Chapter 12 Chapter Twelve

On the summit of Sakya-Mata, the mute electromagnetic beams that came and went and acted as the pyramid's "brain" received a new signal. This is a simple brain whose only desire is to push and pull.But this desire to push and pull is not like human hunger. It is not an autonomous need, but a passive acceptance.The new signal it received was simply: do so. It obeys.As for what is executed, it doesn't care.In fact, the content of this execution has changed, quite different from before. Think of this change as a desire for a "new taste."In the past, the pyramids have been patiently waiting for the emergence of a state-humans call it meditation, and the pyramids are regarded as the ripening of the fruit.Now it's starting to change flavors.Underripe or overripe?In short, different from the past.

Correspondingly, the rhythm and tone of the "de-de-de" sound of the pulse wave in the h—f frequency band changed, and the feedback wave also changed, and—and—wait a minute!Here is a ripe fruit (named the Inison) to be picked!Another (Gara Troppel). Another, and another... oh, 100 more.There were the kindergarten kids Troppel taught, the Wheeling jailers, the woman Troppel had coveted on the street. In the past, the sign of maturity of smart components was the so-called meditation of human beings, and the so-called whiteboard of pyramids; now, the sign of maturity is whether there can be "emotional resonance" with a smart component called Troppel.However it shifts, it doesn't matter to the pyramid on Mount Sa, it just keeps wielding its static scythe: reap, reap.

It never occurred to Saphon Pyramid that intelligent components could manipulate their own actions.How could it possibly know?When the Saphon Pyramid noticed that the criteria for selecting smart components were not the same as in the past, it might have been suspicious—if it still noticed, it would still be suspicious. Instructions were changed without any notice and warning, and it is entirely possible for the pyramid to be suspicious.Now it is not only necessary to harvest those flesh-and-blood organic intelligent parts, but also to push Latin rattling metal machines.machine?Why is it necessary for the pyramid to transcend the machine?But on the other hand, even if the pyramid can, why bother to doubt the instructions sent?In short, it has no doubts.It only reaps what it reaps.

People sometimes regret eating the green fruit by mistake, and the pyramid is not like this. Germin falls into an unexpected trap.In order to avoid thinking about "everything is related", he thought of Glenn Troppel, and before he knew it, h—f pulsed electromagnetic waves had discovered him. He didn't realize that the gas eye had appeared on his head, he didn't realize that the power to transcend him was gathering around him, and he didn't realize that he was captured, charged, shot into space, caught, stopped, and was dying.Everything came too fast. At that moment he was still lying on his own bed, but at this moment he was elsewhere.There is nothing in between.

Before him, hundreds of thousands of human intelligence parts have been superseded.However, the transcendence that happened to him was somewhat different.He was not soaked in the curing solution, and he was not programmed to become a part of the body of the pyramid.Because it was chosen not by the pyramids, but by an undomesticated intelligent part, Tropel.He arrived awake, conscious and ambulatory. He found himself standing in a small room filled with red light, and the sound of huge metal crashes was deafening.The room was steaming, and he was sweating. Everything is too strange to accept at once.Some naked, oily lunatics were jumping around and yelling at him.It took him a while to realize that these people were not devils, this was not hell, and he wasn't dead yet. "This way!" they yelled at him. "Come here, hurry up!" He shrank his head, bowed his waist, and staggered across a section of hot floor in the direction pointed by the lunatics (the density of symmetrical planets is a quarter greater than that of the earth, so the gravity Also bigger), barely stand firm.

Jumping lunatics led him through a door—a door?Sphincter-like retractable doors, or air vents?have no idea.So bizarre, unlike anything he'd ever seen. But it's really an export thing.He passed through the door and entered another room.The room was still lit with red light, but it was lighter and less dazzling, and the ear-shattering metallic sound was separated by a wall.Only then did he see clearly that the shiny thing on the lunatics turned out to be a layer of sweat. "Where—where am I?" he asked breathlessly. Immediately there were two, maybe three or four echoes, and he didn't catch a word of what they were saying.Looking around, I found myself standing in a small barn.A warehouse is an integral part of a larger machine.What is the pyramid used for that big machine?He didn't know that.What he knew was that he was alive and not alone.

He traveled through a million miles of space without realizing it.When the voices of the lunatics came, he felt that the walls of the warehouse suddenly tilted and the warehouse fell.Fortunately, he landed safely and unhurt. It is absolutely true that he was saved. Dazed for a moment, he looked down at himself, then looked around the barn and saw the men still talking: "Stand still. Feeling all right? Well, sir. Come out!" Germin I was so scared that I closed my eyes and dared not look. Another exasperated voice said, "You should find some other place for these people. This is a foundry, not an asylum. Look at the mold this man is standing on! If someone comes in and we don't see it in time, snap! Shut it down." Go in, and it's over!"

Only the first voice said: "It can't be helped. Hey! New here, how are you?" Jermyn took a deep breath of the hot, sour air, looked at the naked figure in front of him, and replied, "Of course, I'm fine." This naked man is none other than Handel. There were hundreds of such naked people in this place, and they were divided into eight groups, and those who had certain common characteristics were grouped into the same group.The common denominator of Germin’s group is that everyone knows Tropel; the second group, the members are familiar with a widow named Ala Narova from Nice; the third group members are all Africans. descendants, and became acquainted with a man named Giango Tembo; and so on.They were all spread out over an acre-by-square area with some huge corridors filled with huge automatic machines the height of a man.

Many machine tools are legged and fully automated, but the general shape remains unreasonably traditional.When the machine tool is working, the collet is opened, the metal processing part is sent into the jaw with a "bang", the collet is closed, and then the workpiece starts to rotate, the tool advances and cuts into the workpiece. After the operation is completed, the tool automatically returns.The processed workpiece has strange shapes and is sucked up by the ring magnetic field and transported away.Every three hours, a huge octagonal forged plate is transferred from the nearby foundry through a channel opening by the annular magnetic field, and is clamped by the chucks of the machine tools, and then drilled, bored, expanded, chiseled, sawed, ground, Polished, through a series of processing, to produce a more amazing thing.The cutter of a vertical planer is about one person high. After processing such an octagonal plate, it becomes blunt and needs to be replaced with a new cutter from a warehouse.The edges of the other knives do not appear to be visibly worn.Every 11 hours, glycerin sprays from the surrounding walls, floods the floor to knee height, washes away all debris, and then gurgles away through the sinkholes.

Occasionally, the pyramids pass by here, with giant hands touching the ground, and the stench is suffocating.At this time, people will run around like mice, looking for safe places to hide.In fact, they don't even know if this big thing can "see" them. Their food came from one row of taps along the wall, and their water from another row of taps.The water was neither carbonated nor salty, and it was not a pleasant drink.The food is Isshiki glucose water, but essential trace elements and amino acids must be added, because no one has been found to have suffered from diseases such as malnutrition.There was plenty of air, perhaps overflowing from the adjacent foundry, where some processes required air.

Most of the time, people have nothing to do and spend their days talking and talking. For example, Germin still has wild ideas about transcendence. "Perhaps," he might say, "this is the real salvation, the real Paradise, but because we don't see enough to appreciate it and enjoy it. We have food, and we don't suffer from the extreme changes of heat and cold." suffering.” He wiped the sweat off his brow with a wave of his hand, ran to the faucet and drank his fill, then turned around and continued, “It also avoids many cumbersome etiquettes and bad habits in dealing with people.” He looked around lonely, There was no place to sit, let alone a husband and wife.He had to squat on the metal floor. Handel was much more blunt: "Heavenly Paradise, the whole idiot! We've all become a fucking bunch of redheaded Indians. I guess the Indians never figured it out until they died, really screwed them What is it? They don’t know the land charter, they don’t know the hegemonic theory of ‘Is there any king in the world’, they don’t know about missions, they don’t know about the expansion of immigrants. They didn’t have these things originally, but luckily they still know Little by little, at least guns and spirits and what to do with them. At the last moment they saw what a white man was, but it was too late. And now we don't even have the redheads No. Back then, the Indians could at least find a little clue of what was going on—they could still see the white sailors leaving the big thief ship and rushing towards the shore: they could also run to their women and protect them. After all, they were all Humans are not ghosts. But we can't even grasp this point. We are completely held in the "hands" of the pyramid—right? Forgive me for only using the word "hands". I don't know what it is. Do you count! See, we can't even describe them in words! " After ingesting the food from the tap for the 50th time, Germin went mad for a while and wanted to kill someone.Fortunately, the workshop had just been washed with glycerin, and there were no iron blocks long enough for him to make weapons, and the floor was slippery.Just as he was strangling the African man by the neck, trying to strangle him, his feet slipped and he couldn't exert himself.Everyone hurriedly rushed over to hold his arm until he woke up.When he awoke, he felt annoyed again. "I'm ready to make a dedication," he said at the end, angrily, "I know that the best death is to use a catheter to perform a bone marrow puncture. However, choking his throat and cutting off his breath are also a substitute for dedication." traditional way." Inison told him not to be a fool, and warned him: "If you have any habit of murdering, we'll have to fix you up. I don't think I've got an idea for you to swallow that eight-inch bird's tube!" It was too much for Jermin to bear such a hideous curse uttered without concealment.He didn't say a word to Inison during three meals in a row, he didn't even look at him, he just turned his back to him.Inneson, not only was not persuaded, but paid no attention to his protest, and kept chatting with Handel. Jermyn couldn't take it anymore, grabbed Inison by the hair, and slapped him loudly across the face. "The lunatic has killed someone!" some people nearby shouted. Handel yelled at the shouting crowd: "Shut up! He's not crazy!" Then he said to Germin, "You're not crazy, are you?" "No," Jermyn snapped back. "I'm just so pissed. Your damned friend is denigrating serious alternatives to devotion. I'm worthy of going to heaven that way!" Touching his face, Inison said, "Do you really want to make a dedication? Do you really want someone to stick a big needle in your back, twist it left and right until it reaches your spine? Then you won't feel it, Unconscious, the spinal cord bleeds out. Then some grinning idiot takes a knife and saws it up and down your throat until it's severed—" Germin replied, "The question is not whether I want to do spinal cord giving, but that certain basic rules of conduct must be observed—" "So you don't want a spinal cord offering?" Germin thought for a long time, and finally replied, "No. But it doesn't matter—" Handel said gently: "Look at yourself, Germin. Twist your arm, then twist your leg, and feel it. You have changed. You grabbed Inison and beat him just now, not out of Nervous but out of anger. In the past, who would have imagined that you would dare to do this? Look at yourself." Germin twisted his arms and thighs according to Handel's words, and looked down at his body, and found that his abdomen had become thicker—it was thick rather than bloated, and his thighs were already thicker than his knee joints.All of these changes happen unconsciously!Touching the face again, the chin is bulging, the mandible can hardly be touched, and there is no sheep-like appearance!As for the ribs, there are no ribs at all! Facing the crowd, he felt that his appearance was unbelievably ugly, so he felt ashamed.Look at everyone, everyone is the same. "Do you feel different?" Handel asked calmly, "What about the inner changes? So it turns out that there is an emotion in your bones that makes you never touch Inison anyway? But now, your body There's another feeling in there, which makes you feel that beating Inison, if done justly, is a great pleasure. Isn't it?" "Yeah," Jermyn replied, a little frightened by the realization. "That's right! What do you call that feeling? What am I supposed to do?" "The wolf orthodoxy holds that such sentiments should be left unchecked." "The commonly accepted name is 'non-starvation emotion.' Have you been thinking about 'everything is related' lately?" Inison said. "No," replied Germin, "this—this, due to distraction—" "Because there is no hunger, Germin. Hunger and meditation are not inseparable, but they are always twins. When the vitality is very weak, the candle of self-consciousness will flicker and may be extinguished at any time, so I have to It is possible to relieve masturbation by sitting in meditation." Germin wandered between the legs of the numerous machine tools, thinking, trying to get to know his new self. Handel said to Inison: "Health and growth may be what we are here for." "Do you think pyramids eat people?" "No. Only a few people will die when the nuclear fusion explodes during the solar regeneration. It must be some kind of electric charge-" "If Jermyn can fight, everyone of his kind should. I propose to reorganize the drills." "We'd better develop a fighting spirit first. Recently, there have been no crazy killings, but fortunately, there are still a lot of disputes and confrontations between everyone. The next step is for you to fight back. This can slowly induce them Get used to fighting fiercely, and develop a certain martial spirit." The two wolves grinned and looked at each other, very proud. "Things are going pretty well, aren't they?" Handel said. "The first week of unlimited caloric intake has taken away the debonair, the conformist, and the fights. Germin's example. Yes, we They must be given something to do before they grow fat and kill each other." At that time, the foundry had stopped entering.In the case of no new arrivals for six consecutive meals, the wolves from Princeton made a population census, and the results showed that there were 684 people in total, roughly evenly divided between men and women.There are so many people, which provide great convenience for the implementation of their plans.They can't just talk without practice. Some difficulties were encountered in the organization of military training.The former sheep had just recovered their wildness, and became rebellious and difficult to discipline.They shouted happily in the corridor: "Who wants to take care of me?" A Princetonian who is good at studying problems recalled that some characters in the "Bible" were also transformed before they finally stepped on the right path.However, it will take time for strength and reason to slowly adapt.Finally, the guy who made the most noise slowly dispelled his rebellious psychology, walked into the team obediently, and participated in training together.At this time, what Handel most urgently needs is the weapon from the earth.Where will they be placed?Several women later became pregnant.This pregnancy followed an incident which was both terrible and inexplicable.One day, the pyramid came again, and everyone hid as usual.Unfortunately, an African man stumbled with something in the open area and fell down. There was still a considerable distance from the wall, and he had no time to get up and run under the I-beam bracket of the large machine tool, so he quickly and carefully pasted it. lying down.In the last few seconds of his life he probably thought he was safe.The large body of the pyramid walked slowly along the promenade, and wherever it went, there was a rattling sound and the stench was suffocating.Just as it was about to walk past the man crouching on the floor, it turned around without a word, pressed on him...then continued to move forward, and went out through its dedicated door. Everyone hurriedly inserted an eight-inch catheter into the back of the dying African to make him die quickly and avoid pain.It's not difficult at all.That night, the barriers of morality collapsed, the precepts of abstinence were broken, and people indulged in carnal pleasures, sex with men and women, and made a frantic row all night long.Everything was hopelessly instinctive.The day of judgment has come. Wolves, sheep, and reborn sheep, all of them are discussing the incident of Africans being crushed. "They got us here. They must be using us for something. However, after painstakingly getting it and taking good care of it, why should it be destroyed all of a sudden? " "Maybe we're here to upset them. Maybe we're like stock in a warehouse, useful only when needed, but usually a superfluous thing, kept for nothing, useless, and a nuisance." "Maybe just kill him for fun?" "I don't believe it. You white people didn't kill Indians for fun." "No, some white people just for fun. They shoot Indians for no reason, just for fun. Maybe pyramids are different, maybe this one is a cruel bad boy." Since then, they have always stood in a pre-running posture, ready to rush to the nearest shelter at any time; and sent people to watch the door of the foundry and the entrances and exits of the two pyramids in turn. But the pyramids never came again. One day in the second month of pregnancy, Gala Tropel suddenly pointed at a wall and screamed.Everyone gathered around to have a look, and their mouths were wide open in shock.It turned out that a flying bright spot was moving back and forth on the wall, drawing a circle with a diameter of one meter.The bright spot gradually became larger, ridged and pierced through. It turned out to be a cutting knife, which rolled to the floor with a "clang" sound from a round iron plate.Then the knife turned its head and retracted, and soon a black cone protruded in, which would vibrate and speak. It said: "From now on, you obey my orders. Is there enough food and water?" It actually asks questions and waits for answers!Gaara summoned up her courage and replied, "It's sufficient, but it's too monotonous. Can I have a change from time to time?" "No. The taste of food and water is bland on purpose, to keep you bored. Is your boss listening?" Both Handel and Inison were scrambling to answer, their eyes met, and the two competed fiercely to be the leader, but Innesson quickly backed down. "I'm listening," Handel replied. "Now tell you how to contact us. Listen to the buzzing sound coming from this horn, now we will stop the humming." When it buzzes, you consider it 'on' and you can talk to it. Once the buzzing stops, you consider it 'off' and can't talk. It's just a trick to put your nerves on. In fact, the horns are not switched off at any time. For this reason, you have to send someone on duty to ensure that we cannot hear you during our non-call hours." "Understood." Handel said.He wanted to venture a couple of sharp words back, but no, he was afraid.That voice is not a human voice, it is not a natural human voice that comes from the warm and moist airflow between the lungs, vibrates through the vocal cords, is processed by oral resonance, is further adjusted by the tongue and lips, and finally blurts out.That sound is nothing more than the electrical signal output after tuning and processing, and the mixed sound produced by the vibration of a dozen crystal chips is as cold and hard as crystal.This is exactly the nemesis that Handel so often dreamed of attacking with human hands, tanks and planes! The conversation stopped, the horn was still buzzing, and the air was full of mystery and terror.This is an opportunity for human beings to have a dialogue with the pyramid, and an opportunity to question the fate that awaits him and the entire human race.As far as Handel knew, no one had done this before, and he held his breath for the first of its kind. Just then a woman, the widow of the dead African, pushed him aside and screamed at the black cone, "Why did you kill my husband? What did he do? He flattened?" "We didn't kill your husband," said the cone, "that's what the pyramids did." "Then who the hell are you?" Handel asked. "For you, we'd better be called Glenn Troppel," replied the cone, and then the humming ceased abruptly, and Handel's gang begged and cursed in vain, and the horn no longer It stopped ringing. It turned out that the black cone was a radio transceiver.