Q. How do you know all this stuff?

A. I have no special inside information. My college roommate was a Queensrÿche fan and took me to the Promised Land tour back in 1996. I was hooked. I started borrowing all of his old albums, then buying them for myself. When it dawned on me that Operation: Mindcrime tells an ongoing story through its songs, I started searching the fledgling World Wide Web for more information. There was almost nothing available. I found some lyrics, and I learned about a box set called Operation: Livecrime that contained extra text. It was out of circulation, but I managed to borrow it from a friend and copy down the extra material. Note that you can now buy a CD called Operation: Livecrime, but it contains only the audio track for the concert. In many ways, however, it is superior to the studio album because it contains extended versions of some of the instrumental, and two bonus songs from other albums.

The lyrics are copied from the album verbatim. Much of the "interpretation" text is lifted from the Livecrime book. The words to the Latin Mass on Suite Sister Mary come from Verdi's Requem (my dad owns the largest classical music CD collection I've ever seen, bar none) but Requiem seems to differs from the background music in some subtle ways.

The rest is my own original interpretation. As far as I know, the idea that Nikki's mind is caught in an infinite loop is all mine. Others may have written about it, but I hadn't seen it.

Anyway, I've been to every Queensryche concert since Promised Land. I was front row center during Evening With Queensryche.

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Q. When are you going to write about Operation: Mindcrime II?

A. Believe it or not I haven't bought OM2 yet as of May 4, 2006. I have a family now, and I recently entered grad school, and I'm swamped with work. When I do buy it, I'll probably be storing the whole thing permanently on my iPod so I can listen to it straight through a few times. But I don't know if I'll write about it for a while. Someday, definitely.

At this point, everyone who has read the main page knows EVERYTHING that I know. I wrote down all the information I could come up with. I haven't even read the lyrics to OM2 all the way through yet because I don't want to spoil the story before I hear all the music.

So what I'm saying is, you don't have to wait for me! Read and write your own suggestions, and maybe I'll link to you until I've got my own.

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Q. Did Nikki have sex with Sister Mary or didn't he?

A. Several people have now written to tell me that I got the story wrong when I claimed that Nikki had sex with Mary regularly. They point to the line in Suite Sister Mary: "Your precious cross is gone, it made me wait so long / For what you gave to everyone." This seems to indicate that they had sex for the first time on the day he went to face Dr. X.

They are probably right, but it involves changes several parts of the story and I'm lazy. Someday soon I'll get around to fixing it, unless I don't.

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Q. Who killed Mary?

Until 2004, Mary's death was an intentional mystery. In An Evening With Queensrÿche, the group finally explained the story in such a way as to remove all doubt. I think enough time has now passed that it can be revealed without a spoiler.

In the concert, after Nikki meets Dr. X, Mary walks to a chair and sits down. The phone rings. Mary picks it up. A voice says, "Mindcrime!" Mary says "What the fuck do you want?" The voice says "See that gun over there?" "Yes." "Pick it up." "Okay." "I want you to put it in your mouth." "No!"

The voice argues with her, and Mary struggles to resist control, but in the end, with her head lashing around wildly, she pulls the trigger. The screen behind her becomes a splattered mess of blood and she collapses.

Minutes later, as a new rendition of "Electric Requiem" plays, Nikki walks in and looks for her. When he sees her, he expresses his anguish, then in a strange daze, he pours a bottle of whatever he's drinking over her body, then pulls out a lighter and burns it. Why? Who knows. Maybe he thought he really DID do it. Maybe he knew he'd get framed and tried to eliminate the evidence. Maybe he was just trying to pay his last respects.

Whatever the case, the facts are these: Mary was also under the hypnotic influence of Dr. X. Mary killed herself, but Nikki burned the body. The police then picked him up, probably on a tip from the fire department.