Chapter 8 Chapter VII

Lise was driving to the consulate when her car's intercom announced new mail.sender?Liz asked. Susan.Adams.The communicator answered. Whenever Lise thinks of her mother these days, she thinks of the pill boxes on her kitchen counter sorted by day and time, routinely recording a life from birth to death.Anti-depressants, cholesterol-lowering drugs, drugs to prevent Alzheimer's disease. She has a suspicious gene for these diseases.read the letter.she said coldly. Dear Liz, the communicator is a male voice, indifferent, lifeless like a frozen fish, reading out the contents of the letter.Thank you for your last letter.After I saw the news, the letter was somewhat reassuring.

She was referring to falling dust, which still clogs roadways and causes thousands of tourists to flee to their cruise ships, demanding a quick return home.When ordinary people come to Equatoria, they hope to see a strange and pleasant scenery, but they happen to encounter something completely different.This is truly strange and strange, one that cannot be reconciled to human preconceptions. That's exactly how her mother would react, Liz thought. I can only imagine how far away you are and how unseen you make yourself.Don't worry, I'm not going to start talking that old stuff again.I'm also not going to say a word about your breakup with Brian.

Susan.Adams had previously vehemently opposed their divorce.It's ironic, because Liz later opposed the marriage just as vehemently.At first, Lise's mother disliked Brian because he worked in the Department of Genetic Safety.Department of Genetic Safety in Susan.In Adams' mind, there were all those people who lingered around her after her husband disappeared inexplicably.She insists that Liz must never marry these sympathetic monsters.But Brian is not without compassion, and in fact he has a crush on Liz's mother.With great patience he overcame her objections, and in the end she welcomed his visits.Bryan quickly learned the first rule of thumb in dealing with Lise's mother: don't mention new worlds, hypothetical intelligent beings, time gyrations, or Robert.Adams' disappearance.In Susan.In the Adams family, these topics had taken on a profane force.This is one of the reasons why Liz left the house in such a hurry.

After the wedding, there was also significant anxiety and resistance in the family when Brian was to be transferred to Port Magellan.You can't go.Lise's mother said that it was as if the New World was some ghost land from which no one could return unscathed.No, not even going to that hell for Brian's future. Of course, this constant act of denial, the forced rejection of the unacceptable, was a strategy her mother conceived to make her bearable and channel her unacceptable grief.But that was exactly what Liz hated.Lise hated the dark space her mother enclosed these memories.The memory was all that Lise had of her father, and it certainly included his fascination with admiration for the supposed intelligent beings, and his love for the planet to which the supposedly intelligent beings had opened the bewildering door.

Lise thought that even the falling dust would fascinate him: the cogs and seashells embedded in the dust, like pieces in a larger jigsaw puzzle I only hope these events convince you that it is wise to go home.Liz, if money is an issue, I can help you book a plane ticket.I admit that California is not what it used to be, but we can still see the ocean from the kitchen window.Although the summer was hot, and the winter wind and rain were more violent than I remember, but compared with what you are currently enduring, it is of course a small matter. You don't know what I'm suffering from.You don't even want to know!Liz thought.

☆ In the afternoon sun, the U.S. consulate looked like a castle of mercy, set behind a moat surrounded by cast-iron walls.Someone planted flowers and plants along the ditch of the fence, but Luo Chen didn't treat the flowers well.These were native flowers, for it was forbidden to bring earth plants past the arch, but the prohibition was not particularly effective.The flower that escaped the fallout was the tough red whore's lip (named after the rough taxonomy of the first settlers), whose stems resembled lacquered chopsticks and leaves like Victorian collars, Wrap the shattered flower.

There is a guard at the consulate entrance, next to a sign asking visitors to leave their weapons, personal electronics, and unsealed jars or containers.This was all too familiar to Liz, who had regularly visited Brian at the Genetic Safety office before the divorce.She also remembers riding past the consulate as a teenager, when her father was still there, remembering how reassuring the building once looked, with its tall white walls and narrow gun holes. The guard phoned Brian's office to confirm, and then issued her a visitor's armband.She took the elevator to the fifth floor of the mezzanine, and what she saw was a brick-paved corridor without windows, like a bureaucratic maze.

When she approached, Brian was in the hallway, pulling open a door that simply read DGS507.Brian didn't know how to do it, but he didn't change: clothes carefully, still in his mid-thirties, and his skin was tanned.He goes hiking in the mountains of Hong Kong on weekends.He smiled lightly as a greeting to her.But his attitude today is very stiff, a bit like frowning all over his body, Liz thought to herself.She pulled herself together, ready to face what came next.Bryan had three of his men, but none of them were there at the moment.Come in, he said, and sit down, please.We must discuss and discuss.I'm sorry, but we must clear this obstacle as soon as possible.

Even at this juncture, he was always so kind, which was what she found most frustrating in him.The marriage was not good from the start.Rather than a disaster, it was one bad choice plus more bad choices, some of which she didn't even want to admit to herself.To make matters worse, she couldn't confess her unhappiness in any way Brian could possibly understand.Brian goes to church every Sunday, believes in good manners, and despises the intricacies and weirdness of the post-time spin world.And this, after all, was exactly what Liz couldn't stand.She had had enough of her mother's attitude.She wanted something else that her father had tried to pass on to her during the nights they had looked up at the stars together: awe, and if not, at least courage.

Brian was charming at times, sincere, and had a deep, serious sense of purpose, but he was terrified of how the world was changing, something she couldn't bear in the end. she sits down.He pulled another chair from the other end of the carpet and sat next to her knees.He said: It's probably not the best talk we've ever had, but we're doing it for you, Liz.Please keep this in mind. ☆ When Turk arrived at the airport that afternoon, still thinking about his conversation with Thomas, he also planned to check his plane before going home to sleep.Turk's Tianwang twin-engine fixed-wing propeller aircraft has been flying for almost five years, and repairs and maintenance are more frequent than before.The plane had only recently had new fuel injectors, and Turk wanted to see for himself how the mechanics were doing.So he parked his car in his usual spot behind the freight building and walked across a stretch of runway dusty with falling dust and rain.Went to the hangar, only to find the door locked with a padlock.A note was tucked behind the latch telling him to go to Michael.Alonghi.

It's not hard to guess what's going on here.Turk was in arrears of two months' rent for the machine shed, and the maintenance fee was delayed. But he and Michael.The relationship between the Alonjis is friendly, most of the time, so to speak.So he walked into his boss's office, rehearsing his usual excuses.It's like a ritual dance: reprimands, apologies, token payments (not much, if any), another reprieve, but this time the padlocks are something new. This time, the elderly man looked up from his desk with a deeply regretful expression on his face.Lock, he said right away, yes, I'm sorry about that, but I had no choice.I run my business like a business. It's all because of Luo Chen, Turk said, I lost a few charter flights, otherwise I would have paid you by now. That's what you said, and I won't argue with you.But in the long run, what is the difference between several charter flights?You know it yourself.This isn't the only small airport in the area, I have competition too.Once upon a time, it didn't matter to relax a bit and give everyone some grace.Everyone is semi-amateur, independent workers like you.Now some corporate rental companies have exaggerated the prices of the hangars.Even if the books are balanced, it is still a loss for you and me, this is a fact. If I can't fly a plane, I can't make money, Michael. The thing is, I can't make money whether you fly the plane or not. I see you are doing well. I have to pay my salary.I still have a bunch of regulations given to me by the interim government.If you read my report, you wouldn't say I'm doing well.My accountant didn't come and tell me I was doing fine. You probably wouldn't call your accountant an amateur either, Turk thought.Mike.Alonghi is a veteran: he opened this little airport when there was nothing south of Port Magellan but fishing villages and illegal construction.Even six or seven years ago, the word report did not appear in his dictionary. In that environment, Turk arranged for the import of his six-seater Uranus at a fee that would make people's eyes pop out.The plane made his life passable, at least until recently.He had paid off the plane, but unfortunately owed almost everything else.So how can I make my plane fly in the sky again? Alonji shifted in his seat, looking away from Turk's eyes.Come over tomorrow and we'll talk.If the situation is extremely bad, it is not difficult to find a buyer. What are you looking for? buyer.Buyer, you know it!Others are interested.Sell ​​the plane, pay off the debt, and start over.Everyone else does it.This happens every day. Turk said: Don't even think about it happening to me! calm down.Our interests are not necessarily in conflict.I can help you get a good price.I mean, if things go that far.Oh fuck it, Turk, you're always working on a research ship, headed somewhere.Maybe now is the time, who knows? Your confidence is inspiring. Think it over, what I'm going to say is this.Talk to me again tomorrow morning. I can pay back the money I owe you. May I?Well.no problem.Then you bring a certified check and we don't care about that. Turk was speechless. go home.Alonji said, you look tired, man. ☆ First of all, Brian said, I know you and Turk these daysFinlay together. What are you doing!Liz said quickly. Wait, let me finish. Are you looking for someone to follow me? I wouldn't do it even if I wanted to, Liz. That is how the matter? Brian took a breath.His pursed lips and narrowed eyes signaled that he was about to announce something that he and she were equally displeased with.Lise, someone else is working here. She struggled to control her breathing.She was already angry, but, in a way, the anger was well received.It trumped the guilt she often felt when they met.who? I'll just remind you of some of the more important things.Let me just start by saying that it's easy to forget that something can be very dangerous.The Human Genome, that is what makes us human and what makes us all human.Everything from the cloning industry to these fanatical beliefs about longevity on Mars puts the human genome at risk, and someone in every government in the world spends a lot of time thinking about it. His creed, Liz remembered, was the same reason he had explained to her mother.What does that have to do with me?Or, what does it have to do with Turk? You came to me with an old picture from your dad's staff party so I put it in the database It was you who took the initiative to put it in the database to find it. I take the initiative, okay.So we got an image from a security camera in the port area, but when you do a query like this, the action is going to startle somewhere.I'm guessing somewhere there's been a warning call, people from Washington showed up here before the end of last week. Are you talking about the people from the Department of Genetic Safety? People from the Department of Genetic Safety, yes, but they are very senior, they are people hundreds of light-years above my department, and they are people who are very interested in finding the woman in the photo, and they are interested in running thousands of miles from Jakarta Come knock on my door. Liz leaned back in her chair, trying to hear this. After a long while, she said: When my father disappeared, my mother also showed the photos to the people in the Department of Genetic Safety.No one was surprised at the time. That was ten years ago.Since then, other information has emerged.Same face, different content, I can't say much more than that. I want to talk to these people.if they know anything about sulian None of that will let you figure out what happened to your father. How can you be sure? Please put this in perspective, Liz.These people are doing an important job.They are business.It was I who persuaded these people not to talk to you. But you told them my name? I told them everything I knew about you, otherwise they'd think you were involved in, uh, what they're investigating.That's a waste of their time, and it's not good for you.Seriously, Liz, you'd better keep a low profile about this. They are watching me.Is this what you want to say?They spy on me so they know I'm with Turk. The name made him wince, but he nodded.They know those things, yes. God, Brian! He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.All I'm trying to say is that when I'm out of it all, outside of our current relationship and the relationship I want, when I'm asking myself what's really good for you, my advice is, let it go thing.Don't ask questions.Maybe even consider going back, back to California. I don't want to go back. Come to think of it, that's the only thing I mean.I can only protect you like this. I never asked you to protect me. After you think about it, maybe we can talk again. She stood up.Maybe not. Maybe we can talk about Turk.Finlay and what happened in that department. that department.Poor Brian, always prim, even when berating her. She thought of defending herself.She could say: We were eating together when the fallout happened.She can say: Of course he wants to go home with me, otherwise what should he do, sleep in his car.She can lie and say: We are just friends.Or she could say: I sleep with him because he's not afraid of anything, because he's unpredictable, because his nails aren't spotlessly clean, and because he doesn't work for the damn Genetic Security Department. She was furious, humiliated, and guilt-ridden.It's none of your business anymore.You gotta figure this out, Brian. So she turned and left. ☆ Turk went home and made himself dinner, a lousy dinner to suit his mood.He lives on an unpaved road near Alongi Airport, where there are a bunch of similar cabins.He lived in a two-bedroom bungalow on a cliff overlooking the sea.Maybe one day the land price here will soar, but it's just a piece of land for now.The toilet sewage flows into a septic tank, and his electricity comes from sunlight and a generator in a shed behind his house.Every summer he repaired the roof tiles, and every winter the roof tiles leaked from new angles. The sun was setting over the hills to the west, and the sea was turning a deep blue to the east.Several fishing boats sailed back towards the northern port scatteredly.The air was cool, and there was a slight breeze to carry away the lingering stench of falling dust. The dust had accumulated on the rubbish around the hut, and the roof seemed to hold up under its weight.His cabin was not damaged.There wasn't much food in the kitchen pantry, though, less than he remembered.He either eats canned beans or goes out to the grocery store, or pays his bills to go to a restaurant he can't afford. My plane is gone.he thinks.But no, it wasn't, it still is.The plane was only seized and not sold yet.But there was no convincing counter-evidence in his bank account.So leave Michael from him.Since Alonghi's office, the mantra has been ringing in his head: My plane is gone. He wanted to talk to Liz, but he didn't want to dump all his problems on her.Being able to be with her still feels unbelievable to this day.The relationship with Lisi is like the favor of the god of luck. He feels that the god of luck has not helped him in the past, so how can he show mercy to him now? cornmeal, coffee, beer He decided to call Thomas again.Maybe he didn't make it clear what he wanted to ask.The only thing he could really do to help Liz was to help her understand why her father had become a fourth year.If anyone could explain it to her, or put it in the right perspective, it was Thomas.Or Ibudian, the fourth-year nurse with the people of Minangkabau on the northern coast.If Thomas could speak for him. He dialed Thomas' number on the phone. But no one answered, and the call didn't go to voicemail.Which is odd, since Thomas carried his cell phone with him everywhere he went.His mobile phone is probably his most valuable possession. Turk pondered what to do next.He could study his accounts and try to get some financing back for Michael.Alonghi.Or he could drive back to town, maybe see Liz, and maybe drop by Thomas if she didn't turn his nose up.The sensible thing to do is to stay at home and get down to business. if he has any business to attend to He turned off the lights when he went out. ☆ Liz drove away from the consulate, feeling scalded by boiling water.That's right.They were scalded by boiling water, immersed in hot water, and scalded to death.She drove aimlessly for more than half an hour, until the car sensed the setting sun and turned on the lights.The sky had turned red in one of Equatoria's long sunsets, made even more colorful by the fine dust particles still lingering in the air.She drives through the Arabian Quarter, past the souks, past coffee shops with their black and white awnings and strings of colored light bulbs.Crowds were packed this evening, flooding the streets as if to make up for lost time during the dust fall.Then she drove up to the foothills, where the land is expensive, and rich men and women from Beijing or Tokyo, London or New York build faux-Mediterranean luxury houses in light colors.At this time, she found that she was driving on the street where she lived with her parents in the past without knowing it. They lived in that house when they were a whole family.The house was smaller than she remembered, significantly smaller than the futuristic palaces that had been built around it, like a cloth coat among a pile of mink coats.She can't imagine how much the house can rent now.The porch had been remodeled, painted white, and dissolved in the shadows of the night. We'll be living here for a while.Her mother told her so when they moved here from California.But for Liz, this place will never be my home, and she doesn't call it home when she talks to her American school friends.That's where we lived, was her mother's favorite way of saying it.At thirteen, Lise was a little afraid of the strange places she saw on TV, and Port Magellan was all strange in one, like an overflowing bowl of gumbo.At least when she first moved here, she longed for the lost California. What does she long for now? the truth.remember.Truth extracted from memories. The roof of the house was black with dust.Liz couldn't help but imagine sitting on the porch with her father in the past.She wished she could sit there with him now, not to talk about Brian or her problems, but to study the dust, talk about Robert.What Adams likes to call the big question (he always smiles when he says that), the mystery beyond this respectable world. It was dark when she finally got home.The apartment was still a mess, with the dishes in the sink unwashed, the bed unmade, and the smell of Turk still lingering.She poured a glass of red wine, trying to think more coherently about what Brian had said about powerful people, and the woman they were interested in who had seduced (sort of, maybe) her father away from home. Brian said she should get out of here, should she listen to him?Would she really be able to find anything meaningful in the fragments of her father's life? Or maybe she's closer to some basic truth than she knows, and maybe that's why she's in trouble. ☆ After Thomas didn't answer Turk's second and third calls from the car, Turk felt something was wrong.Thomas may have been drinking (he still drank, but rarely to excess), but even when he was drunk, Thomas usually answered the phone. So Turk drove his car through the dusty lanes of the bungalow area, slowly approaching the old man's trailer, feeling uneasy.Thomas is a fourth year man, so he's pretty strong, but he's not going to live forever.People in the fourth year also grow old, and people in the fourth year also die.Thomas could be sick, or he could be in other trouble.Chaos often occurs in the bungalow area.The area is controlled by several Filipino gangs, and there are also some drug dens.Unpleasant things happen from time to time. He parked the car next to a noisy hotel and walked the few meters to the junction of Thomas's muddy street.It was just dark, there were a lot of people around, and music was blaring from every porch.But Thomas' trailer was dark, and the windows were not lit.Maybe the old man was sleeping, but no, the door was unlocked and ajar. Turk knocked on the door before going in, and although he knew it was stupid, it didn't really make sense.No one answered. He fumbled to the left, turned on the overhead light, and blinked.The house has been extensively vandalized.Next to the chair Thomas had been sitting on, the table was lying on the ground with its feet up, and the table lamp fell on the ground and broke.The man's rancid sweat still smelled in the air.He hurriedly checked the bedroom at the back, but it was so empty that there was no one there. After thinking for a moment, he left Thomas' cabin and knocked on the door of the trailer next door.A fat woman in a gray blouse answered the door. It was Mrs. Gordy, whose husband had recently died.Thomas had introduced her to Turk once or twice, and as far as Turk knew, Mrs. Gordy would have a drink with the old man.No, Mrs. Gordy hadn't been with Thomas lately, but she had noticed a white van parked outside his trailer a while ago.What's wrong? I hope not.When exactly did you see this van, Mrs. Gordy? An hour ago, maybe two hours. Thank you, Mrs. Gordy.Don't worry too much, but you'd better lock the door. Of course I know.said Mrs. Gordy. He walked back to Thomas's place and closed the door, making sure it was locked this time.A gust of wind blew over and rattled the temporary street lamps at the junction of the aisle and the road from Thomas's house, and the lights were shaking. He took his phone out of his pocket and called Liz, hoping she would pick it up. ☆ Back at the apartment, Liz asks her home communicator to tell her the rest of her mother's beliefs.The voice of the communicator has been slightly adjusted, at least it sounds like a female. Please don't get me wrong, Liz.I'm just worried about you like a normal mother.I can't help but think of you alone in that city Lonely.That's right.Her mother just knew how to hit her on the guts.Alone, because she had a hard time getting others to understand what she wanted here, and why it was so important to her. put yourself in danger And the danger, as she said, seems more real when you're alone But in fact, you can come back to this home, which is very safe.or even with Brian, who He would display the same puzzled sense of superiority that emanated from her mother's messages. will definitely agree no doubt. It's no use digging in the lost past. But what if the past is not dead?What if she simply lacked courage or relented to cast aside the past, and had no choice but to pursue it to the final pain or satisfying reward? pause.she spoke to the communicator.She can't take so much at once.Especially when everything is happening; especially when alien fallout is falling from the sky; especially when she's being followed by Genetic Security, maybe bugged, and even Brian won't explain why; especially when she's (yeah, thanks Mother gently reminds her) When alone. She checks other text messages. They are all rubbish, except for one, I didn't expect this to be a treasure.This is a text message and an attachment, the sender is Scott.Curryland, she hadn't been able to get in touch with him for months.Of her father's old college colleagues, he was the only one with whom she hadn't been able to speak face-to-face.Scott.Curryland was an astronomer with the Geophysical Survey at Mount Muddy Observatory.When she was about to give up, a reply finally came, and it was quite friendly.The communicator delivered the conviction to her in a male voice matching the sender's name. ∮ Dear Liz.Adams Sorry for the late reply to your inquiry.The reason is not just that I am too busy with things at hand, I also spent time doing a little research before I found the attached information, maybe you will be interested. I don't know Dr. Adams very well, but we respect each other's work.As to the details of his life at that time, and the other questions you have asked, I am afraid I cannot help you.My contact with him was purely for work. However, as you may also know, at the time of his disappearance he was already working on a book to be titled Planetary Crafts.He asked me to read the brief introduction for him.I read it, but couldn't find any mistakes and couldn't suggest any improvements (other than a more catchy title). I am enclosing the article he sent me, in case you cannot find it in his manuscript file. Robert.Adams' disappearance is a great loss to everyone in the school.He spoke fondly of his family from time to time, and I hope your research has brought you some comfort. ☆ Lisi wants to print out the document with a messenger.As Curryland thought, her father did not leave the introduction in his files.Or, if he stayed, was shredded by Liz's mother.Susan.Adams shreddered or lost her husband's papers and reports, and donated all his books to the university.From Lise's point of view, this was part of the ritual cleansing of the Addams family. She turned off her phone, poured a glass of wine, and took the glass and six printed pages to the balcony.The night was warm, she had cleaned up the dust this morning, and the indoor light was bright enough to read outside. After a few minutes, she went back inside to get a pen, went outside again, and began underlining certain sentences.The places where she draws lines are not only fresh to her, but also because they are familiar. ## Many things have changed during what we call time gyrations, but perhaps the most distant changes are also the most overlooked.The Earth has been stagnant for more than four billion years, which means that the universe we live in now is older and more complex than we are used to. ☆ How familiar.These are the things my father often said to her when they were sitting on the balcony looking at the dark night and the stars, but they were expressed in more embellished terms. ## Any real understanding of the nature of hypothetical intelligent beings must take this into account.They were very old when we first met them, and now they are even older.Since we cannot observe them directly, we must draw our inferences from their works in the universe, from the clues they left, from their vast and eternal footprints. ☆ Here was the excitement she had gotten from him as a child, a curiosity to look out, in contrast to her mother's usual timidity.She could hear his voice between the lines. ## One of the most visible in their creations is the arch of the Indian Ocean that connects Earth to the New World, and the arch that connects the New World to another, less habitable planet.And so on, until the farthest place that can be explored.A succession of environments, each more hostile than the last, leads us to it for reasons we don't yet understand. ☆ He had told Liz once that sailing to the other side of the world would find the second arch, beyond which lay a planet with rugged terrain and a stormy planet whose air was almost unbreathable.And in the past is the third world, its atmosphere is poisonous methane, and the seawater contains oil and is still acidic.This journey must be carried on an ocean vessel that is airtight and equipped to maintain normal air pressure, just like a spaceship. ## But the arch is not the only artifact in sight.The planet next door to Earth, where I write these things, is also a work of art.We have evidence that it was built, or at least modified, over millions, tens of millions of years to make it a suitable environment for humans. ☆ Planets are crafts. ## Many have speculated what was the purpose of this perpetually continuing work.Is the new world a gift, or a trap?Have we entered the maze like lab rats, or have we been given a new and wonderful destiny?Does the fact that the Earth is still protected from the deadly radiation of an expanding sun mean that hypothetical intelligent beings are interested in the survival of our species?If yes, why? I cannot claim to answer any of the above questions, but I can give the reader an overview of what has been done, and the thoughts and speculations of men and women who have given their professional lives ☆ At the end of the article, there is this paragraph: ## Our situation is like that of a comatose patient waking from a sleep as long as the life of a star.What we cannot remember, we must discover anew. ☆ She underlined the sentence twice.She wished she could pass it on to her mother, or write it on a flag and wave it in front of Brian.All she ever wanted to say to them was this: to them polite silence, to them RobertAdams was surgically excised from the living, about the look on their faces whenever she insisted on referring to her vanished father (it was a flat, troubled look, as if to say Poor Liz) answered like Robert.Adams himself emerged from the obscurity and whispered a reassuring word.What we cannot remember, we must discover anew. As she puts down the paper and gets ready for bed, she checks her phone one last time. I accumulated three links of messages, all of which were marked as urgent, and all of them were from Turk.The fourth call came in while she was still holding the phone.