The Metanaut: a mind-bending sci vs psy supernatural thriller by Megan Bledsoe

Can Sci explain this Psy?
[ ↓ Read Chapter One ]

Halloween

On October 31, at 4:58 pm, the sun cast a reddish hue on the old ornate buildings that surround the University of Washington’s Red Square plaza.

The square was hosting a night market. Halloween themed.

Yuri Palming had gotten there early to set up his scarf-on-a-milk-crate psychic’s table at the base of a steel sculpture, an upside-down obelisk balanced on the tip of a pyramid. It was a great spot, centrally located between two aisles of brightly lit stalls, and primed to catch the attention of anyone wanting a reading.

He’d already had half a dozen clients. Mostly costumed college kids. They roamed the stalls, trick-or-treating and bartering for trinkets. Their laughter rang in the air, mingling with the smell of oncoming rain and imminent thunder.

Usually after one client left, Yuri would catch the eye of another curious co-ed and wave her over. But something else had caught his attention.

To his right, the sun was setting in the gap between Meany Hall and the three brick towers that Yuri had once thought were viewing elevators, but later learned were ventilation stacks for an underground parking garage. The lower the sun sank into the gap, the redder it became‍‍—until it was the same color as the carnation in the black raincoat lapel of a man across the square who had his eyes locked on Yuri.

He was beelining his way over.

The man had grayish-white hair and a stiff gait. He was at least four, maybe five decades older than the rest of the market’s young crowd. He sidestepped a costumed ghost and paused his stride to let a group of Care Bears pass in front of him. But little by little, the man was getting closer. 

It was weird.

But the thing that really had Yuri’s spine stiffening inside his purple wizard costume was a woman flanking the man’s left shoulder.

She was both there . . . and yet not there.

To Yuri, the woman was clear as day. 

She was taller than the man she flanked, but her clothes were more drab: a long wool gray skirt and a cream shapeless top. She had a hawkish nose and graying blonde hair styled in tight curls, like a helmet. Yuri could see the details of her clearly.

But he could also see the bright red sun shining through her body, like she was nothing more than a diaphanous swath of gauze.

Yuri doubted a single other person on the plaza could see the woman at all.

Did the older gentleman know he was being followed? The woman walked just behind him, practically breathing in his ear. Like she was his second. Or a bodyguard. Or his wet-work gal. She reminded Yuri of Baba Yaga, a character from fairy tales with iron teeth.

Yuri was still young, just fifteen, but not stupid, not even close. He always set up shop in the busiest part of an event, and this was the busiest part of Red Square on one of the busiest nights of the year. He should be safe.

But the chill rising up his spine was telling him to worry.

He kept his eyes focused on the man, if only to keep from looking at the woman still flanking his left shoulder, still there and yet not there. He just had a feeling he shouldn’t look at her, shouldn’t let her know he could see her. 

The strange pair came within kicking distance of Yuri’s scarfed milk crate, and the corner of the man’s mouth rose with amusement, like he was scoffing at the idea of fortunes told and crystal balls.

“You do readings?” the man asked, pointing at Yuri’s crayon-on-cardboard sign that advertised as much.

Yuri nodded, feeling cornered. If he were standing, he’d probably be taller than the man‍‍‍‍‍—taller than the woman, too‍‍‍‍‍—but he was sitting on the sculpture’s cold concrete base. The milk crate was pressed against his knees, blocking him in. 

“Twenty bucks,” Yuri said. 

The man opened his black raincoat and pulled a long billfold from the inside pocket, opened it like a book, and pulled out a crisp hundred-dollar bill.

“I don’t have change for that,” Yuri said, sensing that a fistful of the man’s cash would come with a stomach full of worries. 

That same chill that told him not to let on that he could see the diaphanous woman was also telling him to pretend that he was a charlatan and not the real deal, that his readings were phony, too. 

The man dropped the money, letting it flitter down to Yuri’s table like it was just another dead autumn leaf. “You can keep the difference.”

Yuri picked up the bill and tucked it beneath his right hip. People sometimes asked for their money back. He’d learned the hard way that it was easier to give it to them than to argue‍‍‍‍‍—and easier still if it wasn’t in his pocket.

The woman stepped around the milk crate and up onto the sculpture’s platform, invading Yuri’s space. She bent down low and peered at him, her face inches from his own, like she was testing him. Like she was testing whether he could see her, whether her presence made him squirm.

That was a big fat yes. But hopefully only on the inside. Yuri couldn’t help stiffening, but he otherwise tried not to react to her. He tried to look oblivious.

But he could see her out the corner of his eye. Her hawkish nose. A witch’s nose. Not unlike Baba Yaga’s. Her hair was more blonde than gray, but it was curled in the way some elderly women do to make their thinning strands seem thicker. Yuri had a hard time guessing her age. But he placed her at fifty, give or take a decade or two. Which made her a decade or so younger than the man.

“How long have you been doing this?” the man asked. 

Yuri had been reading people whether he wanted to or not for as long as he could remember. But truth wasn’t the correct answer. Not for this man. 

“Not long. A couple years, maybe. What’s your question?”

Baba Yaga stood up straight again and stepped behind Yuri.

He pretended to rub his chest, feeling for the protective crystal he wore under his hoodie. You’re safe, he told himself, repeatedly, trying to convince himself that whatever the woman planned to do while she was behind him, she wouldn’t‍‍‍‍‍—shouldn’t‍‍‍‍‍—be able to hurt him. She was just a ghost.

“I have this brother,” the man said. But instead of getting a feel for the man’s brother, an image of Yuri’s own brother flashed into his mind. “Do you have any brothers?” the man asked.

Yuri had last seen his brother almost a year ago, when Josh had left for his latest assignment. Yuri missed him every day, and didn’t want to talk about him with this man. 

But Yuri was more than just good at reading people. And he could feel that now was not the time to lie.

“One,” he said.

“He older or younger?”

“Older.”

“Mmm,” the man said, his tone disappointed, as if this difference between them meant the milk-crate psychic wouldn’t understand his issue. And yet Yuri knew the man was secretly pleased with his answer. “Mine’s younger,” the man said.

The man’s ghostly bodyguard snort-laughed‍‍‍‍‍—and Yuri heard it. He tried not to frown, not to react, at the strangeness of hearing the sound. But she was unlike any ghost he had ever seen before. She had clarity of figure. He could see her whole body, every detail, from the grays streaking her curly helmet hair to her round-toed boots that looked to be made of something soft, like gray felt. And she had clarity of consciousness. She was aware and focused. And she moved like she had a mission‍‍‍‍‍—and solid form. Yuri could have sworn she’d just tugged at the hundred-dollar bill beneath his hip, with her foot. It took all his focus to resist the instinct to check. 

“My brother and I don’t get along too well,” the man was saying. “Do you and your brother get along?”

Yuri shrugged, using the motion to release some of the tension in his back. He felt the woman behind him, an energy without heat. He took a deep breath to keep from shrinking away from the feel of her. 

She stepped around him and down off the platform, reclaiming her position at the older man’s flank. Yuri was pretty sure she could have walked all the way around him, platform be damned‍‍‍‍‍—a normal ghost would have‍‍‍‍‍—but she hadn’t. She’d stepped up, and then she’d stepped down. 

She acted physical. 

Still human.

“Yeah, I think that’s the way of brothers, to not get along,” the man was saying, “to love each other, but to compete. To put each other down and deny their better differences.”

The woman shifted her weight and then stepped behind the man, watching Yuri as she did so. Yuri once again felt like he was being tested, like she was trying to see whether his gaze would jump from the man’s face to her own and reveal his gift for what it truly was. It took all of Yuri’s concentration to keep his eyes on the man, to keep them from jumping to the woman. 

He missed what the man was saying.

“You okay, son?”

“I was picking up on a feeling.” Yuri rotated his wrist as if reeling in a thought, which wasn’t untrue. “What was your question?”

“How do I heal the rift with my brother?”

The man didn’t have a brother. Yuri had received that clarifying thought the moment the man had uttered the lie, but the image of Yuri’s own brother had clouded it. He still wondered why, and wondered why the man was here, but thinking on those answers would have to wait until later. 

Yuri tilted up the milk-crate table, where his backpack was hidden, and pulled out a tarot deck. He didn’t need props, but most people felt they weren’t getting their money’s worth unless he used them. 

He halved the cards and shuffled them nine times.

“One shuffle for each word in the question,” he explained. It was habit, one he’d settled on for his own amusement. Most people got this look on their face like Oh, no, did my question use the right amount of words? But the man just nodded, like the rule made total sense.

His invisible bodyguard, however, frowned.

Yuri flipped over three cards.

As the sun dropped below the horizon, so did the temperature. Yuri shivered against a sudden bite of wind that carried with it the smell of fried bread, cloyingly sweet. He pulled the hood of his wizard’s robes up higher around his neck, then adjusted the three cards he’d placed atop his makeshift table so that they were equidistant apart. Despite the fact that he didn’t need props, he found that divination tools produced surprisingly accurate results. 

And he didn’t like what he saw: The Tower and the Three of Swords, both upright. And The Moon, upside down. 

Disruptive change.

Secrets and deception.

Sorrow, suffering, and pain. 

Yuri shivered, then reached inside his robes and zipped his hoodie, hoping to play it off as a response to fall night air cooling quickly now that the sun had fully set.

“He needs encouragement, your brother does,” Yuri said. It was one of those classically vague, applicable-to-everyone answers.

But the man looked pleased. 

For a millisecond. 

Then he frowned. “He’s in his fifties.”

“Yes, but you’re only older. Not wiser.”

The words had come unbidden. The man didn’t have a brother. 

But he’d been thinking about someone.

The man’s brows rose, deepening the lines in his forehead, and he released a big, boisterous laugh that caught the attention of people passing by with their market bags and candy baskets.

The man’s ghostly bodyguard, standing to the side, startled at the man’s laugh. But then she turned an intense gaze on Yuri. He was still only looking at her with his periphery, which blurred a lot of details. But he could feel it. He could feel her.

She wasn’t as convinced about Yuri’s act as the man was. 

She suspected Yuri wasn’t a fraud.

Don’t look at her. Don’t look at her. Don’t look.

The man pulled his wallet from his inside pocket again, opened it like a book, and dropped another hundred-dollar bill on the milk-crate table. 

“Thanks, kid,” he said, and he walked away, back across the square, shaking his head as if still laughing. 

The ghost woman hung back. She was still in Yuri’s periphery, which was harder to maintain now that the man was gone. When people stare at your back, you turn around, you make eye contact. The urge is even stronger when they stare at you from the front. 

And she was staring at him, daring him to stare back.

Yuri picked up the hundred‍‍‍‍‍—thank goodness for that hundred, for a place to rest his eyes‍‍‍‍‍—and took his time gathering the first bill from under his hip, folding the two together. He kept his eyes down. But just beyond the milk-crate table, he could see Baba Yaga’s gray felt boots.

He shifted to one hip and stuffed the hundreds into his pocket.

The gray boots quarter-turned and followed after the man, picking up enough speed that she probably wasn’t looking back over her shoulder.

Yuri chanced a look. 

Across the square, the diaphanous woman caught up to the man, slowing as she reached his side. He put on a pair of glasses and turned toward her, as if looking at her. As if speaking to her. She nodded, and then she was gone.

The man pulled a phone from his pocket.

But Yuri lost sight of him when a pink bear paw waved through his view.

“Excuse me,” said the pink bear paw’s owner. She was a college-aged girl, one of a dozen wearing colorful Care Bears costumes. The pink bear pointed at Yuri’s cardboard sign, still advertising, in colorful crayon, Fortunes Told $20. She had two hearts on her white stomach. Love-A-Lot Bear.

“Can you tell me if I’m gonna get my promotion?”

The answer came unbidden: Eventually, but not this round. And that’s not the question you most want answered.

Yuri nodded and gathered up his previous client’s cards, glancing up to see if he could still see the old man. He could. At the top of the stairs between Meany Hall and the three red-brick towers. The old man was pocketing his phone.

The pink Care Bear leaned into Yuri’s view. “Are you trancing right now?”

Yuri smiled. Trancing implied he could turn off the broadcast. 

If only.

“One shuffle for each word in the question,” he said, receiving the customary horrified expression as she undoubtedly repeated her question and second-guessed its phrasing. He shuffled the deck, trying to inhale calm and exhale composure with each flex of the cards.

But then a man appeared. 

A man wearing a dirty black T-shirt under dirty fatigues. 

From out of nowhere, he just suddenly appeared in front of the Care Bears.

Yuri flinched backward, startled, and lost his grip on the cards. They shot out of his hands and all around the table. 

Yuri scrambled to his feet. “Josh?” 

His brother. He was just standing among the Care Bears. Thirteen years older and buffer‍‍‍‍‍—but no longer taller, and with new lines around the dark almond eyes they’d shared with their mom. It was the first time Yuri had seen his last living relative in almost a year. 

The Care Bears had all shrieked and bent down to collect the scattered cards, leaving Josh standing alone. His dirty camos were green and reddish-brown in a pixelated pattern. Perfect for winning the award for Most Authentic Costume. 

But Yuri knew better. 

Josh’s eyes darted around the square like he wasn’t sure where he was. Or how he’d gotten here. 

“Josh?” Yuri said again.

Josh locked eyes with Yuri‍—then winced as the pink Care Bear, reaching for a wayward card, crept through his body. 

Yuri sucked in a breath. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a disembodied being. It wasn’t even the first time he’d seen a disembodied being today. He’d known the truth the moment his brother had appeared. But still. This was Josh. So new. Only just recently‍‍‍‍‍—

Deceased. 

A hollow feeling grew inside Yuri’s chest, creating pressure in his throat, even as it left him completely empty below the sternum. 

Josh’s lips moved. Yuri didn’t hear the words so much as receive them. Almost like he was thinking them himself.

You were right, Yuri. A rift. 41.82555, -123.98445. Big Beauty. Hurry, kid . . . 

Yuri didn’t scramble for a pen. He knew he’d remember the coordinates. He wasn’t so sure he’d remember his big brother. He tried to memorize Josh’s face, his love, as he flickered, already fading . . .

Yuri closed his eyes and tried to imprint this moment, this man, on his memory. He sat with his feelings, breathing into them, beginning the long process of getting used to them, to what it really felt like being the only Palming left in the world. 

“Here’s your cards,” said the pink Care Bear.

Yuri opened his eyes and took the cards from her, then gathered up his tablecloth and sign, packing everything into his backpack. 

“The most reliable way to connect with dead loved ones,” he said, softly, just for her, just for the pink Care Bear who’d wanted to ask this question but had asked another instead, “is to remember them when you’re enjoying yourself.”

She blanched, her face becoming as white as her furry heart-centered stomach. “What?”

Yuri hiked his backpack onto his shoulder and picked up the milk crate. “So go have fun,” he said.

Ignoring the Care Bears’ rude dismissives, Yuri hurried across the square toward the steps between Meany Hall and the three brick towers. He pulled out his phone and typed an email to himself with the GPS coordinates his brother had given him, along with the words rift and Big Beauty, whatever they meant. Then he scrolled through his contacts for the only phone number he’d never called before. 

Yuri dialed the number and held the phone to his ear, listening as it rang and rang.

Darius Jackson heard a siren. He put a protective arm around his wife and looked over his shoulder as an ambulance zoomed past, its exhaust stinking up the air. He waved his hand around, trying to keep the smoke away from Marisol. He held his wife by the elbow, letting her lean into him as she clutched at her belly, like maybe she could pull it in enough to see around it to the red curb below. No go, though. She kicked outward, her black ballet flat making contact, then inched forward and stepped up.

“Got it,” she said, picking up speed toward the sliding glass doors under the big red sign that read EMERGENCY ROOM. They’d gotten lucky and found a parking spot in one of the closer feeder lanes, but the emergency room’s sliding glass doors had been opened when they’d pulled in and Jackson had yet to see them close, what with how many people were filing into the hospital. 

“Most of them are pregnant,” Marisol said, her voice strained. “You seeing that?”

“Yeah,” he said, not liking it one bit.

Up ahead, to the left side of the walkway, only two wheelchairs remained available for patients who needed extra assistance. One of them was already being detangled from the other by a man a lot younger than Jackson, who got it free and rolled it into position for his own pregnant wife.

Darius looked behind him at the parking lot and down the sidewalk both ways. He and Marisol were close enough to get the last wheelchair, but they weren’t the only couple arriving who could use it.

“Leave it,” Marisol said, thinking the same thing. “I’m okay. That woman’s way further along than I am.” She jerked her head backwards, over her right shoulder, where a woman who was almost certainly in her fortieth week was waddling up behind them. Marisol still had two months to go.

They’d been enjoying a nice dinner when all of a sudden Marisol had pitched forward at the table, her mouth dropping open in a silent gasp of pain, one hand bracing herself against the table, the other clutching the bottom of her belly.

Really, that last symptom was the only one Jackson would have needed to jump out of his chair, haul Marisol out of hers, and rush her out to the car. In his limited experience, hands on top of the stomach meant ease, contentment.

Hands clutching the underbelly meant trouble. 

He’d been thankful that the best hospital in Sacramento, California, was only a few blocks away. But pregnant or not, it looked like Marisol would be in for a long wait. 

The brightly lit waiting room smelled like industrial hand sanitizer and lingering sickness. Rows of light-blue vinyl chairs filled the room, and nearly every one of them was occupied. 

Many by people in costumes who looked like they’d had a rough night. 

Too many by expectant women grimacing and clutching their stomachs. 

“There’s one,” Marisol said, pointing out an empty chair in the middle of the room. “I can make it. Go check me in.”

She let go of him and reached for the seatback of the nearest chair, apologizing to the occupant when she brushed his shoulder. 

Flat screens in the high corners of the room and at the tops of support posts were showing a subtitled rerun of Friends. 

Better than the news.

Reports of a rise in complications and pregnancy loss had been all over the airwaves in recent weeks, but local reports had started in the Midwest about ten or eleven months ago, right before Jackson had received his current assignment. He’d been so excited to get one close to home. He and Marisol had just gotten married and they were both running out of time to become parents. They’d heard about the reports in the Midwest, but by then they’d already heard all kinds of horror stories. They figured, at best, the report was fake news, and at worst, it wasn’t anything new.

But the ratio of pregnant women to other patients sitting in this Sacramento hospital’s waiting room said the problem was new, it was different, and it was making its way to the coasts.

Jackson’s phone buzzed and vibrated against his hip. He unhooked it from his belt and checked the screen. The number was post, his latest assignment. 

Jackson ground his jaw. Not even loss of limb was a big enough emergency to warrant his team bothering him right now. 

He answered after the second ring, keeping his head down, his voice low, and his hand over his mouth. “Jackson.” 

“Finally. Where’s Josh?” 

The caller was male, but his voice was young.

Too young. 

“Who is this?” Jackson asked.

“Yuri Palming. Is my brother still there? I want to come get him.” 

“Palming?” Jackson had a Palming on his team. Under civilian circumstances, he might acknowledge the connection, but the job and everyone involved was top secret. “How’d you get this number?”

“Josh gave it to me. For emergencies.”

“Not this numb‍‍‍‍‍‍‍—‍”

Jackson stopped himself. If what the kid was saying was true, it meant no one had answered the phone at command post. He’d expected his team to eventually get comfortable with their cushy mission‍‍‍‍‍—they were used to more adrenaline; to days in the field, rather than months‍‍‍‍‍—but they wouldn’t test him while he was with his wife. Jackson felt a sensation in his stomach that he was trained to work around but never quite got used to. 

“How long was the phone ringing?”

“I don’t know. It clicked over about a billion times, and then you finally answered. What happened to him?” said the caller. “What’s the rift?”

The word sent a chill across Jackson’s shoulders. He’d only heard the term himself last week. From his team. There were so many questions he wanted to ask the caller, but there was nothing he was allowed to say. 

“You know what, dude? Never mind,” said the caller. “I already have your coordinates. I’m coming either way.”

Jackson hung up on the kid and dialed command post. The phone rang and rang, clicking over several times, and then, as someone finally answered‍—

“Jackson?”

‍—he heard a baby cry. His heart leapt. He looked up and glanced around the hospital’s waiting room, looking for Marisol, not finding her in the seat she’d been aiming for. He started to lower the phone but then he heard his name again. 

“Jackson?” A female voice on the phone. And a baby crying in the background. 

“Doc?” 

Jackson had earned his team’s reputation for discretion in part by stipulating in every mission contract that his team always have a doctor on retainer, one that he could call at a moment’s notice. The arrangement was best for team safety, for keeping client secrets, and for maintaining team and family morale. Jackson had a few doctors he trusted all over the globe. 

Gabriela Ceja was his “Doc” in the American Southwest. 

She was also his favorite.

But he did not like that she was answering his phone. 

“Jackson!” Doc said, the relief in her voice tainted by strain. 

“Where is everyone?” he asked, his irritation slowly giving way to dread. “How come no one’s answering the phone?”

“They were out at the clearing. They . . . they . . .” Jackson did not like the tone in Doc’s voice, a woman who had seen it all and then some. The hesitation, the terror, punctuated by the baby’s wail. Jackson feared he’d been wrong: 

There was a big enough emergency.

“Who’s left?”

“Danny’s bringing the last of them back now.”

Jackson waited for Doc to add more names, but on the other end of the line, Doc was cooing, trying to soothe the baby.

“Wait. That’s it?” Jackson asked her. “Just Danny? No one else?”

“I wanted to go out there too, help Danny bring them back, but with Gaia here . . .” Doc’s voice broke. Doc was Gaia’s primary caretaker for the next little while because Gaia’s mother, Doc’s young granddaughter, couldn’t be with her right now. Doc sniffled congestion as she cooed the crying baby. But Gaia’s cries sounded distant on the phone. Like the baby was in her carrier. Which meant Doc was probably already tending someone on Jackson’s team. Doc sniffed, and her tone sounded a little more normal. “You know how it gets out there.”

He didn’t, actually. Back in January, his team had been tasked with guarding a clearing in the woods. “Consider it a break,” his handler had said, “easy money.” Jackson was happy to do so. The post was even close to home, close to Marisol. He got to see her a lot more often. But once they found out she was pregnant, Jackson had mostly left his team to handle the mission on their own. He’d mostly just listened to their reports. 

“When’d it start this time?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I could check the logbooks.”

Jackson didn’t say anything. Moments later, he heard a few sounds through the phone: footsteps, a door creaking open, rain, lots of rain. Then a door closing, the flipping of pages. Jackson figured Doc was consulting the logbooks.

Still two people from the head of the line at the check-in desk, Jackson turned to look for Marisol and found her in the chair she’d aimed for, in the center of the room. They met eyes immediately, like she’d been watching him this whole time. Her forehead was creased. He knew those worry lines were for him, rather than for herself. So he flashed her a smile and shook his head that his phone call was nothing, hoping she wouldn’t continue to worry about him. She needed to focus on herself.

In his ear, Doc said, “Jackson? You still there?” 

“Here.”

“It looks like they started reporting activity about forty-five minutes ago.”

Jackson checked his watch. That was about how long ago he and Marisol had left the restaurant. 

It may have been a while since Jackson had been to the clearing, and the clearing may have been quiet every time he did go, at least to his eyes and ears, but Jackson still had his suspicions. 

His team had been watching the clearing since January. 

The rise in pregnancy complications had started about the same time. 

Logically, it was just a coincidence. It didn’t make sense that his assignment could relate to, let alone cause, the rise in pregnancy complications. But both the clearing and this, this pregnancy loss pandemic, had occasional upticks in activity. And those upticks, at least to Jackson’s eye, sure seemed to happen at about the same time.

He looked around the emergency waiting room, feeling the eeriness of seeing so many expectant women in this sterile, sick-smelling place, all of them here at one time, at the same time. 

And his eyes landed on Marisol. Still watching him. She gave him a small smile. He tried to smile back. But he didn’t know how to help his wife and child. 

At least not here.

Above him, a PA system announced a Code Purple followed by a Code Pink. Neither code was as well known as Code Blue, but the patient demographics in the waiting room tonight made them easy to figure out. Jackson swallowed hard. And made his decision.

“Everything okay?” Doc asked him over the phone.

Jackson ignored the question. “There’s a file in‍‍‍‍‍‍‍—‍” 

His voice broke. In his thirty-three years of having top secret clearance, he’d never once broken mission parameters, let alone trust. 

“A file?” Doc said. “What file?”

Jackson cleared his throat. The sanitized air didn’t have enough oxygen. 

“In my desk. It’s called Supplies.” 

A fake name for a dangerous suspicion and an even more dangerous solution. 

But he couldn’t take it back now. He was grasping at hope. Hopeless hope. It was crazy for him to think that a clearing in the woods could be connected to his wife’s pain, to his child’s survival. But if checking it out had even the slimmest chance of saving their lives, it was worth the sacrifice of his own. 

“Give the file to Danny,” he said to Doc, “and tell him to go get her.”

She’ll need you… 
STEP INTO THE RIFT.