- Chapter 001 -

A large metal construction was build along the 50 meters tall wall, almost touching the ceiling. A sphere, attached to several cables was resting on stage in front of the construction. The framework of both the sphere and tower was covered in hundreds of lightbulbs in various colors and several miles worth of electrical wiring attached to the lights' sockets. Frantically blinking on and off, the lights of the towers spread an ever-changing tapestry of colors over the wall and the stage, the lights on sphere however, were still dim. More lights along the other three walls and all over the ceiling of the hall, every single one of them seemingly trying to be the most bright, to be the fastest blinking.
The purpose of all this was obviously to blind or drive, whoever was in this hall, insane. Eyes were not the only things under attack. Black, monolithic and of monsterous proportions were the countless speakers, placed seemingly random over the surface of the floor. Something was continously blurting out of the speakers at such high volumes it was hard to say what it's supposed to be, all one could hear were screaches and rumbles of speakers almost crumbling under the pressure of the decibles. It was almost as if the speakers themselves were crying out in pain, slowly deafening whoever would be near. And that was a good thing considering the total lack of quality of the obnoxious attempts at music the DJs were pouring into the amps.
But none of the 5718 people present seemed to care, the bright colors of their clothing were competing with the blinking lights and the combined noise caused by all of them talking, laughing or dancing was worse than the stuff coming out of the speakers. Every TV channel in the area had send over their own team of reporters and cameramen to make sure the people at home could catch a glimpse of the atmosphere.

New Central Hall, New York. Like the name suggested, this hall was new, brand new. Only 3 weeks ago the major officially opened the venue and apart from the festivities then, today was the hall's first real party. The occasion : new year's eve. With only several minutes to go, 2026 was almost over and with every minute closer to midnight, the crowd became louder and more drunk.
Finally, at 23.44, the speakers went silent and distorted music was replaced by a humm and here and there some sizzling sounds indicating several speakers weren't in good condition anymore. A local celebrity appeared on the stage and the people close by, who recognized the middle-aged man as a stand-up comedian, became quiet as well. A wave of silence moved along the hall as more and more people noticed him standing there and started paying attention to him. Mister stand-up comedian looked quite ridiculous in his fluo-red suit, but fluo suits were all the rage these days and he fit in just fine with the lights and the rest of the crowd. Pleased with the amount of attention he got from the people, he started talking in a microphone.
'Ladies and Gentlemen, it's almost time!' The crowd roared and applauded while he walked over to a giant switch with much aplomb and obviously under the influence of indecent amounts of alcohol (everybody knew that Mister Comedian's favorite drink was JD and that he consumed lots of it right before and after his shows and even more during the shows). With both hands he grabbed hold of the switch and started pulling it up towards the 'on' position. With a loud 'clank!' the switch fell into place and...nothing happened.
Of course the thing wasn't attached to anything for safety reasons and behind the scenes there was a bored and -by now- very drunk technician who was supposed to push a few buttons instead. It took about 6 seconds for a coworker to realize something wasn't going as planned and to remind his near-unconscious colleague of his duties by means of throwing an almost empty can of beer at him. Chuck a.k.a. nibbles, who earned this nickname by eating peanuts all the god-darned time, snapped out of his drunken stare and quickly smashed several buttons on the control panel he was sitting at. Pretending nothing happened, he shrugged and reached over to his backpack lying on the floor near his chair and grabbed a new bag of 'TopNuts!' peanuts. This would be his 5th bag this evening. Chuck didn't like his job, but sometimes, on events like this, the drinks were free and then he made up for all the drink-less days of work he had to endure. When he was contracted for this job he expected there would be free booze and when the organizers asked how many people he would need to keep the show running he said he'd bring 4 coworkers. Of course, only him and his buddy Jeff a.k.a. skunk showed up and as such both of them had a reasonable supply of beer. They already worked their way half-way trough the stack of six-packs and it didn't look like they'd have any trouble finishing the job. Jeff, honoring his nickname, farted loudly, said 'Boo-yah!', and grabbed another can of Bud.
Back on stage, Mister Comedian was worried for a second and about to pull the switch back down and then give it another try, when the sphere lighted up brightly while the lights in the hall dimmed accompanied by much cheering and applauding from the people in the hall. Slowly the sphere started rising and the whole thing was timed so it would reach the top of the metal construction at exactly midnight. Mister Comedian, now relieved everything was working as it should, turned to crowd with a big grin on his face and fresh bottle of JD in his hand and started doing what he was hired for : entertaining the people with tasteless jokes for the next 15 minutes.

The massive amounts of light and sound produced by the contents of the New Central Hall were captured by almost 50 cameras, belonging to 27 different TV channels and broadcasted over to 16 million TVs all over New York. One of these cameras, a JVC HD²-750U-X2, belonged to David Wheland and had been with him for almost 14 years now. David and his trusty HD² camera had seen many shows and events like the one they were at now, and neither liked them very much, but it was up to his boss, back at the Channel 23 HQ, to decide where David, his camera and Charlie the sound technician would be send off to, to do their jobs. David and Charlie knew from experience when there were lots of people in one place, some of those were bound to bump into the camera, spil drinks or food over their recording equipment or act like retards in front of the camera. Over the years they found ways to deal with that : they would make sure to be on location of the event quite early, when there were only a few people present, quickly interview who ever was near and then spend the rest of the evening at a pub or donut bar. Later on the same evening they might go back and spend 5 minutes taking some mood shots and then be done with it.
Today was different, the food and drinks at the New Central Hall were of high quality and, most important of all, they were free and plentifull. David and Charlie figured that free food and booze was worth enduring the social horrors that came with almost 6000 people being crammed in one location. While putting his hand in the pocked of his jeans, to make sure the little box was still there, David said to himself that the free food was nothing compared to the free meds. The small, grey and unlabeled container with stimtabs would keep him happy for several months. On the street it was also worth about 7 weeks of paychecks, though he already decided he was going to keep them for personal use.
The new year's eve party in the New Central was not just any party, only the rich and famous were allowed in (they were most likely also the only ones who were able to afford the tickets) and several of the more important rockstars, supermodels and actors demanded there would be drugs available on the party. Not just any kind of drugs, not the dangerous and cheap crap everybody else was into these days. No, they wanted the legalized stimtabs. Unable to combat the growing drug use and abuse in the city and the evergrowing number of deaths due to overdoses and bad drugs, New York was the first city to introduce a harmless drug. These tablets had the same effects like XTC, LSD, MTG-3 but didn't get you killed or addicted, or so the scientist who engineerd these pills, claimed. At the time of their introduction, 3 years ago, stimtabs were easily available and pretty cheap and NYPD was proud to announce that within 6 months of the release of stimtabs, the number of drug-related deaths and homicides had dropped with 30%. The rest of America followed suit and more and more people started buying the legal drugs and that's where the problems started. The labs simply couldn't keep up with the demand and stimtab prices quickly rose to become more expensive than any other harddrug on the street. Those who couldn't afford the legal drugs switched over to the illegal ones, including many people who never touched drugs before the introduction of stimtabs. As a result the number of drug-related deaths rose with 200% within the next year. The situation got a little better over the next 18 months, but even now, only the rich could afford real stimtabs and the drug became a proof of wealth. You weren't important if you didn't have a big expensive car, a huge villa and a daily dose of stimtabs.
Neither David or Charlie were interested in any kind of drug except alcohol, but they didn't say no to a free box of tabs. Even if they didn't want to stay at the New Central despite all the free stuff, they had little choice since the show was live on TV and they hadn't yet figured out a way to film stuff while being in a pub. So they positioned themselves near a bar and pointed their camera and microphone in the general direction of the stage and pressed 'record' while enjoying more free beer. With only 7 minutes away from the next year, the live feed of Mister Comedian and his attempts at humor were seen on about 135.000 TVs.

One of those TVs was 17 years old, in bad condition and belonged to the West Side Hotel. It was located in room 71 and was the only source of light there, spreading a flickering veil with a sick color over the contents of the room, being a bed, a small fridge, one empty chair and one chair occupied by professor Daran Wayle. One of the speakers of the TV was no longer functioning but it didn't matter much since the only thing Daran could hear was christmas carols coming the appartment to the left of his room. Daran quickly came to the conclusion that the owner of the room next door only had one CD with christmas songs and that it had been on repeat for at least 3 days now and 2, soon-to-be, 3 nights. 2 hours after his arrival he was already sick and tired of the loud music and paid a visit to his neighbour to ask if he'd be so kind to turn the volume of his music a notch down. Nobody answered the door and over the next 2 days, Daran tried several more times, eventually gave up and pissed against the neighbour's door and hoped whoever was in there got a stroke during dinner and choked in whatever he or she was eating at the time. The prospect of someone dying a well-deserved humiliating death for being a moron made Daran feel a little better.
Daran's only company on this night was a bottle of gin and a smaller bottle of orange juice.The bottle of gin was almost empty, then one with the juice hadn't been opened yet. Daran arrived in New York 4 days ago to attend to a conference on climate control and decided to spend the rest of the year in New York as well so he booked a room at the cheapest hotel he could find. He had to admit that booking a room at Hotel Headache, as he started calling it 2 days ago, was a bad idea, but he was far away from the busy city center and it's overcrowded, smelly, filth-covered streets and parks and he rather undured 2 more days of christmas songs than try and find another hotel that was most likely host to alot more people than this one. So far Daran had only seen one other guest in the hotel, an elderly man, well in his sixties and probably a permanent resident here. That explained why nobody else seemed to care about the loud music in room 73, besides himself, the old man and a possible dead person next door, the hotel was probably empty.
Meanwhile on TV there was a close-up of a timer above the metal construction displaying



The timer counted down to 10 and from there onwards the crowd started counting along : '9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...'
ZAP! Daran had seen enough and shut down the TV with a remote.