Riding through six miles of a city packed tighter than a gypsy’s suitcase is not all that bad when you have no set time to meet the daughter-heir of the universe’s most wealthy person. It was not exactly a rosy ride though.
Goddamn Pam.
I was living my fantasy of being a shoulder to cry on for the four armed woman and here he has to smash it to pieces by bringing me back to reality. Sure I would sooner get a hand job from old man Timber than be able to talk to Cleo after the story was done. Goddamnit though. A man should be able allowed to have his fantasies.
Another dose of reality.
Blue and red lights flashed at me from a cop car, we were both in pretty much the exact spot that we were in yesterday when the lights flashed. I wonder if there was some sort of sensor.
"You lost?" A human cop asked as he pulled up to me.
I leaned down to look in the car and laughed. I tried not to but see how you do when you look into the window of a cop car and see a comically large man squished into the seat. He had to be close to eight feet tall with hands that covered the steering wheel so completely I did a double take to make sure it was still there.
"Miss Cleopatra Eviners lost a cat. I was here yesterday, she told me to come back today when she would not be such an emotional wreck."
"You the reporter?" He asked.
"Yeah, Tom Moore." I showed him my business card on the common open channel for EEs.
"That woman is all sorts of fine, if only she didn’t have those two extra arms." He said ignoring my business card.
"I know right. I thought I was the only one who thought that way!"
He shook his head, glanced behind him then pointed a finger half the size of my forearm at me. "You can go; but you go there and back. Don’t make me look like an asshole for not escorting you."
"There and back. Not a problem." I replied.
He nodded at me then pulled away. So there was actually a cop patrolling Port Richey that wasn’t on Timber’s payroll. Chalk one up to genuine surprise.
While not having an escort was fine, it made the ride a bit more stressful. I was holding my breath for SWAT to come landing in their personal LAEs, Landing and Extracting pods. They resemble big eggs that can put them in the middle of the most heated of domestic disputes.
"You’re coming up on the house, Tom." Bevisste said knowing I would have kept right on past the gate, lost in my own little world where I imagined SWAT landing and shooting me.
The gate was just as I remembered it—larger than life and twice as gaudy.
I was standing in front of the gate when I felt my body respond and leap to the side before the distinct sound registered in my waking brain. I had heard the sound more often than I would like during Operation Freedom Sath. It was the sound of a HTY.13R, a nasty rifle I first came into contact with during that pointless war. The goddamn war lasted three years. After three years a treaty was signed that gave the land—land The United Planets did not want the Socialist Republics to have so bad they had sent people to die to keep SR from getting it—back to SR. Tell me if that makes sense. If you do, you’ll find your jaw a bit sore after I punch you in it.
The HTY.13R was a favorite of the ppings, probably still is. Ingenuity is not all that high on their to-do list. The sound it makes sounds exactly like a rubber band breaking. It is a sound I will never ever forget.
I was pushing my bicycle under the nearest bush before I even realized what I was doing. "What am I doing?" I asked myself out loud. "Go find that cop. You’re a reporter. That giant is the cop."
I stayed.
I would like to say it had something to do with showing up the hero to Cleo and having her fawn all over me for saving her life. I’ve seen women do that in holos, so I’m sure that’s how it happens in reality. That could have had something to do with my decision but the truth of the matter was, I was starved for something exciting to happen in my life. I had turned into a giant drunkard after I left the Marines and had been working a shit hole job. Nothing exciting ever happened to me except for the occasional jerk trying to run a bike rider over.
A few minutes after I crawled under the bush and two nasty bug bites later, I was ready to crawl out and stand in front of the intercom. Lady Luck shined her graces upon me though, just as I pulled myself forward on the ground about six inches the gates slowly opened outward. I froze and hoped the angle I had would be good enough to see into the vehicle that was leaving.
It was a shitty angle, although as the long black four door sedan floated by I did manage to see the scowling face of Cleo’s butler for a fleeting moment then the car was off down the street. I felt like throwing something at it to get it to stop, though if Cleo was in there old man Timber would say I was threatening her life and have me locked away on a prison planet for the rest of my life.
"Fuck Bevisste. What the fuck." I continued a string of curses under my breath as I pulled myself out from under the bush and instinctively sprinted towards the closing gates, getting in just before the enormous things cut my arm off.
"I hope we do not find a dead body in there." Bevisste said.
"You and I both; there is just no way out a situation like that." I said a frown showing up on my face as I looked around while I walked down the too long driveway. Not a single landscaper could be seen. With the yard as amazing as this, I had a hard time believing that a single day could go by that at least one landscaper was not outside pulling a weed or trimming a bush.
"Where is everyone?"
"Early lunch?" Bevisste asked.
"Yeah, and I am sure they were using the 13Rs for weeding. I should have just turned around, went home and did the story on what I have. Denise!" I yelled suddenly snapping my fingers. "That’s my neighbor’s name!"
"Well her name does share two common letters with Denise. Denise it is not though."
"Goddamnit, you’re so mean to me Bevisste."
"You are the one that got drunk."
I wouldn’t have turned around and went home even if Pam told me the story was dead. If I could prove someone had killed Cleo’s cat and was trying funny business with her, or had killed/kidnapped/maimed/tortured Cleo then I had more than enough blackmail material to see my dream of getting rich quick become a reality. It was also an incredibly exciting turn of events. It was going to be fun telling Abe about it over a few beers.
It took me quite a bit of time to walk all the way up to the giant deep cherry red doors. My training kept me to the trees that lined the drive, making progress incredibly slow and to anyone who was looking like a perp making their way to the house in a strange sporadic manner.
Finally standing in front of the giant doors, I’ll admit, I was having second thoughts. I shot at people for a living before my job as a reporter and since then all I have done is regurgitate what people tell me. Sure I put a fine spin on it to keep the listeners coming back for more but the investigative part on the door to my office was largely due to me wanting to put it there. If Pam got to put ’human’ on the door, then I got to put ’investigative’. My curiosity was going to get me as killed as Cleo’s cat one of these days.
"Get rich quick. Beaches, bikinis and all the high priced alcohol money can buy." I kept repeating to myself.
"Why not just knock on the door?" Bevisste asked me as I abandoned the front door and began the long walk around the building for some sort of side door or, in a perfect world, a ground level window left wide open.
"And have a pping or whoever was using the 13R put a new hole in my head? No thank you, Bevisste. We are going to try to find an open window or a dog door."
"She owned a cat; do you really think she owned a dog?"
"I don’t fucking know Bevisste!" I said throwing my hands up. Sneaking around a house that cost more than a planet made me a little on edge. "I’ve never owned a cat and dog at the same time, or either one of the animals. I don’t know how they would react together!"
"It was just a question." Bevisste muttered. "I just don’t want you to be picked up for breaking and entering."
I bit my tongue at the reply settling for sucking on the end of my finger. What had appeared to be a window opening with no window in it with a spiky green bush, I’m no horticulturist, in front of it, ended up being a stasis field—never needed cleaning, was clearer than the air around it and was impossible to break through. I had a sinking feeling every hole in the façade of the house would end up being a stasis field. Hopefully the lady owned dogs.
The modern art feel of the change to the house as I headed in the direction opposite of the ancient style castle extended out to the lawn as well. I don’t know how they did it but the wizards that manicured the lawn managed to transition a strand of Kentucky bluegrass to a purple-green grass that was all concentric circles instead of straight blades. It made my head hurt to look at it.
The fountain in the yard was a nice touch though. I don’t claim to be an art connoisseur; however the fountain was simply amazing. The entire fountain changed shape six times in the ten minutes I watched as I walked along the edge of the house. The shapes didn’t make all that much sense but how it changed without splashing water on the ground around it had me flabbergasted.
Eventually I made it around the side of the ridiculously large house and laughed. I really needed to take a stab at the lottery. There in front of me, closer to the front of the house than the rear, was a dog door for a small horse. Goddamn door would have been normal sized for a small child.
"The dog that uses that door will probably eat half of you in one bite, Tom." Bevisste said to me. She had always been the voice of caution and reason; it made for interesting times during the wars I was shipped off to.
"You only live once Bevisste. Why be scared of a dog door. Besides there may be a room full of rare ancient coins we can take out of here. Just think no more talking to idiots about how a person running a red light made them feel."
"Oh my gosh yes; and maybe an unsecure van that allows anyone to drive it will be waiting fully charged in the garage with enough room to load the bags in. It is a brilliant plan Tom."
One of these days I would find a medium to find that asshat who gave EEs a sense of humor and show him how horrible of a person people think he is; or she since I suppose women could be just as much an asshat.
The flap on the dog door pushed in some as I kicked at it, a bit of resistance but not enough to make it so I would have to break the door down to get inside. I took a deep breath, hoped like hell the massive dog was not waiting with an open mouth on the other side and pushed the dog door open. It was sinfully heavy but I was not about to let a dog door get the best of me.
Inside was a kitchen, chefs had wet dreams over. Marble floors and counters, gleaming infrared and wood fired grills, four ovens that I could see and what had to be the largest refrigerator to be squeezed into a residential home. Unless I missed my guess the surface area of the doors to the refrigerators and freezers was more than my entire apartment; hell the kitchen could have doubled as an enormous restaurant if you put enough tables in it. Why anyone would need a home, let alone a kitchen, the size of this one I had no clue. Maybe the over-inflated sense of self-worth that came with being a trillionaire’s daughter could not fit in a normal sized house.
Not being one to waste an opportunity I headed straight to the island that was an easy thirty feet long and eight feet wide. Gorgeous marble countertop or some stone that looked like the marble on Earth; I’ve never had enough money or the inclination to go kitchen shopping so it was really all the same to me.
"Do you not wonder why that dog door was unlocked?" Bevisste asked.
I pilfered a staze, a tart red fruit the size of a lemon, off of the counter and took a bite as I looked around for where they may have stored the liquor. "Not really, there could be a thousand reasons why it was not locked or does not have a lock on it."
"I’m pretty sure that is the only reason." Bevisste replied as I froze as still as an ice sculpture willing my heart to stop beating so I would make no noise.
Lying on the cold polished stone floor was the largest dog I had ever seen up to that point in my thirty six years of existence. The height and length of a great dane, the build of a mastiff and the face and golden fur of a gold retriever took up pretty much the entire floor space between the island and the wall counter. Sure there may have been a couple feet on either side of the dog though I was not about to break out a measuring tape.
The dog lifted its massive head up off the ground and lazily looked at me. We eyeballed each other for a few seconds when I felt the ground vibrate under my feet. Its tail hit the ground so hard I was a bit surprised that the ground didn’t crack under the impact. The dog stretched and yawned. How I did not piss where I stood from the sight of those canines is something I will never know, the incisors had to be the size of my middle finger.
"Well I cannot say it has been a total loss hitching a ride with you all these years Tom; but damn, what a way to go." Bevisste said.
I silently prayed dogs cannot pick up on the brainwaves EEs use to communicate with the wearer. The giant gold retriever slowly stood to its feet, stretched again then promptly smiled at me its tongue hanging out the side and the tail slapping one of the refrigerator doors.
"Uhh, hi dog." I said a little dumbly. Let’s see how fast you think on your feet when presented with an animal this size. I would like to think I reacted accordingly.
The dog took three steps towards me and shoved its head under my hand. I did what anyone else would do in the same situation, I petted the damn thing; scratched behind its ears and the sides of its face the entire time watching that tail whip through the air. The damn thing could literally break a femur.
The dog let me pet it for about a minute then turned away from me, stopping in front of a refrigerator door two away from me. It looked back at me with a ’what are you waiting for?’ face. I swear it cocked an eyebrow as I stared at it wondering if it was trying to get me to open the fridge so it could push me in, thereby preserving my body for a snack later. Seeing that I had no chance of outrunning the thing, I hoped my morbid thoughts would stay just thoughts and opened the door for it.
The dog took a hunk of cheese out, chomped down twice and swallowed it. It licked its face then walked away from me to a water bowl built into the cabinets underneath the wall countertops.
"Well I’ll be." I said and laughed lightly. "Damn thing just wanted a snack. Not much a guard dog though."
"Maybe it knows you are not much of a thief." Bevisste said.
"Touché."
I scratched the dog’s back on the way past it and entered the rest of the Eviner’s residence.
This one time back on old Earth I visited New York City; I’m from New Kansas and never thought much of visiting the most populated city on Earth. While in The Big Apple I decided I would visit Central Park then swing by The Met. Well the girl I was there to see wanted to go to The Met but Central Park was my idea. The awe of the The Met began on the outside much like Cleo’s house. The art installations they had in their possessions began about a thousand feet outside the museum. When we made it inside my mind was blown, it was very obvious the curator spent most of their budget decorating the place and used the name to draw in the artists. It was amazing and surreal and had this look that everything was just too damn expensive to touch. I touched something anyway, an ancient suit of armor, got the shock of my life, couldn’t feel my hand for a solid week. I actually thought it was permanent paralysis of my hand though when I went to the hospital they told me the velvet ropes around the displays were there for a reason. Cleo’s house felt just like The Met though I had yet to receive a shock that caused temporary paralysis.
Take the statue in front of me as an example. Twenty feet of solid gold, a statue of Cleo. Around her waist, flowing to her feet was what appeared to a linen dress; above her waist she was nude, her hands—two and only two—covered breasts that I am positive were to scale. The sheer beauty of the statue reminded me of the awe inspiring sculptures at The Met. Though I am positive this was the first time I was beginning to feel an attraction to a lump of a gold, and not the ’that’s worth a lot of money’ attraction. There was simply no way a person was born that beautiful. It went to show what having more money than a person can possibly spend in several lifetimes can purchase.
I walked off to continue wandering the house.
"This is so odd Bevisste. It’s as if the entire house is empty aside from us and the dog. It’s really creepy to be honest."
"Do you think Cleo was kidnapped or murdered? I could give you the statistical percentage on either being true, but suffice to say it is very likely in my estimation."
"I’m inclined to go with you on this one Bevisste. I had my suspicions when the 13R was fired; walking through this house all but confirms it. It would be a shame if that woman got done in. I was starting to warm up to the two extra arms." I flinched and jumped back at a holoscreen covering an entire twenty foot long wall showing three sather’s on the prowl.
"Liar." Bevisste replied.
I smiled and tentatively reached out at the holoscreen. I could feel the leaves of a long leafed tree brush over my skin and could just make out the territorial call of the sather. I had heard of screens like this before, seeing and interacting with one in person was surreal.
"Dany." I said happy with myself.
"Boy you are original are you not? Are you going to go with Deedee with your next guess or another D name?"
"For some reason I do not remember you being this mean. I think you’re getting jaded with age." I stated.
"Double liar. You know you would have pulled your eyeballs out to throw me away when you were in high school if I was a pushover. Admit it you’re a masochist."
I laughed and continued walking down the hall. I am not a masochist, however she is right about me liking the sassiness. I’ve heard of other people that will not let their EEs talk to them unless it is for the answer to a direct question. God how boring that would be.
"Whoa. I think this is her room." My hand was still on the door as I looked around the room.
It was three levels high with four different spiral staircases connecting the levels. The room itself was half the size of my apartment building. A massive circle bed a good twenty feet wide took up the very center with ten pink posts holding up pink lace netting.
A statue of a cat was next to the closest spiral staircase.
"Oh my good Lord. I’m going to look the other way and pretend that statue is not there." I said and walked to what I assumed was a closet.
The goddamn closet was twice the size of my entire apartment. The middle of the closet held a literal shower…with no walls. I scratched my chin at the possibilities. The rest of the closet was filled with stuff any person with a closet large enough to be a decent sized apartment would consider normal. Hundreds, maybe thousands of pairs of shoes, enough clothing to fill a couture boutique and three hanging racks of lingerie to my right.
As I stared at her intimates I realized after a minute of daydreaming it was not the skimpy clothing that caught my attention. Down on the ground next to three pairs of red thong underwear was a piece of clothing, a little more than half of it orange and the rest green. It was torn from something else that did not match any piece of clothing I could see and from the style of the colors I knew exactly what it went to.
"I do hope something bad has not happened to Cleo, Bevisste and that really has nothing to do with how gorgeous she is. A kid like that would have been sheltered her entire life, cut off from the horrors common folk call everyday life. If somebody took her she’s gonna be fucked up for life."
"If someone kidnapped a ’common folk’ that person would be fucked up for life as well. I get what you are saying though. She seems a nice enough person, pretty much opposite from her father from what I gather after reading through everything Pam gave you."
"What was in it?" I began retracing my steps back to the kitchen and the horse that looked like a dog. I purposefully did not look at the cat statue a second time. It’s just strange having a monument to your pet.
"An entire biography of Cleo, a few things about her cat, basically that it was a cat and is now dead."
"What was in the biography? Is it just about her father with a few footnotes on Cleo being his daughter?" The three sathers were feasting on something quite large as I passed the holoscreen. The scene was so lifelike I could hear a few of the Coru antelopes mewing from the heard next to the sathers. It was most likely a baby they caught and killed.
"Surprisingly no. It goes into detail on her mother committing suicide after Cleo was born. There are hidden mentions to post-partum depression, however with how the medical community likes to tout that post-partum depression was cured centuries ago there is no outright mention of it. It goes on to talk about her private schooling, a step-mother who filled in quite nicely as a surrogate mother when Cleo reached seven years old and of how she used to go to work with her father and have the teachers come to his office to school her."
"Hold on. Did she just visit her daddy at work or did he actually force her into labor?" I was positive I knew the answer to that. The man had quite the fearsome reputation.
"She worked there but because Timber asked her too. When she was eight she told Timber to divest the entire sand flyer arm on Dnas, she said the planes were ugly and flying in sand dunes was something barbarians did. To make his daughter even more spoiled he divested the entire sand flyer division, three months later Socialist Republics invaded the planet and claimed it as theirs. TimberAIR’s stock went up ninety-three percent overnight. She made a few more business decisions based off of insane reasons, each one somehow proving to be the correct course of action."
"Fucking A. The rich always get richer."
I was greeted to a monster tail trying to put a hole in the marble floor when I entered the kitchen. I walked up to the dog, bent down to scratch along its ribcage, noticing she was a girl and opened two of the fridge doors. I used large pots to prop them open so the dog could get in to them. I didn’t want the poor thing to starve, it wasn’t her fault someone took everyone who lived in the house.
I made it just steps from the door when the dog came trotting up to me. She looked up me like I was abandoning her after years of knowing each other. I had just met the damn thing and here she is looking at me like I’m some jerk that adopts and abandons animals.
"Sorry girl. I don’t know what happened to Cleo, but I’m going to try to find her okay?" The dog looked even more dejected. I began to feel bad and a bit confused. She wasn’t my dog. I wasn’t the one who killed or kidnapped her owner. "Fuck dog, leave me alone."
I scratched her behind the ear one more time and headed out the dog door. The golden retriever followed right behind me. She looked at me then took off at a looping run around the gigantic yard, mouth open in a smile, tongue flapping in the wind. Suddenly she put her head down and went into a sliding spin rubbing her back in something dead most likely.
"You planning on swimming to the public beach?" Bevisste asked.
"Huh?" I asked scrunching my forehead in confusion as I looked at the dog having the time of its life with whatever it found on the ground.
"To get out of here. Those are twenty foot high walls surrounding everything but the lakeside property. The nearest public beach is only thirty miles away, if you float on your back you might make it."
I closed my eyes and felt that sinking feeling in my stomach you feel when you do something enormously wrong. I had smelled an adventure and jumped in without seeing if the water was shallow. It was and there were rocks on the bottom as well.
"Oh fuck, sometimes I hate my life." I looked around me lost. "Maybe the landscapers kept a ladder outside on accident."
"Those were all automated landscapers that have no need for ladders, as each are equipped with modulating magnetic fields for levitation." Bevisste said shattering my dream of finding a ladder.
"Well fuck. Maybe Zeus over there can leap over the wall with me on her back."
"Zeus was a guy."
"Goddamn you’re such an asshole sometimes Bevisste. There’s gotta be some way over this wall. I’ll scale it like a rock climber if I have to."
"I cannot wait to see this."
I was pissed for running in without a plan however I wasn’t without my wits. I scanned the area in front of the house, just peeking my head past the corner. No cops. Yet. Thank God for bicycle riding every day, I made short work of the close to a mile lawn hardly breathing heavy as I got to the wall that loomed above me. The golden retriever who ran in front of me as if I had been walking across the lawn nudged my leg, damn near pushing me over in the process, and looked up at me in that way only dogs can, letting me know she was ready to do whatever it was I was going to do.
"You’re a sweet thing but unless you can jump over the wall with me on your back I’m on my own for this one." She looked at me then proceeded to sniff the ground walking in a zig-zag line up to a tree. I laughed at her. "Sorry girl but that tree is barely taller than me, I’m a pretty good jumper but I’m not a flea."
"Wow, what a smart dog." Bevisste added.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at the top of the tree. The branch should be big enough to support you. Jump from there, to the next tree, climb to the top then jump back to the tree to your right. The branches go far over the wall."
"Holy shit, you’re right." I said looking at the trajectory Bevisste had painted on the tree then scrambled up the tree in front of me. At the top branch I immediately had second thoughts. "I’m not a monkey Bevisste, I can’t do this."
"I suppose you can wait for the cops and explain why Cleo is not here. I suppose the bullet holes that have to be somewhere in the house can be easily explained away as well."
I jumped and felt my stomach drop to the ground below me as I flew through the air. I was not lying when I told the dog I’m a pretty good jumper. Averaging around twenty miles a day on a bicycle makes for some strong legs. I hit the tree and frantically grabbed with my hands, feet too like a monkey, at the branches. I felt skin scrape and also felt my momentum towards the ground come to a halt. I could deal with a few scrapes. Taking a few moments to calm the heart that was trying desperately to beat its way out of my chest, I climbed to the top of the tree. It was about four feet from the top of the wall though it was an easy ten away from the wall. I took a deep breath and without thinking, less I scare the resolve out of me, I leaped like the squirrels I used to watch in my yard back in New Kansas. Those things jumped so gracefully from tree to tree.
I did not.
I slammed into the tree, sliding past several branches. One caught me in the ribs with a crack, I was pretty sure it was my ribs by the pain, while a million more tried to flay me alive. I finally hit an enormous branch expelling the breath from my lungs in a violent manner. I hugged the tree and cried—from being alive not from the pain. Marines don’t cry from pain. After several minutes of hugging the tree I garnered enough nerve to begin climbing again. If I didn’t start now I knew I would just figure out a way to climb down the tree to solid ground.
"Hold on Bevisste." I said as I got closer to the top of the wall. "How the fuck am I supposed to get to the ground on the other side without breaking both legs and some other bones?"
"If you run to the gate you can use the lattice-work to climb down. The front and top of the wall is covered by mirage paint, no matter how dreary the sky over the house when you look at it from the wall it looks like a perfect sunny summer day. Nobody will see you running along the top and since no one is inside the house, no one is going to be watching the security monitors. I am crossing my fingers on the last one but I am pretty sure I am right."
"That’s funny and explains something too. I thought the house looked a bit different after entering the gate but I just brushed aside the thought. For the sake of my mental stability I am pretending they don’t have a security system."
The tree branch grew a good three feet from the top of the wall which was surprisingly narrow. I gingerly dropped myself down on the wall and like a gorilla charging, I scrambled across it on my hands and feet. Bevisste is generally not wrong when it comes to pointing out what technology something has, though I prayed the entire time that she was definitely correct this time.
Stopping at the gate I looked up and down the street, saw no vehicles or pedestrians then climbed down the gate, using all those years of being a daredevil growing up to my advantage and detriment. The climb down the gate was too fun and too fast, just as I touched the ground I touched down wrong twisting my ankle hard; so hard I feared I broke it right at first until I could move it around, not without a lot of pain though.
"I jump between three trees like a squirrel and clamor down a twenty foot tall fence just to sprain my ankle at the bottom. My life sucks."
"It could be much worse. You could have missed the branch on the second tree."
I grunted as I hobbled to my bicycle, pulled it out and shook my head as I sat on it. There was no possible way of riding with an injured ankle. I tried anyway, making it three rotations of the wheels before I thought I would pass out from the pain. I settled for using the bicycle as a crutch and hobbling the three miles to the bus station.
I had made it no further than past the gate when the giant golden retriever came bounding up to me to heel at my side. I opened my mouth though no words came out due to the confusion I felt. The dog simply stood next to me, a slight smile on her face as she panted from the warm afternoon. I continued trying to put words together as I looked at the dog, the tall gate and the tall wall, yet words continued to fail me.
"Are you magical?" I finally managed to say something.
The dog licked the sweat off of my hand and forearm. I pulled my arm away and pointed at the gate.
"Go. You can’t come with me."
She sat down.
"I’m serious!" I raised my foot to stomp at her and thankfully remembered it being sprained. "Go! I can barely take care of myself. I’ll fail taking care of me and a beast that weighs more than me."
She attempted to lick my hand again then panted.
"Whatever. I’m not letting you in my apartment and buses don’t allow dogs."