Reality Bytes
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter Four – Coming Apart At The Seams
Every light and appliance in the house was off. Drew and Tuck stared in disbelief at the pitch-black TV screen. Brad and Jenny had been mere seconds away from escaping the virtual reality world and returning to their own physical bodies. But now …
Tears started to roll down Tuck's cheeks. "Are they … gone?"
Drew snapped out of his state of shock and tried to focus his attention inward. "I run on my own internal power, Tuck, so I they're not gone. But the game doesn't … man, things are really messed up in there."
There was a quick flicker of light in the room, then the power came back on to stay. "Look, the game is restarting!" Tuck said hopefully. "Everything's going to be all right! Isn't it?"
"I don't know," he said, frustrated. "Arghh, I can't do anything from the outside! I've gotta try something – don't even know if this is going to work. Tuck, try not to get too freaked out by this."
Drew's head flowed into a silver liquid, and collapsed into his neck. His torso and legs went liquid too, and his android form started to melt away. With a soft schhlloorrrrp, Drew flowed into a simple cone-shape next to the TV, still connected to the VR helmet, Jenny's pigtails, and the GameStation.
Tuck stared silently for a few seconds, then he managed to get his mouth working again. "No, why on earth would I get freaked out by that?"
The universe exploded into a billion different shapes and colors. Brad was sucked down into an dark abyss, and floated lazily through infinite emptiness. Then he felt himself yanked in one direction, as if he'd been hooked on a fishing line. He hurtled towards a shining point of light. Blizzards of green flecks – trillions of trillions of them – screamed past him like miniature comets, all rushing towards the light. It grew, to the size of planet, shimmering with a faint silver color. Brad could do nothing to slow himself down, and he closed his eyes just before he slammed into the sphere's shining surface …
His body shivered, then he felt solid ground underneath his back. Excited voices were talking and shouting all around him. Brad sat up, blinking his eyes, and saw another copy of "Drew" kneeling beside him, wearing a white doctor's coat. Ozzie – the operating system – was standing next to the doctor, talking to four more copies of Drew, who looked like carpenters.
"All right, ya got one of them back," Ozzie shouted at the doctor. "Get to work on the lady!"
Brad tried to make sense of what was going on. The world seemed to have gone insane. Hills and fields rolled and heaved like ocean waves. Chunks of landscape evaporated into colored polygons. Trees sprouted from the ground and grew to full height in mere seconds. The sky crackled with a reddish-orange glow. The laws of physics and perspective seemed to have been turned off at the moment, and he felt like he was sitting in some weird modern painting.
Brad got to his feet, and patted himself to make sure he was actually there. He was a bit surprised to hear the clank of metal, then realized that he was still wearing the Exo-Suit 500-D from the previous game world. And other than being weirded out, he felt pretty good. "Wow, that beats a roller coaster any day of the week, huh, Jen?"
There was no answer. He'd just assumed that she was there too … but he didn't see her. He approached Ozzie, who was still busy with the other "Drews". "Hey, where's Jenny?" he interrupted.
"She's right over there, mostly." Ozzie looked stressed. "Now if yas don't mind, we're trying to rebuild the universe here!"
On the ground, a few yards away, the doctor was hunched over a pale, motionless figure. Brad ran over with a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. The figure was almost too ghostly to identify, but a flicker of light highlighted its outline. There was no mistaking it – it was Jenny.
"Oh, no!" Brad shouted. "What's going on?!? What's wrong with her!?"
The doctor was working feverishly, looking very concerned. "Please step back, sir. Her core patterns seem to be fine, but I'm having trouble re-integrating her … it looks like her interface was corrupted by the power spike."
Whatever that means. "You've got to save her! Do something! Let me help!"
"I'm doing everything possible to …" The doctor froze, and snapped his fingers. "Are you serious about helping her? You're fully re-integrated and stable now. I can do a health transplant from your body to hers. You will lose half of your health … and she might experience some unusual side effects."
Brad nodded enthusiastically. "Just do whatever it takes, Doc!"
With a flash, a giant syringe manifested in the doctor's hand. He surprised Brad by plunging it into his chest, right through the armor. Oddly, it didn't hurt – it didn't even feel like a needle. The doctor pulled it back out, and the syringe was filled with a glowing blue liquid. He lowered it to Jenny's ghostly figure, and injected it into her body. It spread along her torso to her head, arms, and legs, and she gradually solidified, until she was all the way back.
Jenny sat up, propping herself up with her arms. "Wow," she moaned, "I hope I never have to do anything like that again – hey, this doesn't look like the living room." She looked around at the bizarre condition of the world around her, and rolled her eyes. Brad was standing over her, still in his robotic exo-suit. "Oh, great. We're still in the game, aren't we, Brad?"
Brad stared back at her, dumbstruck. "J – Juh –"
Jenny got to her feet, and brushed off her arms. She was feeling a little odd. "What just happened? We were on our way out, and …"
"And there was a wicked huge power outage, is what happened," answered Ozzie, walking over to join them. "You two are lucky I'm such a perfessional. The whole place nearly got wiped out. I gots Construction working on repairs but, eh, you can see for yourselves, things ain't lookin' so good." Ozzie lifted a walkie-talkie to his mouth. "I don't care what he says, tell that lazy subroutine if the terrain ain't done in the next twenty nanoseconds, I'm gonna delete his sorry butt!"
Millions of polygons dropped out of space above, and locked together as if completing a giant jigsaw puzzle. The landscape was still rolling and heaving, but started taking on the appearance of a forest of evergreens. Tree-covered hills stretched towards the horizon, where a single, snow-capped mountain was rising into a screeching green sky.
Ozzie shook his head. "The only world we could salvage without a doing a full reboot was 'Mountain Assault' – the final game world. And I'm not sure how long we're gonna be able to hold it together. It's not real stable." Then he scratched his head, studying Jenny. "You do somethin' to your hair?"
Brad was still staring at Jenny, stone-faced. "J – Juh – Jen – "
Jenny rolled her eyes – now neither of them was making sense. "Look, can you make another one of those exit portal thingies?" she asked Ozzie.
Ozzie clutched his hat in his hands. "It's gonna be even tougher to hook up dis time around. The exit port has gotta go at the end of dis world – on the top of dat mountain. I'm sorry. Now I gotta go – things are still screwy in the central simulation algorithm."
With that, Ozzie, the carpenters, the workmen, and the doctor all faded away into green photons. Brad and Jenny were suddenly alone in a deceptively peaceful meadow.
"Juh – Jenny," Brad finally said. "Do this." He wiggled his fingers in front of his face.
Jenny didn't understand. She raised her hand to her face and wiggled her slim, pink fingers back and forth like Brad did – hey … what's the deal with this? – She tried to deploy a mirror to look at herself, but it wasn't working. Jenny looked at her elbow to see why it was malfunctioning, and saw that it was a pinkish color, too. An impossible color. The color of human skin.
Brad could barely believe what he was seeing. Jenny looked like a tall, slim – and attractive – teenage girl, with real blue hair done up in two pigtails. She was wearing an icy blue halter top, a short blue skirt, and tall blue boots that came up to her knees – a close approximation of her robotic coloring. But everything else was skin, not metal. The doctor had restored Jenny as a human player.
Stunned, she reached up and ran her fingers through her hair. "This is so – totally – bizarre."
"Jenny, I … I mean … Jenny, you look incredible. I wish you could see yourself."
"Wow, this is pretty cool," she smiled. "The game put some kind of wrapper on me, like my mom's exo-skin. And it's a really good fit." She ran her hand over her arm, and felt her cheek. "It feels real. It feels … warm?" Her eyes grew wide in surprise, and she lost her breath momentarily. Wait a second … lost my breath? I'm breathing?
She slid her hand down over her chest. "B-Brad," she said with a shaking voice, "I … I have a heartbeat. I'm really human."
Brad slowly raised his hand, and gently poked Jenny's arm. It felt like a human skin and human tissue. "That's some side effect," he said. "I guess you really can be anything in virtual reality."
Jenny patted her hips and legs, in a wonderful state of shock. Sure, the rational part of her electronic mind knew that it was all just a simulation. But like everything else in the virtual world, it felt real – it felt convincing. "This is amazing – I can feel weird sensations in my arms and my legs that I've never felt before!"
"Umm, I hate to rain on your parade, Jen," said Brad, "but I feel something weird too."
The ground started to rumble beneath their feet.
From over a rise, a few hundred yards away, they saw a dozen dark, menacing machines silhouetted against the sky. They had huge, armored cockpits, and stood thirty feet in the air, balanced on two monstrous mechanical legs. Appendages stuck out from either side of the chassis, covered with guns, cannons, rocket pods, and flamethrowers.
"Oh, boy," gulped Brad. "On the very last level of this game, you fight with 'mechs'. Big, giant war robots. And the one that we should be riding in … is on the world before this one. You get it as a reward for finishing that level."
"Well, the bigger they are, the harder they fall." Jenny stuck out her arm, ready to deploy her phased electron cannon from her elbow … "Uh-oh."
Brad raised an eyebrow. "Oh, no. Let me guess."
Jenny smiled nervously. "It looks like the game made me very human – right down to not having laser guns in my arms."
"Quick," said Brad, "try to lift me over your head."
Jenny grabbed the exo-suit by the chest plate and … nothing. She strained and grunted, but Brad didn't budge an inch.
"Okay, I propose a bold plan of action." Brad deployed two large rocket engines from the back of his exo-suit. "I propose we run away really, really, really fast."
The enemy mechs broke formation and started to run across the field, straight towards them. Brad and Jenny struggled to keep their balance as the ground shook from the lumbering war machines. Four mechs fired a volley of missiles towards them in a flash of flame and smoke.
Jenny wrapped her arms around Brad's neck. "Running away sounds really good!" Brad held onto her with one arm, and ignited the suit's rockets. They shot into the sky with blistering speed, just as the enemy missiles slammed into the meadow behind them. They outran the billowing cloud of flames from the explosion, and leveled off to fly straight for the mountain.
As she clung to the front of the exo-suit, she looked backwards over Brad's shoulder and cringed. The missiles had blown a huge crack in the ground. The crack grew, and suddenly a section of the earth the size of a football field gave way. With a shrieking, hissing sound, it fell down into an infinitely inky blackness. The virtual world had a huge piece ripped out of it now.
"Ozzie wasn't kidding when he said this world wasn't stable," she shouted – then … "Umm, did you know those mech-robots behind us can fly?"
"Yeah," he groaned, "so can those mech robots in front of us. Hang on."
Two dozen mammoth war machines were converging on Brad and Jenny, a dozen from the front, a dozen from behind. It would've been a challenge to take them on even if Jenny still had her robot super-powers. Brad's exo-suit wouldn't be able to do it alone by using brute force. The only important thing was getting to the mountaintop somehow …
"The river!" said Brad. "It runs down from the mountain. We can dive down and fly right up the river, nice and low!"
"That sounds like it might work," added Jenny. She tightened her grip on the armor's chest plate – flying as a passenger was tougher than it looked. "They're gaining on us!"
Brad wrapped both arms around Jenny's back, and rolled over into a dive towards the forest below. He dodged a few branches and tree trunks, then turned to fly upstream, just a few feet above the water's surface. Hopefully, they were now hidden from the scanning eyes of the enemy mechs.
Hanging upside-down below Brad, and with her pigtails flapping in her face, Jenny couldn't do anything but hang on tight. Zooming along just above the rolling, frothing river, cold mountain water was splashing on her back – against bare skin. "Yikes!" she squealed into Brad's ear.
He rolled back and forth, then regained control, laughing. "So, how does it feel to be rescued by a super robot? Wow, it sure would be nice to have a pair of rocket engines attached to your head right now, wouldn't it?"
"I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?" she groaned.
More splashes of icy water jumped up and hit them – large splashes of water. The river churned with fountains of white foam. They were being fired upon.
"Uh-oh … my radar display shows three enemy right behind us," Brad said glumly. "And we're not even halfway there ..."
A long-range shot from one of the pursuing mechs caught Brad's left rocket motor. The impact spun them around in the air, and the motor started to sputter and die. Brad flipped over so Jenny would be protected from the impending impact. They hit the water, skipped once, and plunged beneath the surface.
Jenny twisted in every direction, and lost track of which way was up. It was a completely new sensation for her – and not a pleasant one. Once the shock faded away, she realized just how cold the water was. And there was a horrible, burning feeling gnawing at her chest. Oh, right. The oxygen thing.
She felt something grab her arm, and was relieved to see Brad's face. Thanks to a propeller in the exo-suit, he was maneuvering with ease underwater. Jenny pointed to her chest, frantically. Brad shook his head, gesturing towards the mechs overhead. He swam them both back downstream, doubling back to confuse the enemy robots, and popped back to the surface behind a large rock.
The sound of the rushing river drowned out Jenny's gasps, as she filled her lungs back up. Brad propped her head clear of the water. "Jen? You okay?" She coughed, and nodded. "I never realized that breathing was so inconvenient," she panted.
Brad looked at some numbers hovering on his visor and frowned. "More bad news. This exo-suit isn't going to last much longer unless I can find some energy packs. And I don't think the rockets work anymore."
"We'll have to … go on foot then," heaved Jenny. They snuck up the riverbank, and climbed onto dry land. Brad tried to walk as quietly as possible towards the forest, despite the whining and clanking of his armor's hydraulics. Jenny followed, trying to wring out her limp, sopping-wet pigtails.
Just as they got to the first line of trees, they were startled by a horrific shredding sound that seemed to resonate from the earth and the sky itself.
Back at the meadow, the hole in reality had continued to grow. More chunks of the earth had broken off and fallen away. Now a huge swath of sky simply ripped away, as if it were a poster on a giant wall. Instead of crystal blue, a huge piece of the sky was now inky black, with a hint of green circuit patterns.
"Normally," shuddered Brad, "I would say that was the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life."
"The whole world is falling apart - literally." Jenny nibbled at her fingernails. "I have to admit, that's freaking me out a little, too. Let's get out of here!"
They started running through the forest, in the direction of the mountain. It seemed to be miles away … but it was their only hope.
A loud pair of shrieks zoomed by overhead. Brad looked up to see two mechs roar through the sky, in a searching pattern. There's no way they saw us, he thought. But his spirits sunk when the huge robots slowed down, turned back in their direction, and dropped down to hover just above the trees.
"We can't outrun them," he groaned. "I've got an idea. Help me get out of this suit, Jen." Brad twisted a release catch, and Jenny helped him wriggle out of the armor. Brad wedged the exo-suit against the thick trunk of a giant pine tree, over a hundred feet high. He picked a small remote control off of the chest.
"Now we get their attention," said Brad.
"What?!?" She was shocked at first, then … "Oh, I understand. Like I said, 'the bigger they are'!"
Brad and Jenny started jumping up and down, waving their arms. The two war robots couldn't miss them. They landed on the forest floor with a resounding thud, and started slowly lumbering towards them, making their way through the trees. The first mech opened fire with one of its small lasers. They dove behind a fallen log for protection.
Brad peeked over the log, and saw that the first mech was just about next to the giant pine tree –
He mashed the button on the remote control, and the exo-suit self-destructed. The explosion rocked the huge pine tree, shattering its massive trunk. It slowly started to lean, and then tipped over and rushed towards the ground. The tree came down on top of the war robot, crushing it like a soda can.
Brad and Jenny were thrilled – but they got more than they bargained for. The crushed mech's fuel and ammunition exploded in a huge fireball, blasting out a concussion wave that knocked over several nearby trees. Instead of carving out a crater, the explosion ripped a new hole in reality itself. The flaming mech, and its intact partner, slid through the hole in the world, and tumbled down into eternal nothingness below.
They stared with satisfaction for a few moments, then they sat down on a log and wiped off the forest debris. "And so we say goodbye to the Brad-inator – a moment of silence, please. It sure was fun while it lasted." He sighed, and turned serious. "Jen, this is farther than I've ever gotten on this world before. We're out of weapons, and I'm out of ideas."
A hissing growl erupted from the hole in the forest floor. The rim of the hole started to send cracks shooting outward, and more chunks of the world started to tumble down the abyss. It was as if the entire world were made of thin ice. The hole, only a hundred yards away, started to grow.
They jumped off the log and into a sprint. Even without the exo-suit, Brad made good speed through the forest. And Jenny was running almost as fast as she could as a robot. The hissing sound of the reality hole faded into the background. But a more ominous sound rumbled from the sky in front of them.
Brad stopped in his tracks, and stared at the sky with slumped shoulders. Three more mechs dropped towards the forest, riding jets of flame from their huge rocket motors. The game-controlled war robots must have "talked" to each other when they first sighted the "players". Soon even more mechs would be right on top of them. There was no place to hide, no way to outrun them, no way to outfight them.
The mechs lumbered towards Brad and Jenny, and armed their giant proton cannons. He suddenly realized that he wasn't about to lose a simple video game. He might be about to lose his thinking mind.
They heard the whistling sound of missiles roaring through the air. "Well, this ought to be quick," cringed Brad.
But the missiles came from the wrong direction … and they weren't heading towards them at all. Four missiles slammed into the cockpits of each of the three lumbering war robots, rocking them backwards with colossal explosions. They dropped onto their backs, and columns of smoke poured out of their chests. Brad and Jenny couldn't believe their good luck. Where in the world did those missiles come from?
With a flaming roar, another mech dropped down into the forest, landing a mere fifty feet away from Brad and Jenny. It didn't look like the game-controlled robots – it was highly customized, with extra weapons pylons, and bigger rocket engines. And it was painted a flamboyant crimson red, with spectacular orange flames painted on the sides of the cockpit. Parts of the legs glistened with sparkling chrome.
"Wow! All right!" beamed Jenny. "That must be Drew! He found a way to create another player and put it in the game to help us!"
"I don't think so – I've never seen anything like that in the game before," gasped Brad. "What a sweet ride! Check out the paint job on the side. Hmmm." There was a name painted just underneath the cockpit …
Brad slapped his head in disbelief. "Mech Commander … Johnny Zoom?!?"
With a hiss of compressed air, the crimson mech's canopy opened, and pivoted up to reveal the cockpit and the pilot inside. It was a short little fellow with jet black hair. He waved, and laughed at Brad and Jenny. "I figured that my doofus brother was going to need some help."
Brad's jaw dropped. "I don't believe it! Tuck! How did you … Where did you … What did you .. ?"
Jenny ran up to the mech's open cockpit. "Tuck, are we ever glad to see you – but you shouldn't have come in here! Now you're in danger too! Wait a minute … just how did you get in the game?"
When Jenny looked closer, she realized that the pilot of the mech didn't quite look like Tuck – he was a little older, and a little more muscular. "Don't worry, Jenny. I'm not inside the game – I just plugged another controller into the back of the GameStation! I customized my player – I think it's a stunning likeness. And I dug around in the other Christmas presents, and found a microphone headset. That's how come I can talk to you on the TV. Pretty cool, huh?"
A series of lights and buzzers started to beep in the crimson mech's cockpit. "Hold on – sensors show five enemy bogies inbound from the east!" "Tuck" sat back, and grabbed the controls with a cocky grin. "Things look grim, but the enemy pilots are no match for Commander Johnny Zoom! With battle-sharpened reflexes, Commander Zoom unleashes a withering barrage of firepower!"
Weapons pods extended from the crimson mech, and a deafening volley of missiles screamed into the sky. Tuck's attack went on for a full sixty seconds, filling the forest with a thick cloud of missile exhaust.
Brad wiped his eyes, coughed, and motioned for Jenny to climb into the mech cockpit with Tuck. They groped their way in through the smoke, climbed up one of the legs, and finally dropped inside the cockpit, exhausted. As soon as they were inside, Tuck closed the cockpit, and prepared his war machine for takeoff.
Jenny wiped the smoke out of her eyes. "Tuck, we've got to get out of here! The whole game world is disintegrating! There's a big hole in the ground back there that's getting bigger every second!"
"I'm way ahead of you, Jenny." Tuck tapped a few buttons, punched the throttle, and nudged the control stick forward. The massive crimson mech lunged into the air, and climbed above the tops of the evergreen trees. "Well … seeing as how I am the only person in this house who has actually completed the whole game, I figured you two could use a little help. Could you use some help, big brother? Why, if you asked nicely … nicely … I'd be happy to help."
Brad's teeth were grinding together. "Tuck … grrr … would you please fly us to the mountaintop base?"
How is Tuck playing so well? All five enemy mechs were destroyed – Tuck had attacked them with sixty-two missiles. Sixty-two!!! He looked at the weapons readout in front of Tuck. The status indicator read "Lasers – infinite. Missiles – infinite. Shield – infinite."
Suddenly, Brad got furious. "Why, you … you're using cheat codes!!! That's why I haven't seen this mech before – it's a cheat code too! You rotten little cheater! You only finished the game because you had infinite weapons! And invulnerability!"
"Cheat codes?" smiled Tuck. "Such an ugly word, 'cheat'. I prefer the term … secret codes."
"I knew you were up to something funny! Why, you little …"
Tuck smirked. "Fine, then. I can always drop you off and let you walk."
Jenny jumped in and stopped them. "All right, boys, maybe we could focus on something a little more important? Like saving our lives? Brad, maybe it's actually a good thing to be sitting in an indestructible flying machine, don't you think? Who cares if it's cheating? It's not like you're keeping score."
"Of course we're keeping score," said Tuck.
Brad pointed a finger in "Tuck's" face. "We'll finish this back in the living room."
Tuck grinned, and nudged his war robot up to full flying speed. For the first time, Brad and Jenny were starting to feel a little optimistic. They were approaching the foothills of the mountain, and just a few thousand feet up, on the summit, was the enemy stronghold, and the portal back to the outside world.
"What am I supposed to be looking for, guys?" asked Tuck. "Somebody want to give me a little help here?"
Jenny thought for a second. "Well, on the last game-world, the operating system had to actually put the exit portal inside the enemy base. So he probably had to do the same thing here, too."
"So you've got to get inside the enemy fortress on top of the mountain. That's not going to be easy. It's heavily defended, and once you get inside, there are a whole bunch of enemy troops. Normally, I just blast 'em all – I don't bother going inside. We'll have to improvise once we get there."
A hail of plasma bolts screamed down towards them from the mountain top. Just below the summit, huge gun turrets unfolded from the mountainside, and opened up with withering defensive fire. Dozens of energy blasts rocked the crimson mech, and although the "infinite shields" protected it, they were stilled being tossed around inside the cockpit. Tuck landed the mech behind a large boulder, giving them a breather so they could stop and think.
Brad lifted himself up off the floor. "Man, if Jen and I take one step out of this cockpit, those guns will turn us into toast!"
"Well, I can take care of those guns – no problem!" Tuck keyed another "special" command into his command stick, and a large red "X" appeared on the windshield. "I think thirty missiles should make short work of those guns!"
Tuck centered his sights on the gun placements, and pulled his weapons trigger.
Jenny had a sudden, horrible thought. "Tuck! Stop!"
But the missiles were underway. With a blinding flash of rocket motors, one massive wave of missiles jumped out of the weapons pod and weaved their way up the mountain towards the enemy guns.
Tuck and Brad looked at Jenny, confused. "What's the problem?"
"Thirty missiles is an awful lot. What happened the last time we made a really big explosion?" Jenny fidgeted with her pigtails. "I sure hope I'm wrong."
Thirty missile contrails converged on the gun placement, and impacted at the same time. A mammoth orange fireball ripped out the side of the summit, sending a shower of rocks and wrecked machinery cascading down the side of the mountain. The hail of plasma fire from above came to a stop.
"See?" grinned Tuck. "Jen, in a video game, there's no problem that can't be solved with firepower."
The devastation from the explosion rumbled through the mountainside, like a small earthquake, shaking the three players in the cockpit of the crimson mech. But instead of fading away, the earthquake continued … and started to get stronger.
The mountain shook, and shook, and Jenny could plainly see a large crack making its way across the width of the summit. The earthquake grew stronger still, and soon they had to brace themselves against the inside of the mech's cockpit to keep from being thrown to the floor.
Then there was a horrific shredding sound. The sound of reality being torn into pieces.
The entire top of the mountain – the top five hundred feet – broke free of the base with a crack like a hundred thunderbolts. Jenny, Brad and Tuck stared, in astonishment, as the mountain summit started to climb into the air. Millions of tons of rock sailed upwards, faster and faster, a completely impossible sight. It rose a few thousand feet into the air, and then shattered the sky, like a rock through a giant plate glass window. A huge, black hole formed in the sky from the impact. The mountain summit, and the chunk of sky, splintered into billions of colored polygons, and was sucked upwards into an endless, coal-black void.
The crimson mech braced itself as the wind started to gust, then pick up steadily into a hurricane-force gale, sucking plants, rocks, and stray bits of game reality upwards into the black hole. Brad and Jenny stared at each other, speechless. The only way out of the game had just disappeared, before their eyes.
CONCLUDED in Chapter Five