ACT 3 — CONTINUITY HOLD

The door opened like it had been waiting for permission from the wrong century.

Not quickly.

Not theatrically.

Just inward, with a low mechanical drag that scraped through the chamber beyond and came back altered by depth. The sound had too much space behind it. More than the door’s thickness suggested. More than the corridor layout allowed.

Ace did not enter.

That was rare enough that Mai noticed before she noticed the room.

Ace stood at the threshold with both katanas drawn, green light low along the blades, violet eyes fixed into the dark. Her stance was not defensive. Not exactly. It was the posture of someone who had found an animal track in ash and did not yet know whether the animal was behind her, ahead of her, or extinct for the wrong reasons.

Mai kept the disruptor raised.

Shammy did not move at all.

The darkness beyond the door did not feel like ordinary unlit space. It felt curated. Preserved. A darkness that had paperwork.

Mai hated it immediately.

“Lights,” she said quietly.

The command was not aimed at anyone in particular.

A strip of overhead lamps answered anyway.

One by one, they flickered on down the length of the chamber.

Weak white.
Cold.
Clinical.

The Continuity Hold revealed itself in pieces.

First the chairs.

Six of them, arranged along the left wall, each built with a Foundation logic Mai recognized without wanting to: restraint, monitoring, redundancy, psychological observation. Not torture equipment. That would have been easier. These were medical chairs designed by people who had convinced themselves that compassion and containment were not natural enemies.

Then the rigs.

Cables hung from ceiling tracks above the chairs, bundled into neural interface crowns, cranial clamps, signal amplifiers, and old-fashioned biometric monitors. Some had melted. Some had been cut. One had been wrapped in yellowing tape covered with handwritten warnings.

Then the cases.

Small containment safes lined the far wall, each with three locks: mechanical, digital, and symbolic. Several were open. One had been welded shut from the outside.

At the center of the room stood a glass containment column.

Empty.

Not broken.

Empty with ceremony.

Mai stepped inside first.

Ace’s head snapped toward her.

Mai felt the motion more than saw it.

“I’m not touching anything.”

“That has historically meant you will touch something after describing why it is different.”

Mai looked back.

Ace’s face was very serious.

Unfortunately, she was also correct.

“I will not touch anything without saying so.”

“That is less comforting than you think.”

Shammy entered behind them, and the room changed.

The stale cold did not vanish, but it became measurable. The air gained weight. Dust drifted with direction. A loose cable moved once and stopped. Shammy’s presence did not challenge the room. It reminded the room that presence existed.

The lights steadied.

Only slightly.

Enough.

Mai moved toward the central column.

A label plate at its base had been scratched almost clean.

Almost.

She crouched.

The first layer read:

CONTINUITY VESSEL HOLD

The second, printed over it:

PERSONNEL PERSISTENCE INTERFACE

The third, stamped in black:

WELLNESS RECOVERY STORAGE

The fourth, appearing as she watched:

NO DEVICE INSTALLED

Mai closed her eyes for half a second.

Then she opened the notebook and wrote:

CENTRAL COLUMN — CONTINUITY VESSEL HOLD. EMPTY. LABEL ACTIVELY CORRECTING.

The words trembled.

She pressed the pen harder.

The ink held.

Ace came closer, scanning the room with both blades angled down.

“Empty column.”

“Yes.”

“But not irrelevant.”

“No.”

Ace looked at the glass.

There were fingerprints on the inside.

That changed the room again.

Not many.

Five, maybe six. Near human hand height, if the person inside had been standing. Or pressed. Or waking. The prints were pale with old residue, impossible to date by eye.

Ace leaned in.

“Mai.”

“I see them.”

“Inside.”

“Yes.”

The correction field did not touch the fingerprints.

Interesting.

Terrible.

Shammy stood near the column and lifted one hand toward the glass but stopped short.

“It remembers skin.”

Mai looked at her.

Shammy’s eyes had gone distant, charged blue dimming into something almost gray at the edges.

“Not the person. Skin. Pressure. A boundary.”

Ace’s face tightened.

“That sounds like someone was inside.”

Mai stood.

“Or something using a host body was inside.”

The moment she said it, the wall terminal woke.

No one had touched it.

The screen stuttered to life with a low whine and a wash of dead pixels.

White text on black.

ARCHIVE ACCESS REQUEST DETECTED

Then:

NO ARCHIVE PRESENT

Then:

CONTINUITY HOLD EMERGENCY MIRROR ACTIVE

Then:

PERSONNEL ARE REMINDED THAT THERE IS NO SITE-5

Ace turned both blades toward the terminal.

Mai moved faster.

“Wait.”

The screen blinked.

A degraded login appeared.

IDENTITY CONTINUITY ASSET — 963
RESTRICTED / LEVEL O5-DERIVED / LOCAL MIRROR ONLY

The text began correcting.

PERSONNEL WELLNESS PENDANT INVENTORY

Mai slapped her notebook against the side of the terminal, opened to a blank page, and wrote the original phrase as fast as her hand could move.

IDENTITY CONTINUITY ASSET — 963

The terminal froze on both versions.

Split between them.

Ace watched over Mai’s shoulder.

“963.”

Mai’s voice was low. “Yes.”

“That’s Bright.”

“Not exactly.”

Ace looked at her.

Mai did not look away from the screen.

“SCP-963 is the artifact. Bright is the person associated with it.”

“That distinction feels like something this room would enjoy abusing.”

“It already has.”

The terminal clicked.

A file opened without request.

BRIGHT PROTOCOL — LOCAL FAILURE SUMMARY

The screen distorted.

Mai read fast, not aloud yet.

Her lips tightened.

Ace waited three seconds.

“Mai.”

She lifted one hand.

The text scrolled in broken chunks.

TRANSFER EVENT: INCOMPLETE
HOST MATCH: DISPUTED
PERSONNEL SELF-REPORT: UNRELIABLE
MEMORY CONTINUITY: PARTIAL
BEHAVIORAL SIGNATURE: CONFLICTING
AUTHORIZATION VOICEPRINT: ACCEPTED / REJECTED / ACCEPTED / REJECTED
DO NOT RESTORE WITHOUT CONSENT

Then the whole file corrected:

PERSONNEL WELLNESS REVIEW — NO ACTION REQUIRED

Ace’s jaw tightened.

“Do not restore without consent,” she said.

Mai nodded.

“That line matters.”

“Because it sounds ethical?”

“Because it survived the correction long enough to repeat.”

Shammy stepped closer to the terminal.

The screen flickered when she did.

Not away from her.

Toward her.

As if the system recognized environmental pressure and did not know what department to file it under.

A small speaker inside the terminal crackled.

Static.

Then a voice.

“Dr. Jack Bright credentials accepted.”

Ace’s blades lifted.

Mai went still.

The voice continued, warped by damage, old audio, bad reconstruction, and something worse than all three.

“Please confirm host identity.”

Static.

A second voice answered.

Not Bright.

Not anyone whole.

“I am—”

The speaker screamed.

Not loud.
High.

A thin electronic scream that made Ace’s teeth hurt and Shammy’s hair flare outward in a sudden static bloom.

Mai covered the speaker with one hand, then pulled back before touching it.

The audio returned.

“I am authorized personnel.”

The terminal text updated:

SELF-REPORT REJECTED

Then:

SELF-REPORT ACCEPTED

Then:

SELF-REPORT REJECTED

Then:

NO PERSONNEL ASSIGNED

The voice spoke again.

Almost amused this time.

Almost.

“Come on. You know me.”

Ace’s expression changed.

Mai saw it.

The room saw it too, somehow.

Ace said, “No.”

The voice paused.

Static.

Then:

“You sure?”

Ace took one step toward the terminal.

Mai caught her wrist.

Ace did not look away from the screen.

“That is not him.”

Mai’s hand stayed around her wrist.

“No.”

“It’s wearing his outline.”

“Yes.”

The speaker crackled.

“Rude.”

Shammy’s eyes narrowed.

“That was not a recording.”

Mai’s face went colder.

“No.”

Ace smiled.

A small, horrible smile.

“Finally. Something stupid enough to talk.”

Mai tightened her grip.

“Do not answer it emotionally.”

“I am not emotional.”

“Ace.”

“I am professionally offended.”

The terminal printed a new line:

UNAUTHORIZED EMOTIONAL RESPONSE DETECTED

Ace stared.

Then laughed once.

Flat.

“Oh, I hate this room.”

Mai stepped in front of the terminal.

“Identify process.”

The screen answered:

CONTINUITY RECOVERY MIRROR

Then:

PERSONNEL SUPPORT INTERFACE

Then:

NO ACTIVE PROCESS

Mai wrote:

ACTIVE PROCESS SELF-DENIES. POSSIBLE 963-RELATED MIRROR / FAILED HOST AUTHENTICATION / IDENTITY ECHO.

The words held poorly.

Shammy placed her palm against the table beside the terminal. Not on the machine. On the physical surface.

The lights steadied again.

The text stopped crawling for three seconds.

Mai used them.

“Was a 963 transfer attempted at Site-5?”

The terminal showed:

YES

Then:

NO

Then:

TRANSFER RECORD NOT FOUND

Then:

THERE IS NO SITE-5

Ace leaned in from behind Mai.

“But did someone stand in that column?”

The terminal froze.

Shammy looked toward the glass column.

The fingerprints on the inside grew darker.

Not new.

More visible.

The terminal answered:

HOST PRESENT

Then corrected:

NO HOST ASSIGNED

Then:

HOST PRESENT

Then:

HOST NEVER PRESENT

Then:

HOST PRESENT

Mai whispered, “It cannot resolve physical occupancy.”

Ace’s eyes stayed on the fingerprints.

“Because the body was real.”

“Or the pressure of it was.”

Shammy’s voice was quiet.

“Someone was there long enough for the room to fail at forgetting contact.”

The terminal speaker crackled again.

“Consent required.”

Mai looked at it.

The voice was different now.

Not amused.

Not Bright-shaped.

Not even human-shaped in the ordinary sense.

Just words from a process that had repeated itself too long and worn grooves into its own purpose.

“Consent required. Consent unavailable. Host disputed. Identity disputed. Site disputed. Preserve. Deny. Preserve. Deny. Preserve. Deny.”

The lights flickered in rhythm with the words.

Preserve.
Deny.
Preserve.
Deny.

Ace’s skin prickled.

The room was not haunted.

She would have preferred haunted.

A ghost was a thing that had died badly and refused the paperwork.

This was paperwork that had outlived the person.

Mai understood it before she said it.

“This wing is the contradiction core.”

Ace glanced at her.

Mai spoke faster now, but not info-dump fast. Discovery fast. The kind where the idea arrived sharp enough to cut the air.

“Site-5 contains things that must remain contained. The correction process denies the site exists. But continuity assets require recognition. Identity requires witness. 963 cannot function inside total denial.”

Ace looked at the empty column.

“So it tried to preserve and erase the same person.”

“Yes.”

The terminal printed:

PRESERVE HAZARDOUS CONTINUITY

Then:

DENY HAZARDOUS CONTINUITY

Then both at once, overlaid so densely the text became a white wound.

Shammy stepped back.

The air in the room tightened too far.

Ace felt it in her lungs.

“Shammy?”

“The room is breathing through the wrong memory.”

Mai looked at the ceiling.

The vents had started moving air.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Not ventilation.

Imitation.

A facility trying to remember how bodies worked.

Ace put herself between Mai and the central column without thinking.

The terminal speaker whispered:

“State name for continuity verification.”

No one answered.

A second whisper, from another speaker near the chairs:

“State name for continuity verification.”

Then another.

Near the far safes:

“State name for continuity verification.”

The room repeated it in overlapping fragments.

“State name.”
“Continuity verification.”
“State name.”
“Host match.”
“State name.”
“Consent required.”
“State name.”
“There is no—”
“State name.”

Mai’s notebook trembled in her hand.

Ink crawled across the page.

ACE — UNAUTHORIZED SECURITY ASSET

Ace saw it.

Her name had not been written there.

The words appeared anyway.

Below it:

MAI — TEMPORARY SYSTEMS ANALYST

Then:

SHAMATERAZU — ENVIRONMENTAL IRREGULARITY / NON-PERSONNEL

The room had stopped asking.

It had begun filing.

Ace’s blades came up.

Mai stared at the page.

For half a second, the correction reached her face.

Not visibly.

Structurally.

Her posture shifted by a fraction. Shoulders aligning, gaze narrowing, breath becoming task-shaped. Temporary systems analyst. A label almost flattering enough to be dangerous.

Ace moved before thought.

She stabbed the notebook through Mai’s name.

Hard.

The blade punched through paper, cover, and the metal worktable beneath.

Mai jerked.

The label stopped crawling.

Ace’s voice was low.

“You are not temporary.”

Mai looked at the blade.

Then at Ace.

For one second, the room’s process pushed against her expression.

Then Mai smiled.

Tiny.

Furious.

Correct.

“No,” she said. “I am not.”

Shammy’s label continued to grow.

ENVIRONMENTAL IRREGULARITY / NON-PERSONNEL / ATMOSPHERIC EVENT / NO STAFF INTERACTION REQUIRED

Shammy’s eyes flashed electric blue.

“Absolutely not.”

The air changed.

Not violently.

Intimately.

Pressure moved through the room like a hand closing around a pulse. Dust lifted from the floor and hung in place. The stale cold gained temperature, not heat, but proof that heat was possible. Every breath in the chamber became suddenly undeniable.

The terminal text faltered.

ATMOSPHERIC EVENT

Then:

PERSONNEL PRES—

Then:

ERROR

Shammy’s voice dropped.

“I am not weather you can misfile.”

Ace grinned despite the situation.

Mai tore the impaled notebook page free and wrote over all three labels with heavy strokes:

ACE — PRESENT
MAI — PRESENT
SHAMATERAZU — PRESENT

The correction tried to change present into processed.

Ace pressed the flat of her katana over the word.

Shammy kept the air steady.

Mai wrote it again.

PRESENT.

This time, it held.

The room did not like that.

The lights went red.

A deeper alarm finally woke, not loud, but heavy enough to move through the bones of the facility.

The terminal displayed:

VISITOR MISCLASSIFICATION FAILURE

Then:

CONTAINMENT LOGIC ESCALATION

Then:

NO VISITORS PRESENT

Then:

NO VISITORS PRESENT

Then:

NO VISITORS PRESENT

The door behind them slammed shut.

Ace looked over her shoulder.

“Finally. Honesty.”

Mai pulled the notebook free and tucked it inside her jacket.

“You call that honesty?”

“It wants us trapped. It trapped us. Clear communication.”

The central glass column lit from within.

Fingerprints shone on the inside like pale constellations.

The empty column was not empty anymore.

Not occupied.

Worse.

Outlined.

A human absence stood inside it.

Not a ghost. Not a person. Not a hologram.

The negative shape of someone the room had tried too hard to keep.

Shammy inhaled sharply.

Mai lifted the disruptor.

Ace did not move toward it.

That surprised her.

The absence in the column tilted its head.

The terminal spoke with the wrong Bright voice again.

“Do I know you?”

Ace’s answer came instantly.

“No.”

Static.

“Do you know me?”

Mai’s voice was quiet.

“No.”

Static.

“Then why am I still here?”

Nobody answered.

That was the first question in the room that sounded like it deserved pity.

Ace hated that too.

Pity made blades clumsy.

Mai stepped forward one pace.

Ace said, “Careful.”

“I know.”

Mai looked at the column.

“You are not a person we can authenticate.”

The absence held still.

Mai continued.

“You are a process built around a failed continuity event.”

The terminal flickered.

FALSE

Then:

TRUE

Then:

INCOMPLETE

Shammy whispered, “Incomplete.”

The word suited the room too well.

Ace’s blades lowered by a fraction.

Mai said, “We cannot restore you.”

The column lights dimmed.

The wrong voice asked, softer now:

“Consent?”

Mai swallowed.

There it was again.

Not ethics as decoration.

A remaining boundary.

A line someone had written into the system deeply enough that even Site-5 could not fully erase it.

Mai looked at Ace.

Ace understood the look and hated it.

Mai was asking whether mercy was safe.

Ace did not know.

So she answered honestly, not kindly.

“If we try to help it, the site uses us.”

Mai nodded once.

Shammy looked at the absence.

“If we deny it, we become part of the room.”

That was worse.

Silence spread.

The alarm continued, low and patient.

Mai closed her eyes.

When she opened them, her expression had changed.

Not softer.

More exact.

“We do neither.”

Ace smiled slightly.

“There she is.”

Mai moved to the terminal.

The process reacted immediately.

UNAUTHORIZED SYSTEMS ANALYST

Ace raised one blade.

The text corrected itself.

PRESENT ENTITY — MAI

“Learning,” Ace said.

“Under duress,” Mai replied.

She connected nothing digital. No cables. No wireless handshake. Nothing the site could swallow.

Instead, she opened the physical ledger from the archive room and placed it beside the terminal.

Paper to machine.

Damage to correction.

Then she wrote a new line in the ledger:

963-RELATED CONTINUITY PROCESS IDENTIFIED. NOT RESTORED. NOT DENIED. HELD AS UNRESOLVED PENDING CONSENT THAT CANNOT CURRENTLY BE VERIFIED.

The room shuddered.

The terminal screamed in text.

INVALID STATE

Mai wrote again.

UNRESOLVED IS NOT ABSENT.

The alarm faltered.

Ace stared at the sentence.

It was not dramatic.

It was not clean.

It was not satisfying in the way killing something was satisfying when killing was actually the right verb.

But it struck the room directly in its broken logic.

Preserve or deny.

Mai had offered neither.

She had given it pending.

The most bureaucratic weapon imaginable.

Ace almost laughed.

The central column flickered.

The human absence inside it blurred, sharpened, blurred again.

The wrong voice said:

“Pending?”

Mai answered, “Pending.”

The terminal tried to correct:

NO ACTION REQUIRED

Mai wrote:

ACTION DEFERRED BY CONSENT FAILURE

The correction stalled.

Shammy stepped closer to the column and placed one hand against the outer glass.

Ace tensed.

Shammy did not look away.

“I cannot make you breathe,” she said softly.

The absence tilted its head toward her.

“But I can stop the room from pretending you never needed air.”

The glass fogged under her palm.

Not from temperature.

From presence.

For one second, the fingerprints inside the column aligned with Shammy’s hand outside it.

Then the lights inside the column went dark.

The absence vanished.

Not erased.

Filed differently.

The terminal displayed one final line:

BRIGHT PROTOCOL: DO NOT RESTORE WITHOUT CONSENT.

Then:

STATUS: UNRESOLVED

Then the correction tried to overwrite it.

NO PERSONNEL RECORD

Ace drove her katana into the terminal casing before the line completed.

Sparks spat sideways.

The screen froze with both states visible.

STATUS: UNRESOLVED
NO PERSONNEL—

Mai exhaled.

Shammy removed her hand from the glass.

For a moment, the room was only a room.

Cold.
Damaged.
Full of equipment built by people who had believed anything could be controlled if named precisely enough.

Ace pulled the blade from the terminal.

“Did we just save it?”

Mai looked at the frozen screen.

“No.”

“Did we kill it?”

“No.”

Ace nodded.

“Pending.”

Mai gave her a tired look.

“Do not enjoy that word.”

“I am enjoying the use of it as a weapon.”

“That is worse.”

Shammy turned toward the sealed door.

“It is not done with us.”

The door label had changed.

It now read:

MISCLASSIFIED ENTITIES REMAIN ACTIVE

Then:

CORRECTION REQUIRED

The wall safes began unlocking.

One after another.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Ace turned toward the sound.

“Oh, come on.”

Mai lifted the disruptor.

Shammy stepped back from the column, air pressure gathering around her shoulders.

The first safe opened.

Inside was no monster.

No weapon.

No amulet.

A personnel file slid out and fell to the floor.

Then another.

Then a hundred.

Folders spilled from safes, drawers, slots, wall seams. Paper flooded the floor in a dry rush, spreading around their boots like dead leaves.

Each file opened as it fell.

Names appeared.

Then vanished.

Photos blurred.

Roles corrected.

Histories simplified.

Assignments removed.

Deaths reclassified.

People reduced to functions, functions reduced to errors, errors reduced to nothing.

Mai’s face went pale.

Not from fear.

Recognition.

“The site is purging personnel continuity.”

Ace looked at the spreading paper.

“Because we challenged one?”

“Yes.”

The terminal, half-ruined, printed through smoke:

REMOVE UNVERIFIED IDENTITIES

Then:

REDUCE RISK

Then:

DENY HAZARDOUS CONTINUITY

Shammy’s hair rose.

“It is trying to make its own people safe by making them never there.”

Ace looked at the files covering the floor.

A photograph near her boot sharpened for half a second.

A woman in Foundation lab gear.

Tired eyes. Crooked smile. Badge unreadable.

Then the face blurred into gray.

Ace crouched and slapped her hand over the photo before it vanished completely.

The image stabilized beneath her palm.

She did not know the woman.

That did not matter.

“Mai.”

“I know.”

Mai dropped to one knee, opened the ledger, and began writing—not all names, impossible, too many—but a category anchor.

SITE-5 PERSONNEL EXISTED. INDIVIDUAL RECORDS UNVERIFIED. EXISTENCE NOT NEGATED BY RECORD FAILURE.

The floor trembled.

Ace grabbed another file.

Shammy moved to the center of the paper flood and lifted both hands.

Air pressure lowered, then spread, pinning loose pages gently to the floor before they could scatter into vents and correction slots.

Not force.

Preservation.

The room fought back.

File labels changed faster.

RESEARCHER became VISITOR became NO ENTRY.

SECURITY became MAINTENANCE became NO ASSIGNMENT.

DIED IN CONTAINMENT FAILURE became TRANSFERRED became NEVER ASSIGNED.

Ace put one katana down across a pile of files like a weight.

The emerald hum made the paper edges flutter but hold.

“How many can we save?”

Mai did not look up.

“Not enough.”

“Mai.”

“Not enough.”

Ace heard the crack under the words.

Not panic.

Fury.

Mai was watching a system erase people with perfect administrative calm. It was everything she existed to resist: chaos made invisible by structure, loss converted into classification, human presence simplified until it stopped accusing anyone.

Ace grabbed her shoulder.

Mai froze.

Ace said, “Then save the fact that there were too many.”

Mai stared at her.

Then the idea hit.

She turned back to the ledger and wrote:

FULL PERSONNEL ROSTER TOO DAMAGED TO RECOVER. SCALE OF LOSS ITSELF PRESERVED AS EVIDENCE.

The room hesitated.

Because that was true.

Because it did not require each name.

Because it prevented the erasure from becoming clean.

Shammy whispered, “Good.”

Mai wrote again.

UNKNOWN PERSONNEL COUNT IS NOT ZERO.

The correction tried to change not zero into unconfirmed.

Ace stabbed the phrase.

The ink held.

The paper flood stopped accelerating.

Not stopped.

Slowed.

The safes clicked shut one by one, as if embarrassed.

The ruined terminal displayed:

CORRECTION PARTIAL

Then:

MISCLASSIFICATION CONTAINED

Then:

NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED

Mai stood slowly.

Her knees probably hurt.

She ignored that.

Ace picked up one file that had stabilized under her blade.

The name remained unreadable.

The photo remained blurred.

But the badge line still showed one word:

FOUNDATION

Ace handed it to Mai.

Mai took it with both hands.

Shammy looked toward the door.

“It will let us leave this room.”

Ace glanced at the ceiling.

“That sounds too generous.”

“No.” Shammy’s expression darkened. “It wants us deeper.”

The door unlocked.

Beyond it, a corridor lit in sequence.

Red emergency lights.

Downward slope.

At the end, barely visible:

A sign.

CORE ARCHIVE / SITE CORRECTION CONTROL

Then:

NO ACCESS REQUIRED

Then:

CORE ARCHIVE

Then:

NO SITE EXISTS

Mai closed the ledger.

Ace rolled her shoulders.

Shammy let the air settle.

For a second, all three stood surrounded by the files of people the site had almost successfully made into nothing.

Ace looked at the corridor.

“Is this still the job?”

Mai’s voice was quiet but steady.

“Yes.”

“Because of Night City?”

“Yes.”

Ace nodded.

Then picked up her second katana.

“Good.”

Mai glanced at her.

Ace smiled without humor.

“I was hoping we had a reason bigger than being offended.”

Shammy stepped between them, tall and pale and calm in the red light.

“We have both.”

Ace’s smile sharpened.

“Even better.”

They walked toward the core.

Behind them, the Continuity Hold door closed.

Its label updated:

EMPTY ROOM

Then stopped.

A new line appeared under it, scratched from inside by no visible hand.

PENDING.

© 2025-2026. “World of Ace, Mai and Shammy” and all original characters, settings, story elements, and concepts are the intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
Non-commercial fan works are allowed with attribution.
Commercial use, redistribution, or adaptation requires explicit permission from the author.

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