It was all very sad,but to be fair machines were generally more constant than people.Stan felt bad that this experience would just cement it for Ian.

After five minutes,he excused himself to go to the bathroom.Using the milling crowd as a human shield,he snuck out of the ballroom for good.

He avoided the nearest bank of elevators since they appeared to be in use,and went down a narrow adjoining hallway until he found an elevator not being used by anyone.

He ran Ian's mag card through the slot built into the control panel,and as soon as the telltale flashed green,'approving' him as a user,he pressed the call button.

In a moment,the elevator 'dinged',and the mirrored silver doors slid open,revealing red velvet carpeted lift.Stan figured that Houten thought it was 'classy',but as the doors slid closed,he felt like he'd just been shut inside an oversized jewel box.

He quickly hit the stop button and pulled open the 'emergency' panel beneath the main one,dropping to his knees in front of it.
Now everything went just as he had planned it,just as he had imagined it in his head.Never once looking up in the direction of the hidden security camera in the top right hand corner,he swung the messenger bag around and laid it in front of him on the floor, pulling it open and removing the laptop.Within twenty seconds he booted it up and connected it via cable to a little access port at the very bottom of the internal emergency panel.A maintenance port for the SysOp workers who got stuck vetting the computer 'brain' for the elevators.

Stan instantly ran his 'codebreaker' program,which he liked to call 'atomsmasher'.Technically,it should take days-and a supercomputer-to break the code on the Palisades systems.Except Houten was not quite as good at hiding his 'tracks' on the net as he thought;with a little help from his hack board friends,he found all of Houten's email accounts and accounts set up at e-stores (even under aliases).By sneaking into the 'back door' of a supercomputer (this one was at a University),he was able to break every single one of Houten's passwords.But that was not the point of the exercise.

The point was to see if he had a pattern for setting up his passwords.Every non-civilian knew you made your passwords random collections of numbers,symbols,and letters,so no one would think them up quickly,and it would take the previously mentioned supercomputer days-if not weeks,months,or years-to crack the code.

And that was where Houten's arrogance had gotten the better of him;he had fallen down on his own job.

'Atomsmasher' discerned a definite pattern to all his passwords.

Houten was smart enough to use names that seemed to have no connection to him,combined with numbers.But the problem was he liked to use common women's names with number sequences pulled from pi to the fifteenth digit (such as Charlotte141),and he had programmed 'atomsmasher' to look for just those code word parameters first.Again,it was habit,that dirty little knee jerk response that not even a software programmer could avoid.

And he had it.It didn't take long for 'atomsmasher' to find the master code for the elevators-Helen589.From there it was no problem to convince the elevator to take him down to the secret garage,and on the way down the program got the master computer to cough up the security codes for the 'gates' downstairs:Denise653 and Sharon14159 (a slight deviation from the three sequential numbers).

As soon as he had what he wanted he disconnected,rolling the cord up and shoving it in the bag with the laptop,but only after inserting a virus in the elevator's main computer.It was nothing major-a minor worm that they should eradicate by tomorrow-but it would screw up the elevator's ability to drop down to the garage level from now on.If he could keep company from joining him on one side,all the better.He shoved Ian's key card in his front pocket,intending to drop it on the street as soon as possible.

The elevator opened on a dimly lit parking garage,all cement and whitewashed wood,with dozens of parking slots but only eight expensive cars taking up space.He knew he might run into someone,so he made sure his Jurgen Mills card was out around his neck,and slung the messenger bag over his back like it was just a piece of luggage.

Sounds echoed in the mostly empty expanse,and he could hear the sound of his own footsteps constantly coming back to him.He was so full of caffeine he was already paranoid,his heart racing in his chest as his thoughts moved at a thousand miles a minute,and now he kept trying to look everywhere at once as surreptitiously as possible.A lot harder than it seemed, especially in a dark garage.

He reached the security gate unaccosted and unaccompanied,and quickly entered the code to open the metal gate that led to the parking lot of Galleon.It looked the same;there just weren't any cars in the lot.

Punching in the correct access code not only unlocked the gate and caused it to raise,but deactivated the secondary security systems,so no alarm went off in Galleon.Well,not yet at any rate.

That was where he really expected trouble.

It looked dead on the outside,unopened and unpopulated,but if there were valuable artifacts inside-and he knew there was-it wouldn't be unattended.He just hoped they weren't too psychotic and heavily armed.

He was half way across the parking lot when he became aware of a sound,an electric hum,faint but quite obviously coming from Galleon,since the hotel's elevator was currently out of commission.He ran across the lot,the slap of his boots against the macadam echoing eerily throughout the garage,and reached the elevator before the doors opened,pressing himself flat against
the wall to its left side.

He wanted to see who came out of it before they saw him.

Stan knew if it was just some innocent employee coming off shift,he'd have to make a choice about whether to let them go or knock them out.But he'd worry about that as soon as he knew what he was up against.

He took several deep breaths through his nose,slowing his own breathing down and calming his racing heart,as the doors slid open with a slight gasp,and he stood stock still,waiting for someone to emerge.

The man that came out slowly was clearly a security guard:dark suit and white shirt,needless black sunglasses,bristle cut hair, built like a refrigerator.Also,he had the telltale bulge underneath his left arm that couldn't be anything besides a piece.A big piece.

A radio crackled on the man's hip just then,making him look away as he stepped out into the lot."Wallace,is it Barracuda?"The man on the radio said,his voice broken with static.

Barracuda?Did they refer to Houten by code name?What were they,the fucking secret service?

Before he could answer,Stan made his move.

The guy was several inches taller than him,and probably over a hundred pounds heavier,but he was counting on the element of surprise and the fact that he was wired on adrenaline to carry him over the top.

As Wallace reached for his radio,Stan spun into a high kick and nailed him flush in his big square face with the heel of his boot.Wallace,caught completely off guard,flew straight back into the elevator,hitting the rear wall with a loud thud,hard enough to jar his radio loose.As it bounced across the floor,he heard the man on the other end say,"Wallace,come in.Is there a problem?"

Stan quickly stepped in between the doors to keep them from closing,and saw he'd gotten lucky-the big guy was slumped on the floor out cold,blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.But the radio continued to crackle away,the man's voice on the other end growing increasingly suspicious.

Stan picked up the radio,and hoped the interference was enough to compensate for the fact that he probably sounded nothing like Wallace."Barracuda's here,hold on a sec,"he said,briefly thumbing the send button.He quickly clipped the radio onto the waistband of his pants,so he could hear the security staff:the moment they knew something was wrong,he wanted to be the first to know.

Luckily,the guy on the other end simply said,"Copy that," and sounded as bored as hell.Nights at Galleon were probably always quiet,and as about as interesting as watching a snail inch along a sidewalk.He hoped that ennui inertia meant someone had snuck a television set in here;maybe they'd miss him planting a virus in the camera system.

Or this guard flat out in the elevator.Damn it.It wasn't such a lucky shot after all.

He grabbed the big guy by the ankles and dragged him out of the elevator,which was harder than it looked (he was three hundred pounds of manure in a twenty pound sack),and then,at the last second,grabbed his gun out of his holster-an automatic,of course-and ejected the ammunition clip,which he tossed across the parking garage.He then put the gun back in the man's holster,if only to confuse him.He'd probably draw the weapon before he'd realize it had no more ammo.

Once inside the elevator, he plugged in the cord and let 'atomsmasher' break the code of Galleon's elevator. Again, it didn't take long (Audrey264535- another slight deviation from the norm), and he used the connection to try and access the main computer of the site. It would probably take longer, so he left the connection intact as he took the elevator up to the lowest floor (he had no idea what alias Zhelov would be using here, but since he didn't think there was that much here, he figured he'd find the stuff under the tightest security and work his way through it).

Atomsmasher came through for him as soon as he was on floor level. He couldn't access every system (a lot of the security was behind tight firewalls that broke completely from Houten's passwording system- a shame, but a smart move on his part), but he could get the cameras and at least part of the power and air conditioning system.

He inserted the special virus- actually a hybrid virus/worm he called Alien (after the acid spewing one from the movie of the same name)- into the heart of the computers that ran the security camera network. These cameras didn't record on video but on high definition digital, so not only could no one break in and steal the tape identifying them from the cameras, but they were recorded in crystal clear life on a medium that could be strategically manipulated to show everything, down to the type of sneakers they wore and the type of food stain on the sleeve of their jacket.

But Houten forgot that while you couldn't pull digital 'tape', you could corrupt the data to the point where nothing usable could be recovered. And that's what Alien was doing now, not so much scrambling codes as digesting the base codes and regurgitating pure gibberish, digital garbage that was the computer equivalent of shit. Alien had a brief shelf life- Stan had programmed it to self destruct after one hour had elapsed- but only so Houten and his tech team couldn't autopsy it and steal his work. It'd be worth a fortune on the business market as a guaranteed way to permanently destroy all electronic data and documents, but he wasn't interested in helping a bunch of crooked CEO's get away with even more crimes against humanity, nonetheless padding Houten's pockets even more.

As soon as he was sure Alien was doing its work, and no security alert had been issued yet, he called up a menu of the secured areas currently in use. Not many as it turned out.

There were, according to the schematic he was able to access, thirty three units available, and only eleven were currently in use. Technically everything here was high security, but some things were more high security than others. There were three 'clean rooms' at the back of the complex on the second level, only one of which was in use. The 'clean rooms' were temperature stable and could be pressurized, although the one in use wasn't; it was kept at a cool sixty six degrees, but he didn't think that was really necessary, just a precaution. Peacemeal going off in here- and next to the hotel- could absolutely devastate Houten's wallet. Stan assumed he wouldn't give a shit about the people.

He was on the second level, so he disconnected the laptop and packed it up again, braced against the wall as the doors slid open, in case security had someone on the level. If they did, he wasn't here yet.

The radio on his hip picked now to crackle to life. "Wallace, anything to report?"

He looked carefully down both ends of the empty, abnormally cool concrete and metal halls, and pulled up his radio. Still inside the elevator, he said quietly, "Nothing yet. Hold on."

He replaced his radio and exited into the hall, aware his fudging was about to come to an end. He was lucky to slide by the first time as Wallace. His luck had probably been all used up.

So full of caffeine and sugar and adrenaline he thought he might explode, he started jogging down the hall towards the clean rooms, then broke out into a full run, feeling so good it was like he was high. The first half of the plan had gone off without a hitch.He couldn't have hoped for better.He'd have started shouting like a drunken frat boy except he still had the rest of the security guards to contend with.

The inside of Galleon was like some sort of high tech mausoleum, all cold and grey, sterile in its austerity. He felt bad for the guards who worked full time here, because this kind of bland emptiness would drive him insane.

He heard the radio on his hip crackle to life, but the message wasn't for him. "Meyer, check on Wallace."

Yep, he was down to time now, and yet it was all he could do not to laugh. As soon as he got to Peacemeal, he was assured of getting out of here, even if he had to blackmail his way out.

(Of course, if Peacemeal really was nuclear in basis and not a 'clean' weapon like Xrayeye insisted, he was so screwed it was both funny and tragic.)

The warehouse was lit by coldly sterile white light, the kind that simulated sunlight and yet remained unparalleled for being completely unflattering. He bet no one looked at any objects du art in here, for fear all they'd see would be daubs of old, washed out paint on peeling canvases.

He made it to the 'clean room' area without encountering anyone, and he mentally said a little thanks to Houten for insuring his security staff got so bored they didn't even bother to pay attention anymore. Also, Alien was probably working its disruptive magic, putting out a new brand of spaghetti code for the new generation.

The clean rooms looked much different from the foam core steel doors he passed on the way here. These were metal all right, but painted white, with tiny bullet proof windows in their center, and all hidden within what was essentially a plexiglas 'airlock', a semi-circular antechamber slightly bigger than an ATM vestibule. And to get through the door of the airlock, he needed a code.

So once again he jacked in the laptop, holding it cradled in one arm and looking around as it worked (he figured he could always claim to be one of Houten's techs, checking out a personal matter for the boss. Thanks to atomsmasher, he knew Houten's private security password-for use on guards too stupid to recognize him or any of his close vetted staff-was Aileron
22 (what that meant he had no idea-Houten probably just liked the sound of it).

The little light on top of the small code panel's display went from red to green (pass code: 415926535- Houten had an unhealthy obsession with pi), as Stanley heard the radio on his hip crackle to life. "Meyer to Deviq."

"What is it, Frank?" Deviq-the guy he scammed earlier-replied.

"There's no one down here," he said, sounding slightly bewildered. Stan was grateful he'd thought to yank Wallace behind the slight wheelchair accessible ramp. Technically he could be found easily-Wallace was bigger than the ramp-but that would have required Meyer to actually go look. There was an amazing sense of lethargy permeating this place, but then he heard that was true of Synergic too.

Still, Galleon was essentially bullet proof. Who'd be stupid enough to try and rob this place? And it wasn't like crackers ever got off their fat asses and out of their basements and did stuff like this in real life.

As soon as he was inside the clean room vestibule, he started humming to himself, thinking in his mind, "I feel stupid, oh so stupid, stupid and witty and wise..."

"Wallace?" Deviq asked, as Stan tried not to laugh at his own bizarre thoughts. He'd really over done the caffeine; he probably  wouldn't sleep until well into tomorrow. Or the next day.

It was absolutely exhilarating. It reminded him of the all nighters he'd pull in college, working with his cyberbuds half way around the world to break into the computers of the Japanese stock exchange or the U.S. Treasury or MI5. Never to do damage-they weren't crackers-just to see if they could do it and get away clean, leaving no digital footprints. They did so remarkably well. Stan now wondered if they had the special blessing that various gods seemed to grant to the intensely stupid.
Because they were. They were smarter than everyone else around them, and yet so very stupid where it counted.

At least he was carrying on that tradition of stupidity. Alias359 would be proud of him.

He had just jacked in to open the only clean room in use (through the window he could see nothing-an empty white space, with what looked like a steel chest of drawers built into the wall) when he heard Meyer reply, "He ain't here, Chief. You don't suppose he went over to the Palisades for a drink, do ya?"

He heard Deviq curse, and Stan laughed. He hadn't even thought about Houten's shindig giving him additional cover. It just seemed like a fortuitous way inside.

"That fat bastard is so fucking fired if he did," Deviq spat, with a surprising amount of venom. Didn't he hate him?

Atomsmasher was taking a lot longer on the security code for this door, but he had taken into account that M.K. had thought up the specific code himself, and therefore atomsmasher was programmed to run through Russian words as well. Stan knew very well he could be here all night, but the hard part was over: Alien was loose in the cameras, and the elevators were fucked over royal. He could enter even more destructive worms, viruses, and Trojan horses into Houten's system if he had to: he came in here fully loaded and prepared for war.

"Should I go check?" Meyer said, with obvious hope in his voice.

"No," Deviq snapped, and Stan doubted it was surprising to Meyer either. "Get back up here. I'll try his radio again."

True to his word, Deviq called for Wallace again, over the same frequency. Stan didn't answer.

"Hey, I'm stuck," Meyer suddenly broke in.

"In what?" Deviq replied peevishly.

"The elevator just started and then it stopped. I can't get it to do anything."

The light on the door's code panel went from red to green, and the lock released with a pneumatic hiss. M.K.'s codeword had been 'koshmar', which-according to the computer-was Russian for 'nightmare'. If Xrayeye had been right about Peacemeal, it definitely was.

As Deviq continued to curse Meyers out for his idiocy ( "How could anything be wrong with the elevators?" ), Stan entered the clean room with some trepidation, pushing the door gently open, his heart continuing to beat at roughly a hundred miles a minute. The air was so clean in here it had a funny, almost ozone taste, and was so cold he shivered, but it was hardly freezing; it was simply the temperature deviation between here and out there, in the unprotected world.

In spite of the chill, he was starting to sweat as he approached the steel drawers, the only containment chambers in the room. If he was wrong, Holly was really going to lose her dad, and he could only guess how messy his demise would be.

Stan knew if he pulled this off everyone would be puzzled as to who could engineer such a technically savvy heist-especially when the few cameras capable of catching him (parking garage-old fashioned video tape, he could do nothing about those but try and stick to the shadows and never look at them directly) would reveal a single man-but Gabriel would guess immediately it was him. And of course he'd have his people look for him.

His people were in for a real disappointment. Stanley and Holly Jobson died last year, shortly after Thanksgiving, on a rainy night on a highway outside of Boston. Semi truck crossed the center line and completely totaled the 1999 BMW Stan was driving, wedging the car between the semi cab and a highway divider, killing Holly instantly. Stanley died two hours later in Boston General Hospital while undergoing an operation for his massive head injuries. Since there was no real family for either of them, they were buried with little ceremony and fanfare at a cemetery only three miles from the spot where they had died. Ironic. Sad.

Complete bullshit.

If they went digging for digital, they'd find that sorrowful tale, complete with a small newspaper article "Truck Car Collision Kills Two" that gives a few terse details on their sudden but not uncommon deaths, and death certificates buried in an on line archive. If they went looking for dead tree confirmation-the actual death certificate, physical hospital records, even gravestones -they'd fine nothing. Because Stan sat in a hotel room with his super charged laptop and planted all of it, hacking into the appropriate agencies and burying these little nuggets of information on their systems like he had buried Jurgen Mills's files in Synergic's corporate office.

Holly was at a boarding school up in Canada, a real exclusive, high security sort of place where celebrities and politicians sent their kids, and she was there under the name of a very real girl whose identity he had 'borrowed' for the meantime to protect her. Hopefully this would all be over soon and he would pull Holly out, and the real Samantha Jane Morton would never know her identity had been 'hijacked'. And after the trail he left, he dared them to find her.

Finding him would be difficult, but much easier than finding Holly. And that was the whole point. If he made things too easy, they'd know it was a trap.

Laptop back in its bag and slung over his back, he carefully slid open the only occupied drawer, and had to stop himself from cringing instinctively as the lead lined drawer revealed itself to have nothing more than a silver steel suitcase inside of it.
Locked of course-combination, non-digital-but Stan figured with enough time he could crack it: in spite of his own occasional doubts, he was not a moron, and he was especially good with numbers and codes. Life was code, and given the time and opportunity, he was sure he could break it all down.

He grabbed the black handle of the suitcase, and found it to be remarkably heavy: maybe sixty pounds. Considering it was supposed to be a weapon of mass destruction, it needed some kind of heft to make up for the fact that it could be so easily crammed in a suitcase.

As he left the clean room and the 'airlock' antechamber with the heavy metal suitcase in his hand, he could hear Deviq and Meyer still arguing over the radio about whether or not there was something wrong with the elevator. Deviq clearly thought Meyer was a stupid,helpless asshole , and Meyers clearly thought Deviq was a sadistic, pigheaded jerk. They were probably both right.

Even as he ran down the sterile metal and cement corridor, heading towards the 'street' exit, he couldn't quite believe things had gone this well. He'd pay for it somewhere else -entropy hit in increments, or it hit all at once: there seemed to be no getting around that- but his turn of luck (along with way too much caffeine) had made him euphoric. It was hard not to laugh.

The street exit was locked and 'wired'- meaning if you didn't have a code, not only would it not open, but an alarm would trip. But Stan had a code; a good, high level code. Houten's code: Sandy653.

He punched it into the number pad by the metal door with the bent knuckle of his right index finger (no fingerprints), just as he heard a third, unidentified guard say, "Uh, boss, it looks like somethin's goin' wrong with the cameras."

The telltale on the panel lit green and the door released with a heavy metallic clank, and Stan took the radio off his belt, wiping it on the mesh shirt as best he could, and dropped it on the floor. It bounced once before its outer casing broke open, and the guts of wiring spilled out like the contents of a high tech piñata.

He shoved the door open with his shoulder and ran outside, into the warmer, smoggier night air, and let out a loud, braying laugh as he ran across the lot, down to where he had parked his rental car. This had been almost too easy.

And so much fun. He hadn't counted on it being so much fucking fun.

Stan barely remembered to dump Ian's key card before he returned to the alley by the coffee place. He did feel like he was tripping on some amazing perfect drug, something that kept his synapses snapping like sparks, and made him more alive than...ever. More completely alive than he had ever felt in his entire life.

And yet, in his left hand, he carried an instrument of perfect death for both man and machine.

As soon as he got back to his rental car, he put the suitcase in the back seat and tried to decide if his back up option wouldn't be the best course of action here. He couldn't continue to have this thing with him, not if it was going to work, but considering its size, he had another idea.

He assumed M. K. told the buyer what he'd be getting, more or less, so he wouldn't think he was being hosed when he was given nothing but a suitcase. Perhaps this would work out even better than he thought.

Stan was careful not to speed as he left the scene, the new plan percolating in his head. It would be an insane risk...but what hadn't been?

The problem remained in the second half of the plan.  So far so good, but as soon as he had Peacemeal secured, this was his game to lose. And he could, badly; one screw up and it was all over.

But what a rush. He didn't think it would be this...exhilarating. As he drove down Highway 101, strangely empty for this time of night in any stretch of Southern California, he found it almost impossible not to stomp on the accelerator, and as he let out a triumphant shout of victory he pounded the steering wheel with his hand, hurting his palm and barely feeling it. It had gone perfectly, without a hitch, and now he had the power.

He had all the power in the world, in fact. The switch was his to throw, the button his to push, the trigger his to pull.

It was a high. Tremendous, almost sexual in its intensity, and he knew the minute he let it run away with him was the moment he would stop existing as a human being and would become a monster. Like Gabriel.

Even though the rental was air conditioned, he rolled down his window so the exhaust laden night air would hit him square in the face, and he took several deep breaths through his nose, letting the oxygen infusion steady his heart beat and level out the adrenaline. He was feeling almost normal, just wired on caffeine, as he pulled into the car rental place by L.A.X.

He parked and pulled out of the glove box all his rental papers, a baseball cap, and a navy blue t-shirt folded into a sloppy square. He unfolded the shirt and pulled it on over the black mesh one, hiding it, and pulled off the clip on eyebrow ring and the lightning bolt earring, shoving them both in his pocket. He pulled his hair back as best he could and put on the baseball cap (actually with a Lakers logo across the front), tucking all of the green highlights underneath. James Bloom was going in to return his rental. The fact that he was wearing vinyl pants couldn't be helped, but it was doubtful anyone would notice.

He slipped his blue tinted glasses inside his backpack before slipping the straps over his shoulders, then slipped on the strap of his messenger bag (containing his precious computer) , and last but not least, as soon as he was out of the car, he reached back in and grabbed the suitcase containing Peacemeal.

It wasn't terribly busy inside the rental agency, but busy enough that no one gave him a second glance, not even the bored worker behind the counter, who took his keys and information with a sullen air, and again Stan found it hard not to start laughing. This was all going so well he just knew some bad shit was bound to hit the fan soon enough.

He walked past a nearly ubiquitous armed security guard on his way out, and the burly Hispanic man gave him a friendly nod, which Stan returned, fully aware his heavy metal suitcase had a weapon of mass destruction in it and he had just passed by the man with little more than that acknowledging tip of his head.

Of course, he didn't fit the terrorist profile, and let's face it, a third rate car rental place was not going to be a likely terrorist target. But Gabriel had done him the favor of teaching him the world - even outside of cyberspace - was far more dangerous than he ever imagined.

Down the street was a cheap chain hotel, and in its parking lot was a blue Chevy Cavalier rented that morning from an agency in Costa Mesa by a man named Jacob Morrow. Stan had parked it there before coming to rent the Saturn in Bloom's name, and start the Jurgen Mills charade. It all seemed needlessly intricate and convoluted, but he had to play the game. This wasn't something as weak as espionage, or as pale as theft. It was full blooded, full on life or death. No joke, no do overs - it was for all the money. And he had no intention of losing.

He put his luggage (the backpack, from which he taken out the Chevy's keys) in the back of the stifling Cavalier (it had been sitting in full sun in an unshaded parking lot all day), rested his laptop still in the shoulder bag on the floor on the passenger side, and finally secured the suitcase in the small trunk. As soon as he started the car, he cranked the air conditioner on full, turned up the radio - pre-set to the only decent rock station in the area - and started driving out to a California town known as Ontario, where a man named John Webb (who looked suspiciously like Stan) had a cheap but adequate room at a no tell motel there.

He was somewhere near Monterey Park when he took a short cut and noticed that perfect little spot he had seen in the daytime when driving up to L.A. It looked even more deserted and remote now, like a haunted little graveyard that mysteriously appeared between rambling suburban sprawl and clumsy gentrification projects. After thinking about what he might need and briefly wondering where he was supposed to get it, he turned back around, and within ten minutes found the right spot.

Only in L.A. would you find a Home Depot open this late.

He found the items quickly in the cluttered warehouse store, where he bet an army of small children got lost every year, only to grow up and become sales associates, and paid in cash so as not to leave a paper trail. No one asked him why he was buying these things at this time of night, but then again, the man the next checkstand over was buying a wheelbarrow, a bag of cow manure, a hand saw, and two bags of quick lime. He didn't even want to know what that was about.