Starbound
Chapter 06 - The Fatal Circuit
Jack threw up his hands in utter frustration, only just keeping himself from screaming in exasperation as he and Twilight exited one of Terra Stella’s Interstellar Travel Regulation buildings. They had been looking to acquire a starmap of Sector Gamma for their ships, but as it turned out, they weren’t as cheap as they were supposed to be.
“I just don’t get it,” he complained. “What’s stopping them from selling us just one damned starmap!? Surely they have spares!”
Twilight was doing a better job at containing her frustration, but she, too, was feeling incredibly infuriated with the apex bureaucrat that had sat behind his organized little desk and told them with a sickly-sweet smile that the ISTR had no inclination to sell starmaps. Even Twilight had a hard time finding some kind of conceivable logical reason for it.
“Argh, this is probably my fault,” Jack groaned as they started on their way back to the hotel they were staying in close to the city’s entry.
“Why is that?” asked Twilight.
“I dunno, he might be related to that stupid apex who wouldn’t take my gems that first night here a couple of weeks back,” Jack grumbled.
“Are you implying that just because they’re both apex, they must be related?” asked Twilight.
“I said ‘might be,’ I didn’t say he was. But that snooty attitude really isn’t common among the apex. It can’t be coincidence.”
“Are they the only place that sells starmaps?”
“It’s human interstellar law,” explained Jack. “I mean, there’s no real overseeing body governing all the different races at once, but when the UN had power here, only ISTR officials were licensed to sell starmaps because only they have the most accurate map of the known galaxy. The UN hasn’t been out of power for long, and no one’s really bothered to change that rule.”
“And they won’t let us buy one?”
“Nope,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Not even with all the pixels we have, courtesy of your gems. We have more than enough to purchase a regular starmap from any other bleeding ISTR facility, but that fucking--”
Twilight winced, making Jack regret saying that.
“Sorry, but that damned apex has to go and be all more-important-than-thou about it…”
He sighed and ran a hand through his red hair.
“Look, Twilight, it may be another few days before we’re able to continue with the search for Equus, so why don’t we just relax and wait for your armor to be finished up?”
Twilight gave him a grateful smile, and sidled up to him to give him an affectionate nuzzle, an act which left Jack tensing up in surprise, but after a hesitant moment, he ran a hand along her mane, which elicited a pleased coo out of her.
“You don’t have to stay with me this whole time, you know,” she said, pulling back and looking up at him. “After hanging around the city with you for the past couple of days, I’m sure I can manage till it’s finished.”
“”Not necessarily,” Jack countered. “There’s much more that needs to be done. I mean, you ponies are a new species. You’ve already caused quite a stir by your appearance here, which hasn’t gone unnoticed.”
“Wait, if they know I’m here--”
“They’ve spoken to me about it, not you,” Jack answered as they boarded a taxi bound for the district of the city with their hotel. “I told them to lay off of you, since all you’re trying to do is find home. Maybe after we find Equus, we can help open diplomatic ties and such, is what I told them, but not right now. Not when I’m trying to help you find your home.”
Unbeknownst to Jack, as the taxi flew past some of the skyscrapers of downtown Terra Stella, Twilight’s cheeks had gone pink, and she had suddenly found it difficult to look in his direction.
Jack, however, relished the silence. Not because he hated talking to Twilight-- on the contrary, she was the most interesting being he had ever interacted with for any long period of time-- but because it gave him a chance to survey the city he once lived in, and see the progress that had been made.
Around the edges of the city were projector dishes, and positioned directly in the exact center was a tall tower, too thin for habitation by any company or enterprise. If some malicious invaders decided to show up and bombard the city, the energy shields would keep them protected from anything short of the most powerful laser at their disposal.
They had done the testing and everything. Shortly after World War III, before the schism, the USCM had tested the shield in an asteroid belt by blocking an asteroid with it and then shooting the test lasers one at a time to see what it could withstand. Only their strongest one had managed to punch through it, and even that took a tremendous amount of time to do so.
“Jack? We’re here.”
“Hm?”
Jack was jolted out of his thoughts by Twilight, prodding his side with her hoof.
“Ten pixels,” said the hylotl pilot at the front of the speeder, and Jack handed over a few coins, before getting out and walking inside the tall building with Twilight at his side.
With all her pixels, and with Jack not having taken any sort of vacation over the last few evers, they had decided to take a month-long stay in a 5-star hotel. Their treasure trove of pixels was in no way greatly diminished due to the sheer amount of gems Twilight had brought to barter, and it was certainly so much better than staying in an underground desert cavern.
They walked in silence into the plaza of the large, expansive ground floor. Many different in-house restaurants were built into the plaza, but they had no current need for food. Instead, they passed by the multitude of hotel guests on the ground floor and went straight to the elevators.
They got into an elevator alone, Jack punched the button to one of the upper floors, and up the lift went.
For a brief moment, they rode in complete silence, with Jack staring out of the back of the lift at the floor below, with the different floors and their room doors overlooking the plaza. Twilight, however, was thinking. Exactly why was Jack so insistent on staying by her side and helping her get home?
A normal being, from what she had seen, would probably have given her some pixels, or pointed her in the right direction, but here he was, just staying with her and helping her find her way.
“Jack?”
“Hm?”
Jack looked over at Twilight as the lift continued to ascend. She was chewing the inside of her cheek, apparently mulling a way to say something.
“Something the matter?” he asked.
“I… yes, actually.”
“Well, go on, then,” Jack said, motioning with his hand. “If you’ve got something on your mind, you can tell me.”
For whatever reason, that only made Twilight feel even more apprehensive about actually asking. Jack’s gaze in her direction started to shift from expectant to a stranger look, as if he was wondering why she wasn’t talking.
“Are you alright, Twilight?”
Twilight nodded vigorously. A little too vigorously, which only amplified the strange look Jack was giving her. However, he just shrugged. Fortunately, the awkward moment ended when the elevator’s bell rang, and the doors opened. Jack stepped out, and she followed him as he walked to their room.
Despite staying in a 5-star hotel, they didn’t go overboard. Their room was quite simple. A large living room in the center, with two rooms off to either side, with a balcony overlooking Terra Stella outside the door opposite the entrance. Each of their rooms had a king-sized bed, a closet, and its own bathroom.
However, a problem had arisen the very first night they had slept in separate rooms in the hotel. And it wasn’t one of the comedic ones.
Twilight was running through the forests of Alpha Prime III-B, away from Dreadwing’s ship as it blasted apart the mountainside in her wake. She had no way to defend herself, her magic was gone, her wings were injured, and her armor couldn’t stop these lasers. There was no other option but to run.
A root tripped her up and she fell onto the ground, splaying helplessly as the ship loomed overhead. Twilight scrambled back as fast as she could, trying desperately to get to her hooves, but the roots of the ground rose up and tied her down. She struggled and wrenched them with all her might, but it was to no avail.
The ship’s cannon started to emit a red light from its barrel. Twilight screamed, pulling a hoof free and desperately throwing it up to block the incoming laser--
“TWILIGHT!”
Her eyes bolted open and she sat up in her bed. She wasn’t on Alpha Prime; she was in Terra Stella. Dreadwing was gone, and she was safe, but her throat felt raw. Had she really been screaming in her sleep?
Something warm pressed itself around her. For a moment, she simply blinked stupidly, wondering what it was as her mind caught up to her recent realizations. But then she comprehended that it was Jack, and that he was hugging her to comfort her.
“I’m here, you’re safe. Nothing’s going to hurt you,” he whispered reassuringly, stroking her mane in a way that somehow eased the fear inside. Twilight let out a shaky breath, which quickly devolved into a sob, which quickly resulted in her just collapsing and crying. How was she ever going to find her way back home when she couldn’t even get over an injury in the past?
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Jack crooned, still stroking. “What was it?”
“I-it w-w-was D-Dreadwing,” she choked out. “H-his ship b-b-blasted me in the woods and I c-c-couldn’t get aw--”
She swallowed, and failed to continue from there. Jack was left to watch her, knowing what the nightmare must have entailed. The state he had found Twilight Sparkle in in the woods of Alpha Prime III-B, burnt and mortally wounded, saved only by his timely stimpack usage...
What would have happened had he not shown up when he did? Those penguins he’d killed, they had been about to kill her.
She would never have made it back to her planet…
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Jack continued.
“But… but I might have never seen my friends again,” she whimpered, shaking her head as he released her.
“If you need help sleeping, my bed is open,” he said, starting to walk out. “I promise, Twilight, you will see your friends again, and I will do what I can to help that happen.”
It had been a simple enough gesture, and Jack had thought nothing of it. Even though Twilight thanked him multiple times. Jack continued to just shrug it off. It really was nothing to him. Though he had to admit, it had been a little strange, growing accustomed to Twilight’s presence on the opposite end of his bed at first.
Those blasted wings just couldn’t stay down!
But Jack had gotten to thinking that Twilight was suffering from PTSD. She fit the symptoms well enough, with her constant fear of the event with Dreadwing. He had considered confronting her with that information, but there never seemed to be a right time to do so.
But that wasn’t the point of his current thread of conversation with Twilight.
“Twilight?” he repeated, noticing that she had zoned out, staring out of the window at a line of hovercars zooming by.
“Huh? Oh!” She shook her head to return to clarity. “Sorry. I just… can I ask you something?”
“You just did,” Jack said, failing to not smile.
Twilight just rolled her eyes. “Look, this is serious, alright? I mean, sort of.”
“Well, if you say so,” Jack said, shrugging. “Ask away.”
“Why are you so determined to help me?” she asked. Jack opened his mouth to answer, but Twilight cut him off with a bit of an annoyed tone. “And don’t try to give me something stupid like, ‘it’s what everyone else would do,’ or something.”
Jack closed his mouth. Truth be told, he had been going to say that. The real reason felt strangely personal, for some reason.
“I…” he started, before rubbing his hair a bit embarrassedly. “Well, it’s just, I know what it’s like.”
“What what’s like?” asked Twilight, confused.
“What it’s like to be lost,” he clarified. “To be stuck wandering the stars, and to be lost from home.”
“You have your little shelter,” she pointed out.
“That’s a shelter, Twilight,” he retorted irritably. “I haven’t ever had a home, truth be told. Living on earth was hell, for the little of it I did. The war, the poverty, everything was just hell. So I left before things came to a head. And in all my years of wandering around space, I’ve never once felt at home.”
“What is home, to you?” asked Twilight. “For me, home is where my friends are, no matter where that is.”
“That’s a deep question,” Jack said, staring up at the beige ceiling. “Home is… the place you… when you’re gone, you just miss it.”
“A being can miss a lot of things,” Twilight said, seeming even more confused.
“What do you want from me?” Jack snapped. “Some kind of vague philosophical quote like, ‘Home is where the heart is?’”
“I-- sorry,” she said, her ears flattening and her head drooping. “I didn’t mean--”
But she was lifted up and pulled backward before she could finish. After a moment of panic, she realized that all that had happened was that Jack had simply picked her up and fallen onto their bed.
“I get it, Twilight,” he said, holding her close in a strange little embrace. “You miss your home and you miss your friends. I know what it’s like to be lost, to be trying to find what you’re searching for, and that is why I won’t stop until I help you find your planet. Do you understand now?”
There was just something about the way he had said that. That, and the way he had been there to save her from Dreadwing, and the way he had been comforting her with the nightmares that just set her mind at ease. She knew she could trust him, and she knew he meant everything he said.
“...so the plan is to create an interior outfit with all the hooks and latches like this,” said Jason, showing off a little model of the prototype pony armor made specifically for Twilight. “What you’ll do is if you want to update the armor yourself, you can simply fit the desired molten metal to the moulds we’ll be providing you, and then when it cools and hardens, you’ll have the same plates to attach. Just gotta switch the different plates in and out.”
“Are you doing that to my suit too?” Jack asked. “Because this armor comes made the same way, actually. See?”
He demonstrated by pulling out one of the sections of his armor out and sliding it back in, where it fastened with a snapping sound.
“Well,” Jason said, “we could have moulds for you to use with that as well, but it would take a few days. If you’d consent to leaving your armor here for a bit--”
*BOOM!*
No one knew what had just happened. Some of the smiths had dove for cover, Twilight’s eyes had shrunk and she had started to shake, and Jack had whipped his rifle off of his back and had pointed it at the door to the foundry they were in.
The ground shook, there came panicked screams from outside, and there was a grating sound that was growing louder and louder. Jack walked forward slowly, trying to get a view of what was going on outside. Crowds of beings ran past the foundry doors, no doubt putting as much distance between themselves and whatever was outside.
As he stuck his back to the wall and poked his head outside, all that presented itself to him was chaos. There was smoke very close by, and the flickering lights underneath made it clear it wasn’t from any kind of smithing. And there were metallic tramping sounds somewhere down the main street between all these industrial buildings.
Jack swept his visor down to give him a better view. It zoomed in on an energy reading all the way down the street, revealing a yellow robot with feet and hands floating independently of its body piece, and a large clear dome on its head with a brain inside.
“Magnets,” he said to himself, noticing how the hands and feet never strayed too far away from the body. The robot lifted its hand and aimed its palm at another building. A stream of fire issued from it and ignited something flammable that he didn’t see.
Where are the Terra Stella Peacekeepers? he wondered. But since they didn’t seem to be nearby, it would seem the lot fell to him. He hefted his rifle up, aimed it at the bot, aided by his visor, and fired a shot at the glass dome.
The bullet hit, but it had little effect aside from leaving a scrape mark. It was plainly bulletproof, and what’s worse, it had gotten the robot’s attention, for it started lumbering towards them.
“Shit,” he whispered, jogging away from the wall. “We’ve got a problem,” he announced aloud to the room. “There’s a big yellow flamethrowing robot out there, and it’s on its way here. Looks like it’s made of pretty strong metals, so we’re going to need some stronger weapons to take care of it.”
“You may need to get to the more high-tech smelting and smithing plants,” Jason said. “Further up the street. They work with the rare things from Sector X, like Impervium. See if you can snag something from there.”
“If they’ll let me,” Jack muttered to himself, glancing back out the door. The robot seemed to be fighting off some of the Terra Stella peacekeepers, who weren’t doing any damage, but at least they were keeping it distracted, and none of them were getting hurt.
With the robot occupied, he had his moment. So he took off, sprinting up the streets, past all the smelting depots, towards the heavy-duty smithing building near the end.
He had been there exactly once, and that was merely to retrieve an Impervium smithing hammer for Jason so Jason could work with his armor better. Hopefully they wouldn’t be completely locked up for any reason. As soon as the unimpressive steel building was in sight, he dashed inside, past a few surprised smiths, and followed signs into the weapons-forging wing, where he barged through the doors and started searching for something that could help..
“What the--”
“Someone stop him!”
“No time!” Jack called behind him as he dug through several large tubs, filled with different weapons. “There’s a huge flamethrowing robot out there that’s destroying everything in its path.”
As if to punctuate his statement, there came a low rumble and the ground shook under their feet.
“Go check,” he heard the first voice bark, followed by scampering feet. Jack ignored them and continued digging. There has to be something made of Impervium in here somewhere!
Finally, buried underneath several blue, green, and red metalled weapons, he found it. A glossy black warhammer, which he snagged by the shaft and yanked out.
Impervium weapons were several times heavier than normal steel, and yet that much stronger as a result. But after all of his time lugging around armor, Jack found the hammer pretty easy to carry. Without pausing, he dashed back out, passing by a panicked smith on his way, no doubt heading to confirm his suspicion.
The robot had almost made it to Jason’s facility, and the peacekeepers were no closer to defeating it than when they had started the distracting. Jack charged forward, even as the robot lifted its hand and aimed at another building.
“NO! STOP!”
A blast hit beside him and Jack was thrown sideways, hitting the building of another depot and falling to the ground. The blast hadn’t been strong, but the hitting of the building hadn’t helped things.
“Are you alright?” asked a calm voice to his right.
“Fine, fine,” he grunted. “Didn’t need to blow me sideways.”
“You were going to destroy it,” the voice said, a hairy hand entering Jack's vision, which he took as he was helped to his feet. It was an Apex scientist, who, despite the situation, looked completely composed, as if this were routine. “It’s a product of the TSPC, and we need it as intact as possible.”
“Wait, what?”
“The Fatal Circuit project requires a great deal of explanation,” the Apex said, rolling his eyes, “and a lot of time and money has been invested into it, so we would very much appreciate it if you were to not completely annihilate it. Simply do as you’re told and you will be compensated.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to be irritated.
“Are all of you Apex this snooty and egotistical?” he asked the scientist, thinking about flicking dirt on his immaculate labcoat.
“My apologies, if that is how I appear to you,” the Apex said, inclining his head. “Shatter the brain capsule and disable the brain inside, and the whole robot should shut down.”
“Smush the brain,” Jack said, nodding and hefting the hammer. “Got it. Thanks for the tip.”
And with that, he charged forward again. When he was within range, the robot still being distracted by the peacekeepers, he leapt as high as he could, lifting the hammer above his head, and brought it crashing down on the robot’s brain capsule.
To his relief and immense satisfaction, the glass of the capsule shattered under the force of the blow, and his hammer continued downward and completely squashed the brain underneath. At once, the robot’s arms fell limply to its side, and it fell backwards, landing with a very heavy crash.
Jack stood there simply staring at the fallen robot, even as the Apex and Twilight both jogged up beside him, looking down at the hammer.
“Ah, such a pity I can’t keep you,” he groaned, hefting it onto his shoulder.
“Very nice work, sir. Well done,” the Apex said, smiling down at his handiwork. “As promised, I can offer compensation of some kind. Is there anything you need?”
“We’ll… talk about that later,” Jack said, looking over at Twilight, who appeared to have recovered from her bout. “For now, let’s move somewhere a fair bit more private, since I highly doubt you’d want details of this machine being revealed to just anyone.”
“Quire right, sir,” the Apex said, nodding approvingly. “If these surrounding depots have offices, we can use one of them.”
“This one does,” Jack indicated Jason’s. “I’m sure they’d let us borrow it.”
“Yes, well, in that case,” the Apex began to walk inside without waiting for him. “If you would kindly follow me, then?”
Jack did as requested, with Twilight walking beside him. For whatever reason, she didn’t look particularly happy with herself, but Jack had a niggling suspicion for why.
“I don’t blame you, you know,” he said.
“Hm?” she looked up at him.
“For freezing up like that,” he clarified. “I don’t blame you.”
“How can’t you?” she asked, sounding quite angry. “You could have died out there and I wasn’t there to help. I was just stuck in here, hiding like some coward,” she spat.
“No, no you weren’t,” Jack reassured her. “Look, from what I can gather, you’re experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder from that ordeal with Dreadwing.”
Perhaps most telling of her predicament was the way she flinched when he said the name. For a moment, he almost smiled at the similarities between one’s reaction to the name Dreadwing, and one’s reaction to the name Voldemort, but he placed a reassuring hand on the nape of her neck instead.
“Look, it’s alright,” he insisted, as they walked into the office of Jason’s metal hanger building. “You can’t control it, and you will eventually recover, but it’s not going to be immediate.”
Twilight just shook her head. Words couldn’t describe how much she hated herself at the moment. She knew it was beyond her control, but that didn’t make her feel any better. He could have been seriously hurt or worse by that robot, and she wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing!
The office looked quite like what some of the offices in Hoofston had looked like. Tiled floors, different computing equipment set up on and around a desk in the corner, recordkeeping books in a shelf behind… the only real difference was the presence of a few chairs, as opposed to poufs.
The Apex shut the door behind Twilight as she entered behind Jack, before locking the door behind him.
“Trapping us in a locked room doesn’t really send the right message,” Jack pointed out.
“Forgive me,” the Apex said, inclining his head. “This is sensitive information, and I do not wish to be disturbed.”
“If it’s so sensitive,” Jack replied, taking a seat in one of the chairs. “why do I get to hear about it?”
“Because it has notably affected you, not to mention you have aided in our endeavor in this way,” answered the Apex, sitting in the chair behind the desk. “I must admit, I am a little opposed to the presence of your pet--”
“Companion,” Jack corrected immediately.
“--companion, my mistake, as… it? He? She?”
“She,” Twilight answered.
“--as she was not present to help you defeat it.”
“She was experiencing mild symptoms of PTSD,” explained Jack, giving Twilight a sympathetic look. “Had she not been triggered by the explosion, she would have been at my side.”
“I see,” the Apex said, nodding. “Very well, then. Allow me to begin.”
He removed a disc-shaped device from his pocket and gave a button on it a click. Instantly, a blue holographic model of the robot Jack had just defeated appeared above it.
“The Fatal Circuit Project is the TSPC’s latest effort to create an automated response team in the event of uprisings and the like. There are a few models, each specialized to take down specific races. The flamethrowing models were for humans, apex, and florans. There are electric models for hylotl, avia, and others, and so forth.”
“The TSPC?” asked Twilight.
“Terra Stella Peacekeeping Corps,” answered the Apex.
“In case of uprisings and the like?” Jack asked, sounding confused. “Maybe things have changed since I lived here, but uprisings never happened back then.”
“You lived here?” Twilight asked.
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Yes, uprisings,” confirmed the Apex. “No, none have happened. However, with the USCM in their current state, they cannot attack Terra Stella directly, and may seek to incite anti-extra-terrestrial confrontations within the city. This was the proposed plan to defend against that. As we had no better solutions, it was accepted and we moved forward with it.”
“How did you lose control over it?” Jack asked.
“We suspect it was the brain we used,” admitted the Apex. “We attempted at first to build it with an intelligence similar to a Glitch, but it failed to even run. So we integrated a superior animal brain with it for an experiment. It… didn’t go so well, as you noticed.”
“So where do you go from here?” asked Jack, cocking an eyebrow. “Attempt to engineer brains for these things?”
“The plan is to select willing volunteers from within the TSPC, induce a medical coma and inject them with red stimpack, and essentially clone their brains. The procedure, I believe, was first perfected by the human race’s brain surgeons and neurosurgeons, and has been tested many times over the decades. It has proven perfectly harmless.”
“I can’t say I understand, but I’ll take your word for it,” Jack said. “You mentioned compensation?”
“Yes, I did,” the Apex nodded. “We are willing to offer you a substantial sum in pixels, or its equivalent in goods and services that are readily available.”
“Well, we currently have no need for any pixels,” Jack said. “However, we do need a starmap for Sector Gamma. Those mongrel idiots at the ISTR refused to sell me one.”
The Apex blinked, before rolling his eyes.
“Ah, yes, we think we are aware why. Does it involve another member of my species? Because he and his brother refuse to work with lesser species.”
“Speciesism, even among non-humans,” Jack groaned. “Yeah, that sounds like him.”
“More like sapienism, as he only refuses to sell to those whom he considers to be of lesser intelligence.”
“Also, do you think you could gift us a pair of robotic crafting tables? There are a couple of things I will be needing to craft in the near future, and a regular crafting table won’t really help much.”
“That sounds well within my power,” the Apex nodded. “Anything else?”
“Actually,” said Jack, his face lighting up as an idea presented itself to him, “can you get that ISTR Apex and his brother fired?”
The Apex blinked again.
“The ISTR does owe the TSPC a favor,” he mused, “I’ll see what I can do. Should I get his brother for good measure?”
“Does his brother own a jewelry and gem appraisal store in the Upper District?” asked Jack, remembering his encounter with the stubborn shopkeeper.
“That sounds like the one, yes,” the Apex confirmed.
“Yeah, get his brother fired, too.”
“Very well. We will have a starmap for you when you come by the TSPC main complex tomorrow. The robotic crafting table might take a few days, but we should have it soon at the main complex as well. Ask for me, and I can vouch. My name is Timaeus, and I am the Chief Science Officer of the TSPC at the present moment.”
“A pleasure meeting you,” Jack said, offering a hand, which Timaeus shook.
“I assure you, the pleasure was all mine.”
The Apex cheerfully hummed to himself as he walked toward the skyscraper in the heart of Terra Stella. Today just seemed like it was going to be a good day, which hopefully meant he would have to interact with any members of those stupid lesser species.
As he slid his employee keycard in the slot, a red light flashed and a little buzzer sounded.
“Access denied,” the cool female voice announced.
That’s odd, he thought. Probably a fault with those damn Glitch in Maintenance.
However, who should walk by him but an Administrator? The Apex administrator slid his keycard in and out, and the doors opened with no problem. The first Apex tried to follow, but before he could, the administrator stopped him.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I work here, sir.”
The administrator gave a satisfied smile.
“Oh, right, yes. You do work here, my apologies. For the next three hours, you will be working to clean out your office, so that we do not have to do it for you, and then you will not be working here.”
Jack and Twilight, who were watching from only a few yards away, would be immensely entertained by the meltdown that the fired Apex went through upon the realization he had been sacked.