– 1 –

In the headquarters of Konami a young executive named Mr. Koga stands. He has been inspired. He has dreamed, as Mr. Matsuda dreamed.

“I have seen it,” he says.

He looks far away.

“In my dreams they crash down before me,” he says. “The lightning and the red. And fire lashes up from the sewers to take me, and it eats me, down to my bones; and God is with me, then, he is telling me, thus ends all mortal hope.

“I am dead,” he says. “I am the walking dead. For I have died in dreams. But from the land of death I bring a jewel. I have seen it. I have seen how to fix the greatest flaw in the Konami Thunder Dance. It is the truth that is given to me by God.”

He is fired for his presumption. Then later the company sends a thunder dancer and two programmers to talk to him. They speak to him late into the night.

They return with a jewel of knowledge, clutched to them like a sacred hat.

“We can do it,” they report, to the board of directors. “We can patch the hole. We can close out Dynamite.”

<< Chapter 2: Bethany and the Nithrid

– 2 – >>