The Observer 9
Aug. 13th, 2007 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lit_galThe Observer (9/17)
Sequel to "The Witness"
beta'ed by Beta'ed by Kitty_poker1 and Slashpuppy and Janedavitt
ADULT/SLASH
Previous parts
Warnings: Puppy play, dom/sub, bondage
Sequel to "The Witness"
beta'ed by Beta'ed by Kitty_poker1 and Slashpuppy and Janedavitt
ADULT/SLASH
Previous parts
Warnings: Puppy play, dom/sub, bondage
CHAPTER NINE
***
"It's NOT part of the pattern," Blair practically growled. "I'm not trying to say it is."
Jim sat next to Blair in the waiting room of Emergency.
"Exactly. Your pattern doesn't hold up." Simon declared as though winning some victory. "Jim, the FBI is sending an investigator down. The connection between this and the other Switchman cases isn't strong enough to get them to release information on the Roy bombing, but they are interested in looking over our information on this one."
"Great," Jim answered dryly.
Simon took his unlit cigar out of his mouth and tucked it into his jacket. "Some parts of this just don't make sense, though. How did you know the bomb was there?"
"I could smell it," Jim answered for the third time.
"You smelled odorless explosives?"
"Oh man, you were complaining about my aftershave."
"Your hygiene is not the point here, Sandburg." Simon glared for a second. "Jim, this is going to sound strange to the investigators. Too strange."
"It's not strange. It's heightened smell. Man, I study heightened senses, or at least I did before your cops pissed me off so that I insisted on riding along on the gay-bashing case, and smell is the most common manifestation. A lot of people have smell combined with taste, but if Jim had heightened taste, I think I would have noticed something. I mean, we had Thai the other day, and someone with heightened taste would have scraped his own taste buds off."
"Sandburg. Another time," Simon insisted, his jaw clenched.
"If you're right, how do we get this to go away?" Jim asked as he leaned back and really studied Blair. He was almost bouncing, the energy winding him up about as tightly as Jim had ever seen him. For a second, he had a nice little fantasy about taking out his cuffs and restraining Blair until some of the energy drained off. No wonder the guy could constantly eat, not work out, and still stay in relatively good shape. He just bounced.
"Go away?" Blair demanded incredulously. He blinked at Jim in clear horror. "No way. This is important. I mean, imagine a cop with a heightened sense of smell. That could be amazing in the field. And some people have multiple heightened senses, like taste and smell or touch and hearing; that's another fairly common pairing. Probably because hearing basically is a form of touch, it's just the feeling of the sound vibrations moving the structures of the ear, but it's still feeling."
"I could hear things on scene," Jim admitted. Simon had been glaring at Blair, but now he turned that glare to Jim even as Blair's face lit with enthusiasm.
"Really? Oh man, is this the first time? I mean, you must have been in high-risk situations before. Oh man, you said you sometimes got feelings without knowing where the danger was coming from. I bet that was you at least partially processing your heightened senses. Oh, man."
"Stop saying that, Sandburg," Simon interrupted. "Jim, maybe we should get you checked out."
"Maybe we should," Jim agreed tiredly. "I felt like I could hear Blair's heartbeat and hear the metal shrieking in that fire. This isn't normal."
"It's completely normal. Medicine isn't going to help you. Heightened senses are a perfectly normal phenomenon. In the perfume industry, they call people with an enhanced sense of scent 'noses.' You have tasters in the food industry, and some musicians have a fine enough ear to identify one out of tune instrument in an entire orchestra."
"Jim is not a musician."
"Of course he's not, but in Vietnam, the Vietnamese scouts could smell the enemy--"
"The Americans had to change their diet in order to hide their scent," Jim finished. "In the army, they talk about not underestimating an enemy that doesn't have advanced weaponry. Some of them can do some amazing things."
"Yeah, exactly, and you can do some amazing things too. Oh man, Jim, you have to let me do some tests for my dissertation. I mean, I've interviewed thousands of people, but none of them had just figured out that they had heightened senses. This could be really big. I mean, you repressed having heightened senses, or maybe you had them and you just thought everyone else had them too. We have to test now, to see if you're more sensitive than normal or if this is normal for you, and you just didn't know that you weren't normal-normal."
"Chief, not now," Jim said as he stood up. The doctor came walking into the room. Collins had been sitting to one side, his shirt back on, but covered in Shay's blood. When Jim had offered him another shirt, Collins just shook his head and stared at the far wall. Now Collins stood up and closed in on the doctor.
"How's Shay?"
"Detective Shay has a good chance. He's in surgery for a perforated bowel, but the damage appears minimal, and the shrapnel exited without touching any other organs. His vitals are strong. He'll be here for a while, but he has a good chance for a full recovery."
Collins listened to the doctor with a tense alertness, but at the end of the speech, he sank back down into the chair. Jim felt some sympathy. If it had been Blair caught by a piece of flying metal, Jim would have shoved his way right into the exam room.
"My captain wants a report. I should..." Collins just stopped.
"Why don't you go to the precinct? You can use one of the Major Crimes computers to write up what you need to," Simon suggested.
"I'll drive you," Jim quickly added. The man didn't look able to navigate the room, much less drive across the city.
"Jim, I think you need to get checked out first."
"I can drive," Blair offered.
"I'm heading back to the precinct anyway," Jim headed off that suggestion. Right now, he just wanted Blair close enough to keep an eye on. "I'll make an appointment with my own doctor, Simon, but this is not something for the emergency room."
"Are you okay?" Collins asked as he suddenly studied Jim much more closely.
"I'm fine," Jim said as he slipped his hand to Blair's back and started pushing him toward the exit.
"He's more than fine. There's nothing wrong with him," Blair seconded that. Before Simon could answer, Jim held up a hand to stop him.
"I will make the appointment, but right now, I need to write up my report before the FBI descends on us with this task force." Jim hated the fact that the FBI would take over the case and most likely treat him like just another witness. "Simon, just make sure I end up on this task force."
"It won't be easy since none of the bombings were here, but I'll do my best," Simon nodded. Not waiting for Simon to voice any other complaints, Jim headed for the door. Behind him, Collins' footsteps echoed against the walls, and clearly his hearing was still a little sensitive.
Jim used his hand to guide Blair around to the driver's side of the truck, opening the F150's door and waiting as Blair slid into the back.
"Thanks," Collins said as he got in the passenger side. Jim wasn't sure if the detective meant the ride or the incident with the car bomb, but he nodded.
"Shay's too mean to let a little metal keep him down long," Jim told the man as he started the truck.
"No joke. He'll be fine." Collins stared out the front window for a second. The smell of blood was thick in the truck, and Jim cracked the window open and turned on the vents. "So, you're going to look up any lawsuits tomorrow?" Collins asked as he looked into the back seat.
"Yeah, no problem," Blair agreed. "The post office was the deadliest bombing, so there has to be something there. I mean, the bridge could have gone at rush hour and gotten a lot more casualties, but the Switchman set it off in the middle of the night instead. The post office was the first bomb that was really designed to kill. I suppose he could just be escalating, but if that's the case, why bomb just one car just now? It just really feels like the post office was special somehow."
"Obviously, he's okay with killing now," Collins said quietly. He took a deep breath, and even Blair seemed to know that it was a good time to be quiet. Eventually Collins added, "That bomb would have taken us both out."
"And that might have been the point," Blair said quietly. "It's the break in the pattern that I couldn't figure, but the pattern is Jim."
"What are you talking about, Chief?" Jim encouraged him when Blair fell silent. Looking in the rear view mirror, he could see Blair chewing on his lip as he stared out into the street.
"Think about it. He's been slowly building up to bringing this home to you, Jim. From the letter, he clearly thinks you should be in charge of this. Only now he's ready for the grand finale, and you go and bring in these other guys. He wants this to be man to man, but Collins and Shay are in the middle, and because this is technically their case and not yours, he isn't even really engaging you."
"So he wanted us out of the way," Collins said softly. "Maybe. It's an odd logic, but it makes sense."
"In that case, we need to get a guard on Shay at the hospital," Jim realized as he grabbed the radio. A quick call to dispatch had a uniform with a message heading to the hospital. "This still doesn't make it my case," Jim pointed out.
"Yeah, which is why he needs to do something here," Blair mused. "Something big. Something that trumps Tacoma and their casualties and Roy with the dead engineer. The bomb on the train might not have even been a mistake. Maybe he knew that if he blew up the train in the fort the FBI would have crowded you right out of the case."
"Which would imply that he understands interdepartmental politics," Jim said softly. That wasn't a good sign.
"Ah fuck," Collins swore just as quietly. "Something we kept out of the report... the Switchman wrote 10-95-020 (6) at the bottom of that first email he sent."
"What?!" Jim's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It was our hold back. Our captain didn't even want it in the internal reports, for the obvious reason. And when the Switchman started showing so much interest in you..." Collins let his words trail off.
"You thought it might be me," Jim finished. Anger swept through him when he realized what Collins and Shay had been thinking. Fuck. No wonder they were so quick to share. The whole time they had been feeling him out, trying to decide if he was the kind of sicko who would blow people up to grab a little of the spotlight.
"Hey, someone want to let me in on the secret code, or is this one of those things where you would have to kill me if you told me?" Blair leaned forward so that Jim could practically feel the man's breath on the back of his neck.
"It's the code for a capital crime... specifically the law defining it a capital crime to commit a murder in order to advance your position in a group. It's the gang-killing law. But not many people go looking up criminal codes."
"So it's probably someone who knows criminal code... and who understands department politics. Oh fuck," Blair whispered as he put the pieces together. "But man, you have got to know that no way does Jim fit the profile."
"Yeah, we had our doubts, but sometimes you have to play even the long odds, Sandburg. However, you two didn't have any time to set the bomb in the car, and Jim saved our asses. Even more convincingly, he saved our asses and then ducked all the press who came flocking to the scene like vultures after rotting meat."
Jim snorted. "The day I stick around for the press, someone needs to arrest me."
"Wait, what emails?" Blair suddenly asked before Jim had a chance to ask the same question.
"We have a number of emails that came into our tip line. They were addressed to Detective Ellison, but they were sent to us in Tacoma."
"Okay, this officially doesn't make any sense," Blair complained. "Jim wasn't in Tacoma. And if he wrote a letter to us in Cascade, why email you in Tacoma?"
"Yeah, that's why he's a crackpot. I mean, right now he's building a pretty good case for an insanity plea."
"No joke." Blair fell silent. Jim focused on the road. This was incredibly fucked-up. Jim hadn't been part of anything this fucked-up since leaving the army. In the silence, the normal police chatter on the radio suddenly demanded attention. Immediately, Jim turned the radio up.
"All cars, explosion off 9th and Coastal, slip 198. Ferry sinking in Puget Sound. Multiple casualties. Ambulances en route. All cars west of Madison report."
"Ah fuck! Geez, Sandburg, can't you be wrong just one fucking time?" Collins demanded as he slammed his fist into the dash of Jim's truck. Jim flipped on the lights and did an illegal and dangerous U-turn in the middle of the street. Horns blared, and he drove two wheels up on the curb before getting turned around.
"Oh man, I'm wrong all the time. I blither crackpot ideas. I suggested Jim look for dinosaur bones in tea shops. Ask Simon--I am so not the one to listen to when I get to brainstorming out loud. This being right thing is really starting to freak me out," Blair said helplessly from the backseat.
"Just keep being right until we catch this guy, Chief. A ferry going up in the middle of the Sound? We aren't talking about just property damage or one or two dead, not on something like this."
"Well, this asshole got what he wanted. He brought it home to you, Ellison." Collins' face was devoid of all emotion.
"And I'm going to make him sorry he ever stepped foot in Cascade," Jim growled through clenched teeth.
***
"It's NOT part of the pattern," Blair practically growled. "I'm not trying to say it is."
Jim sat next to Blair in the waiting room of Emergency.
"Exactly. Your pattern doesn't hold up." Simon declared as though winning some victory. "Jim, the FBI is sending an investigator down. The connection between this and the other Switchman cases isn't strong enough to get them to release information on the Roy bombing, but they are interested in looking over our information on this one."
"Great," Jim answered dryly.
Simon took his unlit cigar out of his mouth and tucked it into his jacket. "Some parts of this just don't make sense, though. How did you know the bomb was there?"
"I could smell it," Jim answered for the third time.
"You smelled odorless explosives?"
"Oh man, you were complaining about my aftershave."
"Your hygiene is not the point here, Sandburg." Simon glared for a second. "Jim, this is going to sound strange to the investigators. Too strange."
"It's not strange. It's heightened smell. Man, I study heightened senses, or at least I did before your cops pissed me off so that I insisted on riding along on the gay-bashing case, and smell is the most common manifestation. A lot of people have smell combined with taste, but if Jim had heightened taste, I think I would have noticed something. I mean, we had Thai the other day, and someone with heightened taste would have scraped his own taste buds off."
"Sandburg. Another time," Simon insisted, his jaw clenched.
"If you're right, how do we get this to go away?" Jim asked as he leaned back and really studied Blair. He was almost bouncing, the energy winding him up about as tightly as Jim had ever seen him. For a second, he had a nice little fantasy about taking out his cuffs and restraining Blair until some of the energy drained off. No wonder the guy could constantly eat, not work out, and still stay in relatively good shape. He just bounced.
"Go away?" Blair demanded incredulously. He blinked at Jim in clear horror. "No way. This is important. I mean, imagine a cop with a heightened sense of smell. That could be amazing in the field. And some people have multiple heightened senses, like taste and smell or touch and hearing; that's another fairly common pairing. Probably because hearing basically is a form of touch, it's just the feeling of the sound vibrations moving the structures of the ear, but it's still feeling."
"I could hear things on scene," Jim admitted. Simon had been glaring at Blair, but now he turned that glare to Jim even as Blair's face lit with enthusiasm.
"Really? Oh man, is this the first time? I mean, you must have been in high-risk situations before. Oh man, you said you sometimes got feelings without knowing where the danger was coming from. I bet that was you at least partially processing your heightened senses. Oh, man."
"Stop saying that, Sandburg," Simon interrupted. "Jim, maybe we should get you checked out."
"Maybe we should," Jim agreed tiredly. "I felt like I could hear Blair's heartbeat and hear the metal shrieking in that fire. This isn't normal."
"It's completely normal. Medicine isn't going to help you. Heightened senses are a perfectly normal phenomenon. In the perfume industry, they call people with an enhanced sense of scent 'noses.' You have tasters in the food industry, and some musicians have a fine enough ear to identify one out of tune instrument in an entire orchestra."
"Jim is not a musician."
"Of course he's not, but in Vietnam, the Vietnamese scouts could smell the enemy--"
"The Americans had to change their diet in order to hide their scent," Jim finished. "In the army, they talk about not underestimating an enemy that doesn't have advanced weaponry. Some of them can do some amazing things."
"Yeah, exactly, and you can do some amazing things too. Oh man, Jim, you have to let me do some tests for my dissertation. I mean, I've interviewed thousands of people, but none of them had just figured out that they had heightened senses. This could be really big. I mean, you repressed having heightened senses, or maybe you had them and you just thought everyone else had them too. We have to test now, to see if you're more sensitive than normal or if this is normal for you, and you just didn't know that you weren't normal-normal."
"Chief, not now," Jim said as he stood up. The doctor came walking into the room. Collins had been sitting to one side, his shirt back on, but covered in Shay's blood. When Jim had offered him another shirt, Collins just shook his head and stared at the far wall. Now Collins stood up and closed in on the doctor.
"How's Shay?"
"Detective Shay has a good chance. He's in surgery for a perforated bowel, but the damage appears minimal, and the shrapnel exited without touching any other organs. His vitals are strong. He'll be here for a while, but he has a good chance for a full recovery."
Collins listened to the doctor with a tense alertness, but at the end of the speech, he sank back down into the chair. Jim felt some sympathy. If it had been Blair caught by a piece of flying metal, Jim would have shoved his way right into the exam room.
"My captain wants a report. I should..." Collins just stopped.
"Why don't you go to the precinct? You can use one of the Major Crimes computers to write up what you need to," Simon suggested.
"I'll drive you," Jim quickly added. The man didn't look able to navigate the room, much less drive across the city.
"Jim, I think you need to get checked out first."
"I can drive," Blair offered.
"I'm heading back to the precinct anyway," Jim headed off that suggestion. Right now, he just wanted Blair close enough to keep an eye on. "I'll make an appointment with my own doctor, Simon, but this is not something for the emergency room."
"Are you okay?" Collins asked as he suddenly studied Jim much more closely.
"I'm fine," Jim said as he slipped his hand to Blair's back and started pushing him toward the exit.
"He's more than fine. There's nothing wrong with him," Blair seconded that. Before Simon could answer, Jim held up a hand to stop him.
"I will make the appointment, but right now, I need to write up my report before the FBI descends on us with this task force." Jim hated the fact that the FBI would take over the case and most likely treat him like just another witness. "Simon, just make sure I end up on this task force."
"It won't be easy since none of the bombings were here, but I'll do my best," Simon nodded. Not waiting for Simon to voice any other complaints, Jim headed for the door. Behind him, Collins' footsteps echoed against the walls, and clearly his hearing was still a little sensitive.
Jim used his hand to guide Blair around to the driver's side of the truck, opening the F150's door and waiting as Blair slid into the back.
"Thanks," Collins said as he got in the passenger side. Jim wasn't sure if the detective meant the ride or the incident with the car bomb, but he nodded.
"Shay's too mean to let a little metal keep him down long," Jim told the man as he started the truck.
"No joke. He'll be fine." Collins stared out the front window for a second. The smell of blood was thick in the truck, and Jim cracked the window open and turned on the vents. "So, you're going to look up any lawsuits tomorrow?" Collins asked as he looked into the back seat.
"Yeah, no problem," Blair agreed. "The post office was the deadliest bombing, so there has to be something there. I mean, the bridge could have gone at rush hour and gotten a lot more casualties, but the Switchman set it off in the middle of the night instead. The post office was the first bomb that was really designed to kill. I suppose he could just be escalating, but if that's the case, why bomb just one car just now? It just really feels like the post office was special somehow."
"Obviously, he's okay with killing now," Collins said quietly. He took a deep breath, and even Blair seemed to know that it was a good time to be quiet. Eventually Collins added, "That bomb would have taken us both out."
"And that might have been the point," Blair said quietly. "It's the break in the pattern that I couldn't figure, but the pattern is Jim."
"What are you talking about, Chief?" Jim encouraged him when Blair fell silent. Looking in the rear view mirror, he could see Blair chewing on his lip as he stared out into the street.
"Think about it. He's been slowly building up to bringing this home to you, Jim. From the letter, he clearly thinks you should be in charge of this. Only now he's ready for the grand finale, and you go and bring in these other guys. He wants this to be man to man, but Collins and Shay are in the middle, and because this is technically their case and not yours, he isn't even really engaging you."
"So he wanted us out of the way," Collins said softly. "Maybe. It's an odd logic, but it makes sense."
"In that case, we need to get a guard on Shay at the hospital," Jim realized as he grabbed the radio. A quick call to dispatch had a uniform with a message heading to the hospital. "This still doesn't make it my case," Jim pointed out.
"Yeah, which is why he needs to do something here," Blair mused. "Something big. Something that trumps Tacoma and their casualties and Roy with the dead engineer. The bomb on the train might not have even been a mistake. Maybe he knew that if he blew up the train in the fort the FBI would have crowded you right out of the case."
"Which would imply that he understands interdepartmental politics," Jim said softly. That wasn't a good sign.
"Ah fuck," Collins swore just as quietly. "Something we kept out of the report... the Switchman wrote 10-95-020 (6) at the bottom of that first email he sent."
"What?!" Jim's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It was our hold back. Our captain didn't even want it in the internal reports, for the obvious reason. And when the Switchman started showing so much interest in you..." Collins let his words trail off.
"You thought it might be me," Jim finished. Anger swept through him when he realized what Collins and Shay had been thinking. Fuck. No wonder they were so quick to share. The whole time they had been feeling him out, trying to decide if he was the kind of sicko who would blow people up to grab a little of the spotlight.
"Hey, someone want to let me in on the secret code, or is this one of those things where you would have to kill me if you told me?" Blair leaned forward so that Jim could practically feel the man's breath on the back of his neck.
"It's the code for a capital crime... specifically the law defining it a capital crime to commit a murder in order to advance your position in a group. It's the gang-killing law. But not many people go looking up criminal codes."
"So it's probably someone who knows criminal code... and who understands department politics. Oh fuck," Blair whispered as he put the pieces together. "But man, you have got to know that no way does Jim fit the profile."
"Yeah, we had our doubts, but sometimes you have to play even the long odds, Sandburg. However, you two didn't have any time to set the bomb in the car, and Jim saved our asses. Even more convincingly, he saved our asses and then ducked all the press who came flocking to the scene like vultures after rotting meat."
Jim snorted. "The day I stick around for the press, someone needs to arrest me."
"Wait, what emails?" Blair suddenly asked before Jim had a chance to ask the same question.
"We have a number of emails that came into our tip line. They were addressed to Detective Ellison, but they were sent to us in Tacoma."
"Okay, this officially doesn't make any sense," Blair complained. "Jim wasn't in Tacoma. And if he wrote a letter to us in Cascade, why email you in Tacoma?"
"Yeah, that's why he's a crackpot. I mean, right now he's building a pretty good case for an insanity plea."
"No joke." Blair fell silent. Jim focused on the road. This was incredibly fucked-up. Jim hadn't been part of anything this fucked-up since leaving the army. In the silence, the normal police chatter on the radio suddenly demanded attention. Immediately, Jim turned the radio up.
"All cars, explosion off 9th and Coastal, slip 198. Ferry sinking in Puget Sound. Multiple casualties. Ambulances en route. All cars west of Madison report."
"Ah fuck! Geez, Sandburg, can't you be wrong just one fucking time?" Collins demanded as he slammed his fist into the dash of Jim's truck. Jim flipped on the lights and did an illegal and dangerous U-turn in the middle of the street. Horns blared, and he drove two wheels up on the curb before getting turned around.
"Oh man, I'm wrong all the time. I blither crackpot ideas. I suggested Jim look for dinosaur bones in tea shops. Ask Simon--I am so not the one to listen to when I get to brainstorming out loud. This being right thing is really starting to freak me out," Blair said helplessly from the backseat.
"Just keep being right until we catch this guy, Chief. A ferry going up in the middle of the Sound? We aren't talking about just property damage or one or two dead, not on something like this."
"Well, this asshole got what he wanted. He brought it home to you, Ellison." Collins' face was devoid of all emotion.
"And I'm going to make him sorry he ever stepped foot in Cascade," Jim growled through clenched teeth.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 04:24 am (UTC)I'm glad Blair is now more comfortable talking in front of the other detectives, and willing to be himself. His babble is so fun to read. "This being right thing is really starting to freak me out," Blair said helplessly from the backseat. LOL.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 01:21 pm (UTC)And yeah, Blair was happier when his theories were wrong a little more often.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 05:18 am (UTC)yay pod-blair is gone! LOL. Man Jim really had to work hard at getting Blair to be himself. I loved how all Jims punishment ideas turned into tail wagging happy thoughts for Blair. *BG*
I love how you are letting Jim's senses gradually emerge.
I just love that this is so far and yet right near the actual episode plot.
Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 01:22 pm (UTC)And yeah, Jim really is going to have trouble with "punishment" here, isn't he.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 06:10 am (UTC)kw
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 06:42 pm (UTC)Awesome.
I heart this story.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-14 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-15 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-15 01:00 am (UTC)Poor Blair - worries about being accepted, then gets accepted but has to deal with being right about the Switchman...
no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-16 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-18 02:39 am (UTC)Blair is feeling more secure and it shows in his body language and speech.
Laurie
no subject
Date: 2007-08-18 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-24 06:53 pm (UTC)PS I like your new oasis layout. =]