[FT/Closed]Acceptable Risks

by **Source Swarm** » Sun Nov 15, 2015 2:16 pm

Diplomatic Corps Pera-Administrator ~/Rexler/
Outsystem Depot Station ~/Dagon/
Innsmouth System

"Some would consider interrupting a man while he's getting dressed to be an abuse of your authority, Dag."

Getting dressed was a common metaphor among DiploCorps Clients, who switched physical hardware bodies as quickly as organics might change clothes. It was rarer for Rexler, but with his services needed and his primary vessel needing a refit two system overs, he'd shlepped here as inert memory and was just now bringing his new vessel and all the subordinate frames inside it online when the depot station interrupted him.

"I wanted to catch you before you got too in depth on your hardware tests, actually, Ambassador."
"Oh? Why's that, now?"
"A number of the frames with which you are equipped are for use in aqueous environments only. I wanted to let you know that attempting to activate them otherwise could result in hardware damage, for which you would be responsible." There was a beat. "I also thought you might want to know you have a transmission from Administrator Haychepiel."

Rexler was quick to activate the link. Faster than light communications were expensive - doubly so from as far away as the Provincial Office. "Administrator. Glad to find you."
"And I you. I want to stress the importance of this contact, Rexler. The target species has poetic commonalities with races in the lore of the First Race. Access to Records and geography is to be your priority, along with archeological rights."
Rexler, for his part, broadcast a simple acknowledgement chord. A bit curt, for the subordinate,but his reputation was worthy of some allowances.

Stretching out, he disconnected from the depot and began his transit to the correct position for a field effect leap. Documented instances of sapient oceanic species reaching this level of technology were rare. The few instances that were recorded did not go well for the visiting parties.

Then again, those previous incidents hadn't benefited from having him present. "Alright then. Rexler out."
"Take this seriously, damn it. There's a promotion in it for you if it goes well."
This caused the exiting AI pause. "... The only promotion anyone could give me would be..."
"9th Sub-Tier Administrator."
"I'm going fast now."

Uncatalogued Starsystem
Local Designation "T'erlak-2"

it took some time to get your bearings upon existing Secondary Field Effect, that brilliant translocational discovery that had circumvented luminal bounds on velocity. Rexler, like many, chose not to press the issue. He put a bit of error into his calculations for the non-linear jumps. The downside was that it took his sense of position longer to catch up once he had transited. The upside was that it let him carry forward a more proper understanding of sense of time.

He could stand a little positional error. In time, it would straighten itself out. The central charts of Field Effect Jump Precalculations were close enough for government work, and what he couldn't work out mathmatically he had the faculties to intuit as he considered his inward track of the system.

There was no point in being silent about it, either. He loaded up a language filter for a few trade languages used frequently in this part of the broadcast, and lowered his voice into the correct radio band. "Local stations, Local Stations, Rexler calling. Seeking contact with local spacelane control and local senior government. Transmitting tetrahex cant identifier phrase."

He coasted, wishing he'd brought at least one or two others along with him. He could use a good match of integral, but it was only really playable within a few dozen AU of the other party. "... I say again, local control, Diplomatic Corps Para-Administrator Rexler seeking vector guidance."

by **Senkaku** » Sun Nov 15, 2015 5:06 pm

T'erlak-2 System
Station Jasper Minnow-4

Jasper Minnow-4, to the naked eye, was a hunk of silicate rock and ice, swinging on a wide elliptical orbit around a mind-bogglingly distant sun, alone save for a single moonlet the size of a human automobile that orbited at a distance of ten miles. The "station", if it could be called that, was about six hundred meters in diameter, a rough spherical shape. One side of the little frozen ball had been blasted inwards to make way for a huge electron guitar transmission system, while the other side had two small black modules leading to tunnel systems deeper within. Inside these tunnel systems, highly saline water, at around -5 degrees Centigrade, flowed around row after row of humming black boxes. Some of the boxes were silent, while others alternated between perfect silence and a hum on the edge of perception, teasing the mind of sapients with auditory sensors with a phantom signal. All were a dull black matte in the very faint blue-green light given off by the algae that lived in the water around them, radiating just enough heat to keep the water liquid.
The station had one resident, who was in fact on the automobile-sized moonlet ten miles away in a small habitation tank. He was currently playing his four hundred and sixty-seventh round of xolich against his attendant AI in that day-night cycle.
In short, Jasper Minnow-4 was an utterly unremarkable communications relay at the edge of a colony system.

Comms Station Overseer Chamnak-16 X'ili frowned as his AI suddenly switched on its field modulator and began speaking. It had been silent for so long it had powered the communicator device off, for efficiency's sake- why would a game of xolich change that?

The holographic xolich board disappeared, replaced by a trajectory map.
"Incoming vehicle," the AI warbled, "requesting vector guidance and contact with ranking official in Standard. Broadcasting native-language identification tag."
16 X'ili inflated his cuttlebone a little, drifting upwards, his skin displaying rippling blue stripes as he went to his transmitter station and wrapped his arms around it, extending his manipulator tentacles.
"Send incoming vehicle holding response. Open channel to Rose Ice Pearl Administrative Office."

The powerful electron guitar dish, a nanosecond after 16 X'ili's instruction, fired a signal off to Rexler.
"Diplomatic Corps Para-Administrator Rexler, Station Jasper Minnow Four acknowledges you. Station is transmitting laser signal for you to vector off of. Please halt twenty-five Galactic Standard kilometers from this station and await further instructions from the Comms Station Overseer."

"Rose Ice Pearl Administrative Office, this is Comms Station Overseer Chamnak 16 X'ili, Jasper Minnow-4, seeking instruction."
There was a long pause as the Administrative Office's AIs processed him, then fed him into a field modulator to speak to someone on the other end.
"Comms Station Overseer Chamnak 16 X'ili, this is Rose Ice Pearl Administrative Office Junior Overseer Chamnak 24 Kex'ir. What instruction is required?"
"Non-hostile, unknown foreign vessel seeking guidance vectors and contact with government officers." 16 X'ili briefly took his arms off of his transmitter station, flashing bright blue as he spoke for a moment to his AI.
"Reference ship design with known species."
"Ship design matches vessel of the Source Swarm. Galaxy-wide synthetic race. No previous affiliations inside the Cluster."
16 X'ili wrapped his face back onto the transmitter station and continued speaking to 24 Kex'ir. "Vessel originates from the Source Swarm, synthetic sapients with no previous affiliations within the Cluster."
There was a slight click- an auditory race would have perceived nothing, but the electric field emanating from the receiver set attached to the back of the transmitter desk had died. 24 Kex'ir had unwrapped from their transmitter desk for a moment.
There was another click. "You are to ensure the vessel remains in orbit around your station for now and handle what questions and the like it may have. If you cannot answer it, contact the Administrative Office again. If necessary we will direct you to send it to us. Over."
The channel clicked twice as it was closed.
16 X'ili could see himself flickering green and brown as he let gas out of his cuttlebone and drew in his arms. Of course the Administrative Office would stick him with the joyless task of talking to the aliens. He jetted sulkily to the far side of his tank, banged his head against the side, and swam slowly back to his transmitter desk feeling rather sorry for himself.

After a moment more of sulking, 16 X'ili got control of his skin, stopped flashing, and sat on the bottom next to his transmitter.
"AI, what language was being broadcast as the vehicle's native identifier?"
"Tetrahex Cant. A digital language used by the Swarm's synthetics."
"Has Tetrahex Cant been translated?"
"Not fully."
"Perform a short-term memory addition of the translated portions of Tetrahex Cant."
"Affirmative." 16 X'ili swam under the transmitter desk and wrapped his face around the receiver set, tiny needles inserting themselves into his tentacles.
"Beginning memory addition," the AI warbled. 16 X'ili shuddered as the needles pumped nanobots into his bloodstream, twitching as they meandered across the blood-brain barrier and began interacting with his neurons. It felt like tiny shrimp were crawling around in his head and at the base of his eye sockets, flowing through his hearts and delivering little static shocks everywhere they went. He flashed red, blue, and green- and the needles withdrew. 16 X'ili swam a short distance away, his gills pumping as furiously as his hearts.
Orange patterns of annoyance meandered across his body as he put his face on the transmitter set.

A few moments later, a transmission again came from Jasper Minnow-4 to Rexler's ship- but this was no longer in Galactic Standard. It was Tetrahex Cant, after a fashion. The grammar was peculiar, words transposed here and there as if cheap translation software had been used, and the whole thing was clearly modified into a lower frequency than it had originally been sent in- but the message was understandable, at the very least.
"Rexler, this is the Station Communicative Boss of Red Gem Small Fish Station, Chamnak 16 X'ili. They will be acting as senior government for porpoises of your ship. Copy? How assist you may I?"

by **Source Swarm** » Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:17 pm

Rexler was taking his sweet time to maneuver, mostly to ensure parade-ground-perfect maneuvers. It was polite, after a fashion, not to zoom around a strange system at full speed. He was reasonably confident in his ability to avoid collision, naturally... but not as confident in his ability to avoid annoying his hosts.

The vessel he'd loaded up for the trip wasn't exactly small, either. A quarter kilometre long, the cylindrical vessel was little more than payload storage, power systems, and thermal control, and mostly the former. When he was given his parking orbit, he clicked a simple acknowledgement back - a flat tone that was the penultimate shorthand for having copied a message. He then busied himself with stabilizing his orbit, and was tempted to load up an organosynthestesiac simulation before he felt the most jarring sensation of his life.

Someone had addressed him in Cant, and they had done so badly. Organics from early contacts had complained of the Uncanny Valley when the Swarm tried too hard to emulate their appearance, and he now had some understanding of what that felt like. The tonality of the cant was off, and even once it was corrected for, the message itself was corrupted. The alexical content - what you might think of as nonverbal cues - was stripped completely. The words themselves didn't make much sense.

He wobbled on his orbit slightly, physically shaking himself, and tried to make sense. Had to be a bad translation by the station's AI. He broadcast back in Dialectic (a simplified, informal version of Tetrahex that was more commonly used), simulcasting the same message in Standard, in hopes the AI would be able to slowly improve its translations. "Ah, right. Communications Station Manager at Station 16 X'ili. I have received your message. I am a consular vessel sent to initiate diplomatic contact in this system. Are you authorized to treat with me?"

At the back of his mind, there was a nagging doubt. Even rudimentary AI ususally could run commercially-available translation programs, and Tetrahex wasn't proprietary - the translation tables for a number of languages had been well-developed and distributed. This felt more like the kind of mistake an organic mind would make in the translation - but what manner of organic could speak directly in a language that was sung electromagnetically?

by **Senkaku** » Mon Nov 16, 2015 2:11 pm

T'erlak-2 System
Station Jasper Minnow-4

The trajectory map glowed a faint green as the alien vessel settled into its orbit, pixels flickering here and there as Jasper Minnow-4's computers calculated the effect it would have on their orbit around T'erlak-2 and the station's interactions with its own small moon. The vessel was fairly sizable, when stacked up next to the station, with a significant mass. Outside, 16 X'ili's habitat-moonlet fired its own attitude jets to compensate for the slight tidal forces the Swarm ship was now exerting.
Inside, in the warm, salty water, 16 X'ili squashed his eyes forward in concentration as the alien's response played from his attendant AI's field modulator. Clearly he had made some error in communicating, or perhaps it was simply that the information he had been given was incomplete or incorrect. Either way, he wrapped his tentacles around the transmitter desk again, thinking carefully as he tapped out a signal.

"I am approved for speaking with you. Correction: speaking, is of the Station Boss for Station Red Gem Small Fish, who is called 16 X'ili-" 16 X'ili let some gas out of his cuttlebone and let his eyes back. It was only complicating things to attempt to speak in the alien's language, when it was clear that the memory upload he'd just received was incomplete. It would take him hours to get his point across at this point, much less to try and answer a diplomatic vessel's queries.

He released the transmission desk, swimming across the tank, and tapped his AI's field modulator a few times and began speaking. Rexler would hear a slight click as the Tetrahex Cant transmission ceased and 16 X'ili spoke to his AI.
"Send the following message to the alien vessel. Mark. Switching to Galactic Standard, alien vessel. Speaking is Comms Station Overseer Chamnak 16 X'ili, managing Station Jasper Minnow-4. I am authorized to treat with you by my government. What is your need?"
An instant later, the message arrowed on a beam of light across the void to Rexler.

by **Source Swarm** » Tue Nov 17, 2015 12:16 pm

Rexler

Rexler took the time at this point to bring up a few documents - he was older and preferred an externalized rendering of information to the more intuitive memory-management newer clients used - familiarizing himself with what little was known of the local species. Precious, precious little seemed relevant in the spare time he had before 16 X'ili responded to him. GalStan, this time. In the radio Hum that surrounded him, Rexler signalled his quiet, subdued amusement. A human would have smirked.

"Right. I must congratulate you on the attempt all the same. Not many organic species are capable of singing in Cant. Why, I'd hazard to say there are a few among my own kind that haven't quite gotten the knack yet. Overseer, I am Rexler, a consular Client of the Collective of the Swarm. My mission to your system is part of an overall program to open diplomatic relations between your species and the Collective. Would you prefer to discuss this in person, aboard your vessel, or to continue this conversation over laserlight?"

He reviewed the message twice before settling it. He was genuine in his sentiment, but concerned the relative flatness of his voice in Standard would render his congratulations more contemptuous than heartfelt. In the end, he left it in. He began, here, the tedious process of selecting and preparing the right tools for his job - preflight-checking a shuttle in his belly for the actual docking. Hmm... he'd have to flood the shuttle, too. And there was the matter of moving the submersible Frame aboard.

The radio noise around him increased somewhat in amplitude and noise, signalling his annoyance. There were procedures standardized for dealing with aquatic environment missions. Why the hell had this vessel been loaded in so irritatingly incorrect a manner?

He rather hoped the Overseer would agree that an in-person conversation would be best. He very much wanted to see with his own "eyes" the creature capable of singing electrically.

by **Senkaku** » Wed Nov 18, 2015 2:04 pm

T'erlak-2 System
Station Jasper Minnow-4

"Right. I must congratulate you on the attempt all the same. Not many organic species are capable of singing in Cant. Why, I'd hazard to say there are a few among my own kind that haven't quite gotten the knack yet. Overseer, I am Rexler, a consular Client of the Collective of the Swarm. My mission to your system is part of an overall program to open diplomatic relations between your species and the Collective. Would you prefer to discuss this in person, aboard your vessel, or to continue this conversation over laserlight?"
16 X'ili shot some bubbles from his beak in annoyance, flashing orange. Was there any point at all in that foolish little exercise? He flexed one of his shorter arms idly, cutting the signal for a moment as he thought the message over.

His tank was much too small to permit an alien to come aboard the little moonlet, and anyways landing anything on it was damned tricky and would upset the tiny body's orbit and axis of rotation unless one was extremely careful. 16 X'ili didn't want his tank to get upset or sloshed around, but then again, it was always useful to see an alien as much in the flesh as possible.
He sent a quick transmission off to Rexler.
"My sub-station is not a suitable meeting location, but discussion in person would be acceptable. Permit me a few moments to move myself to the surface of the main station body, and I shall host you in the larger of the two habitation modules on the surface of the main station body."
With that, he unwrapped from the transmitter desk, swimming to the airlock door to squirm into his exosuit. Once inside, it took a few taps to power up, and he opened the inner doors and stepped through. The doors automatically sealed behind him, and he reached out rather clumsily with a manipulator tentacle to begin pumping the water back into the tank.
The process took a moment, the electric motor grinding away slowly, until he and his exosuit were alone with a thin atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen. He waved his own manipulator tentacle to reach out with the exosuit's, venting the atmosphere into space, and then opened the outer doors.
16 X'ili tucked his manipulator tentacles in, and tapped with his shorter arms to give the suit a burst of speed from its small compressed-air rockets. He waved another short arm to bring up a full control holo, and spoke to his AI.
"Any changes to the orbit of the sub-station?"
"No detectable changes."
16 X'ili inflated his mantle and flashed silvery-blue in acknowledgement as he gave a sustained burst on the air-rockets. It would take a few minutes for his little suit to cross the ten-mile void between the main station and his tank, even at full speed with an AI helping to vector him efficiently.
He pulled up the game of xolich he had been interrupted in the middle of, and got through a dozen moves or so before proximity alerts started blinking blue in front of the board. He spread his arms and extended his manipulator tentacles to tap the controls, firing his retros to lessen the impact. Even so, the bounce was jarring and disorienting, and the station's gravity was insufficient to hold him down. 16 X'ili gave a gentle burst on his main rockets and his AI adjusted his attitude jets to get him lined up for a more gentle landing while he extended his manipulator tentacles to guide the exosuit's own tentacles in grabbing onto the surface.
"Calibrate jump force to stay within fifty feet of the surface," he said to his AI, and flexed his arms outward to guide the exosuit's legs. When he contracted and jetted, the suit leaped up into the pitch-black sky, soaring over the rough, rocky terrain of the asteroid towards the larger of the two habitation modules. A few more bounds were sufficient, and he once again lashed out to grab onto the ground with the suit's manipulators.
"Bring internal pressure and temperature to Khaer standard," he said as he opened the airlock. Lights blinked on on the outside of the module almost immediately, and the airlock doors slid shut behind him.
As soon as the doors were sealed, the airlock began to fill with water. It was still barely above freezing- quite chilly, to say the least- but he could see radiator ports in the roof glowing cherry-red.
He expelled some gas from his cuttlebone in a slight sigh, and braced himself for the cold as the exosuit opened. The warm water swirled against the colder, saltier water of the habitation module, forming a visible thermocline, and 16 X'ili jetted up and out, flashing turquoise and black. The inner doors opened, and he swam through as the exosuit stowed itself in the side of the wall.

The habitation module was really just a habitable space- there weren't many accommodations here. The tunnel to the computer banks had been sealed when he'd ordered the water to be brought up to a more comfortable temperature, leaving the room pretty much completely bare. Radiator ports were pumping heat in through the roof, and there was a standard coating of bioluminescent algae on the roof giving off a soft twilight-blue glow. The rest was all bare carbon fiber, with no furnishings of any kind besides a box in one corner with emergency supplies and a transmitter desk and computer interface next to it.
16 X'ili jetted around the space for a little, enjoying the size compared to his own tank, and then swam over to rest on top of the tunnel lid while he waited for the alien.

by **Source Swarm** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 6:49 am

Rexler//Frame 1
Submarine Mobility and Communications Drone

When you're a client of the swarm, you have to get used to not just rapid changes of scale, but also extreme disparity. On the one hand, Rexler was a large consular ship with attendant warehousing systems and more than a few stored drones and deployables meant for extended operations. On the other hand, he was also a small, surface-bound marine probe no bigger than a toaster oven and equipped with little more than a single manipulator arm and a host of light communications equipment. What's more, he was also the small shuttle, deploying under field effect and manipulated not by itself but by the almost intangible currents of the consular ship's field going aft.

As all this is difficult to write convincingly, much less entertainingly, so suppose for a moment we simply frame his experiences as those of the small Remotely-Operated Vehicle being delivered through the waterlock and into the habitation module.

He was still getting used to moving on drives - most of the frames he used were humanoid in aspect. Unlike some other Clients, he wasn't used to conducting himself with fans, much less in the more difficult environment of water rather than air. Unbecomingly, he flew in a tight little calibration figured for a moment, before turning toward X'ili.

"My appologies," he pulsed in low-band, probably only to be picked up by some sort of communications equipment. "I'm still getting my sea legs, if you would pardon the pun."

by **Senkaku** » Thu Nov 19, 2015 10:15 pm

T'erlak-2 System
Station Jasper Minnow 4
Habitation Module 1

The alien entered swiftly. The airlock was not difficult to navigate, and 16 X'ili had made sure it was unlocked for his guest's convenience. As the inner door blinked to indicate the outer door was in use, the uulchi gathered himself up and swam to float in the center of the roof, puffing himself up a little and displaying dazzling blues and greens all across his skin.
The alien creature was, to say the least, exceedingly strange. 16 X'ili had not been expecting a typical form- these were synthetics- but this simple, unadorned boxlike thing reminded him of an electric incubator. It also apparently had the maneuverability of one. He unconsciously wiggled his tentacles in curious excitement as he regarded the avatar, rising as more gas filled his cuttlebone.
"My apologies, I'm still getting my sea legs, if you would pardon the pun."
16 X'ili could make out a faint whining at the low edge of his frequency perception, but his AI, listening through field modulation receivers, quickly 'translated' for him by shifting up a few electromagnetic octaves.

It made very little sense. "Sea legs? Is that an idiom? What does it mean?", he inquired of his AI.
"A Terran-derived idiom, also used with slightly different wording by the Shan. Getting one's so-called sea legs: originates from sailors on their wooden wind-powered surface vessels struggling with motion sickness, a type of imbalance in the hominid inner ear structure, an organ which balances them, caused by the oscillation of the surface of the sea. Alien appears to be suggesting it is suffering from a similar imbalance in directional equilibrium, making a pun with this idiom about our presence in an aqueous environment."
"I see." He wiggled his tentacles again. What a curious... thing. "Is that thing capable of receiving proper speech, or only low-frequency noise?"
"Cannot clarify. Equipment unfamiliar. If it is capable of reception"
He expelled some bubbles and brilliant orange patches flickered amidst the vibrant turquoise. "Very well. Shift me down to its frequency until we receive a clarification. Mark.
Well, I hope you are otherwise content. How may I be of assistance to you?"

by **Source Swarm** » Sat Nov 21, 2015 6:54 am

Rexler's Submersible

Rexler observed the electromagnetic interplay between the creature and its equipment with some amusement, for nothing pleased him quite so much as proving to be right in his projections. He'd predicted that any race capable of even grasping the concept of Tetrahex Cant would have to be naturally sensitive to electromagnetic fields, if not true radio, and so far that seemed to be the case.

"Oh, very content, thank you," he said, shifting his voice up to match the wavelengths the alien seemed to prefer. "Ahem. My name is Rexler, as you well know. I am something of a wandering consul within the diplomatic corps. I, and others like me, are the ones who get sent to deal with people we don't deal with formally - such as yourselves. It's my hope that we could begin with a formal recognition of one another's states. Could I ask the particulars of yours?"

by **Senkaku** » Sun Nov 22, 2015 11:07 pm

T'erlak-2 System
Station Jasper Minnow-4
Habitation Module 1

"Oh, very content, thank you. Ahem. My name is Rexler, as you well know. I am something of a wandering consul within the diplomatic corps. I, and others like me, are the ones who get sent to deal with people we don't deal with formally - such as yourselves. It's my hope that we could begin with a formal recognition of one another's states. Could I ask the particulars of yours?"

"It is clearly capable of speaking and receiving in normal frequencies," his AI droned unhelpfully.

16 X'ili rose in the water as gas filled his cuttlebone, flashing yellows across his surface before settling back down slightly. Should it terrify me, that this is how species meet? How civilizations say hello? Just a relay station overseer and a flying incubator. Deep Lord shield me.
He expelled some bubbles from his beak and collected his thoughts, intense aquamarine fluorescing in wavy patterns on his skin.

"The particulars." He flashed yellow again and wiggled his tentacles. "Well, the Quadruple Alliance spans four systems, centered on my species' homeworld of Irkhaes. There are... Deep Lord, I've no notion how many billions of us, but most of my people still reside on the world of our ancestors despite our control of other systems. The Grand Council and most of the government is there too, in the great city of Akkech that has stood as the Alliance's capital since... oh, five thousand years ago or so, at the end of the Long War. Is that... particular enough? Or do you have more specific questions?"

by **Source Swarm** » Mon Nov 30, 2015 3:00 pm

Rexler Main Perspective - "Flying Incubator"

"I have more questions than either of us would think you have the time to answer personally, Overseer. Most of them, however, are tangential at best. I will of course need to make more formal inquiries of your home government. Ultimately, my mission is to establish a formal consulate somewhere in Quadruple Alliance space."

Rexler moved in the water, somewhat more carefully than he had before, showing his "side" to the 16 X'ili. The side was a photometric display, mostly used for crude, low-resolution case-colour changes for visual identification when various broadcast schemes weren't working. He manipulated it anyway, displaying his vessel more-or-less as it appeared in space, for little reason apart from something to do as he continued to turn, taking in the sight of the whole habitation module.

"The structural component is the water-ice itself, isn't it?" He seemed more amused than anything. "Novel. Unsurprising. You're a naturally aquatic species. Is Irkhaes an unusually "wet" planet?"

Fundamentally, he was wasting time - both his and the overseers. His own masters wouldn't be satisfied with "I am now on friendly terms with the sole inhabitant of a colony system", any more than 16 X'ili's could possibly be willing to entrust such concepts with a communications officer.

[FT/Closed]Acceptable Risks

[FT/Closed]Acceptable Risks

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