Category: A writer’s journey is never done….

Alice chuckled when she realized that they called her Ancient Alien Alice. Little did they know how close to the truth they were. Her actual Earth name was Alicia, at least, during her first assignment on Earth, that was the name she went by. She decided to change it to Alice, not only was it easier to pronounce, but she loved the story of Alice in Wonderland. Her life had been like that. At an early age, she had been dropped into a rabbit-hole-like conduit, and since then she’d been planet hopping, dimensional transitioning and otherworldly tripping ever since.
She didn’t know exactly why she was here on Earth again. Her presence anywhere was always a mystery, until the last minute, when she would find herself knowing what to say and what to do to solve some incredibly complex problem. While she was here, and since she knew she would be coming back here, she always brought some potion, incantation or new acquired magical power that might help bring her son back to his senses. The problem was that her son didn’t remember who he was. And that was the main reason why it was hard to bring him back with her. He had taken on an Earth identity and was going by the name of Blake Austin, manager of a Home Improvement Super store. So mundane, it made her head spin just thinking about it. After all, he was a descendant of a long line of planetary, dimensional explorer adventurer types, confronting every conceivable situation, environment and civilization across the universe and living to tell about it.

He was missed at the last family clan meeting. In the past he had acquired a reputation as a very entertaining story teller. Usually his escapades were fantastically unbelievable. There was a clan gathering coming up soon. She was hoping she could bring him around by then. Everyone in the family was accustomed to being regaled with his extraordinary exploits. And the spontaneous sharing of useful strategies by the other attendees would better equip him for surviving the most insidious of adversaries. Sadly the clan was certainly not going to experience any expansion of the envelope of their possibilities by hearing about the boring life of a mercantile manager on a relatively mild mannered planet such as Earth. Oh, hum. It could be worse, she thought.
The closest pronunciation of her son’s real handle resembled an ancient Sanskrit name, Bhoj. How often she had thought about how he had got into this predicament. Somehow he had succumbed to a self-induced trance intended to give him deep powers of insight, and the ability to express poetic conundrums woven into the fabric of time and space. As he tried to come out of the trance on this world, he had absorbed the essence of the mental, and spiritual development of this culture, and voila: the personality and persona of Blake Austin was born. Alice had returned a number of times, with a number of so-called cures or remedies to pull him out of his allusion. She thought she hit upon the solution, and started the recovery process the last time she was here. It will take awhile, she knew, depending on a number of subtle factors, but she had faith that he would gradually begin questioning his experiences on this world and compare them with his memory of the past revealed to him in his dreams.
Alice was pulled out of her contemplation when she felt the presence of her son and his cute helper approaching. What was her name? Jellie? Willie? whatever.
Alice could sense that Blake was experiencing a growing awareness of the subtle energies of this location. Thousands of years ago, this site had been used by a star traveling race as a transition loci between solar systems. Deep below in the earth were the appropriate metals that could be used to store the interplanetary energies for galactic travel. That was one of the reasons she could easily come here literally out of thin air. Her energy harnessing device resembled a dowsing rod used by some earth people to find water and other things. Fortunately she was able to hide it before the girl got a closer look at it.
Alice turned quickly, as Nellie came around the corner and appeared at the end of the aisle.
“Hello Nellie, how are you,” Alice said relieved that she had remembered her name. Thank goodness for spontaneous divine memory, Alice thought.
“Eh, hi Alice, we..ah,” Nellie said, and then turned to look back, apparently expecting Blake to be right behind her. “Now where did he go?.”
“He must have stopped to remember something,” Alice said.
“You mean he remembered he forgot something and went back for it?” Nellie replied.
“Whatever makes sense to you,” Alice agreeably said.

To be continued…..

“Ancient Alien Alice might know where the robot is. Maybe she took it and wants us to pay a ransom to get it back. On the other hand, Blake might be able to sweet talk her into giving it back, if you promise to go dowsing with her. What do you say Blake?” Fred asked. Months ago, the first time Nellie spotted Alice in the store from an adjacent aisle, Nellie swore Alice was holding a dowsing rod, and it appeared to have a strong pull. By the time Nellie raced around to the aisle where Alice was standing, the dowsing rod was nowhere to be seen. Alice did tell Nellie that thousands of years ago, star people had lived on the site where the store now stood. Since then, her identity as Ancient Alien Alice was sealed.
“Right I’ll strike up a deal,” Blake said, going along with the joke. He took a deep breath, and sighed.
Blake said to Nellie who was still on the phone, “Nellie, Did she say what she wanted?”
“She said she heard that your toy was missing, and she could help you get it back,” Nellie replied.
“Our toy? Is that what she called it? How did you know she was talking about the robot?” Blake asked.
“We were standing next to the empty robot storage cabinet, and when I asked her, she tapped on the metal door with her finger nail,” Nellie replied.
Blake groaned as he lifted his legs and swung his feet to the floor. He stood up, and stretched his arms straight up, his fingers almost touching the ceiling, and emitted a long stretching groan. With the phone ear piece still in his ear, he replied, “Okay, Nellie. Please tell Alice I’m on my way.”
“Will do, Lou!” Nellie liked to rhyme whenever he could get away with it.
“I’ll let you handle it Blake. If you don’t mind. I think you and Alice have rapport that I can’t begin to match,” Fred said.
After the dowsing incident, Blake had approached Alice, and that’s when she told him they had met before in a prior life, when he was a high priest.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come along, Fred. This could get really interesting. Just imagine, she might have met you before in a past life as well,” Blake replied.
“If she did, I was probably a horse, and had more sense. Give her my best. I’ll wait here. I’m looking forward to the details. On the other hand, we could video tape her explanation and put it on YouTube and it might go viral. We would get more business, then we could get promoted to the corporate office. The possibilities are endless,” Fred dreamily ranted.
“Okay, I’ll check it out on my own, and let you know what’s what. If I don’t come back, remember I gave my life for my company. Maybe we’ll meet in another life, where life is easier, and on the beach,” Blake replied agreeably. Then leaning forward with his arm stretched out before him, he moved toward the exit, leaning as if striding forward into a strong gale. “Onward brave adventurer, into the unknown thou dost step with wary and sure tread.” Blake triumphantly bellowed in a deep voice, as if he were a Shakespearean actor.

To be continued….

Blake and Fred were in their office. Blake was reclining in the swivel office chair, his legs stretched out with feet on the desk. Fred was slouched on the faux leather couch, also with his legs stretched out and his feet were on a low coffee table. They were in recuperation and recovery mode after three grueling hours with Dirk, the corporate district manager.
Their minds were adrift, trying to find mooring in a sea of company mandates, scenarios, and prognostications. After trying to stay on top of the Dirk’s demanding expectations was like preparing for and actually running a grueling triathlon with the rules changing willy-nilly. Their blood sugar levels had dropped, and the next inspiration was slow in arriving. They had been called upon to summon unreal levels of patience, while working to project agreeable yet intelligent personas to spontaneously meet impossible dreams of a superhuman slave driver. “No, I shouldn’t think that way.” Blake thought. “He’s not really a slave driver. In order to compete these days with other companies, it’s required that we make a super human effort to be better than anyone else. And then to outdo ourselves, before anyone else does.”
Blake sometimes wondered about the direction that the company was going. And then as he thought about it, he couldn’t define it, because it was ever changing. Oh yes, he remembered, it wasn’t a direction, it was like a purpose, but more abstract, a process, and like Dirk said: To go where no one had ever gone before. “But wasn’t that too general?” Blake asked himself, there had to be other qualifiers to channel the effort into forming and shaping a company to fulfill customer needs that changed everyday and do it seamlessly, exponentially and extraordinarily well.
“That’s where Super Sam came into the picture,” Blake chuckled when he remembered Super Sam, the epitome of excellent customer service that was exemplified in the big chested superman-like image on a customer service poster that graced all company staff lounges years ago. But that was abandoned, the women wanted a Super Samantha mascot. Redoing all the company announcements was too expensive. So Super Sam was abandoned. “How did I get on this mental jaunt?” Blake wondered introspectively. As he started to ponder that, Fred said as if crawling out of a reverie of his own, “Hey, I must have gotten the high speed videos from Hank by now.” He pulled himself off the couch and struggled over to his desk, dropped into the chair and started punching keys.
“I’d better get busy too,” Blake thought about the numerous tasks that were left undone, trying to prioritize them in his mind, while the last of the mental and physical fatigue ebbed away.
“We should order pizza or something,” Fred said and then with his head craned forward and squinting his eyes: “Hmmm.. This is strange.”
“What?” said Blake.
Fred was studying something on the screen, “He must have gotten our video mixed up with some kids video. Well, wait, I see the robot, and the cabinet and…that’s definitely the hardware department. I don’t understand what this means. Take a look Blake, pull yourself together, muy pronto.”
Blake got up, struggled to pull another chair over to the computer and sat down. He sat there in silence for a moment, studying the image on the screen. “Looks like an elf. Hmm, now it’s perfectly clear, I should have known. Elves stole the robot. They want to make replicas for Santa Clause and the kids…”
“Stop kidding around,” Fred groaned, “that’s dumb….or maybe you have a point there. I mean…I need not take this too seriously. After all, obviously the tape or video has been corrupted. Elves don’t exist, etc and so on. Case closed. And we might as well laugh about it. Ha, ha, ha. Great! We’re not any closer to finding out what happened to the robot than we were before.

Blake’s phone announced a call coming in, “Nellie in hardware calling.” “Yes Nellie. Any more robots missing,” Blake answered.

“No,” Nellie replied, “but there’s somebody here who thinks she can help you find it.”

“Really,” Blake responded, trying to sound incredulous. “Anyone I know:”
“You know her better than anyone else,” Nellie said matter of factly.
“Yeah, and who might that be?” Blake tried to think, He didn’t know any one here at the store any better than anyone else. He didn’t spend time with any employees except at company events. He lived alone. Could it be a customer. He had struck up sort of a casual relationship with a few of them that came in on a very regular basis, and there were a few complainers that were not his favorite people.
“Fred calls her Ancient Alien Alice,” Nellie replied.

“Oh!” said Blake.

To be continued….

Part 4
Blake stood with Nellie at the large cabinet that usually housed the restocking robot.
“Well, it appears that every hydraulic hose and electrical cable has been  disconnected appropriately. Nothing broken, or damaged as far as I can see.” Blake said into a recording app in his phone.
Nellie piped in: “Weren’t these robots installed before the merchandise came in? I mean, right after the building was constructed?” Nellie said.
“That’s what I understand. I wasn’t here that long ago,” Blake said. His head began nodding.
“You’ve got that ‘Ah ha, so it is’ look on your face. Do you have it figured out yet, Sherlock?” Nellie teased.
“Yes, Ms Watson, it’s perfectly clear, million dollar robot disappears magically, leaving store personnel wondering if it was ever here in the first place,” Blake said. Voices could be faintly heard nearby.
“I think I hear Fred talking. He’s probably in the next aisle,” Nellie whispered.
“Right,” Blake whispered as he hurried to close the large empty robot storage closet door.
“Well, there’s Blake now,” said Fred as he appeared at the other end of the aisle. Blake turned the closet door handle with a click and spun around. As Blake walked quickly towards Fred and away from the cabinet, Dirk, the district manager appeared and stopped next to Fred. Dirk was holding a clip board. His brow was knitted, and a frown was fixed across his mouth.
“Good morning, Dirk, how’s everything going,” Blake asked his usual question to ferret out the situation, and test the waters.
“It’s going where it has never gone before. How’s that for a progressive answer?” Dirk responded.
“Very star-treky of you,” Blake glibly responded, and then curbed his tongue, knowing he could easily get too casual and familiar with this guy, and that wouldn’t go over well.
“Yes, we are establishing stiffer guidelines for personnel, store organization and accountability protocols,” Dirk went on in a more serious tone.
“Oh wonderful. Tell me more,” Blake responded, hoping he didn’t sound sarcastic.
“You’ll be receiving full details in the next couple of days. First I wanted to see where your store was coming up short, so we could make appropriate recommendations to bring it into alignment with the next generation store design.”
“Sounds very thorough,” Blake responded.
“I think we’ll find what you’re looking for down this aisle,” a floor clerk said as he tried to maneuver past Fred and Dirk.
“We’ll come back here later,” Dirk said to Blake, as he directed them to follow him by gesturing with his head towards the opposite direction.
“Okay,“ Blake said to Dirk. As Dirk and Fred turned to walk back the way they came, Blake turned to Nellie, looking a little dazed, rolling his eyes and drawing a circle with his nose.
“Carry on, Nellie. We’re work this out later,” Blake said with a sigh of relief.
“Check, double- check” said Nellie.

To be continued….

Part #3
The next morning as Blake walked into the office, Fred was already there looking at the computer screen on his desk.
“Got those videos from your friends’ cameras yet?” Blake asked.
“He’s about to send them over to me.” Fred replied.
Blake’s store phone sounded, “Nellie Hardware calling” heralding that Nellie, the supervisor in the Hardware department was calling him.
Blake answered, “Yes, Nellie. What’s up?”
“You won’t believe this,” she said.
“Try me,”Blake replied. After all, he knew he believed in UFOs, aliens, and magic, so nothing could really surprise. “I’ll put you on speaker. Fred’s here.”
“ Yeah, he should hear this too. Prepare yourselves, even you’se guys might have a little trouble with this….dat ta da….drum roll……(the sound of hands rapping on a cardboard box is heard over the speaker, then stops) The hardware restocking robot is gone.” She said.
Fred straight armed and pushed himself and his rolling chair away from his desk, with a expectant frown on his face, as if expecting a punchline, a retraction, a correction, anything to bring him back to the real world.
“The restocking robot is gone,” Blake repeated. “Isn’t that thing attached to a bunch of stuff: electrical cables, cords, hoses, etc. Plus it’s super heavy, and attached to a railing or something above. If you weren’t the one telling me this, I would say you must be crazy. In fact, I’ll say it anyway. You must have lost your mind.”
“Thanks Blake, you say the sweetest things,” Nellie replied.
“Yeah…” Blake began but was interrupted when Fred’s phone announced: “Cashier Cathy calling.”  He and Fred and looked at each other, ” Now what?” Blake said.
“Yes Cathy,” Fred answered.
“The District manager is here. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks, perfect timing….. Talk later,” Fred hung up.
“We must…, we must…, we must do something,” Blake stammered.
“I agree. Maybe we should split up. I’ll go meet the manager. He usually likes to walk around the store, before he comes in here to discuss issues. He likes to get something store specific to talk about. And you can go to hardware to checkout the missing robot scene. See what isn’t there. If the manager shows up there, we’ll wing it… I guess,” Fred said.
“Okay, good plan,” Blake sounded relieved, as he walked out of the office, almost running into the automatic door because it didn’t open fast enough. “This door could use an upgrade. How about a thought activated door.”
“One thing at a time,” Fred shouted to Blake’s back as it receded.

To be continued…

Part #2
As Blake walked briskly towards his office, he heard the automatic door swish open. He reached the opening just as the door disappeared into the wall.
“I see what you mean. When the machines slow down to avoid an intruder, there’s only a blur registered by the camera.” Fred said as Blake entered the room. He let his momentum carry him right up to the desk next to Fred.
Fred was examining the hardware department surveillance video play back, taken during the night. He traced an indistinct blotch of grey on the still screen image with his forefinger.
“I’ve looked at that several times,” said Blake.
“I know what we need is a special camera or film that can catch fast action. And I know just the guy who can set it up for us. The only problem is it’s not cheap. We can’t set up a camera on every product row.” Fred shared.
“I don’t think that will be a problem. It’s only been happening on only one of the hardware aisles,” Blake replied.

“Okay, another matter. I was thinking: Maybe you should wait until tomorrow night to hang out. Just in case you forgot the district manager will be visiting the store tomorrow, so he’ll expect you to be here,” Fred said.
Blake: “ Hmmm, right. Okay, I’ll wait until tomorrow night. Could you call your friend and get him to set up his camera today?” Blake asked.
“Sure thing! By the way, how do we pay for it?”
“We have a defined budget for security updates, surveillance, etc. Take it out of that account, I’ll okay it,” Blake replied.
“Should we mention it to Dirk, the district manager, tomorrow? Fred asked.
“No, I wouldn’t. We don’t know what we are dealing with. He will be mainly here to make sure that everything else is running smoothly, and I don’t want to stress him out with anything out of the ordinary, unusual, or not run of the mill stuff.” Blake replied.

Later that day.
“My friend can install the cameras tonight, right after closing time. I showed him the blurred images, he said his equipment can handle it. He photographs humming birds and can catch their flapping wings in a still image. It’s amazing.” Fred reported.
“I’m looking forward to it. I’m going over to hardware now, and make a visual inspection of the area, and take a few photos just for reference tomorrow.” Blake replied.
“Great idea. Probably won’t see you till tomorrow. Have a great day.” Fred said.
“The same, bro!” Blake replied

To be continued…

A Sci-Fi/Fantasy story
Part 1
It appeared to be a typical morning, the sky over the distant hills to the east were just beginning to be lit up by the rising sun. The air was biting cold the day after Christmas. A glum cluster of early morning customers were waiting outside the main entrance for the manager to open up so they could return the items they didn’t want. A tall broad shouldered, handsome, apparently, young man wearing the company vest of purple streaked with red lightning-like embroidering strolled up to the inside of the door and unlocked it. As the doors opened, he said, ”Good morning, good morning, welcome to the largest home improvement store in this part of the world,”
A few people grumbled about having to wait in the cold. That wasn’t the manager’s fault, they could have waited in their cars until he opened up. ‘What was the big hurry?’

Sometime later in the manager office, the beginning of what was not usual was beginning to develop. “Tell me again why you want to come in on the night shift” Fred asked.
Fred couldn’t be more different from Blake in appearance. Whereas Blake was not exactly built like an elite football player, martial master, or military policemen he was physically impressive, agile, coordinated and graceful. Fred on the other hand was of average height, thin, a little paunchy, near sighted, awkward with dark stringy hair and an sinister aura that people often wondered about. Fred never did or said anything of a sinister nature so there was an incongruity between his appearance and his behavior.
Blake stopped typing up the morning report and tried to assume an attitude of patience. This was a question he wasn’t expecting, because he thought he had made his reasons clear the day before. Deciding that further elaboration on his part was the best diplomatic response he could muster, Blake decided to give it another try. He looked closely at Fred to make sure he had his attention and he was really listening this time.
He would approach the subject from a different angle, and see if Fred arrived at the same conclusion he did.“There’s been some odd things happening during the graveyard shift,” Blake said.
“Please go on! Yes?,” Fred replied.
“Let’s see, there appears to be evidence of a human presence,” Blake ventured, offering only a little bit of the story at a time, with the intention of not losing Fred. After all, Fred was assistant manager of this mega store. They had worked together on the day shift for nearly a decade. That was a long time in this chaotic world of rapidly changing work and sales environments. The store was, to put it simply, bigger than a small town. How much bigger, let’s say a very small town, 200,000 square feet. It was primarily staffed by people. However there were dozens of robotic machines actively helping customers and employees to find merchandise and move heavy items, like fridges, stoves, etc. The current method of restocking was accomplished with robotic equipment at night. Normally, there were no human beings needed or wanted on the night shift. Mainly, because the robots could detect a human presence and would slow down, and move much more slowly and carefully in order to avoid hurting the human, therefore taking much longer to restock the shelves, a task that took all night even at the breakneck, untiring pace of the AI machines.“One of the hardware robot has been intermittently slowing down and speeding up practically all night in response to a human presence,” Blake said, “barely getting the work done before the store is opened in the morning.”
“Cameras! Have the cameras spotted anything?” Fred asked. Before Blake could reply, Fred went on.“Maybe it’s an animal. You remember that time a bunch of rats were running around. Could be a cat, remember the cat. It was black and didn’t register in the video. Oh, and the birds, remember when there was a flock of birds flying around in there.”
“No, I don’t think it’s animals this time. I haven’t seen any evidence of animals during the day. The clean up machine would have reported feces. Remember, we programmed that in, to check for animal debris. I don’t know what’s causing the problem. That’s why I want to be here during that shift and see for myself.”
“Well, okay. So if you hang out during the graveyard shift, does that mean you won’t be here during the day tomorrow?” Fred asked.
“Yeah, actually true. In order to maintain adequate sleep requirements, I’ll have to get some rest during the day.” Blake said. Sleep deprivation on the part of employees was one of the justifications for a graveyard robotic workforce. The insurance claims filed by human workers had been exorbitant. Employees were having so many accidents, running into each other, other equipment or merchandise, corporate decided it was cheaper to enable a robotic restocking task force. It turns out, after redesigning the shelving system to accommodate an AI robot, that inventory on hand could be more accurately tracked while merchandise was restocked.
“Also, have you considered that whoever or whatever shows up at night might be a danger to you. Are you bored, and just want some excitement of facing the unknown alone? …I don’t believe you have suicidal tendencies, do you? ….I know: you want to try out your martial arts on some unawares intruder. . We could summon a police bot to accompany you for backup,” Fred timidly suggested.
“I really don’t think there’s any danger. I’ll let you know how it goes. Okay?, until later.” Blake said as he walked out of the office. Misgivings and some anxiety began to creep into his mind. Fred had a point there, maybe I should be more cautious and call for police accompaniment. But that requires corporate approval and that could take weeks. I’m tired of running to mother corp every time there’s a decision to be made. Blake pondered for a while the other renegade decisions he’d made and how well things had turned out. His track record had been pretty good, except for that one time. And that was a fluke and no one had really gotten hurt. Blake didn’t feel that there was any real danger ahead and decided to push ahead.
To be continued…

To fly, to die, to be another guy. It’s all possible with the pen. Crafting a new fabric of reality, we cast our minds into another space and time. Relinquishing for a time one’s customary identity, and life, we can immerse ourselves in a different mind, heart and world all at the whim of our imagination. It’s a wonderful experience to bend the rules, and circumvent the terms that usually weld us to a cloistered existence and adherence to guidelines that sometimes do not allow our creative spirit to explore and transcend the unquestioned belief borders.

What do I need to know today to make my day. There must be some tidbit of truth, fact or information that will shift my mindset into the positive, optimistic range. It’s obvious that it doesn’t have to be earth shaking to make a positive difference. I would appreciate even a subtle difference in my situation.

What I realized today: I need a premise to focus on.
The premise or topic or question to explore is: Does God Need to be Taught.
We could say unequivocally NO, God knows everything.
Then on the other hand, God is everything, therefore God is also ignorance, however it manifests.
Then the quote: Know ye not, that ye are gods. If we really are gods wouldn’t we know it, or if we are gods why do we need to be told. We must have forgotten we are gods. If that’s so we could be taught that we are gods or manifestations of the great universal, omnipresent, omniscient, all knowing God. Therefore God in the mind of a deluded, unaware soul can be taught. Their true self knowledge can be awakened.
Therefore we could say yes, the deluded manifestation of God can be taught what it needs to know.
There’s a story of two men, one asks the other what were you doing. the other man says I was communing with God, the first asks what did God say, the second: God didn’t say anything, God was listening. the first man then asks, what did you say to God. The second man replies, I didn’t say anything, I was also listening.
So listening to God’s silence is a lesson in itself. What does that mean? You’re listening to the absence of thoughts, to a non-thinking state of mind.

On a different tangent: There’s a difference between the lesson, and the test. It has been said that we often get the test before the lesson. The test becomes the lesson, or the test metamorphosed into the lesson. Or from the test we realize that there’s a lesson to be learned, or when we are tested, we can ask what can I learn from this. So whenever, we are learning, we are receiving the lesson.
Questions arise. What is the value of the writing? Isn’t it obvious, is it so important to put these ideas into words? What good is it doing? Maybe there is some value that isn’t immediately apparent. It’s building something big. A stone mason apprentice may not think that chipping away at a stone, making it square and smooth, does not seem to be amounting to much, but prolonged chipping and smoothing of a number of stones, and fitting them together, we would or could eventually see a pyramid.
Not that I believe that the pyramids were all built with manual labor, nor do I disbelieve it. Anything is possible. Just as machines have replaced human labor in so many ways, there were at one time, people slaving away on various projects, and then when the time came and machines were developed to take the burden of repetitious labor out of the hands of the laborer, then those who in the future only saw machines doing the work, wouldn’t they find it difficult to believe that human beings sometime in the past stifled their natural creativity and spirit and spent a large part of their lives engaged in mindless repetitive work. Ideally though, we would like to believe that they weren’t always mindless, but subjugating some other natural proclivity or talent to satisfy the need for income. If people are never taught or realize how to dig deep within them selves and define their purpose in life, or develop their innate talent, or unique creative ability, then they are apparently liable to become pawns of the powerful. Ideally we will all find a way to happiness, even if the way is unclear, and arduous.
It’s never too late to redefine who we are, although apparently it’s more difficult to establish a better habit as we get older. But on the other hand, some people find that they are able to apply themselves to activities that fulfill themselves in myriad ways.