Name: Charybdis

Gender: Female (simulated)

Species: Program (Vampiric/Base Program) Charybdis has no physical body, at least not one which exists more than a few minutes outside the Matrix. She can "inhabit" a Sentinel or other outside machine provided it does not have an advanced sentience. However, she also has never existed outside the Matrix as a program: she's always been in the Matrix, never visited 01, and frankly doesn't want to. She'd rather live in Zion from what she's heard... Vampiric Programs can feed on the electrochemical energy that Awakened humans, still plugged in to their pods, create. Instead of waiting for her own 'share' of the Matrix's power, she can tap directly into a specific pod. Particularly during a weird moment like "learning to fly", when the energy is at its peak performance.

Age: at least 400 human years old - has lasted since the beginning of the 2nd Matrix, and was supposed to have ended with the close of the 3rd. She did not however, come to an end, and now it's the middle portion of the 5th Matrix. Visually appears to be in her 40s at the oldest. At times, she gives off an almost immeasurable sense of agedness, tiredness, and loss that goes well beyond any human life could sustain.

Physical Description: Though Charybdis is almost entirely human in appearance within the Matrix, there are some distinct differences. She seems to be around 7 feet tall, this is an effect of not only her bizarre origin but the fact that she likes to float. (She is at least 6'6" tall without hovering.) Her skin tone is fair to pale, unmarred, and she is somewhat shapely, with a narrow waist and strong shoulders. She does not choose to wear mirrorshades.

To UnAwakened viewers: They see what is an attractive pale-skinned woman in a shimmery green-black dress, with long somewhat unruly dredlocks. She must be wearing contact lenses or something, her eyes shine weirdly, and she likes to wear green lipstick.

To Awakened viewers: Her hair has been replaced with a representation of Sentinel tentacles, which unnerves most people - including other programs. Each of these things moves on its own, she looks rather like a techno-medusa in that way. Her eyes are a shining silvery-green. Charybdis wears pale grey pants, no shoes, and an off-the-shoulder split-front dress that is visually reminiscent of the Matrix coding - it does move on its own and seems to flicker sometimes. (Code readers - heh. you'll go nuts trying to figure out what her dress is doing...)

To UnPlugged or Program viewers: Charybdis glows so strongly with bright golden-yellow light that she's often hard to see. She occasionally appears to explode and reform. Her 'hair' streams in literally all directions, and seems to connect to most things just outside of view. (They do connect her, to hard-lines, communication posts, etc.) When she's 'pondering' or sitting around with an odd vacant stare on her face, is when the code-view of her is at its most scattered and vague.

Powers and Abilities: Charybdis reads and re-writes Matrix codes at will. She can reformat an area to a "null" state, effectively clearing out any undesirable presences - including Agents, other programs, human people, and rendered buildings/backgrounds. She can rebuild these areas, with great effort - it's not what she's designed to do. Because she is a reformat program, very few Agents are willing to go head to head with her. She's able to do close up reformatting and very finely controls her ability, she likes to get right up next to an Agent before wiping them off the Matrix. Her delete ability extends to about the volume of a 4-unit apartment complex, or basically one single-story city block worth of space. She cannot destroy entire blocks or buildings, but she can alter or delete almost any number of nearby programs. Charybdis can relocate herself across the Matrix in the same manner as an Agent, but prefers not to do this. Instead she likes to zoom around with her hair looking all sweepycool.

Personality - Charybdis is a fairly open minded and pleasant person in general. She is not in any way stupid or common, she's keenly intelligent and has always been extremely independent. She goes through moments of doubt - wondering whether she's real as the people outside the Matrix are, or if it's okay for programs like her to do what they do to Human kind (or each other). She is a bit jealous of the unplugged Humans, because they have a freedom that she cannot ever have. She is defensive about herself, and will protect herself quickly. She also will defend any given person or program that happens to catch her fancy.

History - as above, created as a reformat program in the 2nd Matrix, and unable to be cleansed from this one. Charybdis has lost her memory of the prior Matrix events, but only in fits and starts. She herself caused this amnesia, but did not wholly succeed deleting everything, when the new Matrix came online. From that point forward, the Merovingian and she have been at odds, since he remembers - and tends to 'collect' bits of her to cause her anguish. She and Persephone had been lovers at least a short time - while Persephone was married - and when Merovingian found out, he imprisoned Charybdis for a time. He had taken advantage of a temporary forgetful stage - she could easily have removed the room, moved herself, or any number of escapes, but did not remember how. Since then she knows that he's a miserable prick, and won't hesitate to spy on him. She still loves Persephone, though from afar now. Charybdis has a long history of helping Awakened humans, which leads Agents to her now and again. Most sensible Agents will leave her alone, and wait until her human friends are alone, to take care of them instead.

Goals - to assist whoever she likes, and to shoo out of the way anyone else.

Charybdis was still busy hemming and hawing, trying to teach the little kids some new tricks, when she felt an odd "ping" from somewhere distant. She let the other attendant handle the kids, and slipped into one of the darker, more private booths that the Great Escape's building provided her. She altered the building as she saw fit, it was one of the few places which she could build with ease, whereas destroying them was otherwise what she did best.

She sat down, her hair slithering around itself and nervously tapping against things. She didn't bother trying to still it, no one would notice but her. She sent out a gentle net, a query - "who?"

Very shortly, it was responded to with another, stronger ping. So primative, though, and from so very far away that she thought the signal couldn't possibly be emanating from within the Matrix. It wasn't, actually. Nor, she peered around with her stronger signals and connected up to lines which she'd found through careful exercises that led to Vere. But the signal wasn't coming from there, either.

Then where?

The outside world? Where the fields and pods and ZeroOne were?

That seemed terribly unlikely. But she strengthened a tentacle's link to a station outside Wiretap's pod (she never gave up hope for him to return to them, perhaps it would be soon... She did hope). It was there which she got a bit of a surprise.

There was an electronic 'note', a weird batch of static like a particle cloud or the area left by a huge electric bolt. There was plenty of electric energy out here, all zapping around the exteriors of the pods. Wiretap rested gently in his, his mind gone but his body safe and sound.

She briefly took over a visual unit inside the pod itself, and noticed that Wire's face had a serene, if almost silly, grin.

"Now that's odd," she said. Then turned her attention back to the static-generated 'note'.

Concentrating just a little, she transferred the information from it, onto what looked like a small USB connector, in her hand. She could read it more easily that way, code in any raw form tended to be swept away whenever she looked at it wrong. If it was encased like this, in a more safe physical-like container, she could at least hold on to it without completely destroying it.

What she 'read' then, was a surprise.

Hey Chary, this is Wiretap. I made it outside, somehow. They call me a Genrehopper - whatever that means, it means I can go wherever I can imagine. If you can, create yourself a body and meet me outside the Pods. I have something to show you.

"He's okay!" Charybdis giggled, but she wasn't sure what to make of this message. Come outside? How? She'd have to create a better body than the one she usually stole, a simple Sentinel.

While she was busy trying to figure out what to do with that, she sent one more 'recieved' ping out, and knew that somehow, Wiretap knew she'd gotten his message. Now there was only waiting to do. She hoped he was in no hurry.

***

Charybdis realized that if she were to establish a 'body' outside the Matrix, maybe someday ... she could visit Zion, the last bastion of Human real-life out in the world. It was a pit, literally, but she knew that the Machines of 01 had always rebuilt it for the men and women refugees there after each Iteration of the Matrix was rebooted.

So how? How to create something which could interact with the Machines as well as the Humans? Without freaking out both or either?

Oddly enough Charybdis found her answer by listening in on the TV in the other room. Someone had put on a movie - these things which Humanity had actually created some half-millennium before and the Machines had kept out of a feeling of queer nostalgia. It was about them: the Machines, in a way even about the Matrix itself, a movie named "Tron".

It wasn't that the characters were 'programs' and 'users' but that they looked like people wearing ... humans, wearing robotic costumery? Charybdis' memory was shot, but she did manage to recall some things quite well. A lot of what happened before the Matrix, Human history, was easily available to any and all Programs - whether in 01 or the Matrix. A whole history of Humans masquerading as robots, and the reverse held true too. From the film "Metropolis" to a stunningly familiar rendition of "AI", Charybdis plotted for a couple days.

She was hardly a seamstress. Hardly one to create a look beyond one which was friendly and fun in the Matrix itself. Her sister, Scylla perhaps... But Scylla had perished at the end of ... well, no, that wasn't entirely true. Scylla would have maintained form through the reboot, had Charybdis not actually destroyed so much of it herself. The hardware had to be repaired, after that moment between the Second and Third Matrixes. A weird sadness crept through Charybdis as she sat fiddling with ideas.

In honor of her sister, then, she would create something unique. At least she didn't have to program it - merely have it built. She set designs up, and went to work with the Harvesters and the Genetic creation machinery even more distant than the Pod fields. The Sentinels and worker drones which assembled the hard material of her suit would be finished long before the genetic programs got to it.

She couldn't bear to steal someone's body. Besides, no body resting in a Pod would really suit her now would it? She wanted something which .... well, which looked like her. She had a strong sense of how people perceived her, after all, and she knew that while she was no ravishing beauty like Persephone, she wasn't ugly by any means, and wasn't all cutesy like some of the newer Exiles.

But she wanted specifics, and she wanted some kind of organics to go with the mechanical aspects. The Gene coders did as they were bidden, from hundreds of miles away. For several days, while the drones outside the hardline-ready post overlooking Singe's pod worked hard to get the outfit ready, Charybdis sent bursts of information to the Gene coders.

In theory, there were pieces of life out there which could survive without food or water. It was plain that there was some life left after the huge war, life which survived in a cold, acidic and dark landscape. It fed on the radiation which would normally kill other things - a kind of photosynthesis which gave Chary an idea beyond her first.

What if she could take that hardy amoeba-like lifeform, and fuse it with human genes? Better yet, just take the good parts? The resistance to deadly radiation, the feeding portion, the fact that it would continue to live even without the radiation?

And then put it into an essentially Human-shaped mask...

But Charybdis knew that her mind would always need a machine around it. So her 'humanity' would be skin deep if that. A face, for sure, but flesh and blood wasn't really needed, at least she hoped not. But she knew that she needed something that could respond to her emotions, her needs, and look acceptably like a Human not to terrify the natives.

***

By the time Wiretap "pinged" again, it had been nearly three weeks. Nothing was instant, of course, not even in the Matrix. The mechanical shell that Charybdis had sent the drones to produce was ready, it was an amalgam of humanoid-style parts for hands, feet, legs and such - it was mostly humanoid and not at all alien or free-flowing mechanical, like the things living in 01.

The Harvester that she'd overtaken (which took work, it wasn't smart in the slightest but it was huge and had all manner of weird, foreign devices in it which Charybdis needed to learn about before setting on this journey) had grown enough of the 'skin' to create a reasonable faximile of her Matrix-appearance.

Now, would it work? Charybdis had weaned the small learning group of Awakened kids off her, and sent them toward the Oracle, who'd made her presence more known. A more dangerous person had never been in the Matrix, Charybdis thought - the mother of it all... An Exile? What had she done, what had been decided that made her steal a Pod's location, hide herself in it and emulate an old black woman?

Well, whatever it was going on in the Real World, Charybdis might get the chance to find out. Or, she might kill herself in the doing. But she didn't think it was all that risky. After all, she'd transferred herself into mere shells like the Sentinels all the time. Now, she could have a body to walk around in!

What was gravity really like? Well  - she wasn't actually going to find that out either, since the body had her compliment of Sentinel technology and she could literally lift herself from the ground the same way she always did.

It was patently clear however, that she was not Human, when she downloaded into the walkabout body. She was big, still, and had Sentinel tentacles for hair, in addition to what appeared to be silken green-black colored strands of Human-like hair. She liked how the face looked, though it seemed oddly vacant until she 'turned it on' from within.

It would take a while walking or flying around, in this new body, for Chary to really get used to it. She didn't have to 'breathe' but she did anyway, cooling systems required some kind of circulation, it was built like a human resperatory system. She blinked, her eyes were not Human orbs, but she soon remembered that Humans blinked not only to moisten their eyes, but for effect or mood. The weight of her own body surprised her, Charybdis knew that her limbs would not tire nor falter, and she could rely upon the energy source found somewhere below her (amply armored) breasts to remain afloat in the air should she have to travel long distances.

She left a tiny portion of herself connected to the Matrix, a thin shining line of gold. On the inside of the Matrix, a kind of shell, almost a mannequin of Charybdis, sat patiently behind the bar in the Great Escape. Running on full automatic, she served drinks or food, dispensed a little wisdom for those who came near, and Agents ignored her establishment. Things would settle for a bit, before she got back. She didn't think there would be any issue too big, to have to come back for a time.

When Charybdis left the safety of her hard-line, she followed her intuition and headed toward Wiretap's pod. She'd barely gotten used to 'standing' (since her head wanted to float and the rest of her wanted to walk, and she often forgot that her sentinel parts were extremely heavy if they weren't gently floating), but she walked the narrow flat corridor between the pod connections and the power plant's wall.

To creatures which could fly, all this space was merely a convienence. Towers didn't intimidate her kind, but they were massive, and if she did fall Charybdis wondered: would she die if she landed the wrong way? Was she 'mortal'? She doubted she'd allow herself to die in such a manner, after all this time.

Plus, she was waiting for her friend to contact her. The sentinel tentacle with a little radio dish perked up - almost all the three dozen 'arms' had their own specific use, if not a duplicate or backup for each other. She actually glanced at it when it stood tall and opened like a flower, startled by her own body's automatic responses.

A group of Sentinels came lazily drifting by, but of course she didn't register as anything other than 'friendly'. With a bit of concern, though, she sent out a small burst which would keep them from this area for a little while, at least until she told them it was appropriate to patrol again. That way, if Wiretap was on his way physically (which she got the feeling he was) he would be in less danger of being spotted.

Distantly Charybdis sent a "ping" out to the destination which she still could not identify. She also hadn't been able to figure out what Wiretap had meant by "genrehopper" - it wasn't a word which even made much sense, was it? Going whereever he could imagine, now there was a thought.

If anyone could do that, she reasoned, Singh was the right kid for it. He was so smart, Chary was glad that he hadn't defected over to Merovingian's camp. It would be a disaster, him working for that monster. There would be no secrets left in the whole Matrix, and at least Wiretap had the good sense in his head to understand that some secrets were best kept close and never let go.

It didn't take very long, before Wiretap gave a much more close "ping" and a quick message.

On my way, shortly. He said - it was almost as though Charybdis could feel the words in her mind, a very intimate communication. Was this "hearing"? She did have sonic sensors, light and motion sensors, all those things which Humans as well as real-world Machines required to interact with their environment. But Charybdis had never "heard" before, so she didn't really know whether she needed to adjust the volume, extend the range of her frequency sensors, or just what.

It turned out she did need to: she heard something so loud that she physically strove to close her hands over her ears. A Pod was being cleared some rows up, so Charybdis used that moment to make small changes to her sonic abilities. She toned down the high range, filtering out a lot of white noise generated by the power plant itself, and expanded the midrange, the more enjoyable lower frequencies were given a little nudge too.

She wondered about her vision, too, but was reasonably happy with it. She'd tested out senses of touch and even smell, things which in the Matrix were all but illusory. Touch, heat and cold, and pressure senses were going to be important, out here.

At the edge of her hearing, she thought there was some odd repetitive noise, a large scale 'whooshing', displacement of air. She didn't know if the Harvesters made that sound, but it was perhaps large like them.

She oriented on the noise's direction, and ...

"Hey! Chary!" A voice called out, distant, but she heard it clearly. It was oddly familiar: she knew the voice, but it actually sounded quite different than from within the Matrix. It was Wiretap, and he was...

"You found the dragons!" Charybdis said, her own voice new to her. She bounced up and down, something she'd been used to doing on the 'inside' - her body had to really work on that motion. She almost toppled from the ledge, but she instead floated up to investigate Wiretap and his draconic partner.

"Well, yeah I ... I didn't find the same dragons, and this one actually isn't even mine, he's a loaner."

"A.... you borrowed a dragon?" Charybdis laughed, she trusted that her face was doing the expressions she wanted it to, and Wiretap would have said something if it hadn't.

"Sure, while I'm waiting... I tried going to a couple places, where they have dragons, but nothing yet for me. It's kind of important you get the right one, you know?"

Charybdis' tentacles and hands went into a flutter of "not really", but she laughed and looked this dragon over.

"The Doc says he matches me, so while he was staying at the Den for a while, I could borrow him. Chary, this is Umpteenth, Umpteenth, this is my friend Charybdis, she trained me."

"I would like to land somewhere," was what the dragon finally said. They headed upwards, to the top of the pillar, and where it was reasonably secure. He had pale blue hide, with lightning all over his wing sails - he didn't look at all like what Charybdis thought the Vere dragons did.

"Where have you been, then," Charybdis asked, after Wiretap dropped from the shoulder of the strongly muscled dragon. "This isn't ... he's not from here."

"No, he isn't," Wiretap said, "Umpteenth is from a place called Nidus Ryslen, I haven't been there, but I've heard it's pretty cool. I've been spending time at a place that ... well, you'll have to see it, to understand what I mean. And that's kind of why I came here, for you. To pick you up, I think you should meet these folks."

"I cannot carry her," Umpteenth said, "all that machinery, looks heavy."

"Doc Sanger told me you were really strong," Wiretap said, dismissively, deceptively. "Besides that guy's all muscle anyway, I don't weigh a thing. You've been getting off easy this last couple days!"

The dragon made a harrumph noise, and Wiretap explained, "he's not really used to going to worlds without his bond, the Doc. They go out and ... well, they rescue people. But that's not what I'm doing, at least not like they do."

"I have eggs to watch!" Umpteenth said.

"You and which queen?!" Wiretap exclaimed, "you didn't say you were waiting for--"

"It's an excuse," Charybdis said, approaching the dragon. "Why is it that you don't like me? I don't want to be scaring people, or dragons."

"I am not scared, I just don't want to be hefting so much metal around."

"I can't do much about that, I'm afraid, but I can float, you saw." With that, Charybdis lifted into the air, and Umpteenth nudged her with the end of his paw. She gently swayed, and he did it again, making a game of it.

"Well, all right. But we should be getting back. This place has ... never had one of my bond in it, I do not know whether it will."

Wiretap fielded that quickly, "they'll explain later, when you're at the Den. There are a bunch of them there right now, you'll see. Here, stay between his paws, he teleports."

Charybdis, if she had a heart, would have clutched her chest in fear at that. "He ... he what? I mean, in this world?"

"Of course, and in any other," Wiretap said. "Dragons are handy that way, at least many of them. Come on, we should go."

Charybdis wondered... what about her link? What about inside the Matrix, where some of "her" was still stored? Would it be okay if she left --

"Wait, where exactly are we goin--" was all she got out, before they moved across the Nexus.

***

She wanted to panic, but Charybdis felt oddly comfortable standing under the static-colored sky and walking along what appeared to be a mixture of stone and asphalt, toward the opening of this "Healing Den" thing. If there was one thing that was completely clear to her, her connection to her Matrix counterpart and memories was not broken, it was fine. Whatever could describe the Den's location, it could not be said to be distant. It wasn't in the same universe, but it was connected to darn near everything. She'd learn that a bit later.

Like she would learn the confusing bits about the Sangers, their quests to locate others of their 'kind' - and when she saw them together like they were, she understood immediately that they were the same. Like different iterations of her own copies, all in one spot instead of spread out over the course of time. Normally in the Matrix of course, only one Version could be running at once, but Smith proved that wrong time and time again, didn't he?

So it wasn't all that difficult for Charybdis to understand the basics. After all, she herself came from a world which didn't technically 'exist' anyway. Was it real? Of course it was. Just as real as the outside world, only warmer. And just seeing Wiretap so oddly - he was human, flesh and blood and bone, but he was also partly his own imagined Residual Self Image. Some of his clothing and appearance from within the Matrix had followed him, he had hair, could walk and speak. If it'd been his real body they pulled from the Pod, he would have no hair, no eyebrows or anything; he would be weak, confused, blinded.

And one more thing which made Chary relax, was that she in no way felt like she was endangering anything, by existing. Her hair waved around, looking at things and taking images, and recording locations, life sensors said there were plenty of beings here, large and tiny. It was likely that Charybdis couldn't actually perform her program function of 'low level reformatting', here. It meant more than that she wouldn't be able to hurt folks - it meant she couldn't delete herself.

"Oh!" Charybdis said, upon reaching one portion of their tour of the Den, walking beside Crazy Doc Sanger (who went by that name, or Van, or Doc, or Sanger, it was a bit confusing because a lot of the others would do that too, and he was the one who called Umpteenth 'his' dragon). "What is that? It's very bright."

"You see that?" Sanger said, looking from the tall woman and over to a series of archways. "It's new, new-ish, we built it for a couple locations, they don't have room for dragons in their immediate space, so we let them stay here. Each of these portals leads to another planet or plane, with plenty of room for the dragon, and enough space for them to move through to their rider's world if need be." Though they looked to normal vision like a hall of large, sculpted stone and metal archways along three walls (left, right and the end of the corridor, plus one larger arch which seemed to back up against another wall and must only go one way) to Charybdis and anyone with magical senses, the archways were brilliant and giving off tons of energy. Some were dimmer than others, it seemed that if they were in use, they were bright. One started flickering into a yellow-white tone, while they watched.

"That is what he meant," Charybdis said, thinking idly about something Wiretap hinted at earlier while they were chatting. "Even if I return to the Matrix, I ... there could be a dragon waiting here for me. And could travel to the power plant, in any case."

"At the very least, yes. From what I've heard you do have enough resources to keep a dragon alive and fine in that world, it just might be less handy. In either case, we've always got room." He waved his hand, right about the time a trio of girls dressed in winter clothing came giggling and talking through one of the portals, and a handful of creatures - draconic and otherwise - followed. They saw the Doc, and brightened up. They headed toward the pair.

"Hey it's Doc Sanger! We just got accepted to the finals at C-4!" Said one, while a dog-like creature nuzzled her hand.

"Excellent, you deserve it," Sanger replied. He looked up at the dragons, and noted they had another since the last time he'd seen them. "They have plenty to spare, you see," he said to Charybdis. "Sometimes dragons are attracted to people even if there are others already. Not all allow it, some are rather possessive."

"Yours isn't," Chary laughed. "I mean, if Singh could borrow him."

"True, but our bond is special. I borrowed plenty of my counterparts' dragons before finding him, so it's only fair he wander a bit."

They toured the rest of the Den, and relaxed a little more under the big fir tree which was still left with a little snow from the Holidays. They hadn't yet brought it to its new home, the tree would remain until it wasn't needed, and come back later.

But at the moment, there was something more to it than that. It was a gift giving tree after all, all but sentient on its own, and with the Den's assistance (since it was all but sentient too) it acted like its own kind of portal.

"There's something under it," Charybdis said, weirdly allured by whatever it was there. The blanket of snow had worn thin but wasn't melting, nor was it cold to her machine feet. "it's alive... should I go look?"

"I think you should," Sanger said. A few others got to watch, as Charybdis the reformat exile from the 2nd Matrix, found a dragon.

He was slender, but huge. And, it seemed, he was able to mix his colors improbably with the surroundings so well that no one really saw quite how big he really was. When he lifted his head, longer than Charybdis was tall, the colors fell away from him like ... code on a screen.

He was black, not snowy-stone white. He had green markings, brightly green like matrix code looked to any Awakened. His lovely static colored eyes caught everything unblinking and with a friendly gaze. He stood up, when Charybdis let off a laughing sigh. Could machines bond? Of course they could - I-57v4n did so, and he was far more robotic than Charybdis. What did this dragon look like to Charybdis? Safety, security, adoration, home, true love.

"Spontaneous Comet," Charybdis spoke, "Well that sounds good enough for a name, doesn't it? Though you're hardly spontaneous are you?"

"Not very, that is true," the dragon rumbled.

They decided first to visit the Power Plant. Because it would be there, that they could make whatever other decisions they'd need to - such as housing or visitation rights. What would he eat? There were things he could consume that baffled even the Sangers minds. Perhaps like Charybdis herself, he would be able to tap directly into the Pods?

Well, that was something they'd come to later. For the moment, Charybdis hovered up to the head of her new found friend, and wrapped her hands in his thick code-green mane. Riding him from the base of the neck, like Wiretap had done on Umpteenth, would be highly impractical. After all, his neck was over forty feet long! She flattened the forelock and clung to his horns, and suddenly almost found herself oddly magnetised to the dragon. It was his psionic power, he took the energy which she might use to balance, and provided a stable cushion onto his head.

Of course he'd be able to project her with that same power, too, should she need to be booted a bit!

***

"I can stay here," he said, and switched to mental speech because of their distance and the eternal crackling of the power plant. I like it here, actually, I can blend in, the energy sustains me, and nothing will harm me, I'm much bigger than any patrol Sentinels.

That's true, Charybdis thought back, "and then we need to work on a way to have you visit inside..."