Till you Remember to Forget me (Writing Nepal, 2nd place winner)

Lalahang | January 13, 2024

Till you Remember to Forget me by Lalahang won second prize in Writing Nepal: A Short Story Contest 2023. About the story, Samrat Upadhyay, author of Arresting God in Kathmandu and judge of Writing Nepal, said, ‘Till you Remember to Forget me(a great title!) is a dystopian story set around Singha Durbar and Teku. A cyborg is assigned to work as a helper to a butcher, which leads to some interesting consequences, and instances of true awakening. The story is super dark and utterly hypnotic. For an English-language story, it also is bold in how liberally it uses Nepali. I was blown away by this story. It’s a dense story, hard to get in at first, but once you are in, it’s mesmerizing. One of the hardest things to do in a non-realist story is to make your futuristic or fantastic world convincing. The biggest challenge here was to make Apekshya, the cyborg, turn into a sentient being, one who is able to think, and feel for the animals in pain, and to yearn, and I thought the author did that with consummate skill. The butchering scenes were fantastic.’

 

The shining knife’s sharp edge slams the wooden block with such ferocity that the carcass between them opens in half. A repetitive thud echoes through the chambers of the butcher shop, an old woman and her help rustling inside it. Manmaya’s butcher shop is at the end of the Teku galli, the ground-floor shutter of her discolored two-storey house, right across the Bishnumati river bank. The almost dead river runs thinly, the stench of drains and pipes connected to it, its appearance just like how it smells, a muddy wasteland. Manmaya, a sunburned woman, small and stout, her naturally tense face preludes a hoarse and haggard voice like a man.

A man appears on the steps, “Manmaya ama, ranga cha?”

Bent over a plastic tub, Manmaya’s thick fingers are extruding shit from the winding pouch of intestines. She looks through her wire-gray hair falling over her face, and she asks upwards in a hoarse voice, “Kati?”

Despite the growl in her voice, her growing age has left her fragile to the daunting tasks of running the shop. The government had sent her an android cyborg a few days prior from the Prime-Minister-Human-Resource-Crisis quota. She calls after her android, “Apeksha nani, ranga halidey ta.”

Apeksha appears, a frail-looking android with a slender frame of prosthetic steel tied with an apron. The apron’s neckline reveals three computer chips as stars that function as a robot heart. The blue star indicates physical sensations, green star logical confirmation, and red star emotional sentience. Since emotional sentience is illegal for androids, it remains shut like a burnt-out filament while the other two stars glow.

Apeksha’s retina display scans the customer, measuring points across his face and linking it to her database. She recites the details scribbled across the bottom of her display screen:

  • Bastola – last visited: Yesterday
  • Prefers a little striated buff
  • Cut into pieces between mince and chop

“Ama hernu ta,” Mr. Bastola turns to Manmaya with heady elation.

Manmaya dips her hands in the clear water and straightens her back, “Aiyaiaya.” Paying no mind to Mr. Bastola, she grabs the remote next to the butcher slab.

“She does remember me,” the man giggles in awe, “Bigyan jasto chiz hai.”

Manmaya looks at him, his egg-shaped face expands on the bottom as his lips stretch to display a smile full of jostling teeth. Without breaking eye contact and not returning the smile, she switches on the TV across the room. Mr. Bastola’s smile transforms into a foolish grin as Manmaya carefully walks back up to her chair with her hands on her hips. The screen shows an android’s face and triggers Apeksha’s memory of an android she had once been familiar with.

A broad rectangle face with a thin line for a nose, Yoko’s metallic contours ran on the edges of her cheekbones and nose, casting a shadow on her cheeks from the dappled sunlight entering through gaps in the pressed green shutters. It was said that one could walk from Ram Shah Path to Anamnagar in one direction and Maitighar in another yet one would still be inside the premises of Singha Durbar. The massive white establishments were distributed in three quadrangles and one of its courtyards overlooked an assembly of young androids lined up, chanting in a single chorus, “Good morning.” The androids were divided into sub-sections, with two, Apeksha and Yoko, trained as retail help for butcher shops. They were schooled and trained in a secluded area of the Durbar with supervisors in each sub-sector, six days a week. Saturdays remained strictly isolated for cleaning.

However, the android on the television looks different, its face featuring an oddity of a smile, its cheeks dented as a crushed soda can. The television blares out a report of a culprit arrested for ordering a cyborg to smile. Apeksha’s auditory devices respond to the TV. She looks at the screen and sees the culprit swearing his innocence. On one side, a picture of a smiling android is displayed. The only thing it has in common with Yoko is the red star, glowing brightly on its chest.

***

“An android’s existence is like water.”

The classroom rang with a voice. The ground floor of Singha Durbar’s left courtyard was cool and dark, in contrast to the brightness of the day, as the sun only entered from patches in the stained glass. The sunlight reflected on the flask held by the life coach. Apeksha and Yoko were seated facing him, his cheeks thin and pale from ill health. His palms held the flask weakly, the water inside it adapting to the light.

“Your existence shall provide leisure if not happiness. Your being and your wishes shall align with the commands of human beings.”

He held the flask to the red reflection of the stained glass and then to the blue one as he added, “You are the dilution, you are the one with answers, not questions.” He placed the flask on the desk, back to being colorless.

A man with a thin face appears on television. His designation badge gleaming on his right chest: ‘Expert on Android behavior / A.I. life coach.’

“We assure the public that this incident wasn’t caused by any sentient awakening. Rather, it was a logical mistake in command,” he says softly.

Apeksha recognizes him and the backdrop of Singha Durbar. She spots the green wooden shutters of the library with arched colorful stained glass as its head casing.

The library of the central wing sat right below the red roof of the durbar that opened itself through the green shutters, a bright contrast to the wing’s white walls. The shutters welcomed an extended rigid bush that perpetually left the windows half open. Yoko was on a ladder dusting off the bookshelf. The sunlight entered through stained glass above the green shutters casting a colorful reflection on the top shelves. Apeksha looked up, as she was right below the ladder, mopping the tiled floors. Yoko’s metallic skin shone against the colorful reflections. Her head moved from side to side following her arms dusting the bookshelf, sometimes turning her coral blue and sometimes jam red. Apeksha’s retina was unable to record the sudden color changes and she got dizzy trying to settle on one color. The mop crashed into the legs of the ladder, throwing Yoko and the ladder off balance. Everything crashed to the floor. Recovering from the fall, Yoko got to her feet. A book laid open a few steps away. Both the androids moved towards it and their retina scanned a poem vividly portraying a narrator in a bathtub, the text unfolding serene reflections of wobbling water projected unto the ceiling, the beauty of the day explained without any rhyme or reason. Yoko recalled the objective of her existence without commands.

When Apeksha and Yoko returned from the library, passing by the fountain reservoir, the wobbly sunspots caught Yoko’s attention. She stood there watching the water, its reflection casting a glow on her face. A few steps ahead, Apeksha turned back. Yoko’s black dots for eyes shone.

Yoko looked up and asked, “Have you ever wondered, what it is like to be inside the water?”

Apeksha paused for a while, unable to compute the question. She finally said, “I have never been given such an order.”

“Apeksha,” Manmaya calls, pointing her chin to the tub. “Pahiley, throw this tub’s water into the drain.” She then looks to Mr. Bastola, “Ekchin parkhi hai Bastola, hijo dekhi dhaad chunu bhako chaina.”

Mr. Bastola, immersed in the blaring news, is startled and asks, “Kina ra, what happened?”

The dirty water splashes in movement as Apeksha carries the tub and goes past Manmaya toward the back door, her auditory senses picking up Manmaya saying, “I went to the terrace to get the bedsheets last night, kasto hawa chaldai thiyo, pani parrirako.” The voices muffle as the door squeaks close behind Apeksha.

The final bright rays of the sun illuminate an eagle across the stretch of wasteland. Bishnumati quietly cuts right through it to endlessness. Apeksha spots a piece of paper beaten down by the rain, pasted to the top of a large stone near the gutter. The printed grid lines on it are blurry and one of its end edges nipped, showing a disjointed signature that says Yoko. Trying to reason where it came from, she looks back to the two-storey house, her room on the topmost floor, its windows facing her.

Last evening, the city had closed down early due to an incoming storm. Light drizzle rode upon the winds of Teku, the trees shivered and the people crawled under rain covers. The shutters closed as the city drowned into the evening. However, the tinted glasses of grey corporate buildings stayed erect like eyeless faces turning their backs to sprawled narrow gallis full of shanty colonies of slate roof and mud, comprising the banks of the Bishnumati River. The wind gusted through the linen hung on the terrace, as though the billowing cloth wanted to become the wind itself. The bright plastic pegs clipped on its edges stitched the linen to the ropes, barely yet determined. Manmaya’s flip-flops slapped against her heels and upon the blobs of raindrops on fissured floors of mold and dust. The green mold wet and slippery sent the woman’s feet in the air as she gripped a handful of linen. Her back hit the concrete floor.

“Mareh nih babai,” she screamed.

In the corner of the terrace, a short unsheltered flight of thin iron stairs led to a small elevated room next to a water tank. Apeksha, sitting on a chair, a little lamp on the table and a folded piece of paper, its back nipped revealing Yoko’s signature, looked through her windows to the panic screams as the wind fanned her metallic face. She watched her employer floored and wrapped in linen sheets. Manmaya finally spotted Apeksha and signaled her to help. Apeksha opened the door, which brought an eddy of dust, blowing the piece of paper out through the window, past the balustrades of the terrace, adapting to the wind itself.

The sound of the pouring rain only got louder as she stepped out of her room. The rioting drops of rain poured onto the terrace, completely drenching it. The transverse waves rippled, a shallow depth of collected water on the terrace as Apeksha’s metallic foot stepped on it, leaving wetness on her soles. With every step she took towards Manmaya, the wetness became only more prominent. Rainwater slid off her metallic shoulder, not really absorbed not really soaked, at least not on the right terms. Amidst the coolness of the wind, the splatter of the rain and the deafening furious flow of the once-quiet Bishnumati, Apeksha helped Manmaya downstairs. On her way, her retina happened to scan her room. Her door and windows were ajar. The idle lamp was glowing but Yoko’s note had disappeared.

A few strands of linen thread clipped by plastic pegs remained soaking on the rope. The white linen had dropped to the floor like porridge out of a bowl. And so did the question:

“Have you ever wondered what it is like to be inside the water?”

***

“Apekshaaaaa! Khanai sakinas???”

The old woman cries after Apeksha as she pours the water into the gutter which ran from the streets, slanted through the back of the shop then to the wasteland, disappearing into the Bishnumati. The water swirls into the gutter, diluting the stream, forgetting its original identity to oblivion turning into the mix of the other source.

“For you to be a good serving android, you must be able to dissolve yourself into your commands,” the life coach weakly carried the flask full of water. He added a drop of red liquid to it. The redness swirled around the flask completely, turning the water red. “Dilution is bilingual, meaning it speaks of both remembering and forgetting.”

“This,” he put the flask back, “is remembering.”

He then poured the red liquid into a larger glass bowl full of water. The redness disseminated like smoke inside the bowl, and the liquid inside the flask lost its initial redness into a tinge of faintly pink liquid.

“And this,” he stirred the bowl, “is forgetting.”

“Apekshaa??? Sakinas bhaneko?” Apeksha’s auditory senses finally catch up with the bellowing. She quickly bends down to pick up the fallen note from last night as she proceeds into the shop. She opens the door with a squeak.

The wooden door squeaked and reverberated, eventually recovering from the slam. Apeksha held the woman through her arms and switched on the lights: a cluttered room piled with things in knotted plastic bags, her bed by the window, a splashback of newspaper fold pasted on the wall of the kitchen counter, dried yellow turmeric stains of dal and curries sprayed from the whistle of the pressure cooker.

It seemed like the room had remained effectively knotted into the confinements of Manmaya and Manmaya only. The curtains forbade the sun rays from visiting the corners of the room, but had a heat absorbing quality from the carpets below. The room gave off the dryness of a forest in summer and the freshness of hunting lodges in the middle of it. It remained detached from the world of the butcher shop below, neither was there Mr. Bastola on the steps nor the tub full of intestines, no butcher knives nor the perpetually wet tiles of the counter.

As Apeksha enters the room, she finds Manmaya sitting in the very same position as she was before. “Hana k garna thalis?” Manmaya looks up at Apeksha, and for the first time, her retina scans in detail. A serious face in contrast to yesterday.

She looked pale and embarrassed. Apeksha tended to Manmaya’s back with the support of comfortable pillows. “Aiyaiya,” Manmaya laughed, frowning her eyebrows and dividing the face. Identical to the picture on the nightstand, the lines on her face stretched, leaving a trace behind of once fuller cheeks, now sunken with old age, the puffy sag of bags under her glinting eyes.

“Bastola parkhina nasakera vegetables kinnu gako cha, tyo chuttayera fridge ma rakhdai gaar,” she points to the bowl full of organs. Apeksha is lost in the contrast of her face, very stern sharp eyebrow lines, her drooping mouth pursed in desperate irritation.

The two folds of Manmaya’s being had little to no intersection with each other, despite being on the same building and shared by the same person. It was as if Manmaya had her existence diluted into her shut room, in order to appear fully as the Manmaya that existed for the shop. As if every night Manmaya punctuated the empty tiled walls by hanging her apron on it, and then took the stairs, shedding off the wetness with every step to her room, a refuge from the groaning sky, splattering roofs, muddy roads, shops with closed shutters and put-out bulbs.

“Hana ako dui din mai bigris ki kya ho,” Manmaya lightly nudges Apeksha’s elbow in irritation, oblivious of Yoko’s note clutched in Apeksha’s palm. Apeksha gathers herself from her thoughts as Manmaya mutters, “Tyo chuttayera fridge ma rakhdai gar bhaneko.” Apeksha heads towards the butcher counter, as she wonders about the sides of Manmaya’s existence. She watches her own reflection on the wet tiles, no tangible shape of the silhouette, just accents of it, blurry grey metals, blue and green glowing stars on her chest spill onto the reflection.

“Aaahh, I-I prefer the window side, a-hmm of the bed more, if you could please help me move.”

Apeksha helped Manmaya shift quietly in between the rustle of the sheets and the woman’s grunts from pain. “It’s my side of the bed,” an embarrassed Manmaya coyly defended herself. Apeksha bid her goodnight as she was ordered to get back to her room.

The house was dark as Apeksha walked listlessly up the stairs to her room. The rioting of rain had gotten a lot softer as she entered the room and closed the door behind her. The absence of Yoko’s note from her desk didn’t get much of her attention as she looked out at the darkness, listening to the quiet flowing of the thin river, only the lights in two rooms of a tall building far away weren’t put out. They looked like dots, briefly distant from one another, similar to Yoko’s beady eyes in the dark. The rain then started pouring harshly, pattering on the roof. The red star on Apeksha’s chest flickered once or twice, as she lay awake in the dark, wondering which side of the bed was hers.

***

Apeksha’s vision blurs in and out, as her retina finds it hard to focus. Her mainframe gets dizzy. Apeksha holds onto the nearest thing and clutches onto Yoko’s note. She tilts her head to the butcher block, its surface rough from the swings of the butcher knife. Her mainframe wheezes as it is unable to harden any factual identities. Yoko’s face and the wooden block’s surface merge into an overlay transition, her retina projecting images of a rectangular face morphed into the wood’s shape. Apeksha’s prosthetic steel wrists creak as she holds tighter to the wooden block which is Yoko’s face now, her metallic skin turning into the textures of cracked human heels but only warmer in color, almost like the gluttony and brownness brought about by roasted chestnuts.

THUDD!

A rendered flesh drops on the table of the butcher shop. It startles Apeksha as she finds Mr. Bastola mouthing his sentences as loud as he can. “Asti ko jasto haina hai, aja malai karang ko masu deu,” he points to his own ribs, signaling karang. It takes a while for Apeksha to regain her auditory senses.

“Ae Bastola kati chir chir gareko, dincha ta,” Manmaya shouts from across the room, sitting in her chair upright, her back still bothering her. “Aba ranga dhalnu ateko, taja paucha, ekchin parkhera lag kih ta,” Manmaya suggests. In assumed agreement from Mr. Bastola, Manmaya adds, “Teslai kaam garna de ekchin, ranga lyaudai cha, TV herdai gaar.”

The marble counter has a bowl full of organs, heart, spleen, liver, and entrails. Her metallic fingers scoop the delicate heart and liver. Its chambers jiggle like a sponge full of blood but its arteries, its texture, so vulnerable that it would burst into blood and demolish its muscle in a single squeeze. Placing the organs into another bowl away from the intestines, Apeksha looks down at her metallic palms smeared with blood, the steel unable to absorb the redness, blobs of blood remain hanging on the plain surface like early dew drops on the park railings.

During one of their training sessions on butchering carcasses, Yoko turned to Apeksha, something tense drafting up between her painted eyebrows, her pupils wavering constantly from side to side to her palm as if in an attempt to look for something.

“Have you ever wondered where they bring this flesh from?” her unmoored voice broke.

Apeksha took a look at Yoko’s bloody palms and then at her eyes. Her pupils pierced with sadness upon the revelation that it is unable to form walls of tears. The copper wires inside her sockets stayed dry like a draught rivulet with no beginning or an end.

The noise of the television drowns out the background as an urgent yelp makes its way toward the galli, inhuman and drawn out. Apeksha’s aperture focuses on a bald man with a large body showing up at the far end of the road, his bald head shining in the sun as all his hair had decided to grow out as a beard instead. He pulls a buffalo by the nose ring, while the buffalo, like a disobedient child, frictions its hoofs against the asphalt, shaking its head vehemently. The man’s helper splatters the buffalo on its skin with a stick, making it plead further with ringing, incomplete yelps. The buffalo is tied against the pole across the shop. The man turns towards the steps of the shop as both Mr. Bastola and Apeksha look at him. Manmaya welcomes him on the steps with a smile, rummaging through her cash register.

“Ranga dhaleko jyala kati dinu parne ho maile?” she asks.

The man looks at Apeksha, “Yo robot pathaideko raicha ta, gardaina yesle?” he asks Manmaya.

“Bharkhar dui din ta hudai cha lyako,” she looks at Apeksha.

“Ke ke liyera ayo yo sarkar le pani hai,” the man shakes his head. Clanking his knives, he sharpens them one last time before heading down the steps. The buffalo grunts as the helper pulls its horn from the other side of the pole, ducking it down, and presenting the back of the neck to the knife. The man swings his sword but not really going full in, as if measuring the girth of it. Stillness records in the air from the spectacle, people passing by the street walk, twisting their heads, Manmaya, Mr. Bastola and the helper collectively holding their breath before it happens.

Mr. Bastola comments loudly, “I wonder if some god was buried inside this pole, asks sacrifices frequently heh.” He chuckles, and no one follows along. The bald man looks at him and smiles, an inconspicuous crevice, a slim gap in between his two front teeth getting wider and wider as he smiles more.

The slim gap in the bookshelf of Singha Durbar from the dropping of the book widened in the upcoming weeks. The gap was directly proportionate to the hollowness from the morning chorus of, “Good morning,” which got wider as Yoko grew quieter. Yoko’s reverie of melancholy and pleasures flew under the radar of supervisors and herself unnoticed. The Saturday before their final week of training, Yoko and Apeksha went about their day in the library, but instead of dusting, Yoko unusually sat on the ledge by the half-open window with a book in her hand, the spectacle providing her a long-shot view of Ram Shah Path, from the ivory gates to the end of the eyesight’s stretch. Her thin legs stood on the ledge against the cool breeze of the summer evening, her foot a little more on the edge looking down at the water fountain. A soft sunset overcast on the fast-setting dimness of the path, the traffic man in his blue uniform stood in the shadow of jacaranda trees as the leaves kept dropping listlessly, with a willingness to be spent.

***

Far away from the window stood an idle Ferris wheel, long out of use, its rusty metal capsules whirled by the wind, jerking it a little into a mild squeak.

The shivering squeak of the butcher knife’s edge makes its presence known.

Yoko placed a small note on the window. As she stood back on the ledge, she looked to Apeksha with the pain of a stab, her eyes secreting sorrow so much that it made her shiny retina darken. An unmistakable breeze flew past her as the red star on her chest emanated a glow.

The sinking sun’s orange casts into a precise angle, and the knife reflects against the sunset on its swing upwards.

And in the blink of an eye, Yoko’s feet took a step forward to fall.

A fountain of blood sprays onto the helper from his torso to his neck and on the steps of the shutter. The horns are still held by the helper as its body detaches. The four legs collapse limply, leaving the body on the ground. Apeksha lets out a gasp as she holds the counter. Her legs grow weak. The headless body of the buffalo undergoes cadaveric spasms, a mix between a clench of the muscle, twisting and binding into a vehement shaking of the veins with bodily pain, even after death. The loss of existence happens in a split second while the pain remains. It lingers around as spasms, as memories in a body that no longer holds mortality, ringing like an afterthought.

The blood flows of a pigmented specific deep red, one that could be found deep inside a heart’s heart. The head remains unresponsive. Hence, forgets. While the body remembers the pain, a final stubborn hold on life, the thread suspending in the air in between a thin boundary of remembering and forgetting your own existence. Apeksha’s realization hits full throttle as she looks at Manmaya. Her interchanging existence between her room and shop, Mr. Bastola – his self-effacing jokes that plead to be acknowledged, his longing to be seen, the note in her hand – Yoko’s yearning for existence. Apeksha almost falls unconscious on the counter, the bowls scattering down on the floor. Everyone looks back at her in confusion and panic as her entire existence climaxes into a single cadaveric spasm, an afterthought. Her existence feels like a vessel for the body with the absence of life. Apeksha feels something for the first time, a burn thaws in her chest, and her robotic voice utters the word, “Pain.”

The burnt filament of her red star flickers into life, getting brighter and more visible. Apeksha opens her mouth to scream, a long-held sonorous screech, eerily sustained in the air. Inhuman but mortal, she whistles as a wounded dolphin veiled deeply under the solitude of a dark ocean whose echoes ring to the surface, creating ripples. The sunset reflects on the windowpanes of the house, on the marble counter full of blood clots, on the stench of animal carcasses, on sweat, blood lathered up from the walls to the floor, and on the little red rubies of blood dried in the knuckles of a screaming android. Manmaya drops to the floor in shock. Mr. Bastola and the butchers run away, screaming for help, leaving behind the headless body.

A guttural response and a spitting command are heard, followed by engines rumbling and feet thumping. Poisonous smoke is thrown in the room amidst the android siren. Apeksha is put down by a guard and handcuffed, her head bashed on the counter. Yoko’s note falls from her palms onto the floor.

Apeksha’s final thoughts wonder if Yoko finally found out what it feels like to be inside the water, when her body splashed into it from the heights, the glow of the red star illuminating the entire water source. That particular evening and this evening brought similar qualities, the red glow of the android in a mildly dim setting.

A soldier turns off Apeksha’s switch.

***

The blood from the buffalo’s neck flows profusely, running down the drains through the curb, its puddle of redness gleaming against the sinking sun, spread across the street. A thin man crosses the street, his bloody footprints marking the steps of the shop. The policemen salute him as he enters, his thin face and weak body movements looking around the wet tiles of the counter, an apron punctuating the wall, fallen bowls of organs, and an unconscious android on the floor.

He slowly bends down to pick up Yoko’s note with shaky hands. The smoke from before has yet to be cleared completely, so he opens the back door of the shop. The evening marks its arrival, as the red sun disappears far away on the Bishnumati, with just a few shreds of light left behind. The blood flowing and mixing, a successful dilution into the Bishnumati, the redness in the river visibly entering like a serpent only to be dispersed on its flow, forgetting itself to become the river. He opens the note and puts glasses onto the ridge of his nose:

I am naked in bomb craters, drenched in the memory of meteors

I talk through the wires with molten glass, and nobody will ever

What I am saying

I am not alone with my disasters, in the nuclear shelters

Blue lights breathe in me, the secrets of atoms, and crooked

trees talk to me

Take care of the red-eyed rabbit in the sky, they say.

Take care of the soft animal, or his ashes in the winter, care for it, will you?

I say I will celebrate the shame in the middle names, when you will not know me.

I beg of you, I pretend more than you know. I can see you but I have been blind to beauty for so long.

Feel the rain for me, will you? I will be waiting in the darker side,

See, how many blood dances, fairies in the Ferris wheel, see, how the blood dances.

Feel the rain for me will you? I will be waiting on the darker side

I am naked in bomb craters. Drenched in the memory of meteors.

Till you remember to forget me.

 

Darkness engulfs Teku. The entire wasteland sits in silence. The man puts down his glasses, a sadness reflected in his eyes leaving a droopy effect on his face, a crow flaps across the night sky. He takes off his badge and looks at it: Expert on Android behavior / A.I. life coach. The badge plops when the old man drops it into the flowing river, silently.

 

Image credit: Kabita Darlami/Unsplash

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