“Those American sons of bitches”, Noah said, gesturing through whatever he was reading. The anger in his voice made Audrey wince.
Elena put her glass down and left her dinner unfinished as she read or watched something on her lenses. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would they do this?”
Audrey would have liked an answer to that question herself. Her project had barely started. Why hadn’t it been given the chance to head this war off? Godbout and his ilk must be delighted—but the attack couldn’t have been launched without Godbout knowing about it in advance. Did he already know at the Tucson meeting? It seemed likely, but if so, why let Audrey go west? Why not just declare her project canceled? The entire point of the Citizen Dividend hoax, as far as Audrey was concerned, was preventing a war.
Maybe Godbout had other plans. Would he have let the project go forward as a way to demoralize Cascadians, or to encourage Americans to support the invasion? That could be it—and if that were the case, it wouldn’t be surprising if Audrey hadn’t been told about the invasion. She didn’t have that level of clearance. That was a plausible explanation. Yet on a gut level, for reasons she would have found hard to explain short of describing the look on Godbout’s face during the Tucson meeting, Audrey thought there must be more to it.
What about the impact on the American people? Maybe the goal of making Cascadia look inept was less about lowering tensions between the two countries than about lowering tensions within America itself. Unfortunately, that seemed all too possible, that the wealthy American interests with so much government influence were creating a Cascadian scandal to undermine the arguments of economic justice agitators in the U.S., the people who had been shunted to the least affluent end of American society by the automation that had multiplied the wealth of the industrialists—industrialists like Godbout.
Yet ... even that didn’t entirely explain Godbout’s attitude. Audrey wondered if he didn’t have something else at stake, something private.
“I guess you’ll both want to go home,” Audrey said. “I’m sorry dinner got interrupted.”
“Are you crazy?” Elena said. “I’m not going anywhere! There’s a war on.”
“The war is hundreds of miles away,” Audrey said.
“You don’t know that!” Elena said. “That could just be the first front. You know how Americans like their wars. They like to bring out all everything on day one to try to frighten the natives back into the forest!”
Noah frowned at Elena. “I’d like to stay, Audrey—if you’re not completely against it,” he said.
Audrey nodded. She could insist they both leave, but what would be the point of that? If Control had anything to say to her, they’d send a message through a secure channel, but the fact that she hadn’t received anything so far suggested there were no new instructions or updates. Generally speaking, she was expected to carry on her assignment until it was complete, until she was instructed differently, or until one of the predefined abort conditions occurred. During preparation for the mission, they had specifically talked about war—in the abstract, with no reason for Audrey to expect it to actually occur—and it had not been set as one of the abort conditions.
What they hadn’t discussed was what should happen if Audrey herself decided the project should be stopped. She had wide latitude in how she conducted the mission, but she didn’t have the authority to call it off entirely.
Did she want to cut the mission short? She was fairly sure she did. It was too late, now, to prevent a war. All she was accomplishing at this point was damaging a working system in a foreign country, in a way that would benefit the United States little or not at all, except perhaps for a certain class of Americans who had ulterior motives. She’d been thinking of herself as a queen in this chess game, or at least a rook, but it appeared that she’d been demoted to pawn. Although ... a pawn that got all the way to the other side could become a queen—not that that applied here.
“Are you OK?” Noah said.
“No,” said Audrey. The wine hadn’t worn off yet. “I’m upset, and I’m angry, and I’d like to know whose brilliant idea this was.”
“It’s infuriating,” he said.
More bulletin icons were showing up in Audrey’s lenses now. Not surprisingly, the attack seemed to include more than just the warships.
“Why don’t we sit down in the living room and share feeds?” Noah said.
Elena nodded. She drained the wine in her glass and went into the living room. Audrey followed, making for the couch until she realized that would mean she’d end up sitting right next to Noah. She changed course at the last minute and took the straight-backed chair Barbara had occupied earlier that day.
Had Barbara known about the impending attack? She did have a higher clearance than Audrey, and Audrey was willing to bet Barbara was more than capable of keeping a secret.
Audrey gestured for voice and said, “Share my news feed with Noah Drell and Elena Bahe, please.” The side of the room that included the front door turned blank and opaque in her display, and a list of text, video, and immersive items appeared.
Noah tried to organize all of the incoming information, but he was slow at it and seemed out of his element. The second time he used an outdated gesture and accidentally opened the wrong item, Audrey stepped in.
“Why don’t I?” she said.
“Please,” Noah said. “There’s too much for me to make any sense of it.”
“I don’t want to see blood!” Elena said.
Audrey made the voice command gesture. “We need information on the American invasion,” she said, “but please steer us clear of anything bloody.”
“There have been no major injuries or fatalities reported yet,” said her AI. Audrey wasn’t reassured. The war had barely started.
She gestured to divide most of the display area into four quarters, plus a fifth area at the bottom for new information. Using that layout, she began to sort through bulletins and other incoming items. There were three articles that appeared almost at once about cyberattacks: one about a widespread attack on electric micro-grids, one about financial institutions, and one about the Jet Train network. Audrey directed all three to the top left quarter of the screen. There was a real-time map tracking the American flotilla and projecting where and how it would attack, and Audrey steered that into the top right quarter, along with written updates. She brought up a keyboard and typed a filter to direct information about drone attacks into the lower left quarter, and she used the lower right for political analysis and information about the response within Cascadia.
She added display settings to highlight the items dealing with the most dangerous attacks, based on automated text analysis, with a red border that could vary in intensity.
“Where did you learn how do this?” Noah said admiringly. “It’s like you’re conducting an orchestra.”
“Maybe if the French horns were trying to kill us,” Elena said. She went back to the dining table and retrieved Noah’s and Audrey’s glasses. She filled them from the bottle Noah had brought and carried them back into the living room. Audrey set hers on a side table, nearly out of reach. She had no intention of getting more muddled than she already was.
An item came up about attacks on the lens network around Seattle. Audrey typed in a command to convert it into a visual overlay on the map that was already on the screen. A hazy green net of innumerable points overlaid itself on the area, turning yellow in isolated places, then suddenly turning at least eighty percent red: only small pockets of green showed up as still working. Meanwhile, the American flotilla icons could be seen rounding the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, ten miles from Puget Sound.
Audrey set her AI to use her layout for new items as they came in and changed her focus to watching and reading. One of the cyberattack items had a sharp red border, and she brought that up in its quarter of the screen. It was a video feed with AI-generated narration in a subdued, male-range synthetic voice.
“An unprecedented number of cyberattacks on local power grids have created blackouts in six areas scattered throughout Cascadia, and hundreds to thousands of additional targets are thought to be vulnerable to similar attacks,” the narrating voice said. The video feed showed a vast array of solar panels in a desert area; then a row of slowly turning wind turbines on a ridge; then a blocky, gleaming battery-based power storage facility; then a downtown area from above, with a mosaic of darkened and powered buildings; then another solar installation; and so on.
“While no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks,” said the narration, “our best analysis at this time suggests they’re part of a coordinated U.S. offensive against Cascadia, connected to the surprise drone attacks and to the approaching flotilla of American warships. Local and household battery systems are helping prevent complete blackouts in the already-affected areas, which have now grown to twenty-three, but disruptions are already causing difficulty with transportation, communications, and other vital systems.”
A new, red-outlined item appeared in the unclassified feed area: in northwest Washington, wildfires had begun, suddenly and for no apparent reason. On the Seattle area map, flickering shapes representing the fires appeared south of the Olympic peninsula, south of Tacoma, and in two locations west of Seattle. That struck Audrey like nothing else had, not even the warships. Had America actually planned and purposely set fires? That might tie up Cascadian soldiers and bots that might otherwise have resisted the invasion, but also interfere with citizens trying to flee the war zone and contribute to a massive climate impact. It would have been easy enough to do, perhaps using satellite-based lasers or insect-sized, fire-starting drones ... but if it was drones, the U.S. would have had to plan at least weeks and probably months beforehand so that the slow-moving drones had time to crawl dozens or hundreds of miles to their destinations. Small flying drones might do the job as easily, but they would have been far more likely to have been intercepted by Cascadian defenses.
“What are they doing?” Elena said in a strained voice. “What is happening?”
Audrey glanced at Noah, and his face was stormy, his jaw tight.
Audrey was no expert on the laws of war, but if America really had started those fires, she was sure they had at least violated some of the key climate treaties that had been crucial to turning the tide against climate change. For decades now, it had been clear that humanity was on the right path, but if nations were going to throw those agreements aside in wartime ...
Audrey’s hand was shaking, and she had to put her wine glass back down. She hadn’t even noticed she’d picked it up, but it was empty now, and she felt dizzy from the sudden and unaccustomed wash of alcohol through her body. That had been her third glass.
Her emotional landscape was a riot of conflict: anger, sadness, surprise, confusion, and even a kind of giddiness she didn’t understand. Stronger than any of these feelings, now, was an overwhelming revulsion: revulsion for what her country was doing, revulsion for the political mechanisms that had driven this offensive in a way that she was certain few Americans wanted, and revulsion for her own part in American operations against Cascadia. What was she doing in Cascadia? Why had they let her come here? What good could she possibly make out of the sabotage she had helped perpetrate?
They watched the catastrophe of war unfold without speaking for some time, each choosing videos or text articles to come forward as needed. A new writing AI had recently been released, and Audrey was surprised by the large number of AI-generated pieces that read like stories. In the past, AI reporting had been mostly a neatly-arranged litany of facts.
It was harder to watch events unfold this way. Every minute, new articles were being generated that took the war down to a human level. There was a story about a family losing the farm they’d worked for generations, and another about the wildfires reaching a hospital before it could be fully evacuated, while humans rushed around trying to do the work of bots that lifelessly waited for the lens network to reconnect.
The hospital was west of Tacoma, and when they closed that article, Noah waved away the display temporarily so that he was no longer seeing it. Glad for the excuse, Audrey did the same, and Elena followed suit.
“My son’s boyfriend is in Tacoma,” Noah said in a raw voice. “He’s visiting family there.”
“Where’s your son? Where’s the rest of your family?” Elena said.
“Down South,” Noah said. “Bakersfield. He has an apartment in the same cluster as my father and my sister’s family.”
“My brother lives in Las Vegas,” Elena said. Audrey knew about the brother: his daughters were Elena’s legendary nieces. “I hope he goes east to stay away from the fighting. My nieces are at Wellesley and Princeton, so I think they’ll be safe. They’re brilliant girls. I’m sure they can fend for themselves if necessary ... Audrey has just one great-aunt in Spokane, and no other living family—”
“Uh,” said Audrey, and her uncharacteristic hesitation caught the others’ attention. “Actually, Elena ... I found my mother and brother ...”
“Brother? You said you had a sister! You should get your story straight.”
Audrey’s face felt hot, and she guessed she shouldn’t be talking about her family, but she kept on. “He’s trans, I found out. That’s one of the reasons I had trouble finding them.”
“What do you mean, you found them?” Noah said.
“It’s a long story. My mother and my, uh, brother left when I was nine. They changed their names, and I didn’t know Adam was a boy. A man, now, I mean. I’d been trying to find out what happened to them, and ... something came through today.”
“Where are they?” said Noah.
“I don’t know. I didn’t check yet. It was a lot to take in. I thought I could use a little time to think before I got in touch, and now this ...” She gestured toward where the display had been projected, and she felt a sharp chill. “So I guess I don’t know for sure that they aren’t in the war zone ...” She thought about the map: the fires had been spreading, and the lens network in much of Washington was still down, meaning most people had no access to news or resources.
“Do you want to check now?” Noah said.
Audrey stared back at him. He and Elena were watching her, waiting. Finally, she nodded.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t changed her virtual keyboard layout since Noah and Elena arrived, so she cycled to a new one just out of habit. She did a linked search for Lauren and Adam in the Jackson Trust System, where in Cascadia, at least, you could find almost anyone in order to add them to your trust networks. All she had to do was search for a Lauren Fisher born in 1990 who had a 55-year-old son named Adam.
She came up immediately: Lauren Fisher, 1990-2068. Dead of a heart attack in the spring.
Noah must have seen something in her expression, because he moved toward her, reaching out, as Elena said, “What’s the matter? Are they OK?”
Audrey waved Noah off, more sharply than she’d meant to, and he froze in place. She switched to Adam’s record. He was a Major in the Cascadian Marines. He lived in Eugene, and he had a wife and three children, ages 17, 20, and 22. The eldest was a girl named Audrey.
Audrey wasn’t able to speak at first. She tried to clear her throat, but it felt tight and obstructed. “My mother died this year,” she said hoarsely. “My brother is in the military, so I don’t know if I can reach him. I’m going to try now.”
Audrey went to her bedroom and closed the door. She wasn’t ready to talk to Adam. A few hours ago, she didn’t even know she had a brother. At the same time, with the war beginning, who knew what would happen to him—or to Audrey herself—in the coming days? She tapped an icon to request a call. It was only seconds before he picked up, and the side of the room Audrey was facing merged with a small, blandly-lit room with steel furniture. Ten or twelve spots in the room, including something on the wall and several items on a table, were redacted by security software, just black squares.
Audrey recognized him. He certainly looked different as a 55-year-old man than he had as a 7-year-old, when he’d been thought of as a girl, but there were the wide brown eyes with the quizzical eyebrows, the prominent ridge of the nose, even much the same whorled brown hair he’d had all those years ago, though most of it was gray now. He’d always insisted it be cut short, even then.
He was dressed in a dark blue, short-sleeved shirt over a white T-shirt, and he seemed to be alone in the room.
“Audrey?” he said, bewildered.
Audrey cleared her throat again. “How are you? Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m ... well, I’m really happy to hear from you. Really happy. Are you OK? Where are you? Are you with Dad?”
“Dad died,” Audrey said. She grimaced when she realized how artlessly she’d said it, especially seeing his expression: it seemed like he might be about to cry. “That was years ago.” That didn’t seem to be enough, so she added, “he looked for you for a long time.”
Adam looked angry now, though still possibly on the verge of tears. “I bet he did,” he said. “Listen, about Mom—”
“I know,” Audrey said. “I mean, I just found out.” She laughed, a choked and unhappy noise. “Just before I called you.”
“Are you OK, sis?” he said. “I ...”
“No, I’m fine,” she said. “I’m doing fine. I’m here in Cascadia now, working at the Reemployment Bureau. Everything’s fine. Not, I mean—”
“Yeah,” he said grimly. He took a deep breath, composing himself. “Audrey, I’m so sorry—”
“No,” Audrey said, “I know that mom—”
“No, I’m sorry ...” he said, but he couldn’t seem to find more words to go with it. Then his brow creased, and he said, “You work at the Reemployment Bureau? Is that why we’re getting all this extra CitDiv money?”
“What?” said Audrey.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry, forget I said that. I guess I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Adam—” Audrey said, but infuriatingly, an urgent bulletin icon appeared in the corner of her vision. What now? was her gut response. She saw Adam’s glance flit to one side, then saw him gesture to open something, and his expression hardened. Audrey looked at her own icon and opened it. U.S. President Marco Jimenez will address Americans in three minutes, it said. The icon turned into a little counter.
“I’d better watch that,” Adam said. “I may not be able to talk for a while—they’ll have orders for me. But I’ll call you as soon as I can, OK? I have so much to tell you. And I was worried that you might not—you know, me not being like you remembered—”
Audrey shook her head. “No, call me as soon as you can. I understand. Stay safe.”
“Yeah, stay safe,” Adam said. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he shook his head and broke the connection. Audrey found herself staring at her dresser.
Is that why we’re getting all this extra CitDiv money? In a way, Audrey was sure, it was because of her. Obviously she hadn’t done anything on her own to make that happen, but the CitDiv fraud had only affected about twelve hundred people so far. The chances of Adam being part of the program just through dumb luck were next to zero. Now, too, Audrey remembered the red flag she had seen in her office just before Noah had asked her to lunch and derailed her train of thought: Marley Jun. That was someone she had specifically told them not to include in the program, because their profile indicated they’d most likely be uncomfortable taking unexplained, free money. Then there were the names that had been sent directly to Bennet to “help” with the project. Someone—either Godbout or someone who reported to him—was setting her up. Probably the intention was to expose her through honest people like Marley Jun, with the damning evidence that own brother was one of the payees. To add insult to injury, Godbout’s people had clearly found Adam before Audrey had, and they’d kept him hidden from her. She was in deep trouble—as bad as or worse than that scapegoat at the ARDR, Gene.
Audrey went back to the living room. To Noah and Elena’s questioning glances, she said “It was fine. He’s fine, but he had to go because of the American president’s address.
“Let’s bring it up,” Elena said. “I want to hear what that rat has to say for himself.”
Audrey nodded and motioned back up the shared screen, then temporarily tucked away the quartered display of mayhem and destruction and expanded the bulletin icon about Jimenez. There in front of them was an ivory-colored hallway, presumably in the White House, with tall marble pillars to the right, arched niches with statuary to the left, and a red carpet with gold detail running down the center under two crystal chandeliers, ending in a wooden door. In the extreme foreground was a podium with the U.S. presidential seal, flanked on the left with an American flag and on the right with a flag bearing the presidential seal, an eagle and a circle of stars on a navy background.
Two men were beside the pillars. One wore a general’s uniform and stood stiffly, while the other wore a brown business suit and had his arms crossed over his chest: Tyler Godbout.
“Godbout,” Audrey whispered harshly, not meaning to say anything aloud. She didn’t look to see if Noah or Elena had noticed, but she felt like kicking herself. The anger in her voice would have been hard to miss.
In the White House broadcast, a tall man appeared through a doorway on the left: President Jimenez. Jimenez had a square head with cropped gray hair and a mustache like a shoe brush. His nose looked like it had long ago been broken in a prize fight, and his expression was severe. He walked forward, and Godbout and the general stepped in to stand behind him.
When Jimenez reached the podium, his face softened, and he looked at the same time troubled and resolute.
“My fellow Americans,” he said. He had a rich voice that matched the depth of his expression. “In the wake of the devastating cyberattacks of this past week, our cyber warfare experts have been working tirelessly to trace the source of this aggression and to protect us from further cowardly and unwarranted assaults.”
It took Audrey a moment to understand what he meant by devastating cyberattacks. There had been two hacking incidents recently that had caused massive delay and confusion, but little direct damage, in Omaha and Dallas. The reports Audrey had heard had concluded that both attacks originated inside the United States, but U.S. media had attributed them to the Louvre, even though the group had not claimed responsibility, and even though as far as Audrey knew, they had only ever made attacks for the purpose of what they considered social justice.
“It pains me to say,” Jimenez continued, “that these attacks have been traced to a hacker group that is working on behalf of and with the full, clandestine support of the government of Cascadia. These Cascadian hackers have attempted more destructive actions in the past days, the details of which I cannot share with you yet, that fortunately our cyber defenses and national security AIs have been able to anticipate and successfully defend against—but Cascadia is increasing its level of the aggression at the same time that it denies all knowledge and responsibility. This must stop. We cannot allow acts of war to be perpetrated against America and its people, especially by a nation that attempts to undermine us while pretending to be our friend. We cannot allow our freedoms and our great national wealth and resources to be looted by a country that seeks to exploit us in order to shore up its own disastrous economic and social policies. Therefore, in accordance with the War Powers Resolution of 1973, I have authorized American forces to move against this hostile government in order to force an end to these cowardly actions, to respond in kind to the damage that has been inflicted on us, and to reunify us with the territories that twenty-six years ago unlawfully declared themselves a sovereign nation.
“This day has been many years coming, and if Cascadia had not turned on us, we whose people are its friends and neighbors and family, it may have been able to survive a few years longer in its dysfunction and isolation. Yet inevitably, Cascadia must answer for both the disloyalty of its secession and for these new crimes against the American people. The states of the American Pacific coast must be brought back into the U.S. to stop the perfidy and destruction those in power there are attempting to wreak.
“As I speak, American naval vessels are approaching Seattle, whose people are already preparing for their surrender to and reunification with the United States. We have deployed all our might on the sea, on the land, in the skies, and through the networks, and Cascadia is only now realizing the extent of the power it tried to defy. To the Cascadian people I say: hold out a little longer. You will soon be safely back under our protection. To the Cascadian government and its villainous allies I say: heed our warnings and give back the powers you have seized from our citizens. And to the people of these great United States I say, God be with us and keep us until this action is quickly resolved and we can turn our hands to reconstructing the greatness and dignity of an America that once again reaches from sea to shining sea. Thank you.”
The broadcast from the White House ended, replaced by American newscasters, some real and some simulated, who launched immediately into talking about the war as though Cascadia had already been crushed. Audrey, furious, cut the stream.
“That pompous shit!” Elena said. “Can you believe that? Who does he think is going to believe that fairy tale?”
Noah just shook his head. He looked pensive and troubled.
Elena must have seen a message pop up in her private display, because she reached out and tapped something. “Oh, this is from Jeremy,” she said. “He’s my husband, Noah. He’s already headed home. They shut down the convention as soon as the news about the American warships came through. He’s upset—I think I should go. Audrey, honey, are you going to be OK? I mean, on top of all this, your family ... ?”
Audrey nodded and tried to smile. Elena looked sad.
“Just call me if you need me, OK?” she said. “I’m sorry I have to go. It’s just, Jeremy’s so shaken up ...”
“No, it’s fine,” Audrey said. “We’ll talk later. Noah, it was good to see you, but I’d like to be alone for a while now.”
“Of course,” Noah said. “I’ll just use your bathroom before I leave?”
“Oh,” Audrey said. She pointed toward the hallway. “It’s the first door on your right.”
Elena gave Audrey a sudden hug, squeezed her hand, and slipped out the door. Audrey collected the wine glasses—Noah’s was still full—and brought them back to the kitchen for cleaning. She placed them in the busing area, and then she brought over the plates, silverware, and empty Syrah bottle and set those in the busing area as well. The kitchen reached in with multiple robotic arms to take everything inside and sort it into compost, trash, recycling and dishes to be cleaned, and Audrey set the puck-like sanitizer on the table to wipe up and dispose of crumbs. In the hallway next to her bedroom, she heard the door open, and she went back into the living room to say goodbye to Noah. He entered at the same time, but instead of going to the door, he sat down in the armchair.
“I see you know who Tyler Godbout is,” he said. “And here I thought I was the only one who followed American politics.”
“Oh,” said Audrey. Why wasn’t Noah leaving? She thought she’d been clear that it was time to go. She hoped he wasn’t picturing things turning romantic. “I met him at work once,” she said. “I didn’t like him.”
“No, I can see that,” Noah said. “How many keyboard layouts do you have memorized?”
“Sorry?”
“I use a government-issue application that reads typing gestures. It’s helpful in my work sometimes. People type all kinds of things when they think you can’t see.”
“I can imagine.”
“But yours I couldn’t read even if I’d tried to,” Noah said. “You don’t use a standard keyboard layout, but you were touch typing.”
“That’s true,” Audrey said. “I try to be careful about those things.”
“Yes, you do. You disabled your built-in door monitor, I saw. And you don’t use room mics.”
“Can we talk about security another time?” Audrey said. “I really need some space to think about everything that’s happening. The war, my family ...”
He didn’t get up. “Actually, I noticed you use more than one non-standard keyboard layout—fluently,” Noah said. “That’s hard to learn.”
“Yes, it was.” Audrey felt her heart beating fast again, and it wasn’t from romance. “I already said I’m careful about security.”
“Audrey,” Noah said, leaning forward. “I’m sorry, but I can see there’s something going on. You just arrived from the U.S. a few weeks ago, which turned out to be right before the Americans started a war. You have better security hygiene than anyone I’ve ever met. You seem to be personally familiar with the meanest snake in the United States government—and don’t try to tell me the way you said his name was just from having met him once at some Reemployment Bureau meeting! I promise you, I’m in your corner, even if I’m not on your side. I can’t help but see that there’s something going on here, and it would mean a lot if you’d tell me what it is instead of forcing me to guess.”
Audrey was afraid to move, afraid even to blink. She desperately needed to be alone so that she could figure out what Godbout’s exact plan for her was and stop it before it was too late—assuming it wasn’t too late already. Almost as urgently, she needed to make firm plans about whether or not to shut down the project she’d worked so hard on. Right now she was leaning toward shutting it down, with or without the permission of her superiors. Should she go to the Cascadian government? Flee back to the United States? Try to escape to somewhere else in the world through Mexico, where she was neither the target of a powerful political figure nor a saboteuse?
“Audrey?” Noah said. “Do you need help?”
The question surprised her. Did she need help? She was used to always relying on herself—when she was growing up and her dad left her to run the household, when she made her way through school, when she fought her way up through a long career, and especially during this operation in Cascadia.
She looked up at Noah again, meeting his gaze directly. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “Maybe so.”