"Oh hello! Yes, it's been quite a while, but you look well! Me? I have been manufacturing dreams for the Psyche Corporation. Oh yes, it *sounds* like a choice gig, but instead of being in the lofty mists among the Shadow Court, or in the future-modern offices of the surrealist image-makers, or breeding nanobots with the geeks on Psi-Net, i have been deep down in the hot, sooty, greasy sub-basement buried far beneath the gleaming spires; where rats gnaw the toes off of the past; where forgotten dreamers babble their fuse-blown inanities; where the coal fired steam furnaces have left the walls black and shiny. Yes, i know i'm making it sound like a Bosch-ian Hell, it really is that bad. Worse, actually, it's hotter than you think you think it is, and the risk of tetanus alone is off the charts! Ok, laugh, but that wasn't a joke, i'm not trying to be funny here. Well i can't say too much, even to a trusted friend like yourself - special clearance and all, you'll forgive me - but i can say that this was to fulfill a special commission. No fancy dreams of gold paved streets, no sex or triumphs for this client. This is one is for justice, to bring nightmares to the fractured mind of someone who has brought nightmares to innocent minds. Ha, ok, yes i see your point. "Called in a criminal", criminal indeed. I'm a bit of a specialist, you know. You might think of me as a "found object" artist, or maybe worse since i don't object to making do with absconded objects either… but I'm the sort that gets called in for the uncomfortable work, when a situation is so badly broken it can only be fixed by someone who is willing to break it worse, first. So, the best Psi-naut in the biz to date (and according to the psychics, the best ever), the primo ballerina of the Dream Spinners, the Psyche Chimère herself wrote the script. Clearance or no, you know of her, she's the worst kept secret in the world. None among the Shadow Court can match her grace, or her skill as a dream weaver - their minds simply do not have her integrity. She Herself has sung the lullaby, it is her voice that will call forth the demons to burn out this poisonous mind - and it is my engine that will drive them there. Oh yes, the package is nearly complete, the nightmare nearly ready for delivery. My toil is largely over, but this is really just the beginning. How do i mean? Well, my invention, it's finished, it works, well, most of the time it works, but it's all analog you know, sort of held together by wire and prayer, haHa, clangs right along but but but it does what it needs to do, and does it bloody nicely when it's doing it, if i don't say so myself. No, i'm perfectly alright, why do you ask? Anyway, i'll be there to make adjustments if anything goes wrong, you know, lever here, valve there sort of things. Once it's wound up it'll just keep going 'til it finds a head to chop off, i think. I mean, you can't really do a test run on this sort of thing, can you? That's why i'm on this one, i make the prototypes, every unit that's made after it will be a swanked up copy of my machine, made by some slicker who'll take the credit at the corporate level, you know, haHa, they've said it for generations, "There's no business like Dream business". Well that's just it you see, the physics of it are all quite simple really, the whole transference of energy thing, a little Newton, a little Goldberg, a little Munchausen… but the art of the thing, really, it will be marvelous, when it's all in action - but i must be off, please pardon pardon me. You really ought to try to catch the playback, it should be quite entertaining. In the future it will probably be all beeps and bloops, but to power this creep's nightmare - why i've built a Steamcrunk Contraption!!!" -- dj addambombb (from sometime in the brilliant future, and the abysmal past)