Buck's Conversion

He had stared his own mortality in the face and had to acknowledge that something otherworldly -- yes, supernatural, something directly from God almighty -- had been thrust upon those dusty hills in the form of a fire in the sky.

That's when it all fell apart. That day when the bombs failed to fall. Surely it was the Hand of God that reached out to spare the Holy Land. Nothing had been right since then, but something so big, so enormous wasn't something that Buck was ready to accept at the time. None of the world was really. Buck had sidled up to the realization of God, catching glimpses out of the corner of his eye -- waking up from terrible dreams of fire falling on dusty hills, feeling his breath falter when he heard an unfamiliar noise, looking up into the sky more than he had before that terrible day.

Sometimes, when forced to endure the quiet of his apartment, he would find himself trying to explain it all away. Every time, his explanations range hollow -- false words from a false man who just wanted things to stay the same. Each time, it too a little more convincing to deny the miracle.

When the faithful vanished, Buck sought refuge in the same flimsy excuses and rationalizations. A strange electro-magnetic event. Sunspots. Aliens seeking conquest. Each time he sought answers, his mind circled back to that day -- the day he stood in the presence of God.
For days now, he had avoided even thinking about it. He was too busy, he told himself. He was going to get the big story, find out the truth. No matter that he knew his career was all built on bluff and misdirection. This time, this time, he'd get it right. Hell, maybe he'd even get the girl for once. So he asked for the interview with Raymond. He'd make this story personal -- an interview with the pilot of his plane when the Event happened. Surely he could write that.

Then Raymond had spent the entire interview talking about his theories of God and the Rapture. At first, Buck has been irritated. What Steele had said wasn't going to make good copy. Readers didn't want to read about yet another theory, and Buck didn't really want to write about it anyway.

As Raymond was drawing to a close, the universe shifted. Buck's soul was torn open and left quivering in a unrelenting spotlight of harsh truth. It wasn't Raymond speaking anymore, but God. God, through some unfathomable mystery, had put Buck on that flight. For some explicable reason, Buck -- horrible sinner that he was -- mattered. In that instant of horrific clarity, Buck saw himself. All his faults were laid bare; his self-denial, his disloyalties, his jealous fantasies - all burned themselves into his awareness as Raymond, poor clumsy Raymond, spoke with God's voice of salvation.

Buck managed to pull himself together long enough to whisper his thanks to Raymond -- though he realized even then that his was truly thanking God -- before fleeing to his apartment.

He'd planned to get drunk.

Instead, he found himself remembering that day in Israel when the bombs failed to fall. Buck fell to his knees, unheeded tears streaming down his face as he confronted the truth. This was God's plan. God was bringing mankind to account at long last for all the horrors that he had done, and He had graciously taken His children out of the fray. Not only had the Lord spared those who had seen the truth, He had also done so in the most astonishing way possible. Even now, Jesus was reaching out a hand to those who had forsaken Him. In agony, Buck looked upon his soul and recoiled from what he saw. "Please," he whispered to God as he curled in upon himself, "Please forgive me."

Working Back Through Left Behind

One of the things that I've added to the Index is links to stories that are attached to specific page numbers.

There are only a few listed currently (see pp. 59, 228-231, 250-251, etc.), but I was wondering if people would be interested in a weekly writing competition to rewrite Right Behind from the beginning of Left Behind.

After each week, I could post a poll of the entries. The person with the highest amount of votes would get a special mention on the Index page.

This would be a fairly loose competition. There would be no formal guidelines for content other than it would have to address either the content of the Left Behind pages or the content of Fred's analysis.

If people are interested, go ahead and post in the comments here to let me know. If you're looking for Exharpazo permissions, contact either me (worldsandtime -at- gmail) or Inigo Montoya (legendary.writeoff.2007 -at- gmail). If we don't get much interest, I'll drop the idea.

Thanks for the attention,

Spherical Time

Tomorrow at Midnight

And there stood at each end of the Wailing Wall a grandfather clock, a mystery in the face of the greatest mystery of mankind. The clocks wouldn't have been considered anything interesting in Jerusalem by themselves, fanatics and crazy folk has set up far more bizarre displays at the Wailing Wall even before The Event, after The Event the displays became even more outlandish and incomprehensible. These clocks wouldn't have seemed interesting at all, except for the fact that they exploded.

The clocks sat at either end of the Wailing Wall all day and all night, incorrectly keeping the time, harming no one. Local authorities considered them so innocent in the face of many other more garish displays that they allowed the clocks to sit for a few days before attempting to remove them. It was then that the grandfather clocks became interesting.

Upon laying his hand on one of the grandfather clocks the luckless Israeli police officer burst into flames, along with the clock he was touching. The grandfather clock was completely destroyed, and all that was let of the police officer was a charred corpse. A grandfather clock was an odd mode of delivery for a bomb, but this was Jerusalem, and far more bizarre methods of death and terror had been implemented, even before The Event.

At noon they deployed the bomb squads robot to deal with the other clock. Remote inspection revealed no trace of a bomb, this one might have been a decoy, a gambit in the hopes the police would inspect it first and decide to let the other clock alone. Still it wasn't worth taking any chances, the bomb squad activated the robots pincers, and attempted to drag the clock over to the detonation van. This clock burst into flames too, taking with it $20,000 dollars worth of robot.

The next day the clocks reappeared, some say in the exact same positions as the day before, at least one of them was for certain, the bomb team had marked the second clocks outline with chalk, and the new one stood exactly within the lines.

The police weren't taking any chances this time, they cordoned off the area around the clocks, and just let them tick away. When they blew up, the police decided, there would be no one around except for the police, who would quickly put out the fire, and inspect the remains for clues too the bombers identity. So they let the clocks tick, and they did tick, for three days and nothing happened. The police were stumped, remote controlled cameras and thermal imaging revealed no bomb components in either of the clocks. but they didn't want to take the chance of touching them again. Nit being able to keep such large sections of the Wailing wall cordoned off for such long periods of time, the police allowed people nearby, but they had to stay outside of the clearly marked perimeter of the clocks.

And so the clocks stood when a tourist took note of them. The tourist wasn't interested in the clocks when he encountered the first one, only sparing a passing glance, noticing its engraving reading "Eli," but when he came across the second clock on the opposite end of the Wailing Wall engraved as "Moshie" he decided to give the clocks some thought. He watched the clocks for hours, and with the pen and stationary set he'd stolen from his hotel, he scratched out notes about the clocks. The clocks read five minutes after midnight, and after calculating the speed at which the clocks told time the tourist worked out that it would be almost seven years before the clocks would read midnight again.

After thinking about his discovery, the tourist turned the page on the stationary pad, and began making a list of all the things he wanted to do before it was midnight again.

Cookie Monster Part 1

Sarah looked up from wiping down the counter top when they walked in. The two seemed to have walked in from over a week ago, a normal totally infatuated couple who seemed to oblivious to world around them. Not there was anything wrong with that, well not anything wrong a week ago.

The man looked oddly familiar as he ordered two coffees and two double chocolate chunks, Sarah told them she'd bring them to their table. The man pawed around his wallet for cash and shrugged giving her a credit card. She smiled politely and pointed to the sign she taped to the register "At this time we can only accept cash, we apologize for any inconvenience." There was a pause and Sarah said "It's alright I'll bring them to you anyway, no worries." The woman said "thank you" and the man said nothing, unable to take his eyes off her as they walked to a booth in the small shop.

They talked in low voices and the man absentmindedly rubbed a spot on his head for a moment, Sarah's eyes hardened. She did recognize him, the reporter. She felt her self being pulled back to The Event. She had been handing over a drink to a customer when *fhit* there was no customer, only a pile of clothes and a cup of soda spreading rapidly across the floor. Her manager had been on a bathroom break, Sarah's first instinct was to run and fetch her but she stood rooted. Panic digging it's icy fingers into her ribs and the sounds of shouts and screams rippling up and down the terminal. Then the planes started falling.

She walked out into the hall, the cookie place was next to the duty free shop. Her friend who worked there had come out to investigate too. She met Shanti's frightened eyes with her own. Shanti turned when a sound like a cry of agony from animal in a trap echoed out from the store. A woman was holding a tiny bright red coat over a pile of clothes on the floor. Shanti gulped and walked to her, Sarah looked down the long concourse at the stream of rescue workers and volunteers carrying in the hurt and the dying from the tarmac.

She walked back into the shop. Her manager wasn't coming back from that break. Panic congealed into cold hard fear. She couldn't just stand there, she had to help. She saw the cooler full of bottled water and juices, she rolled a cart out of the storeroom and loaded it up. She wheeled it down the hallway, passing unBearably Cute, where the customers acted like a mix of the woman at the duty free shop and frantically digging and searching through the barrels of stuffed animal skins and stuffing and pounding on the employee only door at the back. She stopped at the Pan Con Club member lounge, it had been turned into a makeshift infirmary.

People groaning on stretchers, a frantic EMT trying to attend to a severely bleeding patient and people sitting in a state of shock or frantically trying to call loved ones on their cell phones. The reporter had been sitting near the entrance, reading an email with great interest, holding a wet cloth to a cut on the back of his head. She rolled the cart slightly in, a few looked at her "I've brought some water and juice, if anyone needs it." The EMT tightly fastened a bandage on his patient, "Thanks, I could actually use some water to clean wounds, I'm just about out of antiseptic." She handed him several bottles.

Those that weren't still trying to reach someone, anyone on the phone had turned their attention to the wounded. A woman draped her coat around another who sat on the floor stock still and shivering, another held a man's hand as he sobbed uncontrollably. A few took bottles from the cart and walked to nearby gates handing them to rescue workers and wounded people who had the strength to take them. The reporter drummed his fingers on his laptop and murmured some notes into a personal tape recorder. A well dressed man walked up to him,

"I'm a doctor. Let me dress your wound." The reporter looked rather blank, and nervously fiddled with his press badge.

"Just let me do this pal, I'm going crazy here with nothing to do, and I have my bag."

The reporter shrugged and the doctor went to work. The EMT had caught this exchange and started incredulously at the man wondering why he hadn't volunteered before. Then Sarah noticed his arms where streaked with blood and while he chatted airily with the reporter he would grimace in pain. The doctor stepped to the side and she saw one pants leg was soaked through. A woman approached with a clipboard. By her name tag she was an administrator for one of the private charter services O'Hare offered.


"Dr. Dives?"

The Doctor looked at her curiously.

"You need to come with me sir, your wife has been airlifted to Cook Regional, we need you right away."

A kind of heart-scalding rage and grief seemed to fill the doctor's face, his efforts to mold it into a casual air made it all the more terrible

"What do you mean?, she's fine, I'm with a patient."

The reporter had fallen back into reading whatever he was with rapt attention. The EMT walked to the woman, she took him aside and told him quietly, "He was on a flight with his wife and daughter, they where clipped by another plane trying to land, the pilot somehow got it on the ground, but he didn't make it, neither did the girl, and the wife's critical. Her fingers tightened around her clipboard "The girl looked to be just about sixteen, he tried to save her."

She looked at Dives again, he allowed himself to look at her, that same drowned, desperate look of denial, she took a deep breath "Sir your wife and daughter need you." He stopped attending to the reporter he stared at her, she continued "Emily and Anna are waiting, they need you there."

Sarah felt turned to stone and she didn't try to stop the tears that were pooling on her lips as her nose began to run. The doctor picked up his bag and tried to walk after her, the EMT signaled another to help him, he put his arm around the doctor's shoulders and the doctor limped after the woman. The reporter still hadn't moved. She made it back to shop and locked herself in the tiny storeroom, crying until her throat felt like tissue paper.

She shuddered remembering that day, and watching the reporter playfully wipe a crumb off of the woman's mouth. The woman appearing to have a struggle to find that gesture charming instead of supremely off putting. She walked over with their snacks, feeling a strong urge to dump the coffee on his head.

Slacktivist's Left Behind Index

About two weeks ago I tried to open the Slacktivist's Left Behind page from home. At work I have a spiffy and fast internet connection, but I noticed that from home it seems to take a long time to load.

I've spent some time putting together an index of Fred's Left Behind criticism, including links to each post and a sentence or two about its contents. I've dated it so that it shows up as the first link in the Blog Archive under April 2007, and I'll add it under "Links" in the sidebar.

I'll continue to update the index once a month, and I'm still fiddling with some of the links. If you have any questions, comments or changes let me know and I'll fix them.

Spherical Time

The Waiter is Practicing Politics

L.B.: Two swell guys, Left Behind, pp. 381-384

George looked out across the nearly-empty floor of Giuseppi's, reflecting on the dark days that had come to the restaurant since the Event. Two of the waitresses had gone missing that day, and the chaos in the streets had caused both of the busboys to miss work. Since he lived within walking distance, George had been filling in every day.

The first day had been bad, but things had been getting worse ever since, though in a quieter way. Food deliveries had been erratic; he had heard on the news that about a third of the truck drivers in the country had disappeared, and many of them had been driving their rigs at the time. What food was available was going up in price, fast, and the restaurant had to raise its prices accordingly. You heard stories about shops being looted by mobs. George was perpetually worried that a mob might eventually decide to loot Giuseppi's.

And everybody you met, everybody, had a haunted look on his face. People had lost family, friends, co-workers. Everybody had lost somebody. Not a day went by without somebody, either an employee or a customer, breaking down and crying.

George's neighbor, a sweet old lady named Mrs. Hutchinson, was gone. Her car had been sitting out next to the curb ever since. The day after the Event, he had heard her two cats crying, and he had finally persuaded the super to let him into her apartment. They were living with him now, and every time they heard somebody walk by outside his door they ran up to it and started meowing. Mrs. Hutchinson had had a bag of cat food in one of her cupboards, but George couldn't help wondering whether there would be any more to buy after it ran out.

George's gloomy musings were interrupted by the arrival of four people, two men and two women, their ages ranging from mid-40s to college-age. The two women were both good-looking and fresh-from-the-hair-salon stylish, though their subdued expressions didn't accord with their festive clothes. The two men both wore conservative business suits; the older one was rather stiff, while the younger one, a balding man about George's age, had an expression that ranged from alert to ADD.

It wasn't hard to guess which member of this particular group was the leader. George addressed the older man. "Table for four, sir?"

The man agreed, and George led them to one of the tables near the fireplace. The only other group dining in the restaurant was seated on the other side of the room at a booth with a view of the street. The younger woman was saying to the older one, "Have you ever eaten here before?"

"Your father brought me here a few times," the older one answered. They seated themselves at the table, the older woman beside the older man, the younger woman beside the younger man. George gave them their menus and took their drink orders.

While he mixed the drinks, Phil the bartender gave George the look that said, What's the story with them? George shrugged. "The girl is the Stiff's daughter, but she's sitting next to Baldy. The woman's apparently been dating the Stiff, but they look like they just broke up. Baldy is giving the girl the eye, but she's playing it cool in front of Daddy. A regular soap opera."

Phil finished with the drinks, and George carried them over to the table. The Stiff was talking about shopping for souvenirs in Tokyo and pointedly ignoring the woman sitting beside him. Yeah, breakup, no question, and from the looks of things, incredibly, he had ditched her. And then invited her over for dinner with his daughter and her new boyfriend. Yeah, they were definitely entering soap opera terrain here.

"Have you decided on your orders?" George asked, and the Stiff's story was interrupted as they talked over their options. The menus had come from the printer's that morning, and reflected Giuseppi's unfortunately limited selection. George took their orders and departed for the kitchen.

Two more groups arrived while the Stiff's group ate, and the group in the window booth finished and left. Subdued chamber music played over the restaurant's sound system. It looked like a typical post-Event evening in Giuseppi's.

In due course, George removed the now-empty plates from the Stiff's table and asked if they would like dessert. All of them declined, which was just as well considering the dessert menu was even more limited than the dinner menu. As George went to fill out their check, the Stiff followed him to his desk.

"We'd like to spend another hour or so here, if it's all right," the Stiff said in a low tone of voice.

George sighed to himself. He answered, just as he would have before the Event, "Sir, we do have an extensive reservation list --"

"I wouldn't want this table to be less than profitable for you," said the Stiff stiffly, and he slipped a hundred dollar bill from his pocket and pressed it into George's hand, "so boot us out whenever it becomes necessary."

George hesitated for a moment while he looked at the C-note, wondering whether to hand it back. In the end, thinking about the two cats waiting for him back at his apartment, he decided that he would need to make as much money as possible for as long as the restaurant stayed open, and he pocketed the Benjamin. "I'm sure you will not be disturbed," he told the Stiff, who returned to his table with an air of great satisfaction. Rolling his eyes, George went over to the bar to split the hundred with Phil.

Merry Christmas!

From Right Behind, we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas to those that celebrate it, and hopefully just a very good day to those that don't.

I found this online somewhere, but I can't find an author, so I hope you'll all forgive an anonymous yet politically correct quote:

Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion as well as those who choose not to practice a religion at all;

Additionally, a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2000, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions have helped make our society great, without regard to the race, creed, color, religious, or sexual preferences of the wishes.

(Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.)

CNN Transcript - Two Preachers in Jerusalem

(on camera) A succession of shots of showing street preachers surrounded by crowds of people.

CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scenes like this are taking place all over the world, as people search in vain for a reason for The Event. Here in Jerusalem it is no different, as dozens of preachers have taken up position near the Western Wall.

(on camera) Handheld camera shot of a crowd of people surrounding our two protagonists. Several tear-streaked people are clutching children's toys. Just as the screen cuts to the next scene, there's a disturbance in the crowd. The camera operators cut back to that scene just as two men burst from the crowd waving weapons. Halfway through the sound cuts in, but the translators are too overworked to be standing by for what was supposed to be filler and so we don't know what they say. There's a scuffle as the crowd tries to stop them, then one of the preachers points and they all draw back. There's a flash that overloads the camera, and when the picture returns the men are gone, the preachers have calmly gone back to preaching, and the crowd is looking at the spot where they were.

CORRESPONDENT (on-camera, looking down and listening to someone we can't hear. He looks up):We have no idea what happened just then, or if it's happening anywhere else. Check back as we continue with coverage of The Event.

This segment was repeated multiple times over the course of the day, with additional comments speculating whether this is the start of a new round of disappearances.

Zero kindness

L.B.: Cruel to be kind, Left Behind, pp. 367-377

Hattie had met Irene twice in the past ten years: she had seemed like the coldest, least affectionate person Hattie had ever met, outside her own family. Rayford never complained about her, or spoke about her in terms that were anything but respectful. Hattie had always liked that in him. He was reliable and kind and generous: it had been quite startling when he'd refused her a donation to the women's health clinic where Pattie worked. Of course he was pro-life, but she'd thought he would have seen the point that the health clinic was, right now, not doing abortions on anyone.

There were any number of times in the past ten years when Rayford had taken her out for a drink, or a meal - just the two of them, not anyone else on the crew: and she'd known he was attracted. But he'd never made a pass: he'd never even said anything suggestive. Three years ago when they both had four unexpected days off in Australia, he'd invited her to spend the time with him, but when they got to the resort, it turned out he had booked two rooms, on different floors of the hotel, exactly as the airline would have done : and though they spent the days together, and his looks were admiring and his conversation intimate, he had still never touched her, never said anything.

Walking into the crew lounge behind Rayford, Hattie was remembering that four-day vacation with peculiar vividness. Each night when he would stop the elevator on her floor, after a day spent exclusively in his company, she had watched his hand going to the controls with excrutiating embarrassment: she had known he wasn't going to leave the elevator with her, that once again she would go to her own room, alone, and stand under the shower with the water dashing into her face and try not to cry. A man should be faithful to his wife. Rayford was behaving very properly. It was wrong of her to be disappointed. But he did care for her - more than he cared for that frozen bitch Irene. She knew he did. They had worked together for so long, and he had been so constant in his attentions to her.

Irene was dead. She hadn't expected Rayford to turn around and propose marriage, but she had thought that there was now hope for them - that in six months or a year, whatever would be proper, Rayford wouldn't do anything that wasn't proper -

From the first time they talked on the phone after Rayford had got home, she had known that wasn't going to happen. In the same way as she had known the first evening they spent together in that Australian resort, that the evening wasn't going to end in him taking her to bed. Rayford was self-controlled, but readable: his tone of voice to her had changed. No longer inviting her into an intimacy that was somehow always just below the sexual, something that had begun some time ago to make her feel that she was being unfaithful to him when she went out with other men: he had sounded cold, distant, dismissive. He had sounded like Irene, both times Hattie had met her. The next few flights she had scheduled were supposed to be on Rayford's plane: she could ask to have them changed, of course, but - she had been flying with him for so long. It had been good for her career. She had never asked to be moved from a flight because she couldn't get along with another member of the crew. Let alone the Captain. And she couldn't say he had said or done anything to her that wasn't proper: everyone would know it wasn't true. It was better, probably, to have this conversation, to get things clear, however painful it was. At least it would be over.

The crew lounge was noisy with conversation. Everyone was still that bit nervous about flying, since the Event. You could hear it in their voices. Rayford led them to a corner where they were unlikely to be overheard, and when she sat down in one overstuffed armchair, he took the chair opposite, and leaned forward, his face cold and serious.

"Hattie, I'm not here to argue with you or even to have a conversation. There are things I must tell you, and I want you just to listen."

He's going to ditch me here. Hattie stared back at Rayford's implacable face. There was no trace of affection there. Was this all in my imagination? Was I just making it up when I thought he cared for me? Does he know I care for him? Hattie mustered a smile. "I don't get to say anything? Because there may be things I'll want you to know, too."

Rayford's expression didn't change. "Of course I'll let you tell me anything you want, but this first part, my part, I don't want to be a dialogue. I have to get some things off my chest, and I want you to get the whole picture before you respond, OK?"

Hattie looked around. No one she knew was within rescue distance. Either she walked out or she took this from Rayford. She shrugged. "I don't see how I have a choice."

"You had a choice, Hattie. You didn't have to come."

Oh, that was just annoying. "I didn't really want to come. I told you that and you left that guilt-trip message, begging me to meet you here."

Rayford looked angry. "You see what I didn't want to get into?" he said, sounding exasperated. "How can I apologize when all you want to do is argue about why you're here?"

Hattie stared at him. She was genuinely startled, and she couldn't keep the sarcastic note out of her voice. "You want to apologize, Rayford? I would never stand in the way of that."

"Yes, I do." Rayford's expression wasn't purely implacable any more, but there was no trace of remorse in it. "Now will you let me?"

Hattie went on staring at him. No. Rayford wasn't apologetic. Not one bit. He was... smug. Self-satisfied. He was sure he was doing the right thing. After a long moment, Hattie nodded.

Rayford nodded an offhand acknowledgement. "Because I want to get through this, to set the record straight, to take all the blame I should, and then I want to tell you what I hinted at on the phone the other night."

It took a moment before Hattie remembered. It had seemed so silly - like some kind of sci-fi thriller. "About how you've discovered what the vanishings are all about."

Rayford lifted his hand, as if this were a meeting and he was the chairman. "Don't get ahead of me."

Instinctively, "Sorry" slipped out of Hattie's mouth. She put her hand over her lips, angry and humiliated. But she didn't want to hear Rayford's theory, whatever it was. "Why don't you just let me hear it when you answer Buck's questions tonight?"

Now Rayford was looking at her with angry contempt. He had actually rolled his eyes, as if she'd said something impossibly stupid.

"I was just wondering," Hattie said defensively. She hated this. "Just a suggestion," she wanted him to stop looking at her like that. "So you don't have to repeat yourself."

Rayford was still looking at her with that peculiar contempt, though he didn't sound angry. He said, in a voice that he probably intended to sound patient and tolerant, as if he were talking to someone very stupid, "I don't mind telling it over and over." Then he grinned, as if at a private joke he didn't plan to share. "And if my guess is right, you won't mind hearing it again and again." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His hands went out in an odd gesture, as if miming taking hold of her as he spoke. "Hattie, I owe you a huge apology, and I want your forgiveness."

But he didn't sound as if he thought he needed it. The smugness in his voice was clear. He had been talking for a few minutes before Hattie could make sense of the words. "...we were friends."

The hell we were. Even though Hattie would have referred to Rayford as "her friend" if she'd had to identify their relationship, she knew, abruptly, that this was wrong. Rayford had never been her friend.

"We enjoyed each other's company." Rayford was still reminiscing. "I loved being with you and spending time with you. I found you beautiful and exciting, and I think you know I was interested in a relationship with you."

No shit. Hattie was seldom profane even in her mind. She actually wanted to slap him. It hadn't escaped her that all of this was in the past tense.

"If I had found you willing, I'd have eventually done something wrong. Yes," Rayford said, emphatically, as if reacting to the expression on her face, "it would have been wrong. I was married, not happily and not successfully, but that was my fault. Still, I had made a vow, a commitment, and no matter how justified my interest in you, it would have been wrong."

How justified your interest? Hattie swallowed. Rayford's voice was condemnatory. Not self-condemnatory. He was looking at her as if she were a dessert and he was on a diet.

He was looking at her as if he were her father. Hattie swallowed again. Oh God. How did it take me so long?

Rayford was like her father. He always had been. She hadn't noticed - she hadn't wanted to notice - and Rayford had never hit her, had never spoken a word of condemnation when she made herself look attractive, had always seemed to approve and like her -

Mom had divorced him when Hattie was fourteen. Hattie and her sisters had had to keep going back to Father for alternate weekend visits. It had taken years after the divorce to accept in her heart that when Father hit her for looking attractive, this wasn't because she was bad. She was attractive, and this wasn't her fault - it was all right to make the most of her looks, it was all right to enjoy the attention she got. So long as it wasn't like Father's.

How had she managed not to notice that Rayford Steele's attention was just like her father's, except that up until now, Rayford hadn't blamed her for being attractive to him?

"It isn't just that we're so far apart in age," Rayford was saying. He still sounded smug. "But the fact is that the only real interest I had in you was physical."

I know. Hattie clenched her hands together in her lap. She was not going to cry. I know now.

"You have a right to hate me for that, and I'm not proud of it." Nothing, apparently, could take the self-satisfaction out of his voice. "I did not love you. You have to agree, that would have been no kind of a life for you."

No. It wasn't. Hattie widened her eyes and bit her tongue. She could feel it: she was going to cry. It was the last thing she wanted to do in front of Rayford. All those times - those long dinners, those shared conversations over coffee, those four days in Australia - she had thought Rayford was fond of her, pleased with her, enjoyed her company, respected her. None of that had been true. She had made it all up. All Rayford had felt, all along, was physical attraction - and she thought he'd probably enjoyed holding her at a distance, enjoying the fact that she would have had sex with him but that he was faithful to his wife. And now his wife was dead, so he couldn't play that game any more.

All that had interested him was the game.

"I'll let you break your silence temporarily," Rayford was saying.

Ironically, Hattie wasn't sure she could speak. She was certain that she couldn't without beginning to cry.

Rayford was smiling. He looked as if her misery was giving him one final shot of satisfaction. "I need to know that you at least forgive me." Then he stopped. Hattie waited, feeling choked. Let Rayford go on, let him finish whatever he had to say, and then she could get out of here.

But he waited, face now implacable. "I'll let you break your silence" had been an order to speak, and Hattie knew she couldn't resist him. Habit was too strong. Even if it meant she couldn't stop herself from crying any longer.

"Sometimes I wonder if honesty is always the best policy," she said. There was a tight lump in her throat. It hurt to speak. It hurt just to sit here. She had known Rayford was going to break it off with her. She should have known better than to agree to meet him. She might have known he would do something like this to her. "I might have been able to accept this if you had just said your wife's disappearance made you feel guilty about what we had going. ... That would have been a kinder way to put it." The only real interest I had in you was physical. She sat still, conscious of a pain inside her so deep and so old it was like an ancient dagger in her heart. How could Rayford not see how he was hurting her? Or didn't he care?

"Kinder but dishonest." Rayford smiled. "Hattie, I'm through being dishonest. Everything in me would rather be kind and gentle and keep you from resenting me."

No. Hattie stared at him in fascination. No, you're enjoying this.

"But I just can't be phony anymore." Rayford sighed. "I was not genuine for years," he told her, as if this was news.

Hattie nearly choked. "And now you are?"

"To the point where it's unattractive to you," Rayford said.

No shit! Hattie nearly said it out loud. If this - this sadist was the genuine Rayford, he was worse than her father. She couldn't speak: she nodded.

"Why would I want to do that?" Rayford mused out loud. "I want to be able to convince you, when I talk about even more important things, that I have no ulterior motives." He gave her a look, a kind of expressionless survey, of her body from her feet upwards, lingering on her breasts, a familiar appraisal: except always before, Rayford had smiled at her as he'd looked her over like that. Always before, he'd said something pleasant, something friendly, even - when it happened on the job - some professional comment. None of that had been genuine. All the friendship, all the affection, all the respect - all of it had been "phony". The only real interest I had in you was physical.

"Hattie," Rayford said. He paused a moment, making sure she was looking at him, and said formally, with almost a theatrical flourish to the words "I'm so sorry. Forgive me."

She nodded, unable to speak. He looked so pleased with himself, she could hardly bear it.

"Now, after all that," Rayford said. He sounded as if he thought this was now over. All ten years of acting as if he cared, done with. He was going to tell Hattie his stupid theory about why the Event happened, and then she could go. But what came out of his mouth was "I somehow have to convince you that I do care for you as a friend and as a person."

It isn't over. Hattie held up both her hands, try ing to get him to stop, fighting not to sob out loud and losing the battle. He wasn't going to stop. Rayford wasn't going to break it off with her. She had to get away. Rayford wouldn't let her go. It was every Friday night arriving at her father's, the barrage of condemnation beginning from when he first set eyes on her: How dare you look so attractive. No matter how modestly she dressed on alternate Fridays, no matter how she scrubbed her face before she left school, no matter what she did or how she behaved, her father would be angry with her. But whenever she asked to stay home, he would be on the phone, or writing letters, angry directives to Mom about keeping his daughter from him, blistering tirades at her for trying to avoid her father. She was sobbing out loud, knowing people were looking at her, colleagues were thinking - God knows what they were thinking. Rayford kept trying to get her to stop, kept telling her that he wanted to tell her what he'd found out about the Event. Sometimes he told her that he wasn't happy she was crying. Her father had always got twice as mad when she cried. It isn't over. It'll never be over.

She got up in the middle of a sentence from Rayford, blurting out "Give me a minute," and headed for the Ladies. It felt like a long walk. The skin around her eyes hurt. She hoped no one in the room knew her well enough to follow her in. She sat down in one of the cubicles, closed and locked the door, bent her head and sobbed out loud, taking in large gulps of air.

It seemed to take a long time. She got up after she seemed to have cried herself out, and went out into the main part of the bathroom. It was empty. Her make-up was a mess. She splashed her eyes with cold water, opened the pack of wipes for emergencies, and set about painstakingly removing every trace of cosmetics from her face, all but scrubbing it. She stared at her bare face in the mirror, realizing what she was doing: preparing to go back to Rayford as she had prepared to go to her father's house on alternate Fridays.

Why? She looked at her face in the mirror, puffy-eyed and wrecked. She wanted to get away: to escape. To go home. Call in sick. To spend tonight curled up with comfort food and a glass of wine and a familiar movie. She could call her friends - though it would be humiliating to have to tell them: that married man's wife died and he ditched me.

She bent over, clutching at the edge of the sink, and heard herself make a noise. It was almost like vomiting. "Please," she said out loud. "Just let me go."

She thought about doing it. She'd picked up her purse when she fled. Her jacket was still hanging over the chair. She could just let it go: walk out, go home. She didn't have enough cash in her purse to pay another cab, but she knew all the airport shuttle services, and airline staff could always bum a ride. Go home.

He'll only make me come back.

If she faced him now - got him to say whatever he wanted to say, get this done with - wouldn't it be over? Couldn't they finish here and now?

Hattie faced herself in the mirror, took her compact and her lipstick out of the purse, and began, with concentration, to redo her face. Her hand was trembling at first - but she kept going, and finally achieved something close to her usual appearance. She was not going to cry again. Let Rayford say what he wanted to say. Then they would be done.

Rayford was looking at a book, she saw, when she came back into the main room. He was leafing through it, stopping to read parts of it, turning pages again. He didn't look up until she was quite close to him. It was an old fashioned looking book, bound in leather. He was smiling as he read, with apparent pleasure, but when he glanced up and saw her he put the book away.

Hattie sat down where she had sat before. Rayford leaned forward, again, and said with the same kind of flourish - the same smugness - "I'm very sincere, Hattie. I need to know you forgive me."

It was almost funny. Almost, Hattie smiled. "You seem really hung up on that, Rayford. Would that let you off the hook, ease your conscience?"

"I guess maybe it would," Rayford said. He sounded impatient. "Maybe it would tell me you believe I'm sincere."

Hattie looked at him. Captain Steele, handsome, serious, ageing well. She didn't think he was sincere. If his past friendliness had been a pose, this was too. But she didn't want to get into a fight with him. She wanted it to be over. It wasn't even difficult to get the words out. "I believe it. And I don't hold grudges, so I guess that's forgiveness." She couldn't quite bring herself to say the words outright.

"I'll take what I can get," Rayford said.

No shit! Hattie's inner voice said, almost hysterically.

Rayford's hands came together, an odd, steepled class. "Now I want to be very honest with you."

"Uh-oh, there's more?" Hattie managed to say it lightly. It was that or scream. She could not take another bout of honesty from Rayford about how he'd really felt about her for the past ten years. "Or is this where you educate me about what happened last week?" Once Rayford was on to that, they were on the home stretch.

"Yes." Rayford nodded.

Thank God. Just let him get this said, and we're done. "Does this require some reaction?" Hattie asked. "Do I have to buy into your idea or something?"

Rayford looked at her with that kind of gentle contempt again, and lifted his hand, unclasping it. "Now, Hattie, you were going to be quiet - "

"No, really," Hattie said. "Do you want me to say anything? Do anything? Or do I just have to listen to you?" And then I can go and we're done?

Rayford's smile almost looked sincere. He was looking at her with a kind of pleasant contempt. "Just listen to me. If it's something you can't handle right now, I'll understand. But I think you'll see the urgency of it."

Hattie settled herself back into the chair, and propped her chin on her hand. She stared at Rayford. She wouldn't say a word: he could talk as long as he liked: and when he said he was done - he couldn't talk forever! - they'd be done.

"When I got home that night, and found my wife and my son gone, I knew what had happened. I knew even before - I guessed, anyway. Irene knew. She warned me. Thank God she got through to Raymie, even if Chloe didn't listen to her. This was the Rapture, Hattie. All the warnings my wife gave me, and I didn't listen. That's why I was left behind. That's why all of us were left behind." He paused and looked at her, as if expecting her to respond.

Hattie said nothing. She didn't move. This wasn't the first time she'd heard this theory to explain the Event: she'd heard people arguing it back and forth. She wondered if Rayford knew the Pope had gone in the Event, and if he had an explanation for that: most of the people she knew who believed in the Rapture were evangelicals who thought Catholics were going to hell.

"I called my wife's church." Rayford went on again. He told her at some length about how he had been going to this church for years, with Irene, but he hadn't been sincere, he hadn't paid attention. The preacher, like most of the other people who had attended the church, had vanished in the Event, but a junior pastor hadn't vanished, and he and Rayford had evidently been seeing a lot of each other. There was a videotape the old preacher had made, to explain what had happened to those who had been left behind. "I can let you have a copy of it," Rayford added. "You have to see it."

Hattie sat still. She looked at Rayford. He wanted her to be quiet while he talked: fine. Her silence made him angry: it amused her, in a distant, almost satisfying kind of way.

"Bruce and I have been studying together. He's told me about what will happen to us, to the whole world, very soon." Rayford went on, at length, outlining fantasy after fantasy - he really was crazy, Hattie thought suddenly, with odd detachment. He had even linked in some trivial event from tonight's CNN, two guys who were standing by the Wailing Wall in East Jerusalem holding a religious filibuster, claiming these were "the preachers in Israel", prophesied in Revelations. It was some absolutely trivial wrap-up anecdote, someone had happened to be there with a camera and there were a few yards of footage to use up: there had been some kind of almost slapstick event, funny if it weren't tragic, where two men who had tried to remove the nutters had dropped dead. Rayford seemed to think this was some kind of fulfillment of a prophecy about men with fire coming out of their mouths. He went on about it at some length, saying it was the most amazing thing he'd ever seen.

Not the most amazing thing I'd ever seen, Hattie thought, staring at him, still not moving a muscle. The most amazing thing I've ever seen is when I was staring right at these people, that night just a week ago, and they disappeared. I heard the air rush in where they'd been. I saw their clothing fall without them inside it.

Was this the Rapture? Hattie had time to think about it while Rayford was talking. She watched his mouth move, half-listened to him go on and on. He wasn't saying anything really new, unless you counted the amount of obscure Biblical trivia he'd unearthed. What it came down to, she decided, as she had decided before, was that if this was something God had done - the dazed, shocked parents, the women who had been pregnant weeping for their lost children, the accidents they had seen, the bloody corpses they had had to walk over on their way back to the terminal: if this was something God had done, Hattie was against God. But there was no more reason to believe this was God than there was to believe it was space aliens. Hadn't that wonderful man at the UN come up with an explanation that made just a natural phenomenon? No one really knew, that was the truth. But if someone had done this, they were evil.

Eventually, Rayford ran to a halt. It was clear that if Hattie had given him any encouragement, he would have gone on for longer, but in the face of her stillness and silence, he was running out of energy. He said finally, "Hattie, I want you to think about it, consider it, watch the tape, talk to Bruce if you want to. I can't make you believe. All I can do is make you aware of what I have come to accept as the truth."

He was done. Finally. Hattie sat back and sighed. Maybe he was crazy, he probably was - and this leant a new color to his absolute rejection of her, too - but she really thought he was sincere about this. He was really trying to save her. "Well, that's sweet, Rayford. It really is. I appreciate your telling me all that."

She really did. Losing Irene had made him crazy - this Bruce guy had probably taken advantage of his vulnerability. She couldn't even be sure any more that he really meant it when he said all his pretending to like her, all these years, had been phony: maybe he was just reacting to his wife having died. She wasn't going to forget soon how he'd enjoyed making her cry over it. At least, she thought, contemplating her new, cold determination, she hoped she wasn't going to forget it.

But they really were done. And at last, she could go. She stared a moment at Rayford, thinking of her father. Although she'd known she could stop going to see him after her 18th birthday, she'd kept going, for months; she'd only stopped when she'd realized she didn't have to go to college, keep taking his money, keep depending on him. She could just... leave. She'd become a flight attendant. She'd met Rayford. For ten years, she'd let Rayford... not love her.

She was done.

The Monologue

"Did you really think you could get away with this?" Captain Rayford Steele sneered.

Dr. Nicholas Ozark rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't have tried it if I hadn't thought I could get away with it, would I?" He fixed his gaze on Steele. "Just tell me one thing, Captain. What was the point of all this?"

Steele smirked. "Willing to try anything to grab on to a few more precious moments of life, eh, Doctor? Even condescend to listen to a simple airline pilot?" Ozark saw Steele's face twitch, and he knew that behind the pilot's smirking expression there was a boiling cauldron of rage. But the hands, he noticed, remained steady, and the barrels of the machine pistols remained pointed at his head.

"You want to know the point of all this?" Steele continued. "Fine. You can consider this your last request before your execution.

"Before the Rapture came, I was a man just like you. I went to church, but I didn't really believe. I did my job, I raised my kids, I lived my life, just like any other man. Then the Lord took away my wife and son, and I realized that we were living in the Last Days. It's all right there in the Bible, if you know where to look, and my wife knew. We've all got to prepare, Doctor. We've all got to prepare. The Antichrist is coming, coming to bring tribulation to those who've been left behind by the Lord. And it's our duty, Doctor, our duty as Christians, to resist the Antichrist's call. He will come, Doctor. He will come. He could be anyone. He could even be you." Steele suddenly burst out laughing. "But I don't think so. The Antichrist has got his role to play in the Last Days, and in a few minutes you, Doctor, aren't going to be playing any role at all."

"All right," said Ozark cautiously, "I get that. It's the Rapture, and the Tribulations are coming. The Antichrist is going to rise. What will you do then?"

"Fight him, of course!" Steele said, and his blue eyes burned with the zealot's fire. "Resist him! That, Doctor, is what all this, as you put it, is about. Those few remaining Christians will be called upon to resist, and so I've built my organization, my Tribulation Force as I call it. When we've identified the Antichrist, we'll be in position to attack him, and all his works." Steele's voice, which had been ringing out, fell to a conversational level. "We suspect that he'll be taking over the United Nations. That's why I've taken the liberty of seizing control of it."

And slaughtered all the delegates and staff, Ozark remembered. At the time, it had seemed nothing more than a piece of insane butchery, but Ozark realized that within Steele's frame of reference, there was a certain twisted logic to it.

"Captain," said Ozark, "are you certain about that?"

"About what?" Steele seemed momentarily set aback, as though he weren't expecting Ozark to interrupt his monologue.

"About the Antichrist taking over the United Nations."

"The Book of Revelations says that he will rule the world, and that's what the United Nations does."

Ozark had to resist the temptation to correct Steele. Instead, with a sudden burst of inspiration, he said, "But, Captain, you've just taken over the United Nations."

"Well, yes, but just so that . . . "

"The Antichrist will take over the UN, just like you've done. Don't you see, Captain? It's you! You are the Antichrist!"

"Me?" Steele shook his head, as though trying to shake loose Ozark's idea. The two machine pistols wavered. Ozark knew that his chance had come, and that he had to seize it. He had worked his right foot out of his shoe, and now he kicked it into Steele's face. The pilot fell back, firing the machine pistols as he did so. Two streams of bullets stitched their way up the compartment's walls.

Ozark turned, slammed down the automatic release on the hatch, and leaped through it into the starry night beyond. He was blasted by the turbulent air, flung about helplessly. There was a sharp pain in his ears from the sudden drop in pressure, and he worked his jaw until his ears popped. He felt disoriented as he tumbled through the empty sky, Steele's flying command center long gone. He cracked open his eyes, and found that he was floating on his back, the night sky above him. Unzipping the pocket of his parka, he fished out the lab goggles and fitted them over his head. Then he twisted his body until he was looking down at the ground, the wind of his passage screaming past his ears.

If his calculations were correct, The Pinnacle should have been passing over Nebraska when he jumped. He could see a few sparks of light, small towns separated by huge tracts of land. In all likelihood, he'd land in an empty cornfield somewhere, miles away from any other people. It couldn't be helped.

Stolidly, Dr. Nicholas Ozark waited as the unseen ground rose up to greet him.

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The Pinnacle

Dr. Nicholas Ozark ducked down behind a partition as one of Steele's goons clumped his way down the aisle. If it had been daytime, Ozark knew, the guard would have had no trouble spottting him; but Steele kept the converted jetliner in near darkness at night. Probably force of habit, Ozark thought, from the days when Steele had been an ordinary airline pilot, and The Pinnacle had been an ordinary 747.

As he slowly stood up and resumed moving up the aisle, Ozark could feel the packing tape tug on the skin of his back. It might not have been the most elegant solution to the problem of smuggling the Israeli scientist's formula to the world, but it was the best he and Hattie had been able to contrive.

Ozark felt rather than heard the clumping footsteps of the guard returning up the aisle, and he slipped behind a steel cabinet. When the guard was gone, Ozark followed him towards the front of the plane. In moments, he reached the partition that had once separated the business class passengers from first class. He ducked beneath a counter, and waited while the guard passed by on his way back to the tail section.

Springing up, Ozark hurried up to the hatch just aft of the pilot's cabin. The parachute, he was relieved to see, was still hidden beneath the drink trolley, yet another relic of The Pinnacle's days as a passenger jetliner. He had just shrugged himself into the harness and was turning to face the hatch, when the lights came up in a sudden luminous explosion.

"Turn around slowly," a familiar voice ordered, as pain stabbed into Ozark's eyes. "And keep your hands where I can see them."

Turning, Ozark could make out through streaming tears the tall figure in his stylized black pilot's uniform. Each hand, he saw, held a machine pistol.

"So, Doctor Ozark," said Rayford Steele, "we meet again."

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Transcript

Q: This is Buck Williams interviewing Doctor Nicholas Ozark at, uh, one fifteen AM on the morning of Thursday the, uh twenty-second. Hello, Doctor Ozark.

A: Hello, Buck.

Q: Doctor Ozark, I'd like to start things off by asking how you first learned about the, uh . . .

A: Synergistic field effect.

Q: Synergistic field effect, usually abbreviated as SFE. You know, I've heard people say that SFE really stands for "scary freaking Event".

A: You can say "fucking", Buck, I've heard the word before. I do work on a college campus, after all. Some of the business majors don't seem to know any other adjectives.

Q: Ah, ah, yes. Anyway, as I was saying, I'd be interested to hear how you first learned about the SFE.

A: It was after the Russian nuclear attack on Israel. With all that megatonnage going off, there should have been a huge spike in radiation levels around the world. There was, but not enough to account for all the radiation that was released.

Q: At the time, as I recall, there were theories that whatever defense the Israelis used might have absorbed some of the radiation.

A: That's right, but it was hard to construct a coherent hypothesis since nobody knew just what the Israelis did. I decided to assume that the Israeli defense, whatever it was, didn't absorb any radiation at all, that some other effect accounted for the missing radiation. What I eventually discovered was that the radiation was interacting with the Earth's magnetic field, and with the various electromagnetic fields produced by electrical equipment, and wound up being absorbed by living tissue.

Q: Can you explain in a nontechnical way how that works?

A: I can try. Basically, gamma rays are high-energy photons. They're affected by electromagnetic fields. Due to the SFE, the gamma rays were being directed towards the nervous systems of living organisms, and being absorbed by them. The result was something like the laser effect. The atoms making up the brain cells and nerve cells had their electrons raised to higher energy levels. Eventually, they reached a saturation point, and all the electrons returned to their original energy levels, giving off the energy they had absorbed all in one massive burst. It was like their nerve cells had all turned into lasers, and the energy caused their bodies to disintegrate.

Q: If all living organisms were affected, why did only people disappear? And why only certain people?

A: Because humans have the most complex nervous systems of any organism. We attracted the most radiation, and that meant that the saturation point hit us first.

Q: By "hit us first", do you mean to say that other species can expect the same thing to happen to them?

A: I think not. Once the saturation point was reached in humans, the synergistic effects that allowed the energy buildup to occur in the first place were dissipated. Unless we get another sudden burst of gamma radiation from another two thousand nuclear warheads going off at once, the synergistic field effect is gone for good.

Q: Okay, now, how does this explain why only certain people were affected. Why was every child under twelve affected, for instance?

A: The fact that their nervous systems were still developing made them particularly vulnerable.

Q: And how about those over twelve? About ten percent of them were also affected. Why that ten percent?

A: The answer to that isn't as clear. There seems to have been a secondary effect that came into play, a particular type of metal ornament interacted with all the other effects, and that led to people over twelve reaching the saturation point at the same time as the children.

Q: And the metal ornament in question was a cross?

A: A common type of pectoral cross, yes, typically associated with certain Protestant Christian sects.

Q: Now, when did you become aware that the saturation point, as you call it, was coming?

A: I first became aware that it was a possibility about two months ago. I didn't know for certain that it was going to happen. The Event itself was as much a surprise to me as it was to everyone else. I was still trying to figure out whether the Event might actually happen when it happened.

Q: What was your reaction when the Event occurred?

A: Horror. Guilt.

Q: Guilt? You felt guilty?

A: I still feel guilty. I know it's not rational. I know, intellectually, that I did everything that it was possible for me to do. But still, I was the only one in the world who even knew something was wrong. I was the only one who could have done something to stop it, and I didn't.

Q: Could you have stopped it? Knowing now what you know?

A: In theory, we could have kept the saturation point from being reached by shutting down enough electromagnetic fields. As a practical matter, that would have meant shutting down most of the world's power plants. Our whole civilization would have ground to a halt, causing even more death and destruction than the Event has.

Q: So there was going to be a massive catastrophe, no matter what.

A: That's right. As soon as the Russians set off their nuclear arsenal, the countdown to the Event began. At the time, as you'll recall, everyone thought that the world had managed to avoid a disaster, but it turned out that the disaster wasn't avoided, only delayed.

Q: But at least we don't have to worry about the Event being repeated.

A: Well, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons around the world, most of them here in the United States. If they were launched, it would start the countdown to another Event like the one we just went through.

Q: But nobody in his right mind would launch another nuclear attack, not after what just happened.

A: Somebody in Russia set off the first attack, and they had every reason to expect that the result would be every bit as catastrophic as the Event has been. The only way to be certain that there won't be a repetition of the Event would be the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Q: Do you think that's likely to happen?

A: Before the Event, I would have said not. Now that we've had firsthand experience of the effects, and know the cause, I think the leaders of the world's nuclear powers are going to have to give it some serious thought.

Q: Is that what you'll be telling President Fitzhugh when you meet him on Saturday?

A: Among other things, yes.

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