Chapter 2:

Enter Chicken Little

Marvelous sat facing the two astronomers, William Kuykendall and Valerie Williams, as they all occupied a third story deck overlooking a wild and overgrown backyard. Petite, with raven hair and bluish-gray eyes, Valerie’s looks suggested a softness her actions denied. She had the demeanor of a fox in a chicken coop: direct, alert, down to business. She was too preoccupied with the task at hand to be distracted by the beauty of the view, the sublime effect of the low-hanging clouds, drifting over the ridges. Indeed, she seemed completely unaware of her environment.

William was the opposite. Where Valerie was possibly the last thing that comes to mind when the word “scientist” issues forth, William would be the first. He was gaunt, dressed in t-shirt and jeans, glasses, and was evasive as he sorted through complications, contingencies, and delineations. All he needed was the stereotypical white lab coat and Einstein messy hair to complete the picture; but his jacket was nondescript and his dark hair was close cropped, as if he’d just stepped out of a salon, which, in fact, he had. Unlike Valerie, William was distracted and off topic from the moment he walked in, staring open-mouthed as the three walked through the mansion, taking in the various prizes, pictures, and pottery on display.

Nathan was bothered by William’s obvious interest. It didn’t bode well that William should take a shine to Nathan’s past. At any moment the scientist could ask about this or that thing Marvelous had or did. Setting a precedent, other questions would undoubtedly follow—all which would exasperate Nathan to no end. To keep William on task and away from any personal prying, Marvelous allowed his bother to shine through, employing the much underestimated frown, as he led his guests through the mansion. Consequently, Valerie did most of the talking, unconcerned with her extraordinary surroundings, as William looked and even touched. Nathan led the scientists to the deck, saying he enjoyed the view to no end—but mostly he wanted to get William away from his personal effects.

And why were Valerie and William in this mansion at all? They were here to tell Nathan about some rock. Normally, such a thing isn’t worth much comment, as everyone knows there are a lot of rocks. Nor did it bother Nathan that this one happened to be from space, nor that it was looking to take a vacation. Nathan imagined it must be hard to take a vacation, and knew of many rocks just lounging about on beaches—and who or what wouldn’t choose the ever popular Mediterranean? Yes, it was a touch troubling that this particular rock was speeding excessively, and happened to be large enough that its arrival would stir up a bit of trouble—but what of it?

Valerie and William elaborated. “The impact looks to be a good ten miles off the coast, not that this will save anything,” Valerie continued. “When the asteroid hits, earthquakes will shatter the standing structures, collapse bridges, and generally shake things up…”

“…At a distance of a hundred miles, the quakes should reach a magnitude of about eight point four on the old Rictor Scale…” William interjected.

“…Winds will be over two hundred miles an hour, hitting with ear-shattering effect at about one hundred and eighty decibels…” Valerie continued.

“…that’s more than you get ten feet from the engine of a 747 at full throttle. Of course, it isn’t your ears you should worry about, as this would cause your internal organs to hemorrhage…”

“…Heat transference burns the very air as the temperature soars to oven-like extremes…”

“…everything is on fire. Flesh boils off the bone…”

“…and shortly after, ejecta the size of basketballs impact…”

“…so when you think it’s all over, rocks rain out of the blue, with crushing velocity—although, I imagine, the blue won’t actually be blue anymore. More likely, a reddish brown of smoke and ash…”

William turned to Valerie, giving her a quizzical look, “That’s not right, is it?”

“What?”

“We’ve been using the wrong parameters. If Lucifer 6 hits water, there is no solid ejecta—no raining rocks. We’ve been running scenarios for a landfall, even though its going to hit open water,” William noted.

“I thought you did that on purpose,” Valerie replied.

“Why would I do that?”

Valerie shrugged. “Landfall seems scarier. It doesn’t matter. Anyone within a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles of the blast is still dead, and directly related deaths will extend far past that.”

“True, but its still inaccurate,” William surmised.

“I didn’t even notice,” interjected Marvelous.

“Okay. So what occurs in an ocean impact?” Valerie considered.

William thought about it, “Tsunamis of course, a wall of water a hundred feet high, but that only affects the coasts and anyone on the coast will be dead before the water hits…”

“At least it will wash away the mess,” Nathan noted.

William ignored the callous remark. “As far as ejecta is concerned, I imagine you’d get super-heated rain.”

“Showers of boiling water,” Valerie agreed.

“But if it’s boiling, wouldn’t all the water boil away?” asked Marvelous.

“There’s too much water for that,” William countered. “The atmosphere would be supersaturated. All of it couldn’t possibly stay in the air. A better question is whether Lucifer 6 might still puncture solid rock, if it hits the seabed, it’ll launch rocks along with the water.”

“The Mediterranean is relatively shallow…”

“We’ll need to check the depth,” William noted.

Valerie turned back to Nathan, “Either way, at the end of the day, you have an area of devastation that spans a thousand miles through the cradle of Western Civilization. Barcelona, Marseilles, and Rome are all dust. Cities as far as Athens, Istanbul, Paris, Madrid, Cairo all suffer severely—not to mention all the territory at relative distances. Tremors are felt literally around the world, and who knows if that don’t set off cascading events; tsunamis, volcanoes, additional earthquakes...”

“You really think so?” Marvelous queried.

“Well, that is the worst case scenario, so perhaps not. If the asteroid shattered and fragmented in the atmosphere, you still get hurricane force gales, but the ejecta wouldn’t be as bad, and the earthquakes wouldn’t reach as far. Heat transference would be worse, more things igniting spontaneously, burning hotter over a larger area and whatnot,” Valerie pointed.

“It’d be the biggest catastrophe since World War II,” William noted, using Valerie’s least favorite comparison. She only agreed to include it because she believed so many Pentagon officials would find it poignant.

“What about Vietnam?” Marvelous asked.

Valerie sighed. “Vietnam was simply an American catastrophe, and comparatively, Vietnam was small potatoes in total number of lives lost. Besides, Lucifer 6 wouldn’t take five or six years, as wars tend to do. All these people would be dead at the end of the day, and most of those within the first few minutes,” Valerie stated.

“But like Vietnam, it’d be more locally destructive,” Nathan noted.

Valerie glared at the famous pugilist. “No, not like Vietnam at all.”

“World War II was spread across the globe,” Nathan pointed out. “It’s not an apt comparison.”

Valerie stared at Nathan, disgusted. “It’s not. It’s not an apt comparison at all!” she shouted. “War is far worse, no matter that it takes place over a larger area, or stretches on for years, instead of taking a mere few minutes! People killing people is far more atrocious than any rock dropping out of the sky! We are sentient, conscious of our actions, so our decision to murder each other en masse is much more abhorrent than the unavoidable collision of some inanimate object!”

Nathan and William stared at Valerie, neither willing to contradict her appraisal.

“Sorry, I just…” Valerie began.

“We’ve had to talk to innumerable politicians and career military, and all of them seem to want this in terms of war,” William explained.

Nathan waved off the apology. “If we know where the asteroid is going to hit, why not just get everyone to leave?”

“Some would flat out refuse. You’re still talking millions dead and dying, trillions of dollars lost, irreversible ecological damage to the entire Mediterranean, and the burden of hundreds of millions of refugees—and that’s if you get half the people to march inland. All of which is a pointless discussion, because we’ve been assured there will be no evacuations,” Valerie stated.

“Do you know what’s meant by a population crash, because this is where its going,” William noted.

“No. What is that?” Nathan asked.

“A population crash occurs when vital services are destroyed, either through destruction of infrastructure or death of vital workers. A catastrophic reduction in essential goods and services lead to a massive die off, which further reduces vital goods and services in a vicious spiral. If a vital industry, say medical professionals, law enforcement, or water treatment don’t have enough bodies to do their work, well, you get additional deaths as there aren’t enough doctors to cure the sick, limited access to clean water, and/or unchecked panic and anarchy. The initial problem, started by a few thousand deaths, compounded with new problems and an over-sized population, destabilizes a city, region and, possibly, the country. Suddenly, you have several million panicky people thrashing about. Any city nearby that wasn’t directly affected by whatever the agent of the catastrophe is swamped with refugees, and likely, the chaos blossoms, spreading as far and as fast as people can travel,” William explained.

“You also get the same effect if you kill off enough of the general population,” William continued. “Destabilize a big enough city and you could destabilize a whole country, even a region. You crash several cities and you might get a whole continent, and if you get Europe to fall, you’ll disrupt the whole world. It’s the guiding principle behind biological warfare. You don’t want to kill everybody, just enough people to affect everybody. And then you send in the army to take control and quell the panic.”

“But Lucifer 6 doesn’t take the time of a biological agent, or conventional warfare, which has to gestate and spread. It’ll kill instantly, like a nuke. And like a nuke, Lucifer 6 will leave many lingering effects; the greatest being ejecta in the atmosphere, especially the fine particulates. which could stay aloft for months and possibly trigger another ice age,” Valerie added.

Nathan smiled. The whole situation was far too surreal. Rocks don’t drop out of the sky like this, killing everything, destroying worlds, or resetting evolution! That was nothing more than fodder for Hollywood, not something that actually occurs! And yet, these two scientists swore it was true.

Nathan shifted nervously in his seat. He assumed Valerie and William had only one motive in being here: enlisting Marvelous to their cause, to save Southern Europe (and Northern Africa). They wanted him to join their crusade. But what function was he expected to serve? Was he supposed to give money, or lend credibility through his celebrity? Both of these options seemed ridiculous, as anyone worth convincing wouldn’t want to hear this from some washed-up boxer—and as rich as he was, he had nothing compared to the vast coffers of the world’s governments. If the rock was point A, and the Mediterranean was point B, how many half steps would it take to get to Nathan’s part in all of this impending doom and gloom? He rolled his eyes and assumed it’d take at least another hour…

...and while the scientists talked, Nathan found himself wondering where exactly were point A and B located? Would all travels have a point A and B subject to Brion’s dilemma, or was this a question of a specific point A and B, as suggested by the capitalization of the representative letters? When one travels, say, on the road, there are definite points, such as Sioux City, Iowa, and Moab, Utah; and the distance is calculated over the various highways one traverses between these two cities. To say that one will never reach Moab simply because one must first travel halfway, and half the remainder, and so on and so forth is nothing short of ludicrous. People visit Moab all the time! Thus, the question of an ultimate point B struck Marvelous. What is this ultimate point B? He wondered. What is it we are all seeking, the destination we strive for, yet fail to achieve before our bodies wear down? What final truth or good do we all seek and, in the end, fail to gain? Nathan shrugged off the conventional answers. The words God, heaven, and nirvana meant nothing to him. He ignored the other side of it too, that it all ends in disillusionment, our bodies being all there is, flecked through with worms, as we slowly decay. He had the feeling the truth lay somewhere in the middle, as the truth often does. He assumed it lay halfway.

Of course, there was also the question of the real point A. Was Sioux City really the beginning, each of us starting new as we emerge from the womb? Or more than likely, was the beginning before any of us? Before our mothers? Before our mothers’ mothers? He wondered, does it stretch back to Adam, or the day the first fish walked out of the ocean? Does it stretch back to the moment the perfect combination of chemicals met the right electrical charge? When the first amoeba stirred to life? Does it stretch back to the Big Bang, or the day God popped into existence, with the sound of something hollow hitting something flat?

And where would it all end? Where was the final cosmic point B? Does it end in Armageddon, or when the universe cools and contracts into nothingness, far after our race has blossomed, decayed, and died out completely? Does it end in a bang or a whimper—or perhaps not at all—but like the paradoxical line, extending forever in opposite directions? Marvelous wanted nothing more than to call Brion and get a concrete answer. Where, Brion, are these mythical points A and B? Because, like God, I can’t be sure they exist, which begs to make the question worse than theoretical, as it would then be irrelevant.

Nathan glanced at William and Valerie as they sat staring at him. He turned away, remembering Lucifer 6, remembering everything the two astronomers said. They looked anxious, expectant, but mostly they looked uncertain and fatigued.

Looking out over the valley, Nathan was quiet. He pulled his hands through his oh-so-famous champagne curls and contemplated what it all meant, trying hard to feel a sense of dread, of shock, of pity; trying to feel all the things he thought he should feel—then, as Nathan leaned forward to ask the only question that really mattered, a sudden disturbance shook the deck: a loud trumpeting from down in the valley.

William and Valerie jumped—as if the asteroid was early—and severely off target. “What the hell was that?!” Valerie exclaimed, turning in her seat. In a blink, she was up, standing against the rails of the deck, looking down at the trees below. She glanced back at William, then at Marvelous.

William stood and stepped next to his associate. He too stared down into the valley, looking for any danger, and ready to run. “Well, do you plan on answering the lady?” he asked, all raw nerves and anticipation.

Marvelous leaned forward—but before he could respond, the answer presented itself in a thunder. With another blast of its trumpet, an elephant slammed through the low branches of a tree and burst from the grove. The blast of its horn rolled off the valley walls, as both the scientists jumped. A second elephant stormed out of the trees, chasing the first. It answered with its own mighty roar. The first slowed, then it trumpeted again, as it bolted away from the second, and smashed back under the cover of maples and cedars.

William glanced over the landscape, realized they were safe, and became incredibly jubilant. “You have elephants in your backyard!” he said as he turned to Nathan. “Why do you have elephants in your backyard!?”

Marvelous smiled, a bit surprised by the question, “Neither of you has ever heard of The Marvelous Elephant Sanctuary?”

“I really don’t know much about you at all,” William said as she shook his head. “I hear you were a good boxer—and I guess there was some cop thing...” he shrugged. He turned to Valerie. “The man has elephants in his yard,” he muttered.

Valerie shrugged. “I didn’t know either,” she admitted.

“I got ‘em from a small zoo and couple circuses that couldn’t keep up proper facilities,” Nathan said, more than happy to talk about the elephants. “I also bought a couple off an activist that had rescued them and promptly ran into financial difficulties. He was a good guy, just poor.”

“How long have you had ‘em?” Valerie asked.

“Three years?” Nathan shrugged. “I got the last two about eight months ago. They’ve only been with the main group for about a month, and I’m happy to say, they seem to be integrating quite nicely. Of course, there’s only four males, and they’re all well behaved. One of the boys is little more than a calf and two are getting so old, so the fourth gets more attention than he deserves,” Nathan winked.

As he talked, a pleasant idea struck Marvelous. Some people didn’t care what he did, or said, or bought. They had more pressing concerns to attend. They had rocks to track across the sky. They had the people of Southern Europe (and Northern Africa) to save. They had businesses to run, vacations to plan, family to tend. They had stuff to do, and didn’t care in the least that Nathan rescued elephants on a whim.

Nathan smiled. He no longer suspected Valerie and William were here to use him, to con him out of his riches, or shame and expose him for… whatever. Likely, they were not one of the hundreds of prefab charities that spend all their contributions on “awareness”, hoping the populace would simply throw money at sickness and sadness, with no intentions of actually doing any thing more, including checking up on their investments. No. This was a sincere effort to protect the world against a sinister threat—not that Nathan was going to donate. The Mediterranean was half the world away; and like Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Samerikandia, Nathan wasn’t going to do shit about it. Why should he? He had troubles here! He had protesters at his front gate, and couldn’t get the newspapers and news crews to report an accurate story even with the threat of litigation! Why would he traipse around the globe, looking for the most impossible what-the-fuck and try and solve that instead?! He couldn’t get decent internet, and didn’t know how to relate to his neighbors. Why should he care if some rock dropped in the ocean halfway around the world?! What was a washed-up prizefighter supposed to do about it anyway?!

Nathan wondered; how come he didn’t know more people like this? Were there many of them out there, wandering Cityopolis in their disconnected fervor, unsure and uncaring what Nathan might be doing? He wondered how he could meet more people like this. He wondered if they would remain uninformed—or, having met him, would they engross themselves in the trivia of his past? Would they too become connoisseurs of his achievements, reading up on him, forming opinions from mere soundbites, and devising theories all their very own? He imagined not all would be so taken with him or his fame.

“What are they doing?” Valerie asked after the elephants.

Nathan smiled as he glanced down at the beasts. “Its a little game they play, sort of like tag. The one chases the other around for a while and then they switch. They’ll switch back and forth all day until they get sick of it. Usually, others will join. Sometimes it’ll last for hours, especially with the young ones.”

Marvelous stood and walked over to the scientists. He pointed down at the valley.

“I can’t believe you take care of elephants,” William stated.

“I don’t,” Nathan confessed. “Others do that for me, people more qualified,” he explained. “The activist that saved the last couple was here for nearly a month, but then he went back to saving whales or spotted something… owls, mice, dog... For a while, I had forest rangers come by, and various veterinarians, several from the local zoo. I fly in a couple specialists every six months or so just to make sure none of them are dying. One did anyway. Now there’s one main guy, a volunteer, looking after their daily needs. He’s been down there for a year or two, living in the trees, when he’s not reading at the Star and Siren. I might see him once a month or so. Occasionally, he uses the guesthouse for showers and food. For the most part, he stays down in the valley with the elephants, and sleeps on one of several platforms he built in the trees.”

“You don’t talk to him?” William asked.

“He doesn’t like people, and to be honest, I forgot his name. I call him the elephant man, on account of what he does,” Nathan gave a shrug.

“And you don’t pay this elephant man?” William asked.

“I would, but he won’t have it. I keep him stocked in whatever he needs, for himself and for the elephants, and that’s all he’s ever accepted from me. He’s never processed any of my checks. I left a stack of cash in the guest house kitchen, but he’s barely touched it. I know he’s working on a book, a book about these elephants. I found a few pages of it in the guesthouse, so I figure he won’t accept any money so I won’t have any claim on his work—not that I’m interested,” Marvelous admitted with a shrug, “I’m not exactly hurting for money. Anyway, he’s a decent writer. He renamed all my elephants. Classical names, like Troilus, Titania, Ajax—oh, and get this—Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks. Honestly, it’s better than the silly names they had when they came here: names like Bonzo and Whimples, clownish stuff, as you can imagine.”

“Which ones are these?” William asked. “Do you know what he named ‘em?”

“The big one is either Bacchus or Ajax. The little one is Portia, Buttercup, or possibly Irachase—Irachase was sick for a long time and nearly died,” Nathan shrugged. “To be honest, I have a hard time telling some of them apart. I made the elephant man take pictures and put their names on ‘em. He was pissed I was down there among the elephants and only did it so I would leave.”

“The big one is male?”

“Yes, a bull. The other is a cow: a female.”

“African?”

“Yes. Those two are African. There are 10 Africans and three Asians, and despite the racial differences, they get along really well.”

“Bulls and cows, just like cattle,” Valerie noted. “When I was little, my brother and I called them chattle, and imagined the had long conversations about the taste of grass.”

William smiled, “If the plural for goose is geese, shouldn’t the plural for moose be meese?”

“Why should that be?” asked Marvelous, not getting the playful tone of the statement.

“And what about mouse and mice,” Valerie asked, yet keeping her eyes on the elephants below, “Shouldn’t it be house and hice?”

This was a game William’s wife started, playing with the forms of words. Emily was a reader and all around smart girl. William borrowed this grammar game and shared it with Valerie, and nothing pleased Emily more than hearing about the back and forth she’d inspired. Valerie smiled at William and thought about it for a second. She came up with another in short time. “Louse and lice, but no souse and sice.”

“Caboose, cabeese?” William tossed back.

“Chartreuse, chartreese?”

William frowned, “You can’t pluralize a color.”

“Why not?” Valerie retorted.

“Fine. Dowse and dice?”

“Two words with distinctly different meanings,” Valerie noted.

“You did a color,” William defended.

‘So you want to pluralize an action?!”

Valerie and William continued their grammar game as the second elephant chased the bull into another thicket of trees. Trumpeting, the elephant ran from the trees, now followed by the first.

William shouted, “They’re fast!”

“They are fast,” Valerie agreed with a shocked expression, “They run funny though. Not like a dog or a horse at all.”

Marvelous nodded. “Elephants always have at least one foot on the ground. They can’t jump. Every other land mammal jumps when it runs, taking all their feet of the ground at once, even rhinos and hippos.”

“I’m not the best runner as it is,” William confided.

“Neither are they,” Marvelous smiled, “It’s nothing more than power walking, but they’ll top twenty miles per hour with that funny gait—not for a whole hour, mind you.”

“Your girlfriend was a runner, wasn’t she?” Valerie asked.

Nathan thought it was strange that Valerie was the one to ask the first personal question. He was so sure it’d be from William.

When it came, however, Nathan no longer minded. There wasn’t any conniving behind the question, no subtle insult, or search for guarded information, no attempt to persuade. It seemed to be simple curiosity. It seemed to be simple conversation. That, and despite his initial reservations, Nathan was beginning to enjoy these two. They didn’t treat him like most people. They didn’t put him on a pedestal, or treat him as some abomination, but merely as an equal with an interesting past. Nathan smiled and answered, “Michelle—yes, she was a decathlete, and she was fast enough to run on several of the national relay teams.”

“An Olympian?” William asked.

“Yes,” Nathan confirmed. He frowned. Thinking about her was a pin in his heart. She was no longer in every thought, but the void of her absence was still painful. He gave the two a weak smile.

“I’m sorry about all that,” Valerie noted. “I was in love once,” she stated.

It was obvious they knew more about him than they let on, but this didn’t reduce his opinion of the two. Instead, it had quite the opposite effect. He regarded them all the more as they were able to look past all the various media hoopla they must have encountered. He wondered if they pretended not to know the stories because they only had some newspaper’s word that they were true. Maybe they knew that most media was full of shit, that fiction and non-fiction had far more in common than most people realize.

“How many did you say you have?” Valerie inquired, changing the subject back to the elephants.

“Thirteen. Right now I’m in negotiations for three more. I guess some little circus in Alabama or Arkansas is shutting down.”

“There are still circuses?” William asked.

“Not really,” Nathan shrugged. “That’s why I keep ending up with more.”

“Thirteen you say? Where are the others?”

“The sanctuary stretches back around that ridge, along the lake in the other direction. Usually they stay behind the ridge over there, where they get more sun. There’s a heated cave over there too. Now, they also spend a lot of time in the lower level of the greenhouse. Our weather is a bit temperate for elephants, and they tend to get cold, so they like to stay near the heat, but it’s rather nice this time of year, so who knows. In the winter, when it’s really bad, some of the older ones barely come out at all. The younger ones will. They love the snow. Sometimes they stay out for hours.”

Valerie and William smiled at each other, as patches of gray ran through the forest, shaking the trees as they went. The one chased the other, white tusks ripping at the undergrowth, as the first plowed between the trails. The two doctors watched the elephants and Marvelous could see how much Lucifer 6 weighed on them. He was happy his animals allowed them to forget, if only for a few moments. He watched the two standing close to each other. Were they lovers or was this simply what friendship can be? He glanced at their hands. William wore a ring but Valerie did not. Perhaps she didn’t bother with the ring. She wore no other jewelry, except a couple of basic studs in her ears. It might be that she simply didn’t wear her ring.

But their last names were different; not that it mattered these days. People didn’t necessarily do things in a traditional manner. After all, Michelle insisted if they ever got married, she would keep her name. Michelle Hernandez sounded better than Michelle Marvelous anyway, and he confessed that taking his name was like marriage itself: a very small thing to him.

Michelle in mind, Nathan couldn’t keep his eyes off of Valerie, nor could he keep from making comparisons. She was shorter, not as muscular, and pale. However, she was exceedingly pretty in her own right, sharper features, and resolute posture. She didn’t have the natural beauty of Kelly either—but a studied sort of sophistication that took advantage of her assets, her grey eyes, and sharp lines. Her hair was up, exposing her slight neck, giving her a fragile look in juxtaposition with her posture and attitude. She may not have the natural beauty of Kelly, or the athletic good looks of Michelle, but she had a studied type, complimented by her serious attitude. Kelly hid her strong resolve, her killer instinct, appearing soft and vulnerable, while Valerie wore her frailty like a hat. She looked delicate, even precious. Michelle, well, Michelle never struck him as vulnerable whatsoever.

The three stood for a second, all caught in their separate thoughts. Finally, Marvelous felt it was time for one last round of questions. “So your names, Valerie Williams and William Kuykendall... I feel like that could get confusing,” he noted.

“It might,” Valerie bristled. “Only people that are looking to confuse us use our names in a confusing manner, so we recognize such obvious enemies rather quickly.”

“Well, I have something to ask about Lucifer 6,” Nathan said, changing the subject.

William and Valerie both visibly tensed, once again all business.

“What is it?” William asked.

“I appreciate that this is a difficult pickle, I really do,” Nathan began. “What I can’t figure is what I’m supposed to do about it.”

William turned to Valerie, and Valerie returned his questioning look.

“To be honest,” Valerie started, “We were hoping you’d tell us. We’re only here as a favor to the deputy mayor,” she shrugged.

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