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This is the final chapter in the Shelter Number 9 saga. I enjoyed writing this a lot more then the last chapter. I think one of the major reasons I had a hard time with Chapter 3 was the plot. It didn't start very well, so I wasn't horribly motivated to get going. For that reason, this ones starts off a little bit better.
Thanks to all my reviewers.
Chapter 4: The Glass Prison
No. I'm back in the same room as one of my earlier dreams. The dark room, with the LCL pillar in the middle of it. The first thing that draws my attention is, once more, the tube of LCL. I examine it closer now, deciding that this LCL is definitely different from the LCL I've used for synch tests and my battle. It looks like it has a different texture. It seems almost…blocky. Like there are small chunks of something floating in it.
I still feel the same disembodied feeling I felt the last time I dreamed of this room. There is still only one door in and out of the room, and it is still closed securely. Like before there are the sounds of speech, which I intend to listen to as soon as I hear them. But like the first time, they fade as soon as I begin to pay attention.
But that’s where the similarities end.
The most obvious difference is that this time, Gendo Ikari does not stand across the room talking to someone else. No, this time he’s less then five feet away from me, staring directly at where I would be if I were physically in the room. I know that I can see through the wall, but nothing so far has revealed that he can as well.
Unless I count him starring straight at my position.
A second difference from the last time is that the lights in the room are on now. This reveals several dozen computers and desks that I had not been able to properly identify during my previous visit. The light also shines on the opposite side of the room, which has a plexi-glass wall with LCL similar to the stuff in the central tube filling it.
Well, it isn’t just the opposite wall that has the tank running along it. The tank of LCL curves along the sides of the room to…where I am.
It’s more then a subtle shock to me that an LCL tank surrounds the room I’m viewing. More so that I’m actually in that tank. The LCL stinks heavily of conspiracy now. It’s like some sort of a top secret government research lab, one that my younger self had always envisioned being in NERV. Scientists would do illegal activities, such as human cloning, here.
But that can’t be true. There are no clones here after all.
Now there is a reason for having just one way in and out of the room. The reason why access to this room is restricted, as Gendo told Asuka, is becoming apparent. Now Gendo starring directly at where I am makes sense. Now there’s a reason why I can see Gendo through the walls of the room. Now I can tell why a speaker’s words seem to lag behind their mouth when they speak. I have been hearing through thick glass and LCL.
But still, Gendo continues to stare intently at my position. He stares through what I can now tell is inches thick glass, yet I can feel the full brunt of his attention upon me. It makes me wonder what exactly he’s looking at, as the changes in the rest of the room have not brought with them a feeling of me having any sort of a physical body.
I am, literally, nothing for him to look at.
But his gaze makes me feel like he is looking directly into my soul. It is like he’s examining my every inner facet and weighing my worth with those eyes. Those eyes…
Those eyes that a part of me says belong to my father.
As I have no body, I cannot try to move to see how much control over this existence I have. So, as I struggle to understand just what the hell is going on, I have no real way to check to make sure I’m still Kensuke Aida.
The thought that I am still viewing from Shinji’s perspective, as I steadily begin to suspect, terrifies me. And for good reason.
Strangely, it makes sense that this would be from Shinji’s perspective. Besides the last dream in this room and the current one, every dream has been from Shinji’s perspective. This being from Shinji’s perspective would make it so only that one was not. And Gendo has to be starring at me for some reason. Hadn’t Asuka said she’d seen Shinji’s last few days and the reason he went insane? Hadn’t I decided that I would be seeing Shinji’s last few days soon? This could easily be them now.
If this was from Shinji’s perspective, it could mean that this has something to do with how he went insane. The repercussions would be astounding, the possibilities near infinite.
Maybe someone had drugged Shinji, so that he wouldn’t have remembered or seen this. But Asuka, not suffering from the drugs, could’ve seen what happened here from her dream perspective. Maybe that was what she meant when she said she saw the events leading up to Shinji’s death.
It could mean that Gendo has cloned Shinji, and is planning to have an army of him run around as his henchmen. He might plan to fight the angels with multiple copies of NERV’s greatest pilot, in order to more effectively gain power. The little that remains of my younger otaku self cries valiantly in support of this possibility.
So I ignore it, of course.
There are so many possibilities of what this dream might be, if I really am seeing from Shinji’s perspective. A near finite number of things could’ve resulted from this event. It’s mind boggling how this could affect my physical reality.
Still, the nagging question of why Shinji would have no body now continues to bug a piece of me.
Of course, this is all assuming that this is Shinji’s perspective I’m seeing from. In fact, I’m almost positive it is now.
‘Prove it.’
The scientist speaks to me for what seems to be the first time in decades. With the thought comes an abstract concept. Clearly, the scientist wishes for me to understand a complex issue.
Time…look for a clock?
It wants me to see a clock, so that I can tell the time. Simple really. A clock would tell me how soon until Shinji’s death would occur. The time could clear up a lot of the excess questions bubbling in my head by eliminating possibilities. Answers would then be one step closer.
I glance into the room at the center of my glass prison, frantically searching for a clock. With surprising aptitude, my eyes land on one of the computers. Although it’s over fifteen feet away, I can still see the time and date in the lower right hand corner.
February 28, 2016.
I freeze. If I had palms, they’d have begun to itch. If I had skin, it would’ve begun to sweat. The date isn’t just any one. This is an important one, a date burned into my mind eternally.
This is a date burned into my mind eternally as the day of Shinji Ikari’s funeral. This, whatever it is, is what Commander Ikari was working on during Shinji’s funeral. This was why Shinji’s father didn’t come to the departure of his “body”.
This isn’t before Shinji’s death and insanity, it’s afterwards. His body is missing because Rei and Unit 00 have destroyed it. I’m seeing things from the perspective of Shinji’s spirit. Gendo has trapped Shinji’s simulacrum in this glass prison in order to study, experiment on, and do who knows what else to it.
It slowly dawns on me how this would affect me earlier dream. The dream with Asuka confronting Gendo. That dream had been from Shinji’s perspective as well. Shinji had seen Asuka talking to Gendo and been unable to do anything about it.
Asuka had been right. Gendo had set this all up. He’d orchestrated everything from the start, including Shinji’s last few days of life. All in order for his son to end up here, trapped as a soul. All for, I begin to suspect, true Instrumentality.
What other reason could there be besides Instrumentality? Nothing else has seemed to dominate Gendo’s actions as much as NERV’s primary project. Nothing has had any semblance of control over his operations, save Instrumentality.
Shinji, Asuka, Rei, and all the other pilots, me included, have been tricked into thinking that Instrumentality has been completed and that it is over and done with. That it was not only quick and painless, but enjoyable. It had helped us.
It had blinded us. Now I see it as what it truly is. Desolation of the spirit.
The lie we have been living since Instrumentality has been just to silence questions about the true project. Everyone who would’ve been skeptical of Instrumentality has been silenced by its ‘completion’.
Instrumentality has turned my life into a living hell, starting by killing Shinji Ikari. Then, by taking my friend Touji-
Wait. Have all the other pilots been trapped in here as well? Turning my focus into the rest of the tank around me, I can see that there would be plenty of room for other souls. Room for Asuka’s soul, Touji’s soul, Hikari’s soul. In fact, depending on how massive a soul really is, the souls of everyone who has ever piloted Eva could easily fit in this room.
Would I be joining them soon? I worry it will be so.
Asuka had seen what happened to Shinji, but I doubted that she had ever seen this. Otherwise she’d have recognized this room during her confrontation with Gendo. She would have done something to try to save Shinji’s soul. Something to save him from this cruel fate.
Now I can only rationalize that she had eventually succumbed to the same state as Shinji. After all, she had all but disappeared off of the face of the earth. Her and everyone else who had ever piloted Eva. Perhaps the same angel that Gendo had summoned to get her out of his way during the last dream had finished her. Maybe Shinji had gotten a roommate in this trap, only a few months after his own “death”, on the same day as he and I saw Asuka confront Gendo.
It was scary to think that Asuka, who had also had these sorts of dreams, had not been able to thwart Gendo. While I’d always disliked her personality, I’d always admired her mental and emotional capabilities. She’d been able to unravel the plot much sooner then I had, and with fewer dreams. She hadn’t seen this dream, which had practically spelled out Gendo’s whole plan, and she’d been able to put together so much more of the puzzle than me. If she failed, what chance did I have?
What chance did I, the nerdy and pathetic Kensuke, have when every one of my stronger, smarter friends had failed? There had been a good half dozen pilots of Eva over the years and I had never heard much of any of them after they started piloting. Each one of them, like Asuka, had silently faded away. If she had succumbed to the same fate as Shinji, then they all must have as well. How was I supposed to have a chance when so many others passing before me had failed? Hadn’t NERV picked those children because they were stronger than me in every way? If so, my fate is surely sealed.
My mind chooses now to remember where my physical body is. Sitting in a powered down Evangelion, perhaps waiting for this same fate that I watch Shinji suffer to befall me. The defense mechanism all humans have, fight or flight, kicks in and begins to awaken me so that I might somehow survive the trap laid bare in front of me.
I don’t have much hope left.
Everyone before me has failed. What good am I at this? I couldn’t even beat the angel without Unit 01 having to take over and save me. It moved on its own for the victory, not even requiring its controller.
‘Maybe it’ll do so again. Maybe this monster can save you.’
All of my friends have been trapped and experimented on. Their souls have been tortured for unbearable lengths of time. In Shinji’s case, over three years now. I’ll face that fate soon.
‘You don’t know that. They’re just dreams. Find proof that that is really happening before you give up.’
Even if I were to get up and try to pilot for some reason, Unit 01 has turned off and won’t listen to me. There’s no power, otherwise I’d have stayed synched to it and not seen that last, horrible dream that seemed to give me all of the answers. I guess it is true what they say.
Ignorance is bliss.
‘You don’t know if it will work or fail. Unit 01 might work, there’s still a chance. Try it. See what happens.’
My life is really, truly over now. I can already tell that something will appear as soon as I synch with the Eva. Another Eva, another one of the angels created by Gendo. He’s expected all my actions so far and why shouldn’t he? He’s practically shaped my life to his most convenient use.
‘Aren’t you mad about that? The man has practically shaped your and everyone else’s in this towns lives. He’s killed so many. Doesn’t he, at the very least, deserve to die?’
Yes.
Gendo needs to pay for all the blood on his hands. Unit 01 has the power to seal his fate.
No.
I can’t pilot this thing again. It’ll destroy me as surely as Gendo will. I can feel its sinister side, desiring oh so much to take my soul into itself and go berserk. It-
There is no answer, because there is no question. Who is asking me these things? Fractures of my soul begin to question what’s going on.
‘The voice is the manipulator! It’s Gendo, in my head. Kill him!’
‘It’s the manipulator! Hide! Run away…Gendo has come to take my soul!’
‘What can I do against these odds…I wish I was dead. This manipulation…has just got to stop.’
‘It’s an enemy! Maybe the angel’s back and has done this. It’s manipulating us!’
Things begin to fall apart as my center cannot hold. Frantically, the ruling body of my soul wages war against itself, seeking to come to some sort of a decision. But the voices are so separate! None of them make sense; none seem to agree with any other. I can only begin to understand what one means when another jumps into its place, forcing the last from my mind.
Kensuke! You’ve got to stop this. Calm down, take some control here.
Agree with this one? Or maybe this one over here. Oh, they’re so divided! If only there was some semblance of unity in this madhouse that I now dwell in. Have I died, moved on, or am I back in the purgatory of the dream room?
The song is starting to break him up. We’ve got to do something to stop him.
Kensuke! Kensuke man, snap out of it!
A pause. A brief respite in the crushing melody that surrounds me.
What is this? Someone speaks my name. And calls me a ‘man’. But what is man? A person or a species? Surely I’m losing any semblance of humanity I used to have.
We can’t talk to him like that!
Screw the dam rules! No way I’m gonna let my friend go nutso out there!
It’s been a few years since I’ve heard anyone speak like that. I haven’t heard it since…Touji?
See! He’s got some control! It’s not too late to save him.
Oh man. Bad idea.
‘Touji…What’s going on? Where are you, what’s happening?’
We’re in the tank room Ken. It’s horrible! You’ve got too do something to help us out of here.
…
Ken?
‘I can’t Touji. If I move…they’re gonna kill me!’
How do you know that?
‘Look at what happened to all of you! How am I supposed to beat something that took down all of you guys?’
You’ve just got to try Ken. We all did. Even if you fail, it’s not a big deal. As long as you try. Failure isn’t the end of this. All of us, me, Shinji, Asuka, and Hikari, know that eventually, someone will get us out of here. It has to happen eventually, Gendo’s luck can’t last forever!
‘I-‘
Touji’s words, or thoughts, stir something in me. The little bit of Kensuke that really wants to go out there and fight for what he believes in. The little bit of me that has been most mistreated and ignored since Shinji’s death. The little bit of me that has been left out in the cold for so long that even something like this can’t bring it down. This little bit sees being in the belly of the beast, branded by the mark, as another sign of the times. Just something that’s happening and needs to be stopped.
The otaku within me is just itching to pilot this Eva. To be a hero.
So with a cheesy and overly cliché line, I jump into the piloting couch of the Eva. Wrapping my hands around the controls, I let a long suppressed smile flash across my face.
The time has come for me to show everyone how good I really am. To prove Gendo wrong, to free my friends and be a hero to all the others. The time to take these controls and power up the Eva has come.
The switch is small. I press it. Despite my inner cynic’s thoughts that nothing would happen, it does.
Unit 01’s face had tilted downwards during the power loss. Now, I turn its face up in order to see around me.
I can only see from one of my eyes, some foreign object blocking the other. Directly ahead of me stands the azure painted Unit 00. Because my left eye is blocked, I cannot see its right arm. But its left arm is holding something out in front of it, on its right side. It looks like it’s balancing something there.
Something changes in my left eye. I turn my attention to that side of my vision to see a slowly enlarging light. With surprise, I realize that a foreign object has not blocked my sight, but that I am looking down the tube of a rapidly charging energy weapon.
My mouth opens to cry out, Unit 01 tries to roar. Time stands still for a brief moment during which my happier moments in life flash before my eyes. Unsurprisingly, most of them are before or during the eighth grade.
The shot impacts and my visual and physical senses react violently. In the entry plug, my body spasms and begins to die as I feel the left side of my head exploding from the positron rifle’s shot. My sense of smell is completely overcome with the bloody smell of LCL, now more then ever before. I can taste my approaching death like so many bitter, bitter memories.
But one thing I have no sensory overload in is sound. After the immediate roar of the positron shot, everything goes away. No sound comes over the com. Rei does not say anything to the young boy she has just killed. Asuka does not yell out for me, nor does Misato anguish upon my death.
No. No one cries for Kensuke Aida. No one cries as I die.
But that can’t be, I’m dead.
A familiar view, from the LCL filled tank into the room at its heart.
But that’s impossible, I’ve died.
An unfamiliar feeling. Four small but bright lights, each a little bit bigger then I’d describe my current self, surround me. They surround and encompass me. They feel strangely similar to me.
But there can’t be anything. Rei killed me.
Rei.
Shinji. Asuka. Touji. Hikari.
It’s a rush when it all comes back to me. I’m dead, but I’ve been taken to the room of my nightmares. My soul has been harvested for sorrow’s lover’s use. Gendo has captured my most precious being.
Those around me are my friends. They’ve been captured and hideous things done to them. They wanted me to save them. I wanted to save them.
I failed.
“I’m sorry.”
“…That’s my line.”
Despite the long time since I’ve seen him, Shinji’s word still don’t surprise me. I’m instead surprised that both Shinji and I speak words, instead of the strange thoughts I’d heard from my friends when they spoke to me in the entry plug. Seeing as none of us have bodies, there is no apparent reason for the vocalized words.
The next words are instantly recognizable as Touji’s. “Yeah, it just works like that.”
Huh?
“All your thoughts are spoken, dummkopf.”
That’s a surprise. Not the speaker, but the fact that all my thoughts are vocalized. I’m now in a land with no secrets. All my inner secrets, if thought of, could be seen and heard by all of my friends.
“Ugh! Definitely didn’t need to know that!”
“Whoa Ken! Take your mind off those things, not straight onto them!”
With what would amount to a metaphysical blush, I hastily apologize. When I’d first thought that there were no secrets here, all my secrets that I wanted to lock away forever rushed to the forefront of my mind. This will take some getting used to.
“You can say that again.” Hikari speaks for the first time since I’ve arrived.
I barely restrain myself from thinking about what must have happened when she got here and started thinking of Touji. No time for that now, I need to find out what’s going on.
“How? I mean… I saw it coming and you guys tried to help me, but how exactly did my soul get here?”
Asuka’s soul makes as if to speak, but then decides better of it and backs away a bit. Shinji does his usual thing and stays quiet. Hikari and Touji’s souls seem to look at each other, then Touji’s starts to speak.
“First off, that wasn’t us talking to you. Gendo’s got the Eva rigged with small receivers and transceivers. Probably got your room bugged too. For the last few months he’s been messing with your head. Controlling you so that you’d end up here. Trapped. He just made you think it was us you were hearing so that you’d activate the Eva and he’d have a reason to kill you.”
That’s a load. According to Touji, Gendo’s somehow managed to set up the whole town so he can manipulate people’s minds and control their actions. He has controlled me subtly, touching me whenever I have a weak moment. This manipulation has caused me to follow his bidding.
He’s made me become an Eva pilot. His subconscious cues got me to think about the past. These thoughts allowed the dreams, which Gendo had somehow transmitted, to start. Everything I had seen in the dreams, he’d wanted me to see. While I had thought I was getting raw information about the truth, he’d actually been feeding me censored and doctored parts of what he wanted me to see. All for me to end up here.
“And where is here?”
“The room of Gauf.” Shinji speaks up. “Deep in the heart of NERV. We’re not completely sure what it does, just that it has something to do with the true Instrumentality project. We ended up here because it was the place we all most feared going to after we died.”
“How?
“He controlled me first. By placing information about the room of Gauf and what it did, he made me so fearful of it that when Rei killed me, the Room of Gauf grabbed me and pulled me in. Then he tapped into my mind and stole some of my memories. He transmitted them to Asuka, who then feared coming to the Room of Gauf so much that she came here after her death as well. After he had the process down, it was easy for him to repeat it on Touji, Hikari, and a few others from our class. Eventually he used it on you.”
The level of deception is even larger then I’d imagined.
I could understand Gendo trapping us, but using our friend’s memories against us was a stroke of genius. Whenever I’d seen from Shinji’s perspective, I’d always seen it as the absolute truth. Shinji wouldn’t lie to me, so why should his dreams be any less true?
But in reality, it wasn’t all of Shinji’s view that I’d seen. Gendo had cut the “footage” so it only contained information that would lead me here upon my death. I’d allowed NERV to lead me down this path like a meek little lamb. Thinking back to it, when I’d died I’d feared coming here more then death itself. So, some cruel hand of god placed me here.
“Don’t beat yourself up too much Ken. We all fell for it too. Shinji was even the guinea pig for the whole thing.”
Shinji’s soul hung its head. Asuka spoke up for him. “Yeah, the baka didn’t even realize what was going on, even though he was the test run of the whole set up. When I saw his memories, it was like something from a B-grade movie. No subtlety at all. Gendo accidentally spelled it all out, and Baka-kun here still didn’t get it!”
Touji’s soul smiled. “Course, Asuka saw different parts from the rest of us. Gendo hadn’t quite perfected it yet. He let her see too much. But then he fixed his mistake so that none of us would suspect something like this.”
Asuka sniffed haughtily. “I had a better idea about what was going on then you did Suzuhara.”
“Please stop fighting,” Shinji and Hikari spoke together. It was like the both of them too think something like that.
Just then the lights in the main room turned on. Gendo Ikari stood in the doorway, one hand on the light switch. When he saw my soul in the tank, he smiled.
My eyes were riveted on him as he walked into the room and took a seat behind a computer. He began typing something up. But what was it?
“He’s probably taking notes on your capture. Building a better mouse trap.”
I wasn’t sure who had responded to my last question, but I returned with another. “Why did he do this?”
“Instrumentality.” Definitely Shinji now. “He’s going to try to unite the souls of all humanity like this. No secrets from one another.”
“What’s…living like that like?”
“It's complicated, at least at first.” Touji was talking now. “But since we couldn’t do anything secretly here, it got easier as we got to know everyone else’s secrets from the past. It’s not that bad, but the more people who come in the harder it is. We’ve got to learn all of your secrets and you must tell us all of ours, otherwise we’ll just find out when you think about it on accident. You kind of get numb to telling people your secrets after a while though, so it’s mostly difficult for the new person.”
Which would now be me?
“Yeah.”
Shit.
I turn my eyes off of Gendo and realize that there is another person with him.
Rei looks lost. Her body has grown even paler then I remember. There are large bags underneath her eyes, showing of a lack of sleep. She’s also lost weight since I last saw her two years ago.
Her eyes are even stranger then I remember. When you say someone has bloodshot eyes, you mean that you can see the red arteries in their eyes. But in Rei’s case, since she always has red eyes, you can see her veins. Her red eyes are dotted with blue lines running wildly around them. The worst part is that the blue matches her hair perfectly, bringing up the image that she really is an ice queen and that her eyes have frozen over along with the rest of her. Her unshaved legs didn't help this image.
“She always looks especially bad after someone gets brought in. Whenever one of us goes through the dreams, she has to suffer through them as well. It’s some quirk of her genetics. She’s somehow attuned to the energies father broadcasts.”
It was Shinji who spoke. He sounded sorry for her. Only Shinji could feel sorry for his killer. Rei had shot his Eva in the head after all.
“It’s okay. She apologized to me. She always apologizes now. Whenever she has to kill one of us, she feels bad about it. But she has too, because my father makes her.” Shinji was much more talkative then I remembered him being.
For a brief moment I consider that this all may be yet another ruse created by Gendo. That these people talking to me aren’t really my friends, that they’re just another trick. I forget they can read my mind.
“No, it’s not quite that complex. It can only go so far, you know?”
It does have to stop eventually, I suppose. Even Gendo can’t manipulate all of us forever. Besides, my mind isn’t collected enough to try to keep unraveling the lies for much longer. If it doesn’t stop soon, I’ll crack for sure.
“Glad to hear you trust us.”
Do I? Yes, I suppose I do.
“Now what happens?”
Touji shrugs. “Not much we can do. We’ve tried every square inch of this prison and there’s no way out. We can’t get out, and no one else ever comes in here. There’s always a chance that we might get lucky and a janitor will come in and free us, but other then that there’s nothing we can do.”
So that’s it then. There’s no way out. All we can do is wait for Instrumentality to really start and pray someone happens to find us. There is a little spark of hope left, but there’s nothing we can do to try to fan it into a fire. It’s all dumb luck. Chance.
“C’mon. You might as well start spilling your secrets. Shinji and Asuka sometimes tell the rest of us stories about how it was when they both tried to keep secrets from the other. Since then, we tell the secrets as soon as the person arrives. Saves them some embarrassment. After you’re done you can hear all of ours. There’s nothing else to do. Can’t sleep, can’t eat…”
I let Touji continue to talk and lead me away from the glass prison and into a deeper part of the cage. It’s actually much larger then I’d originally thought. It has to be, the rest of humanity will likely be crammed into it someday. It’s the last of mine and my friend’s freedom.
This life sounds and looks scary, but a part of me wonders if it won’t be better than my previous life. With no secrets, there can be no pain. This life could eventually become perfect.
If I can just persevere, there’s a chance I might even be happy.
Well, this is my third conclusion to a story. When I origonally wrote the ending, I thought it came off a little vaguely. I felt like it answered all the questions, but didn't really have any sense of closure. But after rereading it and fixing a few things, I decided I like it open. It's up to you, the reader, to decide what happens after this.
If there's one thing in this whole fic that I'm not happy about it's that I had to bastardize Gendo. I actually find him interesting as a character, despite my turning him into the bad guy here. His devotion to his cause and willingness to go all the way for it makes me like him. I've also heard that he's based (at least physically) off of Hideako Anno. A man like Gendo make Evangelion what it is.
Thanks to the ever present reviewers JCMoorehead and Dartz-IRL. All the reviews, from both of you, have helped me out immensily in writing this. Additional thanks to returning reviewer D24g0n and new reviewer Wildcard-JT. I'm glad you all enjoyed it.
It's never too late to hear from anybody else. Let me know what you think
Considering my next fic, I have to stop and think. I've been trying to work my way through the genres, and so far I've done action/adventure (although somewhat poorly), romance (with good result)s, drama (was there any of that in Rivalitas?), and now horror and some mystery (at least, that's what this is supposed to be). That leaves humor, parody, and angst somewhere near the top of my "to do list". I might take a while on this next one. If you've enjoyed this, or any of my other stories, try to keep an eye out for it.
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