I look across the narrow table and study the lines in his scarred face. His arms are stretched out, like those of a yogi -- palms up, thumbs touching forefingers. I see the razor scars striping his biceps, the disc-shaped welts under his skin. I squint, and can almost see the silver mask of JFK.

We have been seated like this for nearly an hour.

"Session is up in a few minutes," I say. He grunts, his eyes glance upwards from underneath his heavy brow. A droplet of sweat beads up from his forehead and drops down like a lead weight. The room is being kept at a steady seventy-seven degrees. He is dressed in drawstring pants, sandals and a mask of rage. Caged beast rage.

"What do you want?" he asks.

I stub out my cigarette on the edge of the metal table.

He repeats the questions, I pretend not to hear it.

"What do you want, Mr. Krüze?"

"I want what any man wants, doctor. I want to be free" His eyes are cold, grey. His teeth are showing...two of them are capped with steel. "I want to feel the city under my feet, to walk among its peoples..."

I scratch the felt-tip marker up and down across the clipboard in my hands. Pens and pencils are a no-no, especially around the prisoners...especially around this prisoner.

"You say that you're a prophet, Mr. Krüze. Explain?"

His muscles are grotesque, rippling and criss-crossed with buldging veins and scar tissue. He has numerous piercings (all since removed), filed teeth, dental floss sutures stitched across self-inflicted wounds, dimes under his skin, murder in his steroid-crazed mind. He's killed...outside and inside. He'd kill me if he thought it would do any good but he knows that it wouldn't. He's practical this one...and he has a method. At least he has that.

"I have seen the future, doctor."

"So you say." His eyes lock with mine and I feel myself shrink inside.

"I have SEEN it. A world where we live forever under the dome of the sky. A world without war, without pain. I have been chosen to herald a new age..." He rambles on.

My pen scratches again. Always the same...always the same...

GAMMON KRÜZE

Gammon Krüze (aka Nicholas Toland) is thirty-two years old and has spent the last four years of his life behind the walls of San Quentin. He is a physically powerful and imposing man with cold grey eyes and a shaven head criss-crossed with scars. Numerous scars also mark his hypertrophic musculature, the result of too many yard fights and self-inflicted surgery.

Krüze is the adopted son of noted Marin-County therapist Gregory Toland and was himself diagnosed with autism at an early age. After a lengthy stay at his father's retreat and numerous sessions with the Nexus Interface, he was able to interact with normal human society. Unfortunately, he was ill-prepared for this and soon developed into a violent young man with delusions about alien conspiracies, secret military experiments and an obsession with occult sciences that mutated into a bizarre cult called Cybermancy. He left his home and never saw his father again.

After attracting numerous followers, Krüze and his cult embarked on a year-long spree of mayhem, culminating in the bombing of a medical research building in which 72 people (staff and patients) lost their lives. A lengthy stand-off with police anded in his capture and subsequent life sentence (the death penalty was considered but ultimately the court ruled against such a sentence, much to the anger of the general public).

Krüze killed a fellow inmate shortly after his imprisonment and was moved to solitary confinement. The killing was declared an act of self-defense and aside from some fights, Krüze was considered a model prisoner. He began reading voraciously and started a kenjitsu dojo within the prison (of course, the group was not allowed real weapons...instead, Krüze relied on visualized swords, kata, discipline and observance of etiquette). After a year, with many members lost due to death, release or attrition, Krüze and his remaining adherents were a well-organized, disciplined group of warriors (as they referred to themselves) and took to defending weaker inmates from the more violent prisoners and brutal guards.