"Blade?" Hannibal King touched the sleeping warrior gently on the shoulder, "Wake up, dude."

Blade raised one eyebrow, then slowly opened his left eye. Unafraid of the day or night, the warrior moved his hand ever so slightly to verify the presence of his sword. King could see the taughtness of Blade's shoulder sinews as he slowly shifted his weight on the pallet.

"This has better be good," Blade rasped, "I was in the middle of a dream. Kickin' bloodsucker tail," he wiped his hand over his face as though it would wipe away the sleep from his eyes, or the fatigue in his body, but it did neither.

"We have some news," King said with a low voice, "The upgrades have arrived."

Blade's other eye slowly opened, "Oh?"

"Yeah," King laughed, "You're gonna like it."

"I'll be there in five," Blade said, half of him wanting to roll over and sleep, and half of him curious about the upgrades. Blade always had a half-and-half approach to life. The bloodsuckers hated him for it.

A number of minutes later, the warrior strolled slowly into the main atrium of his personal lair, only to find it strewn with boxes, styrofoam and bubble wrap, "What's all this mess?" he rasped.

King appeared from behind one of the largest boxes, a vertical package over eight feet tall, holding a swatch of bubble wrap, "Don't you just love this stuff?" he quipped, violently popping several dozen bubbles with vigorous manipulation.

"Stop that!" Blade commanded, ever-despising King's cheeky nature, "Tell me what all this is."

"All this," King pointed to a far wall where the apparatus had been installed, "is just for you. At your service."

"Blade servers, eh?" Blade took two short steps toward the machines, "What does it do?"

"Only slices, dices and makes Julie-Anne cry!" King cackled.

Blade was not amused.

"Okay, seriously," King began, "Recall some of our - er clients - had some run-ins with the bloodsuckers? Their problems were really that they were working with too little information. Or that it was inaccurate, or not arriving in time. The BI bloodsuckers swoop in to save the day."

"I hate bloodsuckers," Blade seethed.

"Oookay, so they fell prey to the wiles of the bloodsuckers, promising a better mousetrap and all that."

"They always promise."

"Moving right along, they promise but don't deliver. Here's where we come in, and help them get on the right track."

"How do these machines do that?"

"The Blade servers include a special sauce - "

"Special sauce. Is it red?"

"Uhh, no. But it's all painted in your favorite color. The better part is that you can use this machinery during the day to find opportunities, and still let it work at night, you know, when you're - uh - out."

"Hunting bloodsuckers."

"Uhh, yeah, so let's focus here. The new server has a special acclerator that basically lights up the night."

"Is it ultra-violet light?"

"No, but it's ultra-clear light. The kind of light we need to shine on business priorities, SLAs and how to leverage the machine at the enterprise level. You know, best practices."

"I don't need any practice. When the sun goes down - "

"Okay, look," King interrupted, "The accelerator sits on the blade and does all the analytic streaming work. The server then allows for cache RAM to sit between the disk drives and the processor, so we can keep stuff in memory longer."

"I have a long memory for bloodsuckers."

"And some clients," King rolled his eyes, "May need long memory for lookup tables, oft-used dimensions and the like."

"Are you starting all that other-dimension talk again? I thought I'd made a deal with Stan that we would never introduce - "

"No, not alternative dimensions in spacetime," King smirked, "But multidimensional analysis."

"I don't follow."

"Data analysis."

"To what purpose? What are we looking for?"

King thought about the question for a moment, realizing that the answer could capture Blade's attention or lose him forever. He finally said "Bloodsuckers."

Blade's eyes flashed, "If this will help us find the bloodsuckers, why do we only have one? Why not more?"

"Now, now, we should start small and grow tall - "

"Platitudes," Blade huffed, "Time is short. Will it find the bloodsuckers or not?"

King knew that when he said bloodsuckers, he'd meant the broken processes and data that drain the lifeblood from a company, "Yes, it can help us find them."

"Good," Blade finally said, slowly strolling toward the machines. He stared at them for a long moment and finally said. "You work for me, now."

"Uhh, Blade," King said, "They can't hear you, they're machines."

Blade didn't say anything.

"Oh, and I have this," King produced a small metal plate and held it out to Blade.

The warrior turned and stared at the object, curious as to its nature. "And this?"

"Is a Final Interrogation Node," King said, "For use when you are about to dispatch a bloodsucker."

"How does it work?"

"You wrap the wrist-strap here," he applied the strap to his own wrist, holding the plate in his hand, then flicked his wrist. The plate flew to nearest stone column, remaining connected to King's wrist with a tether made of high-tensile filament. The plate sank into the stone with a dull rrrriiiiinggg. . King then flicked his wrist again and the plate dismounted, the tension in the tether returning it immediately to his open palm.

"That was fun, but what does it do, really?"

"When you're done asking questions that anyone can get answers for, the FIN takes it to the next level. And if you have one in each hand - "

"Twin Fins, very funny."

"You'll still get the answers you're looking for."

"I'll always get the answer I want eventually."

"Uhh, well, isn't that what the bloodsuckers say? Anyone can give the right answer slow. But these," he held up the FINs," Get the right answers faster than anything."

"Even faster than me?"

"Faster than Blade alone," King smiled, "Yep, even faster than a blade and all its servers. You still need the FIN's and special sauce. Bloodsuckers don't have those."

"Competitive advantage," Blade said in a low whisper, "I like it."