March has been a soggy damn mess! Fortunately, I haven't been slugging books all over the world and remain tucked indoors, dry and working away. This month's update is a biggie, so I'm going to get right to it.
First thing: Cover Reveal! Here's the first look at the cover of the new fantasy novel, The Mud Fisher's Catch!
Here's the blurb from the back.
When the gods fell, they left a magic Candle as a blessing to all humanity. But their gift was stolen by greed. Now, only barren, dying lands remain, struggling to survive the mad rule of cruel immortal Kings.
When Fisher Tey discovers a man from the past, with lost memories and vestiges of old power, she's faced with a dangerous opportunity. Out of hope and defiance, she binds her fate to the mysterious stranger and sets out on a journey that changes everything.Lost love, desperate need, and dark retribution all collide as Fisher Tey searches for a glimmer of future in the dwindling light of the Candle.
Next up, the ARCS! I have, not only one, but TWO options for getting your paws on Advance Reader Copies of books! The first one is, of course, The Mud Fisher's Catch! Ebook is formatted well enough for advance readers. If you're interested in reading and reviewing my odd dystopian fantasy novel, HERE IS THE SIGNUP FORM FOR THE MUD FISHER'S CATCH.
The second ARC is an anthology of creepy horror stories that I'm in called Don't Read This Book After Dark #3. I've got four stories in that one. If you're up to the challenge, grab the ARC, wait until the sun sets, and get to it! HERE IS THE SIGNUP FORM FOR DON'T READ THIS BOOK AFTER DARK #3.
Both books will be out in April/May.
I'm returning to Market life in April. Here's the breakdown of upcoming places I'll be if you want to swing by and grab some book/cards/stuff/conversation/firm handshakes/whatever.
Alderny Landing Artisan Market - April 7th, 14th, 21st, and 27th and May 19th in Dartmouth
Collector Con - April 13th in Sackville at the Sackville Legion
LCLC Spring Market - April 27th in Bridgewater
Geequinox - May 3rd and 4th in Halifax
Bridgewater Farmer's Market - May 11th and 18th in Bridgewater
Capercon - May 24-26 in Sydney
Y-con - May 31st - June 2nd in Yarmouth
Progress is happening on market prep. Some things will likely roll out in phases over the next 2 months as I level up my inventory: stickers, bookmarks, prints, mystery envelopes? The Mark of the Cloven #2 is still in production and on track for sometime this summer. Oh, and it's not a market, but I'll be doing my regular live reading at Dartspeak at the Dart Gallery on April 4th and May 2nd!
That's it for the update! On to the next chapter of Patchworld Nova! Again, this is a "working draft". It's gone through a couple rounds of editing, but don't expect this to be the final version. I have swatted most of the typos, and any that remain are simply a mark of my humanity. Also, if you'd prefer to read a .pdf version of this, you can find one, free for download in the Chapter 3 post on my Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/judemire My patrons also get the next chapter early, so if you don't want to wait, sign up to any tier and get Chapter 4: The Whirlwind, now!
I hope you enjoy Chapter 3: The Knife!
Troop pulled on the wagon reigns and the horses clopped to a halt. He'd managed to talk Mike into borrowing one of his, Lunabelle, when he'd picked up Scally. He needed both of them to pull the heavy covered wagon, packed as it was with machinery.
If the directions he'd gotten were correct, he was at the right spot. A long driveway cut through the grass on his right and curved around a hill into a copse of trees. He'd never actually been here, though she'd invited plenty of times in the past.
To say Troop was nervous about seeing Callie was an understatement.
Across the years they'd been co-workers, lovers, friends, and even co-defendants. Lately though, they were strangers. He'd shut the door on her over time, choosing instead to stay isolated at the edge of the province, while she forged ahead to a different future.
The life he might have been a part of, if he'd made different choices, was down at the end of that driveway. The offer had been withdrawn for a long time though. Now, he didn't know what kind of reception he'd receive.
He knew for sure that she'd be upset when he told her his plan. Butm he was hoping that once he told her what he needed, she’d understand. Not all of it, of course, but for why he had to try again. Why he needed her, again.
From his spot on the hillside, he had a good view of the water, the Bakudabakek Turbines, and a bit of the High Middleton harbour. It was a bigger place than he'd expected. In a lot of ways, the town reminded him of something from frontier times. Unlike many communities that were still living in the construction of the past, High Middleton was a new city, built after the abduction. The structures were primarily timber on rubble foundations, built rough with hand tools. But though the materials were old-fashioned, the styles of construction were more modern. There were log houses with multiple rooms, in boxy geometric clusters, with sharp-angled metal roofing. Others were done vertically, with a bulky board and batten technique using ripped, unstripped half-logs. The roads were cobble. Everything was strung together with wires on poles, carrying electricity through the city.
Power was limited, of course. The Turbines had to provide for everyone in the Abidance and, most days, the facility produced about 12MW from the pulse of the tide. It could do more, but it was a risk. The Bakudabakek Bay, called the Bay of Fundy by the Provincials, had been the largest tidal plane on Earth. The water still rose and fell, despite the lack of moon, just like it always had. The transition was dramatic, averaging over twenty five feet of shift up and down per tide. The facility didn't attempt to capture and contain that much water, and much of it passed through untapped. But what they used was enough to keep a decent standard of living.
Places like hospitals and emergency centers had power all the time. Lumber mills, factories, and stores got their juice before dawn, but shut down as soon as it got dark. Homes didn't get their cut until late afternoon and it lasted for about eight hours, extending the day a bit. It had taken them years to build the place and phase the energy in. After year without any power at all, due to their refusal to take from the Drip, everyone was glad for even the limited quantities. There wasn't any push to get everyone power 24/7.
But the new migrants, refugees from the Province, were taking their toll. Home power times had dropped from eight to six hours, to meet the demand. There was talk of reducing it even further, to four. A lot of the people from the Abidance didn't want to do with less on account of the Province's poor choice to rely on the Drip. They said the old government should build their own station, further up, by New Truro. Not that such a thing would solve anyone's problems anytime soon.
Troop turned up the driveway, taking his time to do so. He didn't want to surprise Callie. He was hoping that she'd hear someone coming and look to see who it was. He sat up straight in his seat, trying to make himself more visible, to give her time to recognize him.
His plan must have worked because she was standing on the porch when the wagon settled to a stop. She didn't look shocked to see him. Her arms were folded, so he couldn't see her scars, and she had a mild frown on her face. Even with the sour expression, he thought she looked good. The time apart had added curves and wrinkles, and her hair had gone mostly grey, but that didn't matter a bit. She always looked good to him. That was never the issue.
He smiled with as much apology as his expression could muster. "Hey, Callie."
She nodded. "Troop."
"Have you got time to talk, or should I keep these wheels rolling?"
She blew out a sigh and took the steps down the porch, headed for his horses. "Now is fine. Those mares look like they could use a rest. We'll let them into the pasture while you explain yourself." She started unhitching the animals from the wagon.
Given the choice, he would parked the vehicle out of sight, in the barn. Covered wagons weren't common. He didn't want anyone peeking in at the machine, but he wasn't about to ask her to move it where he wanted. The fact that she didn't toss him on his ass was victory enough. He joined her in releasing Scally and Lunabelle.
She pointed with her chin at the wagon. "So what's all this then?"
"It's what I need to talk to you about."
"Must be important, whatever finally got you out here."
"It is."
She didn't say anything else while they finished the task. Once they'd led the horses away, she went into the house without a word. He followed.
He was bracing himself, thinking she might introduce a partner, maybe a kid, but when he got inside, he realized that it wasn't likely to happen. The place was still decorated in her colorful style, and it didn't seem like anyone else was around. No toys on the floor, different types of jackets on the coatrack, or any of the other hallmarks of family. She was still alone. It made him feel a strange combination of relief and guilt. As she led him to the kitchen, he paused at a cluster of picture frames hanging in the hallway.
It was them, all of them, from some twenty years ago.
Smaller, individual pictures were placed around a group photo. Troop stared at his younger self, arm around Callie, both of them grinning like fools. Carlos was on his left, leaning on his shoulder. His mouth was slightly open, caught the moment before saying something. He'd always been a chatterbox. Amanda and Thaddeus were next to Callie. The small woman was standing directly in front of Thaddeus, but it didn't matter at all. The top of Amanda's head didn't rise above his chest. Thaddeus, a bear of a man, loomed up from behind with a broad smile. They were all standing on some cliff-side. There were waves and rocky sea behind them. In the distance, the eternally blue glow of the Vapora Zone blended with the sunny sky and water.
"I don't remember this one. Where was this?" he asked.
Callie didn't stop heading to the kitchen. "I don't know. Somewhere down by the Keji Seaside, old south of Liverpool, I think."
Troop nodded, dredging his memory. That sounded right. They'd spend their last summer, before funding was cut, down there, testing their dissipation theories.
"Have you heard anything from Thaddeus these days?" he asked.
She stopped in the kitchen doorway. "Thaddeus is gone, Troop. He made the choice a few years back. I didn't see the sense in telling you."
Troop's heart sank, if that were even possible. His eyes moved to the single picture of the big man and he touched the glass with his fingers. "God damn it, Thad."
He didn't blame him, after what had happened. While Troop had been the one to bear the legal consequences, the others had suffered physically. Troop knew he'd gotten the better end of that deal, and the understanding only added to his feelings of guilt.
When the Monolith was translated, and their project de-funded, Troop and the crew had been on the brink of an experiment they'd been confident would finally breach the force-fields. Because of this, Troop's mother, and the regulators from the MSU, had been quick to arrive, armed with soldiers, to relieve them of their equipment and all their data. The people in charge took the aliens at their word. The Province deemed any attempts to continued escape tantamount to threatening the lives of everyone in the patch. Nobody was willing to risk 'habitation purge'. Overnight, they went from being seen as hopeful explorers to misguided trouble-makers. Their dismissal was swift, came with a round of demotions, and official admonitions from the government that their attempts had never been endorsed in the first place. Nobody was happy with how it played out.
Despite the mandate, Troop still wanted out, to breach their jail cell. He'd spent far too long working on the project to simply let it drop. Knowing his mother, he'd always kept backups of their research off-site. Once they'd been officially disbanded, and gone their separate ways, he quietly got himself some equipment and set up a tiny lab of his own. For months, he ran his numbers, checked the stats, and figured out a way to continue on their own. With a concrete strategy, he'd sought the others out privately. He recruited Callie to his cause first, and she'd joined him eagerly. The others didn't take any convincing either. They all agreed to the sedition with enthusiasm.
Troop was the oldest of the lot. Every one of them had been born into the alien cage and had decided they weren't willing to live out their lives as prisoners. They didn't trust the words on the Monolith. Who would go to such lengths, traveling across the universe, supposedly saving them and then providing everything they needed to live, only to wipe them out at the slightest infraction? It didn't make sense. The words were suspect and felt like a lie. They all agreed, it was a prisoner's responsibility to escape. At the very least, they needed to do something to get the attention of their wardens, so they could see who their captors really were. They needed answers. Why had Nova Scotia, of all the places on Earth, been chosen? What had happened to the planet? Why had they been taken at all? Where were they going?
A few sentences projected onto a Monolith weren't enough. They needed more. Troop's original crew had not been the only ones to think that way. Slowly, in secret, they gathered dozens of people, all devoted to bringing the breaching experiment to fruition. To escaping.
It took over a year for them to put their plan into motion. Power had to be stolen from the grid and routed to the barrier. To minimize the distance, they picked the closest spot the wall came to the Drip. The location, new-north of Dartmouth, was alongside the Patravale Zone. They built a transformer hub in the abandoned Nelson Wynder grade school gymnasium, outside the main part of town. They tapped into what they could, and ran their own lines when they had to, piggy-backing onto existing poles. They sucked trickles of power from all over the city and re-routed it where they needed.
From the old school on, they had to use thicker, higher capacity, cables. There had been trouble finding enough of the stuff to go the nearly fifteen kilometers to the barrier, and they weren't the sort of thing that would go unnoticed. In the end, it had been easier to find, and dig up, old cables that led to places that had been severed by the abduction. Once they had the material, excavating their own underground line wasn't difficult. The Provincials were constantly digging as they rebuilt and improved the fragmented infrastructure. The task was endless. One more construction crew was easily lost in the shuffle.
Once they had their power, and the line, they set up camp at the barrier and built the machine. It wound up being about the size of a small garage and was designed to create a seal right up against the force-field. It would increase and decrease pressure and temp as needed, while firing a variety of lasers and microwaves in a sequence Troop was confident would dig down to the core levels of the wall.
Carlos, Amanda, and a dozen others had stayed at the school, to regulate the energy flow. Thaddeus managed the connection on the machine end. The hub sent the energy flow. Troop and Callie did all the pre-checks, and fired the machine up.
They had no idea that the moment they did so, the Nelson Wynder grade school exploded and everyone inside it died. On their end, the machine seemed to be working, tearing away through the onionskin layers of the wall. It was almost to the core when the back end of the machine began sparking. Thaddeus shouted a warning as it let out a piercing squeal of grinding metal. Moments later, the entire thing lurched in on itself, compressing like a can crushed by an invisible hand. Troop and Callie ran. Thaddeus tried desperately to disconnect it.
The pressure reversed and the whole thing exploded in a flameless burst of shearing alloy and deadly scrap.
Days later, Troop woke up in a lantern-lit hospital, handcuffed to the bed, with his mother standing over him. The look on her face was more fury than disappointment. He had no doubt that, in that moment, she'd have preferred to be standing over a coffin.
The explosion at the hub hadn't only knocked out the power in Dartmouth, but everything new-north of it as well. Sheet Harbour, Ol'Antigonish, New Truro, Hawksend Causeway, and more, were without electricity. There were fires, spreading out from the blast, and while nobody'd been killed from them yet, dozens of homes had been burnt to the ground and it was far from contained.
As far as the dead, they'd found eight bodies at the explosion site, with six people unaccounted for. At the barrier, three others had been killed by shrapnel, with another nine in intensive care, including Thaddeus. He'd lost an arm and a leg and worse. A tiny gear, no bigger than a bottle cap, had hit him in the middle back, paralyzing the big man from the ribs down. Callie's left arm was broken and cut up, needing over 37 stitches across five cuts.
It took months to tally the final counts; twenty-nine people had died as the result of their attempt. Troop was lucky. Only a dozen of those had been from the lack of power. It could have been much, much worse.
It was no surprise when his own mother told him he was going to jail. Not only for the manslaughter, but for threatening the lives of everyone in the province. She couldn't have asked for a better "I-told-you-so". Finally, she was able to show the whole province that her blessed, ungrateful son, was a selfish miscreant who couldn't be trusted. The enthusiastic effort she put into distancing herself from him publicly, was more than she'd ever put into him privately.
Grandpa Paul said she pulled strings to get him out after four years, but Troop didn't believe it.
Troop stared at the smaller picture of Thaddeus on the wall. It as new to him. Thad was older than he'd ever seen him, with a full beard. He was leaning in a wheelchair that looked too small for him, his good arm raised in a wave and a sort of forced half-smile on his face. They hadn't spoken since the accident. Not once.
Callie cleared her throat. "Oh, Christ. You're not here for reminiscing are you?"
Troop shook it off, gave the group a final look, and joined her in the kitchen. "No. Not at all."
"Good," she said. "Those days are done and gone." She pulled out a chair at the table for him, opened up one of the cupboards, and removed a bottle with two glasses.
"I've been saving this, for if you ever showed up. Figured I'd need a strong drink if the time ever came. I wasn't sure I'd ever get to it, since you don't want to be around me."
Troop sunk into the seat. "We've been over this Callie. You know it had nothin' to do with you. I just, I wasn't good for anybody."
She nodded. "Oh, I know that. You probably still aren't. Something must have forced you out of your little hidey hole for this little kitchen party to be happening. So, spit it out. Tell me what this is."
She filled the glasses and, without waiting, downed hers and refilled it.
Troop spilled the beans.
He told her everything his mother had shown him, from the departure of the Spire ship and the heading change, to the aliens that appeared to be breaking through barriers and killing their neighbors.
It had been two months since he'd gotten the news himself, and it had settled on him. In that time they'd received word from Half John that the Megarodentia had been wiped out. All 1.5 billion of them. The few reports they'd been able to pass through the wall had been sketchy. Their language had never been reliably translated. But, before they vanished, they talked about cracks made of shadows and creatures that stole their warmth with a touch. Or lives with a gaze. Or energy with an attack. The meanings were unclear. Whatever the specific phrasing was, it meant they were dying. By the time they did, and nobody ever got a look at what killed them. The view into the Megarodentia Zone had always been shallow and obscured by buildings.
To her credit, Callie took the news well and knew right where he was going with it.
"You've done it then, yeah? You and Enler finally came up with a way to breach the barrier?" she asked.
"We have, or, at least we think so. It's still a little theoretical, but it should work."
"Work like the last time, or work work?"
Troop sighed. "Actually work. We're pretty sure."
She leaned back in her chair and swirled the contents of her glass in her well-scarred hand. "But you can't do it without power. The damn Provincials have finally let you, but they don't have juice from the Drip anymore. You need the turbines. That's why you're here, in the Abidance. But there's more to it than that, isn't there?"
Troop flushed. This was the part he'd been dreading.
She continued. "If it was a reasonable amount, for an important reason, it wouldn't be you talking to me. It'd be your mother having a conversation with Representative Matak. But she's not. That means what you want isn't something anybody official would ever agree to. Even with pressure from the Province. So, how much power are we talking here?"
"I need a 15MW burst."
Her eyes went wide. "Damn, Troop. That could fry the whole place. You know that, right?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I do."
"They won't ever agree to that."
He kept on nodding, acknowledging the problem. "Yeah. I know that too."
He leveled his eyes at her, asking without asking. She'd been his best engineer, all those years they'd tried to get through the barrier. She'd taken that expertise to the Abidance when she'd left and was one of the primary engineers behind the Turbines. If anyone knew how to do this without permission, in the safest way possible, it was her.
Callie stood up and shook her head. "You are some sort of glutton for punishment, buddy. You're out of your frickin' mind, Troop."
He didn't respond and let her work through it. She was as smart as he was, probably smarter. There was no value in trying to convince her. She'd do the math and come to the same conclusions he had. She paced the room, marching from one end of the kitchen to the other. Without understanding what was at the tower, their odds of surviving when that alien scourge showed up were slim. Even if they did make it to the center of the Dyson Plate, it was a long shot. Power in the Abidance wouldn't matter when the walls cracked and the aliens swarmed in.
Shards build the horizon days, he remembered. Broken things for tomorrow.
"You said burst. How long are we talking here?"
The knot in Troop's chest relaxed. She wouldn't be asking if she hadn't already made up her mind.
"Only 2 or 3 seconds."
She walked over to a wall calendar and studied it. The dates were filled with tidal charts.
"It would have to happen at night, when the load is lowest. There's no way to do it without a service interruption. We could close the flow off entirely and turn off the power ourselves. Then we keep it shut until peak to let pressure build before we reopen. We might be able to limit the outage to half an hour, forty five minutes, tops. Then we just gotta hope we don't blow the turbines when we crank her open and fire it back up."
"That's a long time, Callie. Someone will notice."
"There's only a skeleton crew at night. I've got the authority to send them home. I can make up some excuse about running a diagnostic. When the power shuts down, it'll be the hospitals who respond fastest, informing the utilities center, then on from there. We might get an hour before they show up. Half that, if they have horses ready," she said. He could almost see her doing the math in her head.
She pointed to a spot on the calendar. "Two days. 4am. That's when it could happen."
"Thank you, Callie. Doing it like this, makes me feel awful. I never wanted to put this on you. But the alternative my mother wanted was sending the Province in with guns. You know I'd never allow that," said Troop.
She came back over to the table and re-filled their drinks. "Don't thank me yet. I have conditions."
He should have expected as much. "What do you want?"
She raised her glass in a toast. "I'm coming with you, Troop. Out there, into those other worlds. You're not the only one who's escaping this god-damned cage."
He lifted his own glass. Finally, they were going to accomplish what they'd set out to do all those years ago. "I'll drink to that."
For the plan to work, Troop had to stay with the wagon while Callie regulated the energy from the control room. He was well aware of the parallels to the previous plan and, despite her assurances, it made him nervous. The facility was built like a dam, but instead of spanning a waterway, it was a curved horseshoe of a thing. Water flowed in from all sides at high tide and was trapped, only to be released when the water receded. The turbines alternated directions, depending on whether or not they were in intake or outflow mode. The most power was generated on the intake, with the pressure of the bay bearing down on the facility.
The building did well enough on the intake, but was less structurally capable of maintaining the water within itself to capacity. When the tide reached 70%, the mechanisms were disengaged and the water was allowed to simply flow through, in and out, without restriction. What they were doing was pushing it to 100%, but then shutting it down before the inner reservoir filled. Callie would need shut the turbines down as soon as they got their 15MW and then keep them off for at least 8 hours to cool, assuming they didn't blow.
Someone was bound to show up to arrest them. Troop had the horses detached from the wagon and saddled up in anticipation. They could leave the machine behind and make a run for it once they'd created what they needed.
Troop and Enler called their invention the Forge, and the act of creation would fry it out. There was a high intensity pressure chamber in the center, surrounded by a variety of emitters for bombarding different temperature and radiation. Within the pressure chamber was a short blade. The tool was divided half and half between an edge and grip, and looked like a straight, long hilted, version of a wakizashi. It was made of a hybrid material comprised of metal, plastics, and ceramics. The energy from the dam would compress and infuse it into something new. Some strange material Enler called Satua. If their calculations were right, it would be able to carve temporary holes in the energy fields that separated the biomes.
Callie had set him up and connected everything at the far end of the Turbine, at one of the junction boxes by the shore. From where he was, Troop could see the massive shutters that regulated the turbine flow. All he could do was watch and wait. The Forge was set and ready. There were pre-systems, but those relied on batteries. The machine would idle, waiting for the pulse to trigger the material transformation.
There weren't many lights on in High Middleton at this time of night, but there were a few he'd been able to see, at the police station and a distant clinic. They'd been off for nearly fifteen minutes. Still, Callie hadn't opened up the intake doors. He'd watched as, inch by inch, the tide climbed the sides of the dam walls.
Somewhere in the night, he heard an alarm go off. One of those old fashioned hand crank jobbies, letting out an eerie wail that rose and fell in the night.
"Damn it," he muttered. It was soon. Sooner than they'd hoped. "C'mon, Callie."
Minutes passed and he felt his heart racing. It wouldn't matter if they managed to make the Knife if they were caught by the Abidance. He was half convinced that something had gone wrong, that she'd already been captured, when the intake gates rolled up, allowing the waters of the Bakudabakek to blast in with force.
This was the moment. If it was too much, the turbines would blow out. If they held, any second, and he'd see if all the work he and Enler had invested was worth it or not.
There was a click from the wagon, followed by a high pitched squeal. Bright blue light burst from inside, streaming through the fabric tarp that concealed the contraption. He could feel waves of force thumping into his chest, like he was standing next to a wall of speakers, but there was no accompanying music. A staccato series of bursts, accompanied by red flashes, hurt his eardrums.
The wagon caught on fire.
There was a loud whooshing sound, followed by an undulating ring. The sound lessened, as if it were retreating into the distance. He realized that the throbbing in his chest was only his heart now, and the pulsations had stopped. The light flickered out and the Forge came to a rest, burning in it's wooden cradle.
Troop took off his jacket, beat at the flames, and reached through the heat to press the release button.
A glass tube slid out, curling with steam. He opened it and took out the Knife.
The blade looked like a living oil slick, coiling with loops of iridescent color. It was dense, heavier than it should be for such a short blade. It wasn't hot at all. They'd fashioned a scabbard, and Troop wasted no time sliding the strange tool into it and hooking it onto his belt.
There was no time for inspection or sentimental scrutiny. He climbed into Scully's saddle and, leading Lunabelle by the reigns, trotted away from the smoldering wreckage. Doing his best to ride at a normal speed, to look inconspicuous, he went to the exit in the dam Callie said she would meet him at. It was an open sort of space, like a parking lot, with a single fire exit type door. It wasn't the sort of place anyone would, or should, be lingering.
As he waited, he heard the sound of other horses and men shouting in the street. People were arriving at the Turbines to see what was going on. He hoped that if someone spotted him, they'd think he was there doing the same.
When Callie burst from the door, he knew that things hadn't gone the way they'd hoped. Her face was grim.
"Do you have it?" she asked.
"I do. Did we kill it?" he asked back.
She shook her head, no. "Almost. We blew a ton of turbines, 40% before I was able to stop it." She climbed up onto her own horse. "We need to get out of here. Fast."
They left the broken Abidance behind them. With luck, they had everything they needed to cut through the force-fields, just as long as they weren’t captured.
They didn't stop running until the synthetic sun was high in the false sky.
Chapter 4: The Whirlwind arrives on April 26th for free release!
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