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Is the very essence of our reality changing in ways
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we don't understand? Could there really be a universal phenomenon
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occurring all around us, affecting everyone and everything, morphing the
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very fabric of space and time? Have you ever heard
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of the Mandela Effect? Like all beginnings, it started with
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an end. An end to a life. A global phenomenon
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born in the wake of one man's death. On a
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warm South African summer evening in 2013, a family stood
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grieving around a home hospital bed, looking down upon the
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body of a man who had just breathed his last breath.
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He had been a great man, a revered man, adored
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and respected throughout the civilised world. The date was the
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5th of December, and the body belonged to none other
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than Nelson Mandela. The next day, as news of his
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passing was being broadcast around the globe, an entire nation
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found itself in the depths of mourning. But elsewhere in
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the world, a palpable feeling of surprise was brewing over
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these reports. Mandela's death had not been unexpected. He was
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in his 95th year, and had been ill for some time.
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But the news of his death still came as quite
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a shock to many people, because as far as they
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were concerned, he had already been dead for almost 30 years,
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apparently having passed away sometime in the mid-1980s whilst he
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had been in prison. As the days and weeks passed by,
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More and more people expressed this same feeling of surprise,
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not just in their hundreds, but in their thousands. The
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world suddenly found itself polarized between those who believed Mandela
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had died in December 2013, as reported, and those who
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remembered him dying many decades earlier. It wasn't the first
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time such an inconsistency in the details of a historical
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event occurred. had been noticed, but it was by far
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the most prominent example to date. Before Mandela's death, there
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had been no name for this alleged phenomenon. But due
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to
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the high profile and widespread nature of this one event,
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people began referring to any disagreements over how things are
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remembered and the subsequent feelings of confusion as the Mandela Effect.
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And so the phenomenon was born. And the truly strange
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thing is, there has been no shortage of other apparent
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anomalies in our timelines. Shortly after the phenomenon had made
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itself known, and had been christened in honour of the
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great man himself, many other examples began to surface. For instance,
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there are a whole host of people who absolutely believe,
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beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Space Shuttle
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Challenger disaster did not occur in 1986, but three years earlier,
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in 1983. That Tank Man, the youngster who stood up
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to the column of armoured vehicles in Tiananmen Square in 1989,
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was actually run over and killed by the lead tank,
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not spirited away by the police as was seen on film.
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And that Mother Teresa had already been canonised as a
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saint before her death in 1997 as opposed to September 2016.
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No saint has ever been canonized while still alive and
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many people remember rather vividly the resulting controversy surrounding this
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almost sacrilegious breaking of convention. These apparent anomalies are not
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just limited to major events, they also occur in much
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more subtle ways. In fact, One of the most famous
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examples of the Mandela Effect is that of the alleged
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misspelling of the Berenstain Bears, a much-loved series of children's
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books which originated in America during the 1960s. Many long-time
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fans of the series were confused, and some even outraged,
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to find that the titles of these books had changed
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from Berenstein to Berenstain, spelled with an A instead of
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an E. which is not how they remembered or even
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pronounced the name growing up. However, when they looked into
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the series' history, they could find no record whatsoever of
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the books ever being published under the Berenstain name. Understandably,
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their initial
confusion and outrage suddenly turned to shock. Similarly,
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many other less significant changes have occurred, most notably in
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the scripts of films. For instance, in Disney's Snow White,
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millions of people will remember the Evil Queen's famous line, Mirror,
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mirror on the wall. But in fact, it is, and
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apparently always has been, magic mirror on the wall. What
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wouldst thou know, my queen? Magic mirror on the wall?
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Who is the fairest one of all? In Forrest Gump,
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many would agree that the titular character's quote, My mum
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always said life is like a box of chocolates, just
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doesn't sound right as, My mum always said life was
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like a box of chocolates. But apparently, the latter version
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is how it has always been said. My mum always
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said life was like a box of chocolates. You never
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know what you're going to get. And we all know
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that the original Star Wars trilogy has been edited almost
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to its detriment over the years. But the line, Luke,
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I am your father, has been quoted and used on
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merchandise ever since the release of The Empire Strikes Back.
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Why then does Darth Vader actually say, no, I am
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your father? Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.
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He told me enough. He told me you killed him. No.
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I am your father. Even in a documentary on the
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making of Star Wars, the late James Earl Jones quotes
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the line as Luke, I am your father during an interview.
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When I first saw the dialogue that said Luke, I
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am your father. I said to himself, he's lying. So
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why do so many people remember things differently? Why are
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there such inconsistencies in our memories? What is the Mandela Effect,
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and why is it happening, if it is even happening
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at all? As you can imagine, speculation is rife, and
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has ranged from the insipid to the outright bizarre. One
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of the more unusual explanations requires the use of M-theory.
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M-theory postulates that there are an infinite number of universes
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all stacked close together, much like a loaf of bread,
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where each slice represents a different reality. The closer one
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slice or reality is to the next, the more alike
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those realities are. The proposed theory is that our universe
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has moved so close to a neighbouring universe that it
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has created a bridge of sorts, whereby people cross over
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from one reality to the next and are not even
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aware that they are doing so. In our neighbouring universe,
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Nelson Mandela may well have died in the 1980s, so
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people crossing over from that reality would carry with them
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different memories to the people in this reality, where he
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died in 2013. This would in turn cause a disagreement
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between these individuals. giving rise to the Mandela Effect. Prominent
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physicists have stated that, if there is any truth to M-theory,
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this is most definitely plausible, and there are even well-documented
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cases throughout history of supposed visitors from other realities, such
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as the man from Tor-Ed But for the time being
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at least, it is something we can neither prove nor disprove.
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One of the more exotic explanations involves time travel. We
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have always been told that time travel is impossible, and
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in a way, that is correct. Nothing we can do
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in our daily lives would allow us to go journeying
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through time at will. But in actual fact, Time travel
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is possible and indeed does happen at the subatomic level.
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But how could travelling through time be responsible if we
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are not currently capable of doing so in any meaningful way?
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People have proposed time slips as the answer. Throughout history,
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many people have reported unwittingly slipping through time, travelling both
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backwards and forwards. The experience usually only lasts for a
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few seconds sometimes minutes, but on rare occasions, people have
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described experiences where they have been trapped in another time
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for hours, sometimes days. There are also those who say
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that secret government projects have actually cracked the puzzle of
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time travel and that we, as a species, are in
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fact capable of travelling through time. Whether deliberate or accidental,
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could time travel be causing these anomalies or branching timelines
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in our universe at large? it is doubtful. Any changes
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to events in our past would result in everyone's memories
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of those events being altered at the same time, and
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no one would be any the wiser. Other theories include
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the possibility that we are all wired up to a
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huge supercomputer, as per the Matrix, and that these anomalies
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are actually glitches brought on by intrinsic updates to its
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source code. Others purport that experiments at CERN are responsible.
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though they are never able to clarify in exactly what way.
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On the other hand, maybe the explanation lies more in
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the mundane ways in which our brains work. It has
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been proven many times over that each time we recall
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a certain event, our brains embellish upon it in some way,
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adding or subtracting particular details. We cement and reinforce these
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details as time moves on, and as the recollection starts
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to fade, we convince ourselves that a particular thing did
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or did not happen, even if the opposite is true.
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So is the Mandela Effect nothing more than a side
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effect of the complex processes involved in the storing and
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recalling of memories? Again, there is no clear answer. Whilst
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our memories are certainly fallible, this mostly only applies to
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things which we have seen, heard or experienced only once.
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When you have grown up knowing that something exists in
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a very specific way, and have seen it in that
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very specific way for most of your life, only to
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find that one day it suddenly and inexplicably changes, can
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we really put it down to the fickle and impressionable
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nature of human memory? Especially when so many other people
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out there also remember it in the same specific way
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that you did, and then experience the same confusion and
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alarm when they realise that something has changed. it's an
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interesting question. Whatever is responsible for the Mandela Effect, whether
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it is neighboring realities, clandestine time travelers, glitches in the
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source code, or just our brains playing tricks on us,
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it is no less of a phenomenon, and it looks
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like it is here to stay. And as always, we
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should keep our minds open. In the description, we have
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linked to a website which has catalogued hundreds of these inconsistencies.
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But be warned, it may freak you out, and we
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would bet our bottom dollar that you will find at
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least one inconsistency that your memory does not agree with.
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Bedtime Stories.