Linden would walk down the hill, through the housing estate, every working day. Each time he would see the bell tower peeking above the other rooftops. On clear days, he sometimes stopped to admire the tower's elaborate masonry and wondered what civil building it was atop.
On July 17th, 2001, after taking several zoom shots of the belfry, Linden resolved to take a detour on the way to the clinic in order to see the rest of the building. However, after heading in roughly the right direction and systematically exploring the streets, he could not work out which building it was.
That night he dug out a town map and examined the area closely. He could account for all the civil buildings in that area; schools, halls; but could not see anything that might be the tower. Going to sleep that same night, he had a dream in which he was repeatedly punching the face of one of his patients, Mr Parrish, until all that remained was a red smear on a concrete floor.

Ricky pulled the bottlecap off with his teeth; Lilly winced.
The quadmech stomped into a marshy area and couldn't get out. The crew abandoned the vehicle and later an enemy aircraft dropped a bomb on it. Fortunately non of the crew were harmed.
Brett Hero and Tinkerbell finished their meal and walked back to HQ hand in hand.

At first he defended himself with two tonfa, but after an initial struggle managed to disarm the security guard and took his weapon. Now using one tonfa across his left forearm for defense, he gave a few experimental slashes with the steel cat 'o nine tails.
The multiple tails kept the furious guard at bay; then he gave the device a quick lateral twist, and it snapped into a single solid shape - a steel bian, or hard whip.

Lilly Tier was the PTSD counselor Thornton had been seeing between August 2000 and July 2001.
He told her that he never had any stress problems before and had only recently been triggered.
She referred Thornton to Dr. Erwin Hanson after the subject of reaction experimentation came up in their sessions.
She has written several papers on social organisms and the Gaia hypothesis. During her research in the late 90s, she befriended ex-convict Ricky Lao.
She is often seen wearing complimentary black and white clothing.

Sethyline 17 is the nootroptic cocktail which comprised part of Dr. Hanson's 'Circinus' project. It is used as a medium within the nervous system allowing acetylcholine to transmit more efficiently. When used on its own it tends to induce severe seizures.
It is believed that development of Sethyline 17 stemmed from Hanson's work on research into possible antidotes for the rumoured Iraqi war-chemical 'Agent 15'.

Hanson didn't like The Matrix, for two reasons. The first was the (in his opinion) ludicrous technical notions; that human beings were being used as batteries. The total energy output of humans cannot be greater than their energy input; their energy input, food, was comprised of humans that had died. So as an energy source they are pointless. Plus the total energy output would be dwarfed by other forms of energy available (nuclear, geothermal) regardless of the blockage of sunlight.
Secondly, he resented the self-important wannabe esoterics and incessent waffle about control and destiny, et cetera.
However, it should be noted that Dr. Hanson rarely liked any cinematic entertainment.

Abe Parrish had been using his chequebook for about a year (once or twice even during his sleepwalking, writing blank cheques to people in his dreams), and had finally used it up on the 1st of December 1999; except for one cheque which he had deliberately skipped over sometime during June.
It was there each time he had opened the book, and each time he examined it, then moved onto the next cheque instead.
Now the book was just stubs, apart from this one sheet. For the umpteenth time he flicked through the stubs to make sure he hadn't missed something obvious.
The first stub showed cheque number 000151. Each successive stub showed a sequencially increasing cheque number, up to 000171.
The following cheque - the unused one in the centre of the book - bore cheque number 1000000. The remainder of the book continued as normal - 000172 onwards.
When he had first encountered it - trying to pay for a new bike for his nephews birthday present - he happened to spot the odd number straight away, as the previous cheque had to be cleared in the store with a phone call and before that he was barely aware that cheques had numbers.
He noticed the slip had more than the usual six digits there, decided something was amis, and used 000172 instead.
Calling his bank that afternoon to query 'cheque number one million', they told him no such cheque would exist; it's probably a misprint; don't use it.

A week later, habitually clearing out his desk, Abe came across a folded-up piece of paper in a wooden slide-box for keeping pencils in. Unfolding it, he found a love-letter from someone unknown to himself ('My darling Abe...'), a full A4 page long, signed only with the letter T.
Abe had only ever had one girlfriend before - a long time ago - and this was not her handwriting anyway. He scanned through again, baffled. The lady - or gentleman - who had left this for him appeared to imply that they had met only briefly but were somehow intimately close and that he/she wanted to give him 'a million kisses'.
He showed the letter to his therapist, suspecting a stalker or a pratical joker and in either case proving he wasn't paranoid. His therapist - Linden - pointed out a third possibility; that during his irregular somnambulism he had walked over to his desk and written the note himself, despite the different handwriting.
Abe accepted the idea but wasn't convinced, even joking that maybe it was a love letter to him from someone in his dreams, using his sleep disorder as a method to communicate with him in the 'real' world.
Linden didn't smile, just nodded thoughtfully and made some notes.

Abe Parrish saw the near-black dog three times.
1. Too young to remember
2. On the bus back to the sanitorium; thinking about cheque number one million; could it be fateful or magic somehow, like a magical blank cheque?; Could he make it pay out somehow?; the bus turns a corner and through the window he makes eye contact with the creature; disturbed for a fraction of a second then the vehicle moves on; Abe realises that the cheque can only be used to take amounts out of his account.
3. Seen in the Red room before going to sleep for the last time ever.