Death by Fucking
© 2005 by Andrew Wiggin
Chapter 17
Preparations and Programming
The Year Five
Andrew’s Story
It’s the database that’s
important. I’d taught the twerps to program starting when they were
three. They are a whole lot smarter than I am. Was three years old
too young to learn to program? I don’t think so. I’ve done the initial
system design, but soon I’ll turn that over to them, too.
Anyway their assignment
recently was to build me a firewall. I’ve got a plan. It’s a good
plan and I’m proud of it. My theory is before long we are going to be
under attack. People are going to want to get into my database, find out
what we are about, sabotage our operation, even.
We are trouble. Not
short term, we are somewhat harmless in the immediate future, except for Em,
who might be the most dangerous person on earth. I mean that. But if
someone finds out what we really are doing, there must be some h. Sapiens
somewhere who will want to take on the next generation.
And we have our dark
little secret. The girls are telepaths. I can read them but no one
else. So I must have some incipient abilities. Maybe many h. Sapiens
are born with that latent talent, but have no one at the other end of the line
to link up to, so to speak. I’ve got my links in place. The eGirls seem to be
able to read anyone’s thoughts. I don’t think anyone else can read their
thoughts, though, except for the eBoys, of course and each
other.
So we’ve got to protect
ourselves, data-wise at least. I’ve got some ideas about how to do it,
but I’m not good enough to pull it off. I’ll let the eGirls wrap their
little brains around our problem, then see where they go with it.
Meanwhile I’ve learned to
live with my mind being an open book to a pack of five year olds. I’m used
to it. I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m not like a serial killer or
jay walker or anything like that. Mostly I like sex. That’s the key
to Andrew. The little ones know it, even if the concept of ‘sex’ is
foreign to them. There is no way I can hide it from them, so I figure a
relaxed attitude is the only sane way to handle it.
There was a time when I
could go for weeks at a time with no sex at all. Some female acquaintance
might eventually call me up and suggest getting it on, and that would be that.
Otherwise, I was dry. And it didn’t bother me that much.
But now I live with two
ravishingly beautiful, intelligent women. I’m constantly horny. I
can’t help it. They are sweet, warm and sexy. Every day I am with
them I feel enveloped in warm nurturing love. Thank God the girls decided
to quit their jobs not long after their pregnancies were confirmed. I
couldn’t have handled being away from them.
They manage to keep busy,
handling our business, managing the Institute for the Advancement of Mankind.
They even finished off their doctorates. They do housework too,
occasionally. I mostly raise the little ones and do my programming
thing. I do the cooking and grocery shopping too. You see a lot of
good looking mothers in a grocery store.
But I figure there is
danger lurking. Somewhere in the future, someone is going to come after
us. It will probably be the government. After all, one of the
points of our movement toward the next generation is to poke a bit of a hole in
consumerism. That won’t go over well in the most powerful circles of this
country. And our present administration likes to be in a position of
total control. We are pretty uncontrollable.
And let’s face it we are
creating a race of geniuses. I’m pretty smart, but I’m a mental midget
next to the children of the next generation. I tried giving the eGirls an
IQ test a while back. I took the test and scored 155. I felt pretty
good about it. Then the munchkins went right off of the charts.
Over 200 is the only thing I could confirm. How much over 200 I just
don’t know.
Right now we are so small
as to be invisible. But we are ready for a major breakout if our mating
plans work out. Here in our own family, six years ago there were only two
women. Now there are six females and three males. That’s
progress. Besides which, I’ve had one hundred and eighty-five kids
through these informal liaisons with twins on the network that the girls have
worked out. I’ve even had seven boys to accompany my eighty-nine sets of girl
twins. As far as we can tell, they are all geniuses. And they all
have the telepathy thing going. I do nothing. I know nothing.
Suddenly some woman shows up at our house and I’m spending the afternoon
valiantly trying to impregnate her. Mostly it works. My life is
good.
Multiply that by twenty
thousand and we start making some noise. I want to be prepared when that
noise is heard. After all, how easy is it going to be to keep a lid on it
when I’ve got a couple of hundred kids all over the stinking country? I’m
a very prolific guy.
Donnie’s Story
It was so horrible.
We were peacefully sleeping in the middle of the night when Andrew was up like
a shot. As he ran from our bedroom he yelled “Call 911. We have an
intruder.”
Dee Dee
grabbed for the phone and placed the emergency call while I followed after
Andrew. He was running to the girls’ room!
He burst into their room
with me only a few steps behind. There was a man trying to grab our
little girls! Andrew was on him in a flash. He wrapped his arms
around the man’s waist from behind and fell backwards twisting as he
fell. The man went down with him, falling flat on his face.
His head hit the floor so
hard he seemed to go out like a light. Andrew was searching the man when
Elle said “He has a gun, Daddy. It’s in his pants.”
Emma said, “Don’t worry,
Daddy. You knocked him out good.”
It was then I started to
go into hysterics. I couldn’t catch my breath. I was crying.
Deirdre came in and she was crying too. Emma was laughing.
Andrew found the
gun. It was big and it was loaded. There had never been a gun in
our house before. Andrew pulled the man’s wallet out of his pants.
He opened it and removed several cards.
He said to Edda, “Eddie, go scan these into your computer. Email
me a copy, okay?” He handed the cards to her and away she ran.
Andrew backed away and
pointed the gun at this big ugly man who had tried to take our babies. I
thought he might shoot him. I was still crying. I couldn’t help it.
I was so scared for the babies.
Dee Dee
said, “Please Andrew. Don’t shoot him. The police are on their
way.”
Andrew looked at me for
the first time. “Calm down, sweetheart. Everything is going to be
alright.”
He turned to the
girls. “When he wakes up, I’m going to ask him some questions. He
won’t want to answer. I don’t care if he says anything or not. You
munchkins listen to what he says in his head. But don’t say it out
loud.
Edie said “Okay,
Daddy. He woke us up when he came into the room. He’s a bad man.”
Eddie came back into the
bedroom and handed Andrew the cards. He put them back into the man’s
wallet and reinserted the wallet into the man’s pants.
The big ugly thing was
coming to. He sat up suddenly and reached in his pants as if to go for
his gun.
Andrew said, “Too late,
asshole. Sit there and don’t move, or I’ll shoot
your child molesting ass.”
The man turned and saw
Andrew for the first time. It must have been an intimidating sight,
seeing my tall strong husband looming over him with his own pistol, cocked and
ready.
Andrew asked “What’s your
name?” The man said nothing.
Andrew said “Who sent
you?” The man was silent.
“Who do you work
for?” Still nothing.
We heard the police
sirens in the distance and knew that Chief McArthur or one of his patrolmen
would be here soon.
Andrew asked “What did
you want with my children?”
The ugly man refused to
talk. Dee Dee ran down to the front door to let
in the police.
Then everything was chaos
as the young police officer took over, arrested our ugly intruder and took our
statements.
He tried questioning the
girls but all he got from Emma was “We woke up and saw the big ugly man coming
toward us. We called our Daddy and he came and saved us.”
The cop took the man away
in handcuffs. I was finally calm enough to hug Andrew, saying “Thank
you. Thank you. You are so brave and wonderful.”
Andrew shook his
head. “The girls were in no danger. What do you say, Emmy?”
Emma laughed. She
found this whole episode delightful. “Daddy told me not to hurt the ugly
man. So I just made him stand there so Daddy could bop him. Daddy
bopped him good.”
Andrew laughed too.
“At least I learned something from little league wrestling.”
Deirdre and I gaped at
them. It was dawning on us that Andrew had held out on us again!
Dee Dee
said to Emma “What do you mean you just made him stand there?”
Emma said, “Whoops!
Was I supposed to say that, Daddy?”
Andrew smiled.
“It’s okay, baby. Your Mommies need to know that you will always be
safe.” Then he looked at us. At least he had the grace to appear a
little embarrassed. “If they have to, the girls can take over a Sapiens’
mind. It’s a little difficult for them to do individually yet, Emma’s the
best at it, but four of them together would be overwhelming. They know
they aren’t allowed to do it unless I say it is okay. And they know that
if they harm someone they’ll be in deep shit. Don’t you girls!”
Eddie said, “We don’t
want to be in deep shit, Daddy.”
Elle said, “Emma does it
more than anyone else. She plays jokes on people.”
Emma said, “Elle!
Shut up you tattletale. I’m going to get you if you don’t be quiet!”
Andrew quieted them
down. “Girls, tonight I’m not going to be mad no matter what.
Please, Em, you know you are supposed to use your powers only for good, just
like Spiderman. Cool it with the telepathic control, would ya’?”
I was speechless. I
said “Andrew we need to talk; in our bedroom. Now!”
Eddie said, “Daddy’s in
trouble! You’re gonna get it now, Daddy.”
Daddy gave the girls a
weak grin. “Go to bed, please.
Emma said, “Don’t worry,
Daddy. After they yell at you, both of them want to get laid.”
The little stinker!
She always has to have the last word. I walked over, intending to scold
her. Instead I hugged her and started crying again. Each adult took at
least one little girl and held her. Eric and Ethan came running in from
their bedroom. God, I hadn’t even given them a thought! It made me
cry even more. Our family was safe.
I don’t know what was
more shocking: catching an intruder in our little girls’ room, or finding out
our children have the powers of some super hero.
We were shocked either way. And Andrew hadn’t told us. He knew and
he hadn’t told us.
We marched him back to
our bedroom. I must admit that Emma was right. Seeing Andrew act in
so manly a fashion certainly made me horny. Maybe it was the aftermath of
the whole thing, but I really needed him inside of me.
We got into the room and
made Andrew sit on our bed. It’s a huge king-sized bed that fits all
three of us comfortably. Andrew was in his pajama bottoms. He never
wears a top. He was gorgeous. It’s very difficult being angry with
him.
Deirdre said, “Well
Andrew, what do you have to say for yourself?”
He said, “Do you really
want to get laid?”
What could we do?
We had to laugh. Then we attacked him. We even let our one-on-one
rule slide a little just for the evening. We both wanted him now!
Deirdre’s Story
Andrew seems so staid, so
set in his ways. He’s comfortable in a routine that is unchanging.
Perhaps it’s because he has so many things to do that he has little choice but
to do them according to a schedule.
But an outside observer
might consider our Andrew a boring stick in the mud. Every Saturday and
Sunday afternoon he can be found in front of the tube with his football games,
his Big Mac and his beer. During the week it is programming, child
rearing and not much else.
He is the most dedicated
of fathers. He’s never far from our six children, playing with them,
teaching them or just babysitting – working on his programs as they do their
own thing. It’s so easy to forget that our Andrew may be unique in all the world.
Donnie and I are the
businesspersons in our family. Andrew’s regards business matters with
ignorance and apathy. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. And yet
from a standing start he has built a programming business that supports us
comfortably. We allow him to do his programming thing: after all it is
the engine that drives the business. And we handle everything else:
sales, accounting, etc.
He has fathered almost
two hundred children. And he’s only thirty-two. How many more will
he have? Each of his children is a super-genius. Each of his
children is telepathic. And now it appears that each of his children may
have some kind of incredible power to control minds.
Yet Andrew goes along as
if nothing is out of the ordinary, the world is going according to plan.
He refuses to have his head turned by his accomplishments, no matter how
extraordinary.
Tonight he captured that
intruder, bandit, or kidnapper, whatever he was. He threw the man to the
ground and knocked him out in a single move. Then he calmly lifted the
man’s wallet, had one of the girls scan the pertinent information into our
network, and then replaced it without the man’s knowledge.
Then at gunpoint he
questioned the man, who I am sure gave his answers silently without even
knowing that he did it. Andrew must be the most special boring person on
earth.
A couple of years ago our
cousin Danny was the first woman to take advantage of another of Andrew’s
unique talents, the ability to impregnate the IAM twins. A year and a
half later she called us again, wanting a chance at another child or
children.
I asked her “What does
your significant other think about that?”
She said, “After being
with Andrew, I found out that Artie is my insignificant other.
Oh! I suppose I shouldn’t have said that! Sorry.” I think all
the girls that Andrew has been with feel that way.
We have invited all of these
women in to Andrew’s bed for the sake of IAM. Andrew doesn’t complain
about his use as our resident stud. It doesn’t matter whether the woman
who comes is beautiful, plain, older, younger, white, black, or whatever.
He does his duty. He does his duty so well that we’ve gotten many a
request for a return engagement just like Danny’s, with or without the goal of
procreation.
But Andrew only cares
about Donnie and me. After each of his encounters he is always eager to
have one of us join him for a second round of
lovemaking. He says it cleanses his soul. I think he’s just a horny
little devil who adores making love to us.
Andrew doesn’t see us as
we are. He sees us with his heart. We are the idealized version of
ourselves to Andrew. We are
Andrew loves us! He
thinks we are beautiful, warm, sexy, smart. He
sees us with the eyes of love. We have no illusions about ourselves but are
glad that Andrew’s illusions remain intact.
We were in our bedroom
after Andrew had dispatched the villain in our children’s bedroom. I must
admit, after I had calmed down from the shock of it all, my reaction was one of
intense arousal. I was so horny for our sweet beautiful boy. He is
such a man.
We were somewhat upset
with him for not telling us about the girls’ powers. He seems to shepherd
his knowledge of what the children can do, as if it were some deeply guarded
secret. Perhaps it should be.
Yet Andrew defused the
situation with a single sentence: ‘Do you really want to get laid?’
Of course we did. He’s so
funny in his single-minded desire to have sex with us. Any occasion
warrants a lovemaking session as far as Andrew is concerned. How did we
survive for thirty-five years with so little sex?
It’s like we are addicted
to it. Every day we look forward to our time together, and it is always
wonderful, varied, exciting, mind-blowing. I
firmly believe it is good for the circulation. We should never have heart
problems or Alzheimer’s. That’s a theory I’m working on (to paraphrase
Andrew).
Donnie and I were in our
flimsy nighties, Andrew in his pajama bottoms. We had responded to his
question by jumping on him and pulling off his bottoms, laughing and kissing
him, rubbing our bodies on his. It feels so good to rub against
him. Skin to skin contact is my favorite.
He helped us remove our
nighties, but then we were confronted with our eternal problem, two girls and
only one penis. We usually solve this problem by making love in
shifts. But neither of us wanted to wait tonight.
Andrew instinctively knew
how to handle our shortage of penises by bringing his other wonderful sex organ
into play. He lay back onto the bed, drawing the two of us towards
him.
We caressed him as he
fondled each of us, giving one then the other long and loving kisses. His
hand fondled my breast just the way I love it. He does things to those
small breasts of mine. They are so sensitive to his touch. Every other
lover I’d had seemed to think they were too small to bother with, but Andrew
can spend hours on just my breasts.
I don’t know how he can
be so patient, sometimes. The only time he is impatient is when we’ve
been apart for a few days, or after our periods. Then he takes us like he
did the first time he had us, demanding and domineering.
But tonight it is we
girls who are demanding. Neither of us can wait, we have to share.
Sometimes I think that Donnie and I are telepathic or perhaps telempathic as
Andrew would say. We feel each other’s emotions. Perhaps we did
contribute some genes to that special talent so well developed in our children.
We pushed Andrew onto his
back. His magnificent erection pointed straight up in the air.
Donnie grabbed hold of it and climbed aboard. I straddled his head and
brought my center down so he could reach it with his tongue.
Oh, that wonderful tongue
slid up my thighs and found my pussy lips. I moaned in my passion.
His tongue parted my lips and it was inside me. My head flew back and my
eyes closed. I was in heaven.
He brought a hand to bear
and suddenly there was a finger inside me instead. His tongue made its
way to my clitoris. It touched and I screamed! My hips began to
rotate on Andrew’s face, humping, helping those long lovely fingers to find
their way deeper into my pussy.
I could hear Donnie
behind me bouncing on Andrew’s cock, groaning, working her way to a peak.
We were both so hot, we couldn’t last too long. His tongue was worrying
my clit. I felt dizzy with the passion. His finger searched until
it found my G-spot. I screamed again. I felt the spasms take over
in my pussy.
Donnie was screaming
too. Here in our bedroom, two identical twins were riding our lover to
our orgasms. We do everything together. This was a first though.
We’ve never cum in unison before.
Donnie was laughing and
crying at the same time. Was I? My emotions were out of
control. Our hero husband was servicing us, filling us.
I heard Donnie say, “Yessss! Fill me up! Fuck me Andrew. Fill
me with your cum! I love you!”
I love him too. I
was just too crazed to say it. My climax finally ended and I collapsed
beside Andrew. I kissed him deeply, my female wetness on his lips, in his
mouth, covering his chin.
Donnie fell forward on
his chest. He held her with his right arm while holding my with his
left.
Andrew said “Are you
still mad at me?”
We laughed. We
hugged him. Thank God for this man. Where would we be without him?
Andrew’s Story
I woke up with two
gorgeous things trying to swallow me whole. They were gloriously naked
and beautiful. These girls have a serious self-esteem problem, because
they seem to feel that they are old and plain.
Believe me, they are
anything but plain. If they were old, would they be
wanting to get laid every day of their lives? They remain soft,
warm, round, and beautiful; their skin satiny, velvety soft; their curves in
all the right places; their beautiful faces retain the soft glow that turns
heads wherever they go.
They think I’m crazy, but
I know that I’m the envy of every man who sees them. They are
wonderful. Their personalities are soft and warm, too. Donnie is
more humorous, Dee Dee more romantic. But they
are both soft nurturing and funny. They are patient with my immaturity,
don’t mind my strangeness, love me for me.
That’s one I’ve never figured out. What the hell do they see in me?
And they have a
particular talent that is, I feel, rare at best. They’ve learned to give
coordinated blow jobs. It is indescribable having two warm wet mouths
loving your dick. It’s so hot I can hardly last. I want to ride it
out, experience it. I just can’t. Within a few minutes they have me
spurting into one of their mouths.
Dee Dee
has this way of looking into my eyes as she swallows my cum.
I want to throw her down on the bed and fuck her senseless.
I can’t do it this
morning. We have too much to do. Still as she cleans my shrinking
dick with her tongue I whisper to her, “You’re next.”
Donnie smiles as Dee Dee starts to turn red. After all this time it’s
still easy to get to her. She is so easy to turn on.
But I say to them, “It’s
time we talk about last night. I’ve got to admit I was holding out on you
ladies a little bit.”
Donnie said, “A little
bit! You were holding out on us a little bit? What do you consider
holding out on us a lot?”
I put my hands up as if
to stop the onslaught. “It was just a figure of speech, Donnie.
Don’t get your panties in a wad.”
Donnie stated the
obvious. “Tell us Andrew. Tell us what we don’t know.”
I shrugged my
shoulders. “There’s not much to tell. If you ever see somebody do
something foolish, spill something on themselves, whatever, there’s a better
than even chance that Em’s involved.”
Deirdre remembered.
“We stopped at a restaurant in town the other day. I had taken the girls
shopping and we wanted some lunch. The woman at the table next to us was
reading a newspaper as she ate. She reached for her glass to take a drink
and grabbed the ketchup by mistake. She didn’t notice until the ketchup
was already in her mouth. You should have seen her spit it out! The girls
were laughing hysterically.”
I said, “Em. That’s
an Em trick if I ever heard of one. The other eGirls are too timid to try
anything, but they are her collaborators. They always find whatever she
does funny. She feeds off of that. Hell, she is funny in a
five year old kind of way.”
Donnie asked “But how do
they do it? Why haven’t we noticed?”
“As soon as I realized
they had some sort of telepathic control, I read them the riot act. I
made them promise to never try to do anything to you two or to me. If I
caught them trying it, I would come down on them hard.”
Dee Dee
laughed and said, “That’s the emptiest threat I’ve ever heard! They have
you wrapped around their little fingers. You don’t know the meaning of
the word discipline.”
I objected. “I
certainly do! It was a Word Wealth word in tenth grade. I know what
it means. I’m just not very good at it.”
Donnie said, “Well I
don’t remember us doing anything out of the ordinary. Andrew
makes a fool of himself regularly, but no more than he did before the girls
were born.”
I said “Hey! Hey!
Hey! This is not supposed to be about me. We’re discussing the
children here. We’ve got to talk about last night. That man, that
Joseph Williams according to his driver’s license, who broke in and tried to
take one of the girls.”
Deirdre looked
appalled. “What did he want with one of the girls? You called him a
child molester. Was he really?”
I shook my head.
“No, things are not as they seem. His name isn’t Joseph Williams.
His papers were false. His real name is Ralph Morris and he works for the
government, specifically he’s a special operative working for the Attorney
General.”
They looked aghast.
“What does the Attorney General want with our children? And why would
they go to this extreme? How do you know all this?”
“I think they went to
this extreme because they couldn’t break into our system. A while back I
started the eGirls programming a firewall to end all firewalls. Actually
we ended up with a multi-layered system. It was really Em’s idea, even though
Edie and Eddie did most of the actual programming. It requires a sick
mind like Emmy’s to come up with something like this.”
“Instead of making it
impossible to break in, we gave them a few cracks that would let a good hacker
slide through. We let them see information after they broke
through. It was reasonable information but it was all false.”
“Depending on how
thorough our hackers were, they might leave it at that. But once they
found their info was garbage, they would probably come back and try to dig
deeper. We gave them three more walls to break through, each one with
plenty of information behind it, all of it false. We had a ball coming up
with the mis-information, by the way.”
“Each wall was
progressively harder to break through. If some enterprising hacker made
it through all four walls we gave him a reward.”
Dee Dee
asked, “A reward? What kind of reward?”
I think I may have looked
a little guilty. “It’s a naked picture of Donnie. Anyone good
enough to break through four firewalls programmed by our little girls deserves
something special.”
Donnie hit me on the
shoulder. “You are awful! You didn’t let the girls see that
picture, did you? You know that picture was just for you!”
I said, “Baby, the girls
see everything. They know everything. There isn’t any
way to avoid it, so you might as well get used to it. These little things
are a different species from us. We may as well accept it. Hey if
some poor sap goes to all the trouble of breaking into our server, the least we
can do for him is give him a thrill. I guarantee you, he’ll be happy.”
Donnie blushed but looked
mollified.
Dee Dee
asked “But what about our real information? Won’t that be compromised?”
Andrew laughed. “It
will take another super-genius to come close to it. Heck, we don’t even
keep it on the server. We don’t even keep it in the computer room.
They can come and confiscate all our hardware and they wouldn’t get our
database. I’ve got the smartest programmers on earth working on this,
honey. It’s a done deal.”
Dee Dee kept up. “So how do you know all
this?”
“I told the girls to
listen to Morris’s mind’s answers to my questions, remember? He didn’t
hold anything back. He couldn’t. I let Emmy know that she was to
flog it out of him, if necessary. She twisted his brain and hung him out
to dry. In the few minutes we had with him, he gave it all up.”
Donnie asked, “Well is
the government going to get him off? Will he just walk away free after
trying to kidnap our babies?”
I responded in the
negative. “We are among the biggest political contributors in
Dee Dee
was puzzled. “I always wondered why you gave so much money. You
hate politicians.”
“Hey, the local
politicians do good work. Most local governments I’ve dealt with work
hard for their constituency. They do so here too. They are good
people. It’s state-wide and national politicians I despise, regardless of
party. They are almost all whores. I don’t blame them. We
created this fucked up political system. They are playing the hand that was
dealt them. I don’t blame them but I still despise them.”
Donnie said, “Dee Dee you’ve set Andrew off again. We were talking
about this guy, what’s his name, Morris?”
I continued, “This guy is
going down for breaking and entering and attempted kidnapping. That’s a
big time felony. We’ll make sure that he knows that he’s doing major hard
time unless he talks and tells the truth. It will be easy if we can just
get one of the kids, Em preferably, to be close to the action when he is in
open court. She’ll make him talk.”
Dee Dee
asked “What does the Attorney General want with us? We’re not making any
waves, are we?”
I nodded in the
affirmative. “Honey, I have almost two hundred children and they are all
telepaths. There is no way information like that isn’t going to make it
back to the powers that be. We told all the mothers to keep everything
quiet, but who ever saw ninety women who could keep their mouths shut.”
Donnie wasn’t taking
that. “
“Well there are two
reasons we might be wanted. First, we aren’t real popular with the
religious right. I have all of these kids; it is general knowledge that I
have two wives. Even without the telepathy angle, I’ll bet there are some
religious extremists who would love to move me to the top of their hate
list. They would be applying pressure to the current administration, and
there are a lot of religious whackos in positions of
power in that group. But the fact that they went after the girls
indicates they know something. Maybe it’s just their IQ’s. They might be
interesting in grabbing a super-genius and seeing what makes her tick.
But maybe it’s the telepathy. Morris really didn’t know the why. So
I’m guessing on this.”
Dee Dee
asked, “What are we going to do?”
I smiled. “My
little league coach always taught me the best defense is a good offense.
They’ve got the IRS and napalm bombs on their side. But I’ve got Emma on
my side. I think it’s about time we set her loose.”