fiction - brigits_flame - seed
Apr. 12th, 2009 06:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoThis totally got away from me (2,550 words). I go sleep now.
Dr. Carson thought it was practically criminal to force such a breathtaking landscape through such a small window. Still, it was either ride in the truck to the excavation site or get out and walk, and Dr. Carson didn't like the Australian scenery enough to risk dying in it of dehydration, sunstroke, or stepping on something angry and poisonous.
It had been Dr. Carson's hope that the natural beauty of his surroundings would help to wash away his doubts and fears about the trip. It wasn't working.
"I'm an idiot," he said.
"Hmm?" Oswald said, not looking up from what he was reading. Oswald wasn't interested in scenery. To Oswald, scenery was something you looked at only when you had already read everything twice, eaten all of the snacks, and it was still too early to have another drink.
"I don't know why I let you talk me into joining you on this expedition. It's like your digs are cursed," Dr. Carson said.
"You let me talk you into coming along because you're too much of a scientist to let an idea as irrational as 'being cursed' keep you from being part of one of the most important archaeological discoveries of our age."
"It is a sad day for science indeed when irrational ideas find themselves supported by so much empirical evidence." Dr. Carson leaned forward in his seat and spoke to the man driving the truck. "How about you, my good man? Anything to say about my esteemed colleague here? Anything alarmingly catastrophic happen around him lately?"
The man didn't say anything at first, but his expression turned decidedly uncomfortable.
"I haven't been at the site for a few days. I've been in town waiting for your ship," he said eventually.
Dr. Carson frowned. He leaned back and scowled at Oswald, who would not look him in the eye. "An answer of 'no' would have been much more reassuring, though I suspect not even remotely truthful. What's been going on?"
"We'll be there soon, sir," the driver said, and Dr. Carson had the impression he wasn't willing to speak any further on the matter.
Dr. Carson sat in silence for a few minutes just staring ahead into space. Then he turned towards Oswald again. "Oswald. Oswald, look at me," Dr. Carson said. Oswald's eyes flickered ever so briefly in Dr. Carson's direction, but retreated quickly from Carson's scorching glare. "You don't seem interested in the suspicious vacuum of information here. That means you already know what's going on, and have probably known about it before coming to see me. Since it's far too late for me to see reason and decline to join you here, why don't you tell me what this man is so reluctant to talk about?"
"It's nothing, really," Oswald said, waving his hand dismissively. "Probably not even related to the excavation at all. The locals are a funny lot, you know." Dr. Carson did not speak, but his withering gaze intensified. Oswald squirmed in his seat. "Just some nightmares."
"And? It can't only be something that innocuous."
"Oh, look!" Oswald said with implausible enthusiasm, "We're nearly there! I'd best get my papers in order!" He started shuffling the notes he'd been reading and tried his best to ignore Dr. Carson's murderous expression.
Carson turned to look out the front window and saw that they were indeed coming up on a cluster of tents. A few minutes later they coasted slowly to a halt next to one of the larger canopies.
No one stepped out to greet them. Even more disturbing, when the driver killed the engine it was as if he'd slain all other sound along with it. Dr. Carson opened the door on his side of the truck and flinched at how unnaturally loud the squeaking hinge seemed against the eerie silence. He stepped out of the vehicle with no small amount of reluctance. Oswald seemed even less eager to leave the perceived security of the truck, but eventually he too stepped out onto the dry, dusty ground. Their driver emerged only after both men stood watching him expectantly for several moments.
The three men slowly made there way past the first row of tents and canopies and got a good look at the rest of the camp. The driver immediately turned and ran. The two remaining men heard the roar of the truck’s engine starting up, soon followed by the sound of tires spinning against the hard-packed earth. Then silence returned.
“I suspect I shall soon regret not running after him," said Dr. Carson quietly. "Though considering the haste with which he left, perhaps he would have driven off without me even if I'd been only two steps behind him. Regardless, it would appear we’re on our own.”
Oswald did not appear to hear him, and may very well not even have noticed the man leave. He was still staring with wide eyes at the center of the camp.
"Well. This is…worrying," Oswald said once he'd found his voice again.
"Truly, you have a dizzying talent for understatement," said Dr. Carson. "What about this situation, exactly, do you find worrying? Is it the mysterious absence of the personnel from the advance team, or the eerily glowing stone tablet in the center of the abandoned camp?"
"Um…"
"Never mind, it was largely a rhetorical question. Tell me, though, did you in fact bring your elephant gun with you on this expedition?"
"Yes, it should be in my tent."
"Go and fetch it for me, would you?"
"Why?"
"I want to shoot you with it."
* * *
A quick search of the site confirmed that Oswald and Dr. Carson were the only people present. At first, Oswald had tried to convince both Dr. Carson and himself that the members of the advance team had to be somewhere nearby, and surely didn't just disappear. All of the supplies and the second truck were still there, after all. With every passing moment, Dr. Carson wondered more and more why he and Oswald didn't take the second truck and leave like anyone claiming sanity or common sense would. He suspected that it was their scientific inclinations that kept them there. They wanted to understand what had happened. Dr. Carson only hoped that whatever had happened didn't also happen to them.
"I'm sure they're nearby," Oswald said for perhaps the eleventh time. Regardless of whether or not be believed this, he had still taken the precaution of visiting his tent and retrieving the elephant gun, and his finger had been hovering near the trigger ever since. Dr. Carson considered how dire their situation likely was that a nervous man standing near him holding an enormous firearm actually did make him feel a bit safer.
Eventually, there was nothing left to do but examine the stone tablet or flee in ignorance. Though each passing moment made ignorance seem more and more appealing, Dr. Carson and Oswald at last found themselves staring at the softly glowing reddish slab of rock.
"Can you read any of it?" Oswald asked, referring to the symbols carved into the stone. They spread out from the center of the stone block in a single large spiral. Dr. Carson shook his head in reply. "Nor I," said Oswald.
"You know," said Oswald, "it doesn't seem to be glowing where my shadow is cast over it. Maybe the glow is a natural phenomenon caused by some curious property of the rock interacting with sunlight." He didn't sound like he believed it.
"Don’t delude yourself, man. If I were standing next to anyone else I might be willing to accept that explanation. But it's you – the man who was standing next to me when I was attacked by a mummy, and when I was attacked by a vampire, and when I was attacked by...that...other thing," he trailed off, obviously not wishing to speak of it. "The whole reason I gave up doing field work with you in the first place was that I wanted to advance the sum of human knowledge about ancient peoples and civilizations without a day's work turning into a fight for my life against the supernatural."
"So, what do we do now, then?" Oswald asked.
Dr. Carson sighed. "It's been moved," said Dr. Carson. "You can see where the dirt has been disturbed."
"So, a door then?"
"It would seem so."
"We're going to see what's behind it. Aren't we, Ted?" Oswald said, with no trace of enthusiasm.
"I'm afraid so. Keep that gun handy."
The two of them managed to slide the tablet aside with less effort than they expected, once they pushed in the right direction. It appeared to be affixed to a stone framework underneath it on some sort of hinge. Oswald thought this a hopeful sign.
"That means it's meant to be opened, not sealed permanently shut like a tomb," Oswald said.
"So?"
"No tomb guardians."
"Point taken."
Both men peered into the gloom. A short ladder led down to a narrow passageway which curved to the right. Dr. Carson lowered a lantern on a rope, then climbed down the ladder while Oswald stood at the ready with his gun. Once at the bottom, Dr. Carson retrieved the lantern and waved for Oswald to join him.
Oswald reached the bottom of the ladder to find Dr. Carson studying the wall on one side of the tunnel.
"Pictographs," Dr. Carson said needlessly. Oswald could hardly have failed to see them, since they covered the wall even to the very edges of the lantern's light, and quite probably beyond. "At first they seemed to be telling the story of an ancient society of arborists. I took these," he said, waving vaguely at several images, "to represent men pruning trees. Then I saw this one." He pointed to a picture of a man who seemed to be impaled on the branch of a tree. "I started over at the beginning with that in mind, and it looks more as if they're…fighting with the trees."
"Damned odd looking trees," Oswald said.
"Yes, well, I thought that was a stylistic thing at first. Now I wonder."
The two men studied the rest of the mural as they made their way down the tunnel. The story seemed to show eventual victory by the men over the trees.
"What's that, do you suppose?" Oswald said, pointing at a particular glyph.
Dr. Carson considered it for a moment. "Fruit from the trees?"
"Seeds?"
"I suppose."
"And these would be…"
"That looks like a furnace…men pouring molten metal into molds…um."
"Please tell me that doesn't show what I think it does."
"I would like nothing more."
If indeed the pictures showed seeds, then they also showed seeds being sealed inside metal coffins. Then it showed the coffins being sealed away underground. Behind a door with a spiral on it.
"Good God, why not just destroy the damned things? Why keep them around?" Oswald said. Dr. Carson shrugged.
"Perhaps they were shiny and looked like gold. Or maybe they kept them as weapons to use against their neighbors. Few peoples of the world have been willing to give up something they might use as a weapon against their neighbors." Dr. Carson couldn't help glancing at Oswald's gun as he said this.
"I saw that, Ted. Let's see if you can keep up that contemptuous attitude if I end up having to use this today."
"Point taken."
The two men continued down the tunnel in silence. They had run out of pictographs, and both men had long ago realized that the tunnel was a large spiral. As the curves came tighter and tighter, they knew they must soon reach the center.
"I expect it won't shock you to hear that if I'm judging the distance right, we're going to end up right under where we started digging, just south of the camp?" Oswald said.
"I would in fact be astonished if it were otherwise," said Dr. Carson.
A few feet later, the tunnel opened up into a larger chamber. It was only about twenty feet across and perhaps eight feet high. It was not empty.
"It certainly is a damned awful-looking tree at that," said Oswald said after a moment.
"Indeed," said Dr. Carson. He gestured at the floor of the room. "Is that your advance team?" Dr. Carson asked.
"I'm going to assume that it is. I'd really rather not get any closer to them and try to make identifications."
Stacked up against the walls were several rusting iron containers, like giant metal hat boxes. One of them had corroded away so badly that one whole side had fallen away. It looked empty.
Not far from the empty casket a pale, sickly-looking stalk protruded from a shiny black pod. Roots had poked their way through the sides of the pod, and many of them anchored the loathsome plant to the hard earthen floor of the room. The rest of the roots extended into the kneeling, shriveled shapes that Oswald was reluctant to look at too closely.
"Do you hear that noise?" said Dr. Carson.
"I do. Less of a noise and more like a song. Doesn't sound like it's coming from outside of your head, though, does it?"
"No. Tell me, do you suppose that door, which was closed when we arrived, might have been closed from the inside?"
"It seems possible."
"And do these men look as if they might have purposefully knelt around this…plant?"
"That also seems possible."
"Do you suppose this rather peculiar song might have anything to do with their self-destructive behavior?"
"I would suppose exactly that."
"And would you further suppose that the song might be coming from the rather abhorrent seedling we see before us?"
"I would."
"Then, tell me, Oswald - why you have not started shooting at the plant?"
"I fear I may have listened to too much of the song, Ted."
"Oswald, hold this lantern."
"Okay, Ted."
"Now, give me the damned gun."
"Okay, Ted."
Dr. Carson's first shot missed the tree by a wide margin. The corpse he hit instead tore apart like tissue paper. The root that had tethered the plant to the poor man flailed wildly in the air. The pitch of the song changed.
"How do you reload this damned thing?" Dr. Carson said loudly. His ears were ringing from the thunderous report of the elephant gun, which had echoed dreadfully the confined space of the underground chamber.
"Here, let me. I think you've broken its hold. Though whether it was anything you hit or just the noise I couldn’t say."
"You might hurry, Oswald. I think the rest of the plant is starting to move."
"Here we go," Oswald said, then raised the gun and fired. The whole top of the plant vanished, and the song became discordant and intermittent.
"Once more, I think," Dr. Carson said.
* * *
In the end, the two men ended up firing three more shots, just to be certain. Then they came back with some kerosene, broke open the rest of the caskets, and doused the lot of them. After a few hours work, Dr. Carson and Oswald stood back and watched with satisfaction as a plume of acrid black smoke surged up out of the opening in the center of the camp.
"Hopefully the smoke won't damage the pictographs too badly," Oswald said.
"That's a chance I'm willing to take," said Dr. Carson.
Dr. Carson thought it was practically criminal to force such a breathtaking landscape through such a small window. Still, it was either ride in the truck to the excavation site or get out and walk, and Dr. Carson didn't like the Australian scenery enough to risk dying in it of dehydration, sunstroke, or stepping on something angry and poisonous.
It had been Dr. Carson's hope that the natural beauty of his surroundings would help to wash away his doubts and fears about the trip. It wasn't working.
"I'm an idiot," he said.
"Hmm?" Oswald said, not looking up from what he was reading. Oswald wasn't interested in scenery. To Oswald, scenery was something you looked at only when you had already read everything twice, eaten all of the snacks, and it was still too early to have another drink.
"I don't know why I let you talk me into joining you on this expedition. It's like your digs are cursed," Dr. Carson said.
"You let me talk you into coming along because you're too much of a scientist to let an idea as irrational as 'being cursed' keep you from being part of one of the most important archaeological discoveries of our age."
"It is a sad day for science indeed when irrational ideas find themselves supported by so much empirical evidence." Dr. Carson leaned forward in his seat and spoke to the man driving the truck. "How about you, my good man? Anything to say about my esteemed colleague here? Anything alarmingly catastrophic happen around him lately?"
The man didn't say anything at first, but his expression turned decidedly uncomfortable.
"I haven't been at the site for a few days. I've been in town waiting for your ship," he said eventually.
Dr. Carson frowned. He leaned back and scowled at Oswald, who would not look him in the eye. "An answer of 'no' would have been much more reassuring, though I suspect not even remotely truthful. What's been going on?"
"We'll be there soon, sir," the driver said, and Dr. Carson had the impression he wasn't willing to speak any further on the matter.
Dr. Carson sat in silence for a few minutes just staring ahead into space. Then he turned towards Oswald again. "Oswald. Oswald, look at me," Dr. Carson said. Oswald's eyes flickered ever so briefly in Dr. Carson's direction, but retreated quickly from Carson's scorching glare. "You don't seem interested in the suspicious vacuum of information here. That means you already know what's going on, and have probably known about it before coming to see me. Since it's far too late for me to see reason and decline to join you here, why don't you tell me what this man is so reluctant to talk about?"
"It's nothing, really," Oswald said, waving his hand dismissively. "Probably not even related to the excavation at all. The locals are a funny lot, you know." Dr. Carson did not speak, but his withering gaze intensified. Oswald squirmed in his seat. "Just some nightmares."
"And? It can't only be something that innocuous."
"Oh, look!" Oswald said with implausible enthusiasm, "We're nearly there! I'd best get my papers in order!" He started shuffling the notes he'd been reading and tried his best to ignore Dr. Carson's murderous expression.
Carson turned to look out the front window and saw that they were indeed coming up on a cluster of tents. A few minutes later they coasted slowly to a halt next to one of the larger canopies.
No one stepped out to greet them. Even more disturbing, when the driver killed the engine it was as if he'd slain all other sound along with it. Dr. Carson opened the door on his side of the truck and flinched at how unnaturally loud the squeaking hinge seemed against the eerie silence. He stepped out of the vehicle with no small amount of reluctance. Oswald seemed even less eager to leave the perceived security of the truck, but eventually he too stepped out onto the dry, dusty ground. Their driver emerged only after both men stood watching him expectantly for several moments.
The three men slowly made there way past the first row of tents and canopies and got a good look at the rest of the camp. The driver immediately turned and ran. The two remaining men heard the roar of the truck’s engine starting up, soon followed by the sound of tires spinning against the hard-packed earth. Then silence returned.
“I suspect I shall soon regret not running after him," said Dr. Carson quietly. "Though considering the haste with which he left, perhaps he would have driven off without me even if I'd been only two steps behind him. Regardless, it would appear we’re on our own.”
Oswald did not appear to hear him, and may very well not even have noticed the man leave. He was still staring with wide eyes at the center of the camp.
"Well. This is…worrying," Oswald said once he'd found his voice again.
"Truly, you have a dizzying talent for understatement," said Dr. Carson. "What about this situation, exactly, do you find worrying? Is it the mysterious absence of the personnel from the advance team, or the eerily glowing stone tablet in the center of the abandoned camp?"
"Um…"
"Never mind, it was largely a rhetorical question. Tell me, though, did you in fact bring your elephant gun with you on this expedition?"
"Yes, it should be in my tent."
"Go and fetch it for me, would you?"
"Why?"
"I want to shoot you with it."
A quick search of the site confirmed that Oswald and Dr. Carson were the only people present. At first, Oswald had tried to convince both Dr. Carson and himself that the members of the advance team had to be somewhere nearby, and surely didn't just disappear. All of the supplies and the second truck were still there, after all. With every passing moment, Dr. Carson wondered more and more why he and Oswald didn't take the second truck and leave like anyone claiming sanity or common sense would. He suspected that it was their scientific inclinations that kept them there. They wanted to understand what had happened. Dr. Carson only hoped that whatever had happened didn't also happen to them.
"I'm sure they're nearby," Oswald said for perhaps the eleventh time. Regardless of whether or not be believed this, he had still taken the precaution of visiting his tent and retrieving the elephant gun, and his finger had been hovering near the trigger ever since. Dr. Carson considered how dire their situation likely was that a nervous man standing near him holding an enormous firearm actually did make him feel a bit safer.
Eventually, there was nothing left to do but examine the stone tablet or flee in ignorance. Though each passing moment made ignorance seem more and more appealing, Dr. Carson and Oswald at last found themselves staring at the softly glowing reddish slab of rock.
"Can you read any of it?" Oswald asked, referring to the symbols carved into the stone. They spread out from the center of the stone block in a single large spiral. Dr. Carson shook his head in reply. "Nor I," said Oswald.
"You know," said Oswald, "it doesn't seem to be glowing where my shadow is cast over it. Maybe the glow is a natural phenomenon caused by some curious property of the rock interacting with sunlight." He didn't sound like he believed it.
"Don’t delude yourself, man. If I were standing next to anyone else I might be willing to accept that explanation. But it's you – the man who was standing next to me when I was attacked by a mummy, and when I was attacked by a vampire, and when I was attacked by...that...other thing," he trailed off, obviously not wishing to speak of it. "The whole reason I gave up doing field work with you in the first place was that I wanted to advance the sum of human knowledge about ancient peoples and civilizations without a day's work turning into a fight for my life against the supernatural."
"So, what do we do now, then?" Oswald asked.
Dr. Carson sighed. "It's been moved," said Dr. Carson. "You can see where the dirt has been disturbed."
"So, a door then?"
"It would seem so."
"We're going to see what's behind it. Aren't we, Ted?" Oswald said, with no trace of enthusiasm.
"I'm afraid so. Keep that gun handy."
The two of them managed to slide the tablet aside with less effort than they expected, once they pushed in the right direction. It appeared to be affixed to a stone framework underneath it on some sort of hinge. Oswald thought this a hopeful sign.
"That means it's meant to be opened, not sealed permanently shut like a tomb," Oswald said.
"So?"
"No tomb guardians."
"Point taken."
Both men peered into the gloom. A short ladder led down to a narrow passageway which curved to the right. Dr. Carson lowered a lantern on a rope, then climbed down the ladder while Oswald stood at the ready with his gun. Once at the bottom, Dr. Carson retrieved the lantern and waved for Oswald to join him.
Oswald reached the bottom of the ladder to find Dr. Carson studying the wall on one side of the tunnel.
"Pictographs," Dr. Carson said needlessly. Oswald could hardly have failed to see them, since they covered the wall even to the very edges of the lantern's light, and quite probably beyond. "At first they seemed to be telling the story of an ancient society of arborists. I took these," he said, waving vaguely at several images, "to represent men pruning trees. Then I saw this one." He pointed to a picture of a man who seemed to be impaled on the branch of a tree. "I started over at the beginning with that in mind, and it looks more as if they're…fighting with the trees."
"Damned odd looking trees," Oswald said.
"Yes, well, I thought that was a stylistic thing at first. Now I wonder."
The two men studied the rest of the mural as they made their way down the tunnel. The story seemed to show eventual victory by the men over the trees.
"What's that, do you suppose?" Oswald said, pointing at a particular glyph.
Dr. Carson considered it for a moment. "Fruit from the trees?"
"Seeds?"
"I suppose."
"And these would be…"
"That looks like a furnace…men pouring molten metal into molds…um."
"Please tell me that doesn't show what I think it does."
"I would like nothing more."
If indeed the pictures showed seeds, then they also showed seeds being sealed inside metal coffins. Then it showed the coffins being sealed away underground. Behind a door with a spiral on it.
"Good God, why not just destroy the damned things? Why keep them around?" Oswald said. Dr. Carson shrugged.
"Perhaps they were shiny and looked like gold. Or maybe they kept them as weapons to use against their neighbors. Few peoples of the world have been willing to give up something they might use as a weapon against their neighbors." Dr. Carson couldn't help glancing at Oswald's gun as he said this.
"I saw that, Ted. Let's see if you can keep up that contemptuous attitude if I end up having to use this today."
"Point taken."
The two men continued down the tunnel in silence. They had run out of pictographs, and both men had long ago realized that the tunnel was a large spiral. As the curves came tighter and tighter, they knew they must soon reach the center.
"I expect it won't shock you to hear that if I'm judging the distance right, we're going to end up right under where we started digging, just south of the camp?" Oswald said.
"I would in fact be astonished if it were otherwise," said Dr. Carson.
A few feet later, the tunnel opened up into a larger chamber. It was only about twenty feet across and perhaps eight feet high. It was not empty.
"It certainly is a damned awful-looking tree at that," said Oswald said after a moment.
"Indeed," said Dr. Carson. He gestured at the floor of the room. "Is that your advance team?" Dr. Carson asked.
"I'm going to assume that it is. I'd really rather not get any closer to them and try to make identifications."
Stacked up against the walls were several rusting iron containers, like giant metal hat boxes. One of them had corroded away so badly that one whole side had fallen away. It looked empty.
Not far from the empty casket a pale, sickly-looking stalk protruded from a shiny black pod. Roots had poked their way through the sides of the pod, and many of them anchored the loathsome plant to the hard earthen floor of the room. The rest of the roots extended into the kneeling, shriveled shapes that Oswald was reluctant to look at too closely.
"Do you hear that noise?" said Dr. Carson.
"I do. Less of a noise and more like a song. Doesn't sound like it's coming from outside of your head, though, does it?"
"No. Tell me, do you suppose that door, which was closed when we arrived, might have been closed from the inside?"
"It seems possible."
"And do these men look as if they might have purposefully knelt around this…plant?"
"That also seems possible."
"Do you suppose this rather peculiar song might have anything to do with their self-destructive behavior?"
"I would suppose exactly that."
"And would you further suppose that the song might be coming from the rather abhorrent seedling we see before us?"
"I would."
"Then, tell me, Oswald - why you have not started shooting at the plant?"
"I fear I may have listened to too much of the song, Ted."
"Oswald, hold this lantern."
"Okay, Ted."
"Now, give me the damned gun."
"Okay, Ted."
Dr. Carson's first shot missed the tree by a wide margin. The corpse he hit instead tore apart like tissue paper. The root that had tethered the plant to the poor man flailed wildly in the air. The pitch of the song changed.
"How do you reload this damned thing?" Dr. Carson said loudly. His ears were ringing from the thunderous report of the elephant gun, which had echoed dreadfully the confined space of the underground chamber.
"Here, let me. I think you've broken its hold. Though whether it was anything you hit or just the noise I couldn’t say."
"You might hurry, Oswald. I think the rest of the plant is starting to move."
"Here we go," Oswald said, then raised the gun and fired. The whole top of the plant vanished, and the song became discordant and intermittent.
"Once more, I think," Dr. Carson said.
In the end, the two men ended up firing three more shots, just to be certain. Then they came back with some kerosene, broke open the rest of the caskets, and doused the lot of them. After a few hours work, Dr. Carson and Oswald stood back and watched with satisfaction as a plume of acrid black smoke surged up out of the opening in the center of the camp.
"Hopefully the smoke won't damage the pictographs too badly," Oswald said.
"That's a chance I'm willing to take," said Dr. Carson.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-12 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 10:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 12:42 am (UTC)I don't even usually like adventure writing but this is so fabulous, like your writing always seems to be.
P.S. How in love am I with the phrase "implausible enthusiasm"? XD
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 11:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 11:02 am (UTC)