of Cirrus Station. Today had been a late-shift patrol assignment, keeping her up later than usual, and so she was about to fall asleep on her feet by the time her head hit pillow on her bunk in the sardine-can-like room that the Head Administrator, Cassefin, called "barracks".

As she fell to sleep, her mind continued going for a while...







All systems normal.
Stand-by mode initiated
... ... ...

---

Her neko systems in sleep mode and her Tactical Operating System standing by with its usual vigilance, Tweak's primary operating system -- her primary mind and the seat of her personality, her emotions, what some called the "soul" of a neko -- calmed into the sleep patterns that allowed most humanoids to dream. And so she dreamed.

Danny Hanley-Lewis was sitting in a shoebox apartment on Dawn Station that was borrowed from a friend of a friend who owed him a favour. It was a shaky favour at best, but Danny would take a stable opportunity if he could see it. At best, the furnishings were spartan, the view was uncharacteristically brick-like. However, it was close to the convenience stores.

A fold-out table in the middle of the living room was littered with the job sections for newspapers and heavily penned with circles, crosses and underlines throughout. Unfortunately, the crosses were numerous, and the circles were few. Either way, it'd been the end of another day of looking for work, and nobody had smashed his door down demanding anything - yet.

Danny changed into some pyjamas before creeping under the sheets of the threadbare bed provided and nuzzled the pillows. At least the little apartment had good climate control.

And he eventually found a rut and fell asleep, letting his thoughts drift into listless dreams...

As Venicus fell asleep his mind began to wander, until full REM sleep took over. As usually happens when one dreams, his mind wasn't fully comprehending everything around him, nor fully controlling his actions.

Door....White. I must enter the door. Venicus approached the door and opened it before stepping in and closing it behind him. Door is closed now. White....More White.....Nothing but white. He stood and waited.

This is a place. Where is this? What is a 'place'? What is that object? Whatwherewhowhenwhyhowwhatwherewho--

Questions slipped through the sleeping neko's mind at unregulated speed, nearly urges rather than conscious thoughts. As far as it knew, it had never been here before. Yet, at the same time the white room with the door was the only place it had ever been. Unaware that it was dreaming (or even what it was) the mind was fully alert, drowning out the subtle, but irresistible tug the other dreamers might be experiencing. However, the plane was featureless except for the door, so it examined the feature.

The neko's mind took in the door from all angles, close up and far back, examining the workings of the handle and the latch...the curiosity was insatiable and dream-time was flexible, so the investigations took no time at all. For a flickering moment, there was a replica door next to the first as the mind attempted to recreate it; however, the new door led nowhere and vanished. The presence realized that the original door enabled passage through the wall and the copy would never be accurate unless it led to the same place that the first did.

What was on the other side?

Unable to open the door directly, the mind's eye flew through the door in the same manner that it examined the inner workings with. However, something made it pause just before it crossed the threshold to the room beyond. The place ahead was somewhere new...it had a different feeling to it than the place behind. The place behind was now known, and admittedly quite boring, but the mind felt stable there. Curiosity countered that desire for safety, though, and it continued forward into the room.

To the others in the lobby-like room, the neko's mind was invisible to sight, unheard, unsmelled, and untouchable. There was only that feeling of someone watching. A vague impression of someone other than one's self. Sometimes close, sometimes distant, but always there.

This room was interesting. There were other things here (it had no knowledge of what "people" were, but would soon learn), and also other doors. The mind jumped from one point to another to another to another, examining everything. The others were represented as foggy outlines, or mirage-like images, but still examinable even if there were no details to see yet. For some reason, though, the neko's mind felt repulsed by the doors that the others entered through, and kept a set distance from them.

Danny was lying on the featureless white ground and staring at the door three metres up when he came to, he wondered for a moment how he got here, but he quickly remembered that he went to bed - ergo, he must be dreaming. He wondered what the door three metres up was supposed to represent, aside from being yet another wonderful screwover. He took a moment to take in the scenery - featureless, sterile, white and plain and stretching infinitesimally in all directions.

"Sometimes I just can't catch a..." He groaned as he moved over to the featureless wall and jumped up a couple of times, waving his arms in futile attempts to reach the handle, "Hup, Hngh." He grumbled after a few jumps and realised that he needed a running start. He took a few steps back and jumped against the wall and bounced upwards high enough to reach, but he'd moved backwards too, causing him to miss the handle. He landed on his feet though, "Dagnabbit."

Then he decided to try again, this time keeping in mind that he was dreaming. "Its just a dream, its just a wall, and that's a door outta here!" He stood back, cracked his knuckles, and made another running jump against the wall. This time however, he started running up the wall rather than bouncing up it, and he grabbed onto the handle with both hands and dangled for a moment as the door swung open. He manoeuvred his legs into the door frame and got through.

However, after getting through, something occurred to him; why did he want to go through the door in the first place? Was he sick of the scenery (or lack, thereof)? This new area wasn't providing any positive (or negative) changes to the scenery aside from vague representations of the other Users, which just looked like fuzzy humanoid outlines of varying shapes and colours to Danny. Danny's outline was a burnt yellow colour with interlinings of blue and cream here and there.