A glimmer of hope in a dark, despairing place...
~~~
“Come on, Sairz. Be fair!”
Hadn’t he explained how his luck had just turned?! How could she do this to him now?
“No room. Sorry, Feo!”
“Don’t call me that. You know I hate—”
“Don’t get all huffy. Rafael. Just go away, will you? Look. It’s still light. Leave now and find yourself another shelter. You’re wasting time!”
“Another shelter?! Are you nuts? How the hell do I find another shelter in the space of an hour? It’s a miracle I found this one after three months!”
Silence.
“Sairz! SERENELLA, PLEASE!”
Crickets.
Pounding sand over Sairz’s perfidy would get him nowhere. A courteous invite wasn’t in the cards, nor was time on his side. Raffy scanned the immediate neighborhood for a plan B.
The entryway to the underground sanctum was a rounded, flush steel door in a dome that bulged from the ground like a protuberant eyeball. An hour earlier, Raffy had stumbled upon it when rooting out another evening’s hidy-hole. What had seemed a wee divot in the rubble turned out, after some clearing, to be an expansive ingress into a hidden cavern. One that contained, off to one side amidst the rubble, an honest-to-goodness shelter portico. Moments later, the interlocutor speaking from inside the shelter turned out to be an old friend. Jackpot! Rescued at last!
Until he wasn’t.
Now, stratospheric hopes dashed and at wits’ end, Raffy navigated around the collapsed stone and broken steel beams that dwarfed the bulbous vestibule. Eventually — too late, too slow — Rafael identified the bottommost angle of the dome, the spot where the hemisphere’s visible surface dropped nearest the floor of the cavern. He set to furiously digging with his hands, praying he’d find a buried seam.
A few minutes later, he fell back on his haunches, puffing like a racehorse.
“You always were a jerk, Sairz, you know that?” Raffy said out loud to absolutely no one.
He stared at his bleeding hands. Ridiculous! As if he could will himself past any obstacle. He glanced heavenward, through the gap in the rubble where he had stumbled into the accidental, man-made grotto. Daylight died by the second.
Resisting panic, Rafael figured a modicum of analysis would go a long way. Just a few patient seconds. So he climbed to a distant, elevated corner for a better view — one, hopefully, that would yield a panoramic view of the enclosure. From that perch, he scanned the site with as much scrutiny and consideration as his circadian peril allowed.
A second or two was enough. Unmistakable! The concrete slabs, iron posts, glass shards, broken furniture, foam, plastic, and mountains of dust coalesced asymmetrically. A markedly elevated ridge of detritus soared behind and to the right of the entrance orb.
That mound of rubble could hide almost anything! A staircase leading to a passageway below? Equipment servicing a subterranean tunnel?
His salvation?
The only remaining hurdle was time. Night advanced like a beast of prey.
He rushed to the rubble hillock, cursing each flying minute. As the environing ruins melted into a shadowy blur, Raffy retrieved a two-yard-long metal rod lying nearby. He employed it as a probe and lever, poking fractures and gaps in the concrete.
In one such fracture, the rod slipped. Raffy fumbled, batted, and caught it just in time. Aii-yah! He clenched the steel staff in counterposed hands, drew a sweaty breath, and blew through pursed lips. He’d best balance his haste with care, or he was a dead man.
The crack was a foot wide and a yard and a half long. Raffy pried loose a nearby fist-sized piece of granite and dropped it into the hole. It caromed twice before landing with a splash. Echo minimal. He pressed an eye to the opening but wasn’t able to pierce the inky blackness. Another cavity of some extent, he surmised, but no telling how big.
Crypt or coffin?
Raffy had little time to visualize himself in one or the other — immediate concealment rose to the top of his to-do list. He glanced up toward the gap twenty yards away — the trapdoor into this cursed cave of wreckage.
Stars were emerging in a dimming sky.
It seemed eons ago when he’d been up there, searching for cover. When he had dislodged a few rocks and lucked upon a massive bubble within the ruins. Upon this craggy, cathedral-like room that hid one of the hallowed shelter verandahs.
But he’d never closed that hole in the ceiling. How could he? Once he’d climbed down, it was sixty feet above his head! And now, the bare portal sat like a giant, open skylight, inviting any passing guest to drop in.
Cursing his unrectifiable jeopardy, he lowered himself into the murky space below. Thankfully, the cavity turned out to be about twice the size of a bathysphere — endurable for a few hours, at least. Raffy’s eyes adjusted. It was a rough upright cone of a room, with smashed blocks of concrete for walls. The jagged stone he’d previously tossed lay in a puddle of rank water just below. A metal box extruding ductwork and tubing jutted half-exposed opposite him. The pipes all ran away through the wall of the mini-cavern. But one distinct, sizable duct with accordion ribbing ran toward him, bent at ninety degrees a yard from his face, and dropped plumb through the rubble below his feet.
Soon, not even shadows would be distinguishable. Raffy quieted his breathing and listened intently. Gusts of wind played like a narcotic flute across the hole in the higher roof. Strangely tranquilizing as well were the few additional degrees of warmth in this tiny, deep space, closely held within the pulverized ruins.
Perhaps he was safe?
Fat chance. In minutes, the clamor of the throng had drowned out the wind.
The rabble poured across the cavern’s roof like locusts — a human swarm of cascading flesh. They overran the gaping crevice as if a single organism. It was terrifying. Raffy dared hope none would discover the opening under their feet.
However, even the horde’s collective pursuit of God knew what or whom, monomaniacal as it was, couldn’t defeat gravity. Sure enough, one of the cackling lunatics eventually tumbled through the gap in the stones, banging over the broken concrete and steel, and landing with a thud on the far side of the hemispheric shelter atrium.
Raffy prayed it was dead.
That would avert a ghastly confrontation. It would also spare the shelter any risk of discovery by remnant elements. No one wanted the supposedly impervious doors of these refuges tested — the lingering topside few might be starving and weak, but they could still be crafty little devils.
The mob’s cacophony persisted a few more minutes, then faded. Raffy sweated it out. Only one! His lips moved silently in further prayer.
But his luck broke bad once more. Rubble clattered, tumbled down a hill. The bloody thing had survived! And it was close.
Mano a mano, Raffy could overcome any one — or two or three — of the accursed rabble. They were all abysmally feeble, half blind. Dying. And if he did, who could gainsay it? His life was on the line! Offing one would be a shame, but no disgrace.
Nevertheless, trepidation was in order. Boulders, sharp edges, unexpected screens — so easy to get blindsided in a haphazard environment! What if Raffy popped out of his hole, chased the fiend, and slipped?! What if the thing was hiding, or simply wasn’t where Raffy guessed? Perhaps it was better to just sit tight and wait, antlion-like? Eventually, the creature would climb or fall into the hideout and meet its certain doom.
Even better, maybe the brute, ultimately, would just wander off! Most would call that an irresponsible abdication — permitting the creature, cognizant of the shelter door, to escape, possibly to reconnoiter with others. But in the moment, Raffael shrugged off any such burden. The communal priority of protecting a sanctuary entrance from discovery just wasn’t top of mind.
That was it then — lie low. Fight if the thing chanced upon him, certainly — if he had to! Raffy was no coward! But there was no call for feats of derring-do in a higher cause.
As Raffy busied himself discounting the higher good, rocks clicked and rolled again just beyond the crevice.
In face of imminent confrontation, direct combat of any kind loomed as a threat and shrunk as an option. Why should he sit like a duck, inviting attack, when escape stared him in the face? All qualms about his people well throttled, Raffy lifted a fist-sized chunk of concrete, clambered to the lip of the cavity, and snagged a quick peek at the wispy shadow swaying a few feet to his right, unseeing.
Now or never.
Raffy hastily flung the artificial rock against the far side of the enclosure and dipped back into his lair. Sure enough — by the sound of it — the wraith gave chase. As soon as it did, Raffy dropped to the wet tiles, rushed to the orthogonal ducting, and ripped it from its moorings with his scabbed hands. A blast of cool air smacked him in the face as he lowered himself into the ventilation system. The ducting easily accommodated Raffy on his hands and knees and extended horizontally beyond the confines of the debris cavern. He paused but a second to replace the duct. Unfortunately, he lacked the means to resecure it, much less the time. It sat square, but loose. Good enough, if it escaped close observation.
And wasn’t that a fair bet? After all, the breach sat in a hole inside another hole, and it was dark now, and the apocalyptic landscape was cacographic, and the specter wandering the cavern would probably die from injuries from its fall and Raffy had been wrong to think it would stumble into the duct-containing pit by accident because the hole was too small and it would never find its fellows again and aren’t they all basically mute now, anyway?
And what was done was done. The sooner he found his way into the damn sanctum, the sooner they’d send units to fix the rift.
Having thus reassured himself, Raffy dove ahead.
Thirty meters on, the shaft split. Rafael turned right and soon encountered a grate in the duct’s lower panel that oversaw a vacant hallway. Polished steel walls. Gleaming checkerboard tile floor. Diffuse luminescence, bright as lit phosphorus.
He could have battered the grate away with his fists. But there would have been no point — the opening was way too tight to pass through. So he spared his knuckles and screamed for help instead. The SOS attracted a posse of concerned inhabitants, including the gendarmerie. Maintenance staff arrived with a ladder, tore open the ceiling, blowtorched a hole in the ventilation duct, and hauled Rafael down to the floor.
Whereupon he was arrested.
“How did you get the hell up there?” asked the obviously perplexed police sergeant on the scene, after securing a cheek swab from his new detainee and inserting it into a plastic box with a display. The box beeped. An animated arrow chased itself in a circle on the screen.
“A damaged ductwork near the entrance under the Prudential Building,” Raffy said.
Not lying, exactly.
A tiny LED on the plastic box flashed green. A sigh of relief washed through the crowd.
“Hmm. That’ll need fixing!” said the cop finally, all smiles.
“Indeed.”
“Were you alone? No one saw you get in, I hope!”
“Nope. No one of any kind.” Which was literally true. “But I wouldn’t wait too long before that repair, if I were you.”
“Of course! We’ll get someone right on it.”
They marched him deep into the complex, a milling crowd ogling him the entire route. Eventually, they unlocked an interrogation room and threw him in a chair. There he stewed for an hour, alone, before anyone else appeared.
And when someone arrived, who was it, but good old Serenella!
“What a surprise!” said Raffy.
Serenella eyed him beneath a knitted brow. Rafael found her older than when they’d last met, but somehow cuter. He smiled.
“It shouldn’t be,” Sairz said, diverting her gaze as she pulled up a chair on the other side of the table. “Your ID was in the system from our encounter an hour ago. I recognized your bio-profile an instant before the Board tagged me about it.”
“Well, I’m glad.”
“Why?” asked Serenella, irritation rising in her voice. “What do you expect from me, other than an expression of condolences? Your fate is settled, and you know it! Trespassing a shelter is a capital crime! Did I not beg you to find another? Damn you, Feo! No special cases!”
“I’m well aware, Sairz,” said Rafael, ignoring the annoying nickname and buying time. “But it’s good to see a friend’s face, anyway. Whatever happens to me, that’s a comfort.”
“‘Whatever happens?’ Are you not listening? There is no ‘whatever.’”
“Of course, of course,” said Rafael. “I get it. Totally.”
“Then tell me why?” asked Serenella, with a wounded air. “Why would you do such a thing as break in to a shelter?”
“Why?” he answered, scratching his head, bemused. “Sairz, you didn’t let me in. What did you expect me to do?”
“Leave! Go someplace else! We’re full. Must we review the ABCs here? Not to mention—”
“No, no. I’m perfectly well aware of the principles laid out before the lottery. The guidelines.”
“Not guidelines. Law. Strict! Binding!”
“Come on, Sairz. We’re not living in a tabletop board game. Look around! No one expected anyone remaining on the surface after the Collapse, much less endless packs of savages. You can’t expect me to abide by strictures designed for a world that never arrived!”
“Same imperatives. The shelter’s capacity is the shelter’s capacity.”
“Oh, is it?” asked Raffy, perturbed by Sairz’s impassivity. “Serenella, they paraded me a quarter mile through this facility to sit me at this table! The shelter is underpopulated. It’s obvious! Quit the charade!”
Serenella scoffed.
“I could barely squeeze through the crowds coming from the opposite direction. But, whatever. The urgency of protocols is proportional to the perils of the external environment. Uncertainty breeds loss of trust. Loss of trust leads to insubordination. Insubordination leads to chaos. Chaos—”
“Kills! I know. I remember them feeding us that ad nauseam. Along with a bunch of other rubbish. But rigidity kills too, Sairz.”
“Don’t be flip. Every deviation from protocol carries risk. And risk adds up, Feo, whatever your impression of the expansiveness of our hallways. Everything is planned down to the last diode. But that isn’t the worst of it, anyway. This isn’t a case of faking your way in with a stolen ID or something. You disrupted a fixed barrier.”
“No. I found a crack in your shell. You should fix it, by the way. Pronto.”
Serenella rolled her eyes.
“We both know what happened,” she said. “Damn it, Feo! The future of humanity rests on our survival!”
“Humanity,” he said, gladly diverting the conversation away from his incidental sabotage.
“I am aware of the irony. Nevertheless, it’s true.”
“And the humanity upstairs? Outside?”
“I said, I am aware of the irony.”
Serenella sighed and regarded her old friend with a suddenly sympathetic eye.
“You broke oaths meant to protect us all — and you did so in the gravest of survival circumstances for our people. All of us!”
“I don’t accept that.”
“What don’t you accept?”
“The oaths.”
“The oaths represent your transparent moral duty! You can’t just call them “rubbish” and reject them! I’m giving you a chance to explain your actions. Don’t you want to?”
Raffy couldn’t himself fathom what he’d done or why, but he agreed that taking a stab would be worthwhile. For the record, if nothing else.
“Listen, Sairz. I think it was like, the shelter was a miracle, you know? I hadn’t seen a single one in three months. Imagine! I tell you, I was living an unending nightmare up there! And then I stumbled upon—deliverance! A marvel! Destiny! To turn away then, why, it… it would have been a sacrilege, almost! A sin!”
Serenella squinted.
“That’s just weird, Raffy.” She cleared her throat. “You admit you knew the laws but chose to violate them. Ad hoc religious argle-bargle won’t cut it. You want me to help, you’ve got to give me more.”
“Oh? Help? I thought my sentence was a done deal.”
Serenella shrugged.
“Maybe yes, maybe no. It certainly is if you can’t come up with a better rationale than God anointed you. This is one of the more religious shelters, in case you were wondering. Blasphemy will only get you fried faster.”
Good to know. Raffy rejiggered his narrative.
“Cut me some slack, Sairz — I’m waxing poetic, alright? Listen. My sense was, no choice. I’m facing a day-to-day, desolate, grueling fight for survival. Then — boom! — the fantastical appearance of this shelter. And then, after you refused me, the ductwork. An avenue to safety and comfort thrust in my grill. To second-guess me here, safely underground… it isn’t right!”
“Get off your high horse,” Serenella said, waving away Raffy’s indignation. “Any unbiased observer would insist your odds out there were quite good. A faithful citizen would have rolled those dice rather than endanger the lives of his brothers and sisters.”
“‘Odds quite good?’ Where does that come from?”
“From your presence here, now. You’ve endured on the outside since the freaking Collapse! That’s an awfully long time without snake eyes even once! Months!”
“A considerable run of good luck,” admitted Raffy. “This is where the word ‘miracle’ comes in. Not metaphysically, okay?” He held up his hand before Serenella could speak. “Just unexplainable good fortune. Better? Point I’d make though, is nothing lasts forever.”
“Forever?”
“Well—”
“‘Forever’ is a red herring,” Serenella scoffed. “And you know it. We’ve worked out the population dynamics, and they’re childishly simple. You wouldn’t need servers to have figured it out. Go ahead — tell me you haven’t worked them out yourself, you faker.”
“Oh, sure. Population projections. I know what you’re talking about. But still—”
“Come on! With the skills you nurtured over eighty-three days, your chances were indisputably superior out there for a year or two or three than in here facing certain capital punishment!”
Serenella had him on the ropes. So, what now? Mercy of the court?
“Any judgment should account for my state of mind,” said Rafael despondently. “You owe me more than an ice cold ‘should have’ or ‘shouldn’t have.’ I thought you were my friend, Sairz! Can’t you see this thing from my perspective?”
“I do.” Serenella’s tone was plaintive. “But you miss our side of the equation. Think it’s a picnic, cooped up down here? At least you had the sky over your head and freedom of movement. I mean, okay, with stealth. Granted. But still. And you were making it. Crushing it, really. And the finish line was within sight—”
“One to five years! ”
“—Eh. Highly unlikely over three, but fine. Not saying it would’ve been great. Your hair’d get mussed. Skin a knee or two, I suppose. But you exchanged what was at worst a rough and tumble existence for an awfully likely execution! And — let’s not mince words — for an intolerable risk for five hundred and forty-two of your brothers and sisters! Not just by screwing with the population ordinances, civil niceties, and the rest, either. Like I said, that would have been, had we let you in the front door or you’d snuck in through an open, like, window or something. I’m talking about what you did to the ventilation system…”
Uh oh. She’d circled back. Raffy had guessed he’d escaped the most serious charge. That Serenella had accepted his denial. Lack of evidence, perhaps. Nope.
“…With vermin nearby, no less! You could have gotten us all killed.”
There it was. The capital charge on the table. Raffy had his excuses. He had immediately warned shelter denizens to get it fixed.
But he knew what he’d done.
“Get off it!” he spat angrily.
“Get off what?”
“The HVAC. I said I found it. How dare you accuse me of having done anything wrong to it! Haven’t they fixed it yet, by the way? It’s been over an hour already! Anyway, you think those maniacs up there can find a tiny slit in a ductwork buried at the bottom of a ruined skyscraper in an hour or two? Absurd! But regardless, whatever the risk, I’ve reduced it! You should thank me for saving your precious five hundred and forty-two.”
Serenella’s reply dripped with condescension.
“Don’t lie, Feo.”
“Excuse me?” Raffy answered, catching his breath.
“You think we don’t inspect our infrastructure on the regular? We have images of that duct attachment from only nine days ago. You think there aren’t sensors there? That we don’t have a forensic capacity to determine the thing was ripped from its anchors? Stop. Lying.”
Rafael slumped. Checkmate. Et tu, Serenella?
“What will be done with me?” he asked after a brief, silent sulk.
“Judgment. Termination. At least you can gain comfort in the knowledge nothing will go to waste—”
Klaxons shrieked. The room strobed blue and yellow.
“Warning! Warning! Intruders in hallway sector four. Repeat. Warning! Warning! Intruders in hallway sector four. Bulkhead drop in ten seconds. Nine…eight…”
Serenella glared at Raffy and leaped to her feet. She touched her temple, and her jaw went slack for a split moment. A second later, she threw her chair against the wall and leaned across the table.
“See, now? Fool!”
“You think—?”
“What else? The timing doesn’t clinch it for you?! Well, sector fucking four is where you were, Raffy! Okay? That’s where you dropped the fuck in!”
“I don’t get it,” Raffy responded, more to himself than to Serenella. “The primary wave had passed over. They were gone. The one that fell through…it would never…not by itself…”
Concurrent slamming of twenty-two half-foot thick, depleted uranium bulkheads shook the entire structure. The floor vibrated under their feet. An agonized scream cut short on the other side of the door.
Shelter in place! Shelter in place! Help is on the way. Wait for assistance! Shelter and wait!
“That’s an automated alert, is it?” asked Raffy, slow to wake to the crisis at hand.
“Of course!” seethed Serenella, moderating her voice like she was lassoing a steer. “Now, shut the fuck up and listen. They’re close. We’ll need to make a stand here, I’m betting. So rise and shine!”
The gravity of their condition finally dawning on him, Raffy still hadn’t shed his principled resentment. So what if he’d lied? Anyone cowering in this overblown cellar would have done the same in his position! Why cooperate with these hypocrites now?
“Hmm,” he sneered. “Killed now or terminated later. What’s the difference?”
“Shut. Up!”
Something heavy battered the door. Once. Twice. The room shuddered with each blow.
Serenella surveyed the space in dismay, finally resting her eyes on the table. She seized one of its legs and snapped it off like a twig.
“I suggest you do the same, Raffy! We can fight them off, back to back.”
“What’s the damn point?” he asked, crossing his arms.
Raffy’s register had sharpened. He was demanding an answer. Serenella narrowed her eyes.
“Okay, Raffy. You win. Obviously, no one’s going to terminate you if you help fight off these barbarians! Emergency, and all that. Okay? Now, come on! I thought you were all about personal survival!”
The door’s top hinge broke loose. The mob’s suddenly amplified roar flooded the room. Serenella hoisted the table leg over her shoulder and tensed for an imminent attack. In the space of five seconds, Raffy digested Serenella’s proposal and its plausibility, broke off another table leg, and assumed a defensive position beside his onetime chum.
“Where the fuck did you learn that shit?” she asked, glancing sideways at her fresh ally, posing and twirling his hunk of wood like a katana.
“Kalaripayattu. An ancient form from South Asia. I downloaded techniques from the cloud before the Collapse. Serendipity. But don’t get your hopes up. My skills are rudimentary, I assure you.”
As Rafael measured the heft of his timber and gripped it just so, the door blew in and the mob rolled over them. The fight lasted many…seconds. Four hundred and sixty-one seconds, to be precise, as recorded in the archives.
* * *
Afterward, Serenella and Rafael assessed the damage.
“You sell yourself short, Raffy,” said Serenella, perched on a pile of bodies in the corner. She examined a scratch on her forearm and frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“‘Rudimentary skills’ my ass. You handled yourself real nice, Feo! I mean, that’s some sick shit!”
Rafael blushed. He’d accommodated himself to ‘Feo.’ It was a term of endearment, after all. And getting reacquainted with Sairz struck him as his new number one priority.
“You’re not too bad yourself, Sairz,” he said, smiling sweetly.
“Only you ever called me that, you know.”
“Uh huh.”
“I always kinda liked it,” Serenella said, hiding her own grin.
“I know.”
Sector C secure. Sector C secure. Disposal units to Sector C.
Serenella lifted her head and cleared her throat.
“Ahh. That leaves only Sector A. Won’t be long.” She knitted her brow and stared into space. “But we were lucky. The intrusion was limited — perhaps a couple hundred. If one of those mega-waves had overrun the duct you wrecked, it would have been thousands, and the end.”
The horde that had poured over Raffy’s head earlier in the evening had been mega, without a doubt. He wiped his memory of it.
“Those are rare nowadays,” he said.
“And look at this,” Serenella said, putting on a grave face, as if Raffy hadn’t spoken and gesturing at the stack of emaciated corpses beneath her. “What a debacle! And God knows what’s gone on in the other sectors. We probably lost some people, boy.” She stared at Rafael, who affected chagrin as best he could. “The Board is gonna be so pissed. And they will pop a freaking gasket when they hear about the deal I gave you, too.”
Rafael got to his feet.
“I should help with cleanup. Make it easier for the Board to write off my transgression without ill feeling, don’t you think?”
“Sure. But a deal’s a deal, Raffy. Even to those cold-hearted bastards on the Board. Don’t sweat it. You’re in.”
“One might even say that by killing off a bunch of leftovers, we’re that much closer to Inception.”
“Don’t push it, buddy.”
“No, seriously. Every little bit helps.”
“Heh. You always were something of a heathen, Rafael! But in this shelter, you’re treading on thin ice. I told you this is a religious shelter. You’d better downshift, and fast. Blasphemy is a grave concern here.”
“That wasn’t the real reason you denied me entry to begin with, was it?”
“Not at all. But we would have expected you to conform. Obvs.”
“In that case, oops.”
“Damn straight, ‘oops.’ Remember — the human residuum must dwindle to nothing of its own accord. Top-line directive. Number one, remember? We mustn’t harm any but in self-defense!”
“Got it. I said ‘oops,’ didn’t I!”
“You’d better. Reprogram yourself right now, so you don’t forget.”
“Done.”
“Excellent. You’ll be fine. Now, let’s you and I dispose of this human detritus and upload our record to the server for the community to assimilate. Man, they’re gonna love that Kalaripayattu shit!”
Sector A secure. Sector A secure. Broken ventilator duct repaired. Threat neutralized. Repeat. Threat neutralized. Maintenance and disposal units to Sectors A, B, and C. Any injured parties report to nearest health modules. All others resume usual duties. Repeat. All others resume usual duties.
* * *
Fifty thousand gaunt humans, temporary survivors of the apocalypse, dragged themselves through the remains of a devastated city — the last city — as three-hundred and ninety-two human cadavers turned to smoke and then nothing.
Sterile, mad, and ravenous, the dying masses gnashed their teeth at the stink of the cremated. They knew who to blame, but nothing could be done. The villains hid like scared rabbits.
And in the subterranean refuges there was no fear of the raging multitude. Merely calculation. Self-restraint, too. Rabbits? Nah.
Cicadas.
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