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Access Rstricted written by me 3rd chapter

Three: The Jacksonville Prison System        

Meanwhile at the Logan star ports hundreds of handcuffed people are being escorted on to huge transport hover ships by the INCBOTS. "Single file, keep it moving people", the metallic being says. They walk up the planks and into the ships. They are loaded on to the vessels.  The hatches of the ships close up. “All aboard sir and ready for take off sir", the Incbot says as he reports in to the human patrol officer who watches from the holographic digital monitor from inside the control tower above. "Good, good you have no incoming ships in your vicinity all ships are clear for take off. Then the thrust engines begin to rumble and then of the ships rise up vertically and then within minutes they’re gone. The ships cruise down the east coast picking up other prisoners from other city star ports. The ships finally reach their destination they land on the docks of a fifty-foot steel wall prison compound that surrounds the entire city of Jacksonville, Florida. The prison officer gives Incbots orders to report to their stations. The heavy armed Incbots stand on the flight decks outside the prison city walls. The ship hatches open up; the mechanical planks are lowered down on to the deck. Then Incbots and patrol officers walk down the planks and then the reluctant prisoners follow behind. They are all lined up on the flight decks in rows of threes just below the prisoner transport ships. Using digital image illumination display projection systems, the patrol officers’ project twenty foot tall computerized documented texted images in mid-air. The Chief security prison officer sits up in the prison security tower. He speaks into an advance audio speaker system that echoes across the swampy marshlands. He speaks in a southern accent. "Prisoners I instruct you to read the projected image in front of you. The projected image reads. I am a prisoner who has committed a crime against the federal government lockdown law. As a permanent prisoner of the Jacksonville Prison Security System I am on my own and if I shall attempt to try to escape this prison I will be incinerated without question. Some of the prisoners read the images out loud others just look at the images and say nothing. Other prisoners cry in their capture, other prisoners swear and curse the patrol officers who project the images that light up the humid night. Then three prisoners break away from ranks, they run down the ramp, the Incbot looks at the patrol officer. "Do it", the officer responds. The Incbot raises his arm, it targets the three escapees then with his laser cannons mounted on his forearms his shoots the prisoner automatically incinerating them. "Let that be an example to you all, from here on out you are on your own", he said. The prison transport officers deactivate there projected images from their iPods and then they walk back up on to the prison ships followed by the Incbots. And then the prison ships vertically take off from inside the flight decks of the main prison yard. The prisoners look up at the ships as they fly up and over the city prison walls.

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Greetings and salutations,

I’m excited to announce the release of Reign of the Good King! This is a revised edition of my 2008 novel, the second book in the Good King Saga, an epic fantasy series. This is the first time it has been released as an eBook. Here’s more about the book:

Edgar Winefellow ascended to the throne and is now King of the Six Lands. However, his life does not get any easier. Enemies lurk in the dark and in plain view, and Edgar soon realizes that not all citizens of the Six Lands are willing to embrace his idealistic views. Old foes and new tormentors enter the stage, leaving Edgar confused as to who is truly his friend and who is really his enemy.

It’s available from Smashwords and is coming soon to the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo stores.

To help celebrate the release of book 2 in the Good King Saga, I am offering Crowning of the Good King (The Good King Saga, Book 1) for free on the Kindle on 11/30/12. Download it here. (If you don’t own a Kindle, you can still take advantage of this offer. Click here to download free Kindle apps for your PC, Mac, tablet, and phone.)

Thanks for reading!

Words = Life,

A. Jarrell Hayes

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Breaking All The Rules...


The supermassive black holes occupying the centers of most galaxies have a close relationship with their galactic hosts. Galaxies with large central bulges have massive black holes, while the relatively lightweight black holes live in galaxies with smaller bulges. This link has been observed in enough cases to raise it nearly to a principle: black holes and galactic bulges grow together, as part of a single process.

 

A new observation has revealed a galaxy that isn't just bending the rule, but completely breaking it. In most systems, the black hole's mass is about 0.1 percent of the mass of the galaxy's central bulge. Remco van den Bosch and colleagues identified a black hole with a mass that's about 59 percent of the mass of the central bulge. In fact, this black hole is one of the most massive ever observed, a striking discovery in a galaxy much smaller than our own. The galaxy itself is a bit on the small side, and the researchers suggest that we might want to look at the black holes in more galaxies this size.


Ars Technica:

Violates established relationship between black holes, galactic bulges masses.

**********


Fort Davis, Texas — Astronomers have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory to measure the mass of what may be the most massive black hole yet — 17 billion Suns — in galaxy NGC 1277. The unusual black hole makes up 14 percent of its galaxy's mass, rather than the usual 0.1 percent. This galaxy and several more in the same study could change theories of how black holes and galaxies form and evolve. The work will appear in the journal Nature on Nov. 29.

 

NGC 1277 lies 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The galaxy is only ten percent the size and mass of our own Milky Way. Despite NGC 1277's diminutive size, the black hole at its heart is more than 11 times as wide as Neptune's orbit around the Sun.



McDonald Observatory:

Using Hobby-Eberly Telescope
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EPISODE TWO: A Tale of W.O.E.S. concludes in Part V! While the DROMEDARY continues its journey to the HESTIA System unaware of what they carry, a PROMETHEUS GROUP Security Team prepares to intercept the Transport. Only the Security Team knows what lay inside the mysterious Gray Transport BOX and they're prepared to do what is necessary to get it under their control! The answers and more questions will be found in The PAnd0RA Ultimatum part 5!

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Grandmere's Secret Part 1

Free download at smashwords

Michelle, a slender, brown girl of 18 leaned against the magnolia tree watching them. The couple got out of their car: a white man around 35 with windswept short blond hair and his elegant wife also in her thirties with shoulder length black hair. They looked casually rich in their designer jeans that were wrinkled in all the right places.

They’d parked their jaguar in the driveway and now stood on the lawn envisioning, Michelle was sure, lofty possibilities for the house she’d grown up in as a child.

It was a two story sprawling wooden house with a wide porch and what used to be a swing; before Katrina had splintered it into shards of wood that now lay tossed over the lawn and steps like broken teeth.

The demon storm had destroyed the inside of the house too – photographs, old hats and clothing she and Simone used to play dress up in, antique furniture, were gone now. All that couldn’t be salvaged had been gutted and piled in the front of the house. But the frame, as if immune to the elements had fought the hurricane and won. Unlike Grandmere Angelique who’d died of a stroke.

She pushed her braids out of her face and fought back tears. Hurricane Katrina in her fury had torn through New Orleans. Like a woman scorned, she’d ripped and destroyed the city, leaving its children homeless, hungry, in shock, crying for their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, tossed to the four corners of America – like their ancestors before them.

Her parents André and Louisa had fled to Baton Rogue. André had begged his mother to come with them — had tried to force her out of the house. But Angelique refused. “I’ve seen storms before, Cherie. They come and go. I’m not leaving my house, non – it needs me to keep it safe…”

Michelle had found Angelique’s body in the attic. She’d hid there when Katrina hit.

And now these people, these strangers, wanted to buy it. What do they know of the scent of magnolias in the air each morning, or the taste of the Mississippi?

She’d pleaded with her father to keep the house. But André had said no. “The water damage is too bad and now the insurance company won’t pay!” He spat these last words bitterly. “Thirty years, thirty years Mama pay them bloodsuckers, eh? And now they won’t fix her house!”

“We can fix it Papa!”

André only shook his head. “No Cherie, it’s just a shell, not worth saving.”

She remembered playing in the backyard with her sister, Simone, both running from her grandmother giggling on stubby little legs, past the vegetable garden and wild roses… until Angelique would collapse on her white lawn chair laughing with them.

“Time for a snack, eh?” And grandmere would shoo the little girls through the backdoor into the kitchen for sweet cakes and milk.

Michelle remembered the mantelpiece and the sepia photographs that lined it too. Photos of Angelique when she was young, and Grandpere Henri who’d died when Simone was just a baby. There were pictures of her father as a solemn eyed toddler too, wedding pictures of him and her mother Louisa, of her Great Grandmere Cosette; and one photo of her lover André.

Angelique told them of their family history: how their roots could be Angelique told them of their family history: how their roots could be traced to Dahomey, Africa, where men and women were great warriors, before the French had enslaved them. Grandmere told them that their ancestors had fought in the revolution too under General Toussaint to free Haiti, and some later made their way to New Orleans.

When they were older, the sisters learned the history of the house. Cossette had worked as a laundry woman. She was also a great Vodoun mambo, who’d first met their Great Grandpere André Dumont, a rich white man, in New Orleans. And Cosette had petitioned the loa to give André sight into his own heart. Soon after, he became smitten with her dark beauty and strength. But to publically proclaim his love would have meant death for them both. So he hired Cosette as his maid, and on his deathbed willed her the house. Michelle remembered her father shouting, when he first caught grandmere telling his daughters about Cosette. She’d never seen him so angry! “You never tell them these things again!” He’d raged, his café au lait face twisted with emotion. “Such stories to tell little girls!”

But when they were 14 and 12 the sisters had snuck away to a Vodoun ceremony. Michelle remembered holding tight to Simone’s hand in the moonlight, watching…With the sound of the drums punctuating his movements, a young man stepped into the dance court wearing a cane in the crotch of his pants.

The drums accentuating his movements as he skillfully spun with leaps and pirouettes…suddenly he shuddered, and fell to the ground as if in the throes of a seizure…then he became an old man, walking laboriously with a cane.

It was Papa Legba, the ancient loa who stands at the crossroads of life and death – the honored one who is called before all others.

One by one, the loa appeared and rode their human horses. The sisters watched wide eyed as a woman fell to the ground and became a serpent… as another transformed into a growling panther…

Previously published in Genesis Science Fiction Magazine 2010

Cover art and design by Quinton Veal

Copyright 2010, 2012 Valjeanne Jeffers all rights reserved

 

 

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Young Chess Master...

12-years-old: from the BRONX!


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

According to Grandmaster Larry Christiansen, chess is more than a strategy game — it’s a “mental war” involving sharp mental faculties and efficient cognitive processing. Christiansen gave a simultaneous exhibition at a Cornell Chess Club event on March 30th. At a simultaneous exhibition a highly ranked chess player plays multiple games at the same time with a number of different players. In this event, Christiansen faced more than 20 opponents without suffering a single loss. Prior to the exhibition, Christiansen shared a few secrets of the trade with other avid chess players.

Cognitive Science, Computer Science and Chess: Grandmaster Christiansen Visits C.U.
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Brain and Universe...



Scientists have found through a computer simulation that the universe grows like a giant brain.



This research has been published online in the November 16th issue of the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports.



Scientists have found that there are some single basic laws, which are still unknown, are working from the tiny electrical firing of neurons to the expansion of the universe.



“Natural growth dynamics are the same for different real networks, like the Internet or the brain or social networks,” said study co-author Dmitri Krioukov, a physicist at the University of California San Diego.



Researchers made a computer simulation of the early universe by breaking it to the tiniest possible units even smaller than the sub-atomic particles. They linked any quanta – the smallest discrete quantity of a physical property – in the huge celestial network and found that more and more space-time was added to the universe as the simulation progressed showing that the “network” connections between the matter in the galaxies also grew.



Researchers found that the growth of social networks and brain circuits follow the same path as the growth of universe i.e. their networks expanded in the similar way. They maintain a balanced links between similar nodes with the ones that had already many connections.

 

Say People: Single unknown fundamental laws are controlling everything

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Sequestration...





 
The looming possibility of deep, across-the-board budget cuts-know as sequestration-poses historic risk for U.S. research and development, experts said at a Capital Hill briefing organized by AAAS. Unless lawmakers find a compromise by year's end to avert the cuts, the crippling impact could be felt for a generation, they warned, even as other nations are increasing R&D investments.

Without an agreement, sequestration would be imposed automatically beginning in the first week of January. It could slash the U.S. R&D investment by 8.4%--some $58 billion--over five years. That would mean laboratory closures and layoffs, the experts said, and it would jeopardize current research in areas ranging from genetic medicine and advanced manufacturing to batteries that could allow a 10-fold increase in the range of electric cars. It might also discourage a new generation from careers in science and engineering. 

 

AAAS: "Sequestration" Budget Cuts Would Cripple U.S. Scientific Progress, Experts Warn

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PAnd0RA 001 is adjusting to life aboard the Transport DROMEDARY. As it's newest crewmember, PAnd0RA finds herself assisting her companion Captain Gital in his strange tinkering with ancient spacecraft and being adopted as the Dromedary's official mascot. The Android will soon find herself put to the test as her eccentric companion prepares an ancient ritual called a 'Pool Party Barbecue'! How will so 'fresh out of the container' being like PAnd0RA survive so barbaric a scene carried out by scantily clad humans and aliens? Answers and more questions will be revealed in 'The PAnd0RA Ultimatum EPISODE TWO: A Tale of W.O.E.S. Part 2!

TPU Episode 2 pt 2

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Moon Base Alpha...

NASA - Apollo


This is an open advocacy for returning to the moon.


Listening to NPR this weekend, I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson elucidate on several topics: aging weather satellites impacting predictive weather models (and thereby climate change science); putting science into the latest issue of Superman (making a cameo in the comic); the possibility of going back to the moon. It was poignant and poetic with the death of Larry Hagman this Friday.

NASA I feel, held its collective breath on the election results: the consequence of which affect their budgets, thereby their goals and missions.

Going back to the moon: as Dr. Tyson pointed out on WAMC (not up on the site yet, or maybe just a replay), this would be at most a three-day trip, which could ignite a renewed interest in science. For the current generation, moon launches are as boring as shuttle launches and Civil Rights movements and bear equal time and attention (as none). It would finallly put to rest the conspiracy theorists that weren't alive, yet are absolutely sure that the launch was faked (because the video software on their laptops say so). The young have become the ultimate consumers of electronics and technology, only annoyed when it doesn't work, but not interested in mastering it as future career options.

 

If we don't, other countries will make a first and successful run at our closest neighbor, and we will be scrambling like a nostalgic recast of Sputnik in 1957:

Indian Space Research Organisation - Wikipedia


It could serve as a launching pad for further deep space exploration, such as asteroids; such as Mars. Richard Branson could get his space hotels, and another generation of astronauts would see an Earthrise, and be forever affected, no longer feeling part of a particular "tribe," but human: an earthling.

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With new cover art, the Android PAnd0RA 001 returns! PAnd0RA slowly learns how to interact with both her fellow crewmembers and her growing 'Fan Club' among the Transport DROMEDARY as they continue their journey to the HESTIA System. Dealing with overzealous fans is easy. Trying to complete her task of engaging her Human companion Captain Gital into forming a pair bond is hard! While PAnd0RA works towards her goal, she must contend with the negative side of social interaction as well. Not everyone aboard the Corporate Transport is enamored of the state-of-the-art android! Will PAnd0RA be able to navigate the treacherous currents and eddy's of social life and still complete her mission? Answers and more questions will be revealed in EPISODE TWO: A Tale of W.O.E.S.!

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Einstein's Brain...

Some excerpts:


Beginning in the 1980s, researchers started asking [Thomas] Harvey for samples — photos, slides and preserved blocks of the actual brain. Observations began to trickle out. In 1999, Harvey and Witelson discovered that not only did Einstein have abnormally wide parietal lobes — associated with math, vision and spatial perception — he also lacked a groove that runs through that region. Their hypothesis: No groove means more connectivity between neurons.



So what did they find? Well, they analyzed 14 of these photographs and compared the visible parts of Einstein's outer brain with 85 human brains previously described in scientific studies. "Einstein's brain differs from the average human brain," says Falk. "In various parts, it's more convoluted. It's bumpier, and that may be related to an increase in the neurons."

Of course, there's an iPad app.

You can see the "Full Monty" of the brain below at the link. I'd prefer to remember him from photos like this:

Albert Einstein, seen playing the violin in the music room of the S.S. Belgenland, had knoblike structures on the part of the brain that controls motion of the right hand. Brain scans of modern musicians show similar structures.

 

NPR: Scientists Get A New Look At Einstein's Brain

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First Cause quote, on human memory

“People have remarkably short memories when it’s in their interest–or a matter of convenience–to do so. Look at some of today’s political alliances: how many are between nations that were mortal enemies less than a century ago? Ironically, that could be construed as one of our better attributes, you know…that America and Japan, or France and Germany, or whomever else can overcome past grievances to work together economically or politically. But the shame of it…is that as often as not these collaborations only seem to fuel conflict or oppression in some other area. They’re almost always politically motivated or profit-oriented, hardly ever altruistic…”

James Stock, 5/24/2008

firstcauseproject.wordpress.com

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Final Flight...


Most remember him as JR in "Dallas." I'll remember him as Major Tony Nelson, US Astronaut. Nerds could go to the moon, and get the magical girl.

It was an age of possibilities; right before we all froze at the real mission completed, vision articulated by President John F. Kennedy of a man on the moon.The change of the times then, as now terrified some and thrilled others. For our entertainment, we had families Lost in Space, in the 21st Century the Jetsons; explorers in the 23rd Century with a Starship named Enterprise. Our collective imaginations looked up as well as inward; Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman made us laugh as we inexorably moved forward under time's arrow of entropy we're all subject to in the end.

Godspeed Larry Hagman...Smiley

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HD-DVDs and Nanotech...


Researchers at the University of Missouri in the US have shown how surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based fluorescence amplification platforms can be produced at very low cost by using features found in commercially available HD-DVDs as a starting mold. The group reports that the discs, which come pre-fabricated with sub-micron-sized grating patterns, have the right dimensions to couple surface plasmons in the visible range.

Sensing platform: plasmonic gratings fabricated using HD-DVDs



Nano-gaps are important
In the study, the scientists used a simple PDMS-based microcontact printing/replication process to reproduce the surface features of an HD-DVD-R disc (dissected into two parts to reveal the grating pattern on the inner side of the polycarbonate substrate) on conventional glass substrates. An important consequence of the fabrication process was the generation of defects in the form of nano-gaps that cut across the printed gratings.

Nanogap

The presence of nanogaps within the grating structures led to substantial field localization and amplification – propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) travel as surface waves with high field intensity towards the metallic nanogap where the sudden field discontinuity causes “extreme crowding” of the surface charges, leading to very high field intensities.


Nanotech Web Lab Talk:
HD-DVDs provide low-cost starting mould for fabricating plasmonic gratings
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BaBar Time Reversal...

BaBar (Physics World) - Wikipedia explains how it was named

The BaBar collaboration has made the first direct observation of time-reversal (T) violation. The results are in agreement with the basic tenets of quantum field theory and reveal differences in the rates at which the quantum states of the B0meson transform into one another. The researchers say that this measured lack of symmetry is statistically significant and consistent with indirect observations.

 

The BaBar detector at the PEP-II facility at SLAC in California was designed to study the collisions of electrons and positrons and to determine the differences between matter and antimatter. In particular, physicists working on the experiment are interested in the violation of the charge–parity symmetry (or CP violation). Although the detector was decommissioned in the spring of 2008, data collected during the period of operation continue to be analysed.


Physics World:

Nature:

SLAC:

Science Daily:
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SAM's the Word...


Happened on Tuesday. Hopefully, an interesting Christmas present.

For a rip: they should announce conclusions December 21st. The world would poetically "end as we knew it."


NASA's Mars rover Curiosity dug up five scoops of sand from a patch nicknamed "Rocknest." A suite of instruments called SAM analyzed Martian soil samples, but the findings have not yet been released.

NPR: Scientists working on NASA's six-wheeled rover on Mars have a problem. But it's a good problem.

They have some exciting new results from one of the rover's instruments. On the one hand, they'd like to tell everybody what they found, but on the other, they have to wait because they want to make sure their results are not just some fluke or error in their instrument.

It's a bind scientists frequently find themselves in, because by their nature, scientists like to share their results. At the same time, they're cautious because no one likes to make a big announcement and then have to say "never mind."

The exciting results are coming from an instrument in the rover called SAM. "We're getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak, and the data looks really interesting," John Grotzinger, the principal investigator for the rover mission, says during my visit last week to his office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. That's where data from SAM first arrive on Earth. "The science team is busily chewing away on it as it comes down," says Grotzinger.


NPR: Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now

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47XX

A morsel from my upcoming novel, TIC ONLINE. Please enjoy.

Various tests were conducted on the upgraded SmartSkin over a five-year period, with NAVYSPACE scientists discovering that there was no increase in physical attributes in all of the male test subjects. Female test subjects, however, outperformed their male counterparts 100 percent of the time, showing all the desired increases in speed, strength, and lethality with absolutely zero side effects. No one knows for sure why this is so but it is hypothesized and argued often that the female karyotype simply “works” with the special operations version of the S3BS, and because of this the special operations SmartSkin is more commonly known in the field as the 47XX. The 47XX allows its wearer to jump higher, hit harder, run faster, and kill more effectively than their male counterparts.

Considered the best of the best, Tameka Gates took the 47XX and rewrote the book on how to conduct special operations with over forty missions and a flawless success rate, making her the number-one-rated asset in the fleet. Lonewolf, Gates’s former pupil, planned to take that book and incinerate it. Thomas studied under Gates for three long, agonizing years. Three years of insults and hazing, nigh effective against Thomas’s unwavering confidence. Three long years of tagging along and taking unwarranted punishment from Gates while on missions gave Thomas the training and tools to quickly become the new go to asset in the fleet. Not much was known about this Georgia native, donning customized black armor and armed with a fuel cell accelerated .50-caliber sniper rifle dubbed “Cherokee Rose.” Thomas’s missions ranged from reconnaissance, sabotage, tactical extractions, and wetworks. Feeling her number-one spot quickly slipping away, Gates’s alpha female attitude, coupled with her explosive temper, had gotten her pulled from several jobs, opening the door for Thomas, among several other operatives, to move up the ranks. Gates now loathed her former apprentice and her rapid ascension to the special ops corps de’ elite, The Valkyries.

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Monday PAnd0RA 001 returns to keep you going after the holiday and with a new official cover for the series! Special thanks to Artist Ken Bishop for not getting bent about the unofficial use of his work 'Maja'. PAnd0RA finds her presence aboard the Interstellar Transport, DROMEDARY has made her a celebrity. Learning to contend with her sometimes rabid 'Fans' and life with her new companion Captain Gital to be quite a challenge. While the pinnacle of Android engineering navigates life aboard her new home, a crack Contingency Team is in pursuit of the DROMEDARY to retrieve its mysterious cargo. PAnd0RA's curiosity continues to grow concerning the undocumented Gray Transport BOX, but what lay inside may be more than she or anyone in the Galaxy wants to know! Will the Contingency Team arrive in time to claim the BOX before PAnd0RA's curiosity gets the best of her? Answers will be revealed in 'The PAnd0RA Ultimatum' EPISODE TWO: A Tale of W.O.E.S.

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