YD6-56(SHEk) In the Realm of a Strike: Where Destiny Lingers and a Message Reveals

This memoir, presented in self-contained chapters, delves into the layers of existence through the lens of Aetheria, a toddler who personifies 'Consciousness.' Born from a profound yearning, Aetheria names herself Sunshine, yet her journey is shadowed by dark forces threatening her destiny. Inspired by The Code: Horizon of Infinity, these stories weave together themes of mind travel, destiny, and the shaping of fate.

In this chapter, the protagonist navigates a deeply introspective journey through a restless day, grappling with the aftermath of an estranged relationship with Francine. Haunted by memories, regrets, and unfulfilled plans, he roams through the city, tracing her presence and absence in equal measure. The narrative intertwines mundane actions with vivid, dreamlike imagery, revealing the tension between longing for closure and an uncertain future. As the day unfolds, the protagonist’s wanderings echo he internal struggle, culminating in moments of fleeting solace and inevitable solitude.

This chapter is shared in its raw, unedited form, as a gift for those curious to explore the creative process behind the memoir. While it has yet to undergo professional revision, it offers a glimpse into the story’s heart and themes. I invite you to journey through it, reflect, and, if inspired, share your thoughts.

As morning light seeps through the front window, nudging me awake. The music plays, ‘… Breaking up is never easy, I know, but I have to go - (I have to go, this time I have to go, this time I know) - Knowing me, knowing you, it’s the best I can do . . .’ I glance beside me, catching Francine in the rear window’s glow, her angelic eyes open. The sight stirs my estranged, lingering heart — a heart burdened by the residue of her screams, her fractured Zulu dance that refuses to fade. A forest Fire that had swept through us, reducing the lush vegetation to a battlefield of skeletal trunks and charred branches. Her incessant, wild accusation of lingers, pregnancy, palpable, sinking my heart in swamps.  

My Stoic mind, scolds my crying heart, pleading, ‘We could have made it work!’ I shift focus to today’s significant, impending departure. In mere hours, after leaving my faltering company, Aditon Inc., with Michael Pinkhasov, to board an Air France flight — my only assurance resting on a tenuous connection through Rico, my brother-in-law, rekindling the thriving teenager within me, eager for an island’s surviving adventures.

I grab the duvet, waving over to Francine as he pushes away from her side. In unison, we spring to our feet. Her eyes rebuke me, lingering on the bed before passing me — Ignoring the silent plea of my heart, which yearns for her to mend it. Without a glance toward me, she disappeared behind the shower room door. I pick my clothes off the lounge chair and slip into jeans, shirt, socks, and slip-on shoes while pacing off. Sadness soaks through me, as I prepare to leave behind a heart-warming six weeks with her.

She reemerged dressed yet distant, ignoring me as she heads toward the entrance door, where my calf-belly suitcase of parachute fabric and handbag sit loyal in waiting pets. I lingered at the foot of the bed, rooted in place, as her eyes brush passes me, unseeing, without an acknowledged flicker. she pulls the door open, and steps into the gapping daylight. pulling the door close, I’m left stalking the muffled thud of her boots descending the stoop stairs, volatilizing at the base as she vanishes along the sidewalk. 

I remain seated on the bed’s edge, her footsteps resonating in my imagination, filling the gap, tracing the mile-stretch of 63rd Road to the subway. I picture her pressed tight among commuters, standing before the coach’s sealing doors. riding tunnels and punctuation stations, evanescing into the fog of my relapsing mind. Suscitating to dawns on me — my life in suspense. I glance at my wristwatch, anxiety tightening its grip. Shaking myself loose, I rise from the bed, and step toward the dark rear corner of Francine’s studio. I pick up the phone, and dial a taxi, envisioning the driver’s approach through the streets flanked by fenestrated brick facades and undergrowth jungle, inching closer to where my luggage waits.

As I’m opening the entrance door, to the asphalt. A canary yellow taxi slips in at the base of the stairway to a stop. I tug my calf-bloated suitcase, bumping the doorjamb, wrestling outside to lock the door, drop a thought. ‘My Little Sparrow, you didn’t ask your keys back?’ I turn toward the taxi driver, descend, onto meeting, heaving my bags into the depth of the trunk lid. Walking away from a closing lid, around the taillight, to the back door, and duck inside, meeting the taxi driver’s glance, I call out, “J.F.K. Please.” 

With my destination logged in, we pull away from the terrace houses. I lean back, watching Forest Hill’s raise to unfamiliar streets. I’m on my way, leaving behind the relentless hustle of a city that never sleeps—a city whose rhythm mirrors the chaos of my tormented heart, a rejuvenating challenge lies ahead, an anesthetic to cloister my heart and let my mind take the lead. 

Riding streets through thin traffic, we pass shoppers lingering on corners, bright brands punctuating the facades of local retailers. I lowered my eyes, the error-prone of my dyslexia lingering in the back of my mind. I rummage through my handbag, fingers grazing over the travel documents. “6th June 1990 Air France.” with the departure time. Reassured, I lift my gaze around the headrest, gauging our progress with a smooth flow in the trickling of highway traffic after the on-ramp’s merging lanes.

The driver, with dark rounded Mexican features, catches my eye in the oblong mirror, perhaps to incentivize a conversation. But I remain silent, thoughtless, yet tethered to a path Francine has nurtured in my life since her arrival in New York — until now, as I find myself on my way. Bittersweet, she has permeated under my skin, her radiant presence tingling and drifting within my body. I roll my eyes for diversion, and scan the distant green, flocculent woods slowly at obfuscating the houses, giving way to the looming city skyline. Suscitating the song rhyming in my head: 

‘Oh Capri, oh c’est fini, Et dire que c’était la ville De mon premier amour. . .  — Capri, it’s over. And to think it was the city of my first love! Capri, it’s over. I don’t think I will return there one day.’

Fledging wings as the signs, on overhead gantries loom closer, flash “J.F.K International Airport” breaking the cast shade, to see my gateway as the taxi driver pursues graphic airplanes to affix “Gate,” weaving roadways to widespread structures. He spirals down to the upcoming widespread terminal’s monolith facade, onto reflecting myself faint, at a yellow taxi coasting up alongside to a stop. 

I step out - smack - the door, circling the rear fender, I hand a twenty-dollar bill. “Thank you,” he says with a thick accent as he lifts the lid of the trunk. I whisk my luggage from the trunk; we turn our backs to each other. I lug my calf-bulged suitcase, up the curb, and through the swing of the airlock doors. Overcome by giddiness for my flight — my mind soaring into the sky — I step into a concourse that gleams, awash and deserted.

My suitcase's faint wheel hum follows me, after an eye sweep, pursuing Air France check-in boot fascia signage, short of which a fountain shape crowd and spattering figures from the circle. In my long strides with darting eyes, I’m determined to leave quibbling people behind. I meddle through passengers leaving with their luggage. ‘Something is amiss?’ Thinking, ‘I only need a boarding pass, and I’ll be on my way.’ I head toward the beacon, the royal-blue dressed Air France steward, a distance upfront of the tricolor fascias to a series of check-in counters. In the midst of heckling gazes, and obliging, I approach. The steward, repeated, and again to stressed face stranded passengers. “There is a strike — you can’t board the plane.” 

I’m stoned, standing reluctant among travelers, to pace, turning away. ‘And now!  — where do I go to?’ Effaced, I begin pacing, heading nowhere, ending from large circling, with the widespread and towering monolith of the glowing curtain wall looms as a caller. Distant silhouettes converge, breaching the light — a gateway, pulling me into the engulfing glow. The glazed specters swing clear of the airlock, and I find myself facing the asphalt driveway. ‘Where am I going?’ 

Across the driveway, a canary yellow taxi pulls away, only to pull up the rear door window shrouded in darkness before me. With the driver raised above the undulated roof. I round the rear fender, stepping down the curb and up to the driver. He grabs my bags, stows them in the trunk, as I track back to step to the curb. The smoked plate-glass mirrors my phantom mimics reaching the car door. I leave behind, ducking inside, and pulling the door. Seated dawdling, Upfront, the taxi driver insists. “Where to?” 

I’m bamboozled, having abandoned, everything I held dear, too amnesiac to conjure a plausible drop-off. At the insistence, my mind rhymes home by Mrs. Pinkhasov, although abandoned when up came the month. “Hundred-and-six, Sixty-third road, Forest hills.” I watch the taxi peel away from the plate-glass wall.

The heat of the sun melted the wax binding Icarus’s wings, and he fell, wanting to fly high, approaching too close to the sun. I couldn’t have an inkling of what Aetheria had churned up — cotton candy and cosmic. I look ahead but can’t see myself further than the taxi driver. His eyes through the windshield seeing my destiny unfolding along highway lanes, threading through an inbound trickling traffic. We ride through the cloverleaf. I’m descending into estranged suburban streets. He crawls around corners, marking my tarry return. 

I catch onto my whereabouts after a dizzy zigzag route. “Just drop me off here.” I say, a house away from the terrace houses to the Pinkhasov family. On halt, idling, the driver’s eyes flickers to the oblong mirror as I fix my gaze on the familiar fenestrated brick facade, its window panes veiled in darkness. ‘Get out,’ I repeat to myself. 

With a heavy-hand, my pinky hooks the door handle, unlatching it as my weight leans into the door, spilling me onto the sidewalk. I catch myself, step out, and around the rear fender. I meet the driver standing by the lifted trunk lid, posing my luggage on the asphalt. After handing him a bill, I lift my luggage from the street. The canary bright car pulling away, silent distancing into the quiet street. Alone on the asphalt, I fumble my pocket for keys. ‘Was I meant to have retained Francine’s keys?’ I pose the question to myself. 

Lifting my luggage, I step onto the curb, cross the sidewalk, and a few strides along the front yard path. Staggering up the stairs, I pause at the door. With the reluctance to invade Francine’s estranged privacy, I'm turning the key. The left hinged door swings back, and shame dawns on me, trespassing into the floor-through passageway leading into the depth of her studio. Around the right doorjamb, behind the wall, I place my luggage. 

I paced onward into the cold hearth of her soul, unstoked. Closing the door behind me, I sweep my gaze, rejuvenating in my absence, the domain of Francine in a pink Japanese garden. I plonk down like a dead weight, sinking into the foot of the bed. Hours pass. My gaze drifts from the Kitchen’s dark corner, the shower room doorway, I’m still facing, then to the built-in-wardrobe. Atop a juxtaposed shelf, a box catches my eye, reminding me of compact cassettes — my music collection. 

A childish desire dawns as thought the tapes whisper, ‘I knew you weren’t going to leave me behind!’ But their claim, goes beyond my regret. Their sharp corners were unsuited to fit in my organic suitcase. The pieces of the puzzle out of the box — a part of my life’s engrained image — camouflaged with Francine’s arrival. Deep sleeping muscles twitch, claiming to exercise. Rising to my feet, I shift my luggage farther from the door, and beyond the spill of window light, tucking the bags into the dark corner. I return to lounging in the cup-chair, but discomfort calls to retreat to the bed. 

I roll back into the soft embrace of the mattress, my legs draping over the edge. My mind, bereft of ideas, finds solace in sunlight filtering through, skimming the white ceiling, the page to my spill thoughts — a journal’s cathartic — stitching together fragments of my failed departure, a leap I failed, 

Estranged from Francine, her onslaught hadn’t dissipated the bitter remnants of her broken Zulu dance, her shattering screams. Bleeding into the quiet, her routine evening return home from Pesce Studio. Last week, midweek. Closing the door behind herself, she snarled. “J’ai eu mes règles. Tu devrais être content maintenant ! — I had my period. You should be happy now!”

‘No, I’m not,’ I snapped, though my thoughts remained unspoken. As she walks past me, I added, ‘Your pregnancy wasn’t anything more than an Aries’ blazing need — your Horse instinct to gallop freely.’ Bitter, I frowned. ‘What for? Did you have to freak out, humiliate me — ram me with your head and crush me with your hooves?’

I drift through the afternoon, my body aching and restless under the burden of lying idle. With my mind numbed, ebbs and flows, conjuring holographic images of Gaetano Pesce’s studio — Francine hunched over, her pencil pecking pointillist at the drawing board. 

My body creeps and crawl nerves, I doze off with a twitching leg, an arm, awaken again — random, on the half-hour, the quarters, at the head of the hour  — granting Francine more space to work her time prevailing.

My restlessness sharpens, ticking more pointed at the notch of five minutes on the dial toward ‘Five o’clock!’ the needle-pin hands crossed the head of the hour, launched into another cycle. 

After She seems having left behind, a rainbow of colored crayons abandoned in a cylindric container on the corner of her architectural drawing board. The holographic images faded, 

But the door seam doesn’t crack. My mind leaps back, reaching building sites in Manhattan, my tracks left behind over the years through the grid of streets, and points to subway stations — in vain, without cue. Doubt sinks in, finding I’m readjusting as my thoughts echo in my head. ‘By now, she must be turning away, walking out of Pesce Studio.'

In the distance, I listened through the studio walls to the muffled hum of thoroughfares, the peak of city traffic. I dozed, slipping from reminiscing, slogging late in the evening at Gaetano Pesce’s studio. I forged a jealousy cure, vowing never to ask, ‘Why are you slaving away?’

My heart flounders with envious fevers. Stirred by the subtlety of Francine’s youthful generation of students, and her reverence for Gaetano Pesce. I bear the old man’s feverish shadow in my heart, a burning ache that compelled me to abandon our divergent paths. 

Ant like nibbles spread through my spine, wrapping my ribs, as the hollow echo of suburban traffic lulled into a restless slumber. I remain at a loss, appeasing my restless mind as the needle on the dial spider-crawl toward a lagging “6 o’clock.” but still, the door seam didn’t crack. 

Re-investigating Francine’s routine, I convince myself she ought to have drained from the tower with the crowds by now, swept into the flood of crowds filling the street. I rise, sitting upright, forging blood to circulate my body. Still, without a pulse of her desire to return home, my mind wanders, errs into the labyrinth of evening traffic. 

My head rolls in slow motion, halfway to catch sight of my wristwatch: '7 o’clock, she ought to be home… Patience!’

The ceiling loomed under a summer’s waning daylight, echoing the faint rhythm of a biological clock, My glance shifted to the windows, where the last traces of daylight ebb away. I try to sterilize my thoughts of Gaetano Pesce’s whereabouts. 

Spasm jitter through my arms and legs, my torso shrinking as I lay back on the bed, desperate to halt speculations of Francine’s return — so near, or so it seems. I lent my expired day a fleeting mental glance, yet time emerges as a bulk — a weight still to be leveled, stretching into the unknown.

Scheduling Francine’s homecoming in my mind, patience tortures me as I struggle to keep a cool head through the slow minutes spider-crawl toward the quarter before the hour. I set a new deadline, at nine o’clock. Yet, the entrance door remains silent. 

Reckless and restless, I drowse, stone-cold to the fever of Gaetano Pesce in my heart. My mind drawing the conclusion that he’s not in town, as I lie beside the door jamb’s seam, dreaming, cracking open. Faithful to the hour, I rise to my feet. 

When nine o’clock struck, reluctance grips me, fearing the vacuum that lies beyond the door. The quarter-hour passes, my body swarms with the activity of an ants’ nest. My lethargic arm brings my wrist to glimpse the dial — just short of 10 o’clock, I spring free of my inertia. In a few strides, I turn the key, my eyes meeting the lantern glow of the night street. Shadows casts by the young linden canopies dance on the pavement, their foliage trembling in the night stillness.

I pace along the mile-stretch of 63rd Road, shadows flickering underfoot, emerging onto Queen Boulevard. Lanterns scattered their glow, embracing a river of streaming red and white glittering lights. The fear of the night’s void, a pleasantry of animation. 

Descending by the guardrail.to the sidewalk hatchway. I follow the F-line’s orange disk into the fluorescent-lit tunnel, emerging among a forest of columns to a deserted downtown platform. My metabolism feeling dormant, hibernating. As the train driver flashed emerges behind the large window, and flitting past. Windows flickering cinematographic commuters, few and far seated and pulling to halt. 

I step aboard; the floor tugging under my feet. Settling into a ride far removed from creatures with eyes that vacillate between empty and flared, I watch close the mirrored interior as we ride. Station stop punctuating my blind course. I sniffle in the quiet, the grid of Manhattan’s underground. 

At a guess, I step off the coach onto a deserted station platform. Slowing my pace, I climb the stairs. Gazing through the hatchway, the night’s looming in the concrete jungle’s shadowy rooftops, lowering their fenestrated facades to street level at orientating myself. My mind sniffs out the faint, elusive trace of Francine’s silage. 

A blurry déjà vu of nowhere, to rotate the streetscape, dubious. ‘A city of millions of people — how can I find Francine?’ 

I turn my back to the banality of a fenestrated brick block, unable to feel it as part of Francine’s realm. I step off, following the best course my instinct can chart.

Across the trickling traffic to toggling green to yellow, and red flaring lenses pulse their rhythm. Distant across the boulevard, a woman’s silhouette emerges from a street gorge. Two other shadowy figures mark the empty opposite sidewalk, far and between. Leaving me to scan into the avenue, engaging my curiosity. I jaywalk to the median’s curb, pausing for the cars. 

Raising my eyes at the staring sign. “Houston Street” — ‘A sent message.’ 

‘You are leaving…’ Soho. 

‘No, I didn’t know.’

Drawn to jaywalk across the remaining lanes of traffic, at my pace, an inadvertent awakening of my third eye -- an unseen beacon of sight and sound -- strobes invisible light pulses, and unheard sirens wail in the depth of my perception. Through the avenue, an amalgam of fenestrated brick facades, parading an approach, mingling with scattered towering curtain walls, and glass-to-concrete structures. 

My gaze retracts from the distant blur of the avenue. Drawn into the commercial portals speckled with insignias of industry, locked in darkness for the night. The vacancy speaks for itself. My eyes skim seeking to discover an anomaly, as I’m step up, prolonging my path along the right sidewalk. I grapple for tangible sings, at searching Gaetano Pesce’s studio, 

Until I fondle, the cosmic cotton candy of Francine’s savoring soul, woven into the essence of the avenue. I pause, hearing with my eyes and seeing with my ears, as I scan across the street, needling on a strip of windows breaching the night — shadowing a deserted floor where a fluted pilot light filters at its core, worth scouting. 

I pause again, turning to the curb facing the building across the street. Rising strip-windows, staggering and etching themselves away into the night. A lantern’s shadow slips from beneath my feet, dispatching a phantom away from my body, groping through the haze of instinct. Across the street, shadows, an avatar nearing the portal’s offset plate-glass curtain base by the adjacent tower.

My body conjures a hydra head of my mind, stretching and shadowing a morphing figure as it crosses the street to the opposite sidewalk. Clad in a wetsuit avatar, it gecko-crawls up the ground floor’s plate-glass curtain, reaching the lip of a stone cornice, before escalating higher up the brick spandrel. 

The avatar clings to the glaze, climbing over the hollow of the floor. Proceeding to the next spandrel and strip of windows. There, a faint and wasteful spill of light hints at a pilot light stirring in the depths. 

Scouting the interior, the Hydra of the mind reveals bare office furniture. Against the far wall, outlining the edge of an architectural drawing board. The stool vacated, and by an assortment of sharpened crayons rest in a cylindric holder on a side table, evokes my vision of her workplace. Etching further the architectural core of the tower — at imagining the upright edge cracking a spill light from the blind corner, hinting at the layout of the abolition block, the kitchenette, wrapped up with the fire escape and elevator spanning floors above and below. 

‘Francine is not on rendezvous!’ the thought sparks unbidden, my habitual slip into the early morning stillness, accepting her absence as the verdict. 

My avatar, undeterred, crosses a diagonal descent, crawling the brick spandrel to the windows below, tracing the tower’s furthest edge. Creeping over the lip of the cornice, the Avatar leaps with a grand landing, softened by a crouch squat. Shedding the wetsuit’s shine by the plate-glass curtain, its shadow walks away, leading me up across the deserted street, past portals and a few addresses. 

Reaching a point of curiosity, the shadow vanishes into the copper-framed smoked-glass at the base of a towering curtain wall. I stand magnetized to the window beside the entrance doorway. My eyes settle on the facade, permeating the glazed threshold, with an inadvertent curiosity. Infiltrating the soft lit interior, to a gleam sculpting a sturdy wooden bar counter, its quiet allure in the depths. 

At the far end of the bar, a figure emerges, etching in stillness, seating high. Her fingers curl in a gentle wrap around her other hand, resting on her lap — a mute posture, eloquent in her restraint. An efflorescence creeps through my body, as Francine dawns before me. In her subtle allure, she carries a frustrating fever that speaks for itself. ‘Do as I say, not as I do!’ 

A barman’s silhouette is cut against the sparkling back shelves. Lined with glasses with an assortment of bottles that catch the light in fractured brilliance, as he chats with Francine. 

Aetheria orchestrates the rigmarole, with an instinctive guide. ‘Never mind — It’s her life,’ my chilled mind whispers, scolding my frayed heart as it nurtures a melody humming to my mind: “You’ve been a’messin’ where you shouldn’t ‘ve been a’messin’. . .” 

As their conversation lingers in the air. The gleam flickers across the line of barstools, extending towards the entrance door, a silent testament to the departure of white-collar workers for the evening. As the bar edges toward closing. 

I rise to the rhythm, spurring my heart, ‘Are you ready, boots? Start walkin’_’

My gaze lifts, drawn into the vista of the street ahead. The long avenue tapers into the distance, dissolving into a blur of giant octopus tentacles — fuzzed shapes meandering amidst towers, set against a backdrop of skyscrapers. 

In the realm of the night, half-hearted, during my gradual approach, the fuzz clears the city block’s interstice to a foliage spills, mingling with the glow of lantern lights. When I turn the corner, my shadows blend into the etching of Washington Square, the New York University portal sparkling with fleeting memories as I pass. 

When a railing rose in my path, I halt, speaking to my shadows as they rush ahead only to vanish behind: ‘that’s enough!’ I descend the sidewalk hatchway, worming the fluorescent-lit tunnel and onto the outbound, empty platform.

I pace along the entrenched outbound silver rail track, toward my future. Turning around, I find my past etched along the encased sleepers, at the silent rhythm of my steps. Back and forth, I roam for an hour, cycling through thoughtlessness. 

A train storms up, flash its drive in the cabin flits past before coach windows flickering of a few shiftless passengers. The doors open, inviting me inside and close behind. The floor tugs underneath my feet, to a ride punctuating with bright station stops, with the occasional man fresh in a cargo outfits, to sit in silence. 

I alight the coach, soon leaving me behind, stepping out of the forest of H-columns. Worming my way to the exit and climbing the stairs back into the realm of the night. I zombie-walk along 63rd Road, a breeze brushing through my head, stirring a long-drawn awakening before the city lends itself to a bustle of a new day. 

Awakening to my reluctant path, knowing Francine is absent from home. My mind braces, shielding my heart. Find the streetlights’ shadow on the stoop, cascade of stairs. I climb to the door, with her key and an intrusive, lost familiarity. I pick the lock, 

I awaken, my mind bracing, shielding my heart, finding my reluctant path, ending. Before me, where the spill of streetlights tumbles from the stoop, cascade the stairs. With an intruder’s approach, I climb to the door. Haphazard, having her keys — its familiarity now lost — I pick the lock.

The door’s shine relents, swinging open to reveal the hollow shadows of a cold desertion.

I cross the threshold, swerving to close the door, and step forward, kicking off my shoes. Brushing the deep curtain folds onto, pulling my pants down. Turn away from the window’s filtering streetlights. I tug my shirt over my head. I let it flutter into the chair after my pants. Grabbing the duvet, I dive headfirst into the pillow, pulling the covers after me.

Daylight grows, brightening the room and casting me into a lull of daydreams. By glances at the translucent blooms of the pink Japanese garden, my heart aches for Francine's absence besides me. The dread of the long day ahead weighs heavy. I listen to the faint murmurs of the city beyond, the ground carrying the distant hum of a beehive cloud  -- Thursday’s hustle and bustle stirring in the distance. 

Until I spring to my feet. I pull on my jeans, thread my head through my shirt, and slip on my shoes. With a tweak of the key, I step through the doorway. Descend the stoop, and follow the sidewalk toward Flushing Meadows’ 1964 Wold Fair’s Unisphere, a route across Forrest Hill’s interlocking highway, 

But then, I jaywalk across 63rd Road, short of the traffic lights, pass a few boutiques before pressing through the doorway. Inside, I turn away from the shattered men stooled along the bar counter, hunched over their breakfast plates. Behind these men, I step to the ranch platform. Weaving past elderly couples dining at small, fenced in tables in the paddock. 

Seated in an isolated depth, a waitress in a nurse’s outfit, order pad and pen at hand, approaches. As always, I won't be disappointed. She soon returns, placing a plate of Sunnyside up eggs, toasts, sausages, fried potatoes, and a cup of coffee that she’ll refill before a ten-dollar note, will settle from exaggerating my coffee intake, and heading out.