Chapter 13 Chapter Twelve

After walking back to the paddock with Isaac, Su Lian.Moy told Dr. Duvaly about the flowers. This matter seems too mysterious, so it is necessary to send a team to find that thing.Su Lian did not participate, but she pointed them in a clear direction.Dr. Duvali took only three people and drove into the desert in a public vehicle.Duvali's excitement was to be expected, Su Lian thought.He fell in love with hypothetical intelligent beings, with what he imagined them to be.He simply couldn't resist a gift like an alien flower. They returned towards evening.Duvaly hadn't found the rose, but not for nothing.There were other unusual things growing in the dry heath, and he collected three of them, put them in cotton bags, and showed them to Sulianne and the others on the saloon table.

One of the trophies was a spongy green disc shaped like a small bicycle wheel, with twig-like spokes and knotted tree roots attached to the hub.Another is a translucent tube with a diameter of one centimeter and the length of Su Lian's forearm.The last was a sticky mass, like a clenched fist, streaked with blue and red. None of these things looked sane, but there was no doubt that they had been alive.The bicycle wheels were blackened and damaged in many places.The hollow tube splits apart along its axis.The fist is pale in color and has begun to emit an unpleasant smell. Mrs. Rebuka said: Did these things fall with the falling dust?

Duvale shook his head.They are all rooted. Where did you grow up?in the desert? I can't explain it.I can only guess that it has something to do with falling dust in some way. Duvali looked at Su Lian expectantly. Su Lian had nothing to say. ☆ Sulian went to see Isaac in the morning, but his door was closed and Mrs. Rebuka stood outside, arms folded.He is not feeling well.she says. I just talk to him.Su Lian said. I want him to rest.He has a fever.I think we must talk, Ms. Moai. The two women went out into the courtyard, walked in the shade of the main building, and then sat together on a stone bench that looked out over the garden.The air was so hot that everything seemed to stand still.The sun shines on the fenced flower beds, although it is invisible, it seems to weigh tens of thousands of catties.Sulian waited for Mrs. Rebuka to speak.As a matter of fact, Sulian had expected Mrs. Rebuka's hostility sooner or later.She is the closest thing to a mother figure around Isaac, and while Isaac's nature precludes any emotional attachment, at least not on his side.

Mrs Rebuka said: He was never sick, not once.But he's been different since you came here.He would wander around and eat less.He has an avid interest in books, which at first I thought was a good thing.But I wonder if this is just another symptom. Symptoms of what? Don't dodge questions.Mrs. Rebuka was a big woman.All of them seemed large to Suliane (she herself was under 160cm), but Mrs. Rebuka was especially tall and seemed to want to appear fierce.I know who you are, like everyone else.Everyone here has known you for years.We were not surprised when you knocked on the door, we were only surprised that it took you so long to come.We're ready for you to observe Isaac and even interact with him.The only condition is that you must not interfere.

Did I interfere? He has changed since you came.You can't deny that. That has nothing to do with me. Yeah?I hope you are right.But you've seen it happen, haven't you?before you came to earth. Sulian was never going to hide it, and word of it had spread among fourth-year Earthers, especially people like Duvali, who were completely obsessed with supposedly intelligent beings.She nodded. Kid like Isaac.said Mrs. Rebuka. Like him in some ways.It's a boy.At the same age as Isaac died. Yes. Died of his physical condition? Su Lian didn't ask and answer immediately.She didn't like recalling those memories, although those who came later could learn from them.He died in the desert.different deserts.Martian desert.He tried to find his way, but got lost.She closed her eyes.The world under her eyelids is a boundless red, the red brought by the unbearable sunshine.If I could, I would stop you guys.you know too.But I came too late, and you all hid yourselves very cleverly.Now I am as helpless as you are, Mrs. Rebuka.

I won't let you hurt him!The intensity in Mrs. Rebuka's tone was as startling as her accusation. I will not do anything to hurt him! Maybe not.But I think, on a certain level, you're afraid of him. Are you completely mistaken, Mrs. Rebuka?Of course I'm afraid of him!Are you not afraid? Mrs. Rebuka made no answer, but stood up and walked slowly back to the paddock. ☆ Isaac still had a fever that night and couldn't leave the room.Su Lian lay awake in the room, looking at the stars through the wind-sanded window sill.That is, looking at hypothetical intelligent creatures, this is the name everyone gave these stars, how cleverly vague.Even before it was confirmed that they actually existed, they were called that: they were a hypothetical entity that wrapped the Earth in a bizarre time a million years.They are a network of self-replicating semi-biological machines scattered across the galaxy.They intervene in human affairs, and perhaps countless other conscious civilizations, for reasons we don't quite know, or perhaps for no reason at all.

She watched them, but of course she couldn't see them.They filled the night sky and contained several worlds.They are everywhere. Other than that, what else can be said?A network so vast spans the galaxy that it is indistinguishable from the forces of nature.It cannot be bargained or even spoken to.It interacts with humans in non-human time.Its words are decades old, its dialogue is indistinguishable from evolution. Does it do any meaningful thinking?Do you doubt, argue with yourself?Can you make up ideas and act on them?In other words, is it an entity?Or just one big and complex program?

Martians have argued for this for centuries.As a child, Sulian often heard older fourth-years debate this issue.Su Lian didn't have a verdict, and no one else had.She suspects, however, that hypothetical intelligent beings have no center and no functioning intelligence.They do complex and unpredictable things, and so does evolution.Evolution has produced extremely complex and interdependent biological systems without any central direction.Once self-replicating machines are released into the galaxy (by some long-defunct ancient species, perhaps much older than Earth and Mars formed from stardust cooling) they are subject to the same relentless logic of competition and mutation At the mercy of.What kind of things cannot be born in billions of years?Huge size and power, semi-autonomous, intelligent machines in a sense (the arches, the time membrane that encloses the planet), yes.But to say that there is a central sense of motivating action?soul?Su Lian was quite skeptical.Hypothetical intelligent beings are not an entity.They're just what happens when the logic of self-replication engulfs the vastness of space.

Dust from ancient machines fell on the desert, and from this fallout grew strange, failed fragments.A wheel, a hollow tube, a rose with coal-black eyes.Isaac is interested in the West, the Far West.What does this mean?Does it have any definite meaning? This meant, Su Lian thought, that Isaac was being sacrificed to a force as mindless and indifferent as the wind. ☆ In the morning, Mrs. Rebuka allowed Sulian to enter the boy's room.You'll see why we're all so worried.she said coldly. Isaac lay limp under the messy sheets.His eyes are closed.Su Lian touched his forehead and felt the high fever emanating from it.

Isaac.She sighed, speaking to the boy as much as to herself.His pale, dying condition evoked too many memories.Once upon a time there was another boy, yes, another fever, another desert. Rose.Isaac spoke, startling her. what is that?she says. I remember roses.And the rose, the rose also remembers His eyes were still closed, as if asleep.Suddenly he sat up, the pillow was pressed under his lower back, and his head hit the back of the bed.Hair is thinning from sweat.Su Lian thought to herself, how strong humans look when they can walk, run, and jump, and how fragile they are when they can't do these things.

Then the boy did something that horrified even Sulian. He opened his eyes, and the irises of his eyes almost lost their color, as if the original light blue had been sprinkled with golden paint.He stared straight at her, smiling. Then he spoke, speaking a language Sulian hadn't heard in decades, a dialect of the sparsely populated southern wastelands of Mars. He said: It's you, big sister!Where have you been? Then, immediately fell into a deep sleep, leaving only Su Lian trembling in the terrible echo.