Chapter 14 Chapter Fourteen

From time to time, the speakers on the wall issued various instructions to the people in the factory; the metal spider scouts came and went, went and came again.People kept asking questions to the horn and getting answers, almost always answers they didn't want to hear. "Damn it, what are we doing here?" "Trying to turn you into mice," Black Cone Trumpet said. "Sometimes you say you're Troppel and you say you're Jaango Tembo or something. Who are you?" "Yes, they're all 'us.'" "Please clarify, what exactly are you going to do with us?"

"Hungry you." "Why? When? For what purpose?" "Turning you into mice, it won't be long." The threat of starvation forced the people in the factory to try to stockpile water and food in case they were needed, but they couldn't.The only raw materials they have at hand are scraps from machine tools.The machine performs well and produces very little scrap.When a lathe is machining a metal or plastic workpiece, it produces a small amount of useless spiral waste; a milling machine also mills off the protruding part of the workpiece, creating some bar waste.Usually, these wastes are washed away by the glycerin sprayed regularly from the four walls of the workshop. Now people collect them and classify them.The spiral waste was rolled up and hammered to obtain scrap iron slugged from above; the bar waste was tied up and made into small anvils and hammers.They tried unsuccessfully to beat the scrap iron into storage jars with a hammer on a small anvil.The iron filings under the lathe are very brittle and can barely be hammered into iron sheets, but these iron sheets have poor ductility and cannot be hammered into jars any more.They tried three times to take the hammered iron pieces to the nearby foundry for annealing, but they were also unsuccessful.The foundry is an extremely dangerous place, where the temperature is very high and the air is dirty.When people are in it, they will feel dizzy and even faint.Some stumbled on the naked and tight steel cables, some fell into the boiling melting pot, and some fell into the automatic stamping die.In short, people are helpless, and they only end up in a situation of being suspicious, bored, irritable and full of food all day long.This is exactly what the eight human beings asked of them.

Eight human beings are becoming more and more powerful.In the end, the maintenance tank was covered with wires everywhere, but he was buried in it, almost invisible.It had already transferred the work assigned to it by the pyramid to another duplicate eight-body body lying in another unused maintenance tank.It is not difficult to copy the input signal control board and output signal switch in that idle maintenance tank, but it is difficult to use the double remote control to program the copy, because it requires eight people to recall their own programs one by one and step by step Copy it to the new body.The eight human bodies finally completed this arduous task, all 16 hands were liberated, and the eight human bodies gained the freedom to move around the symmetrical star, and the wires and cables sent from it led to all parts of the symmetrical star.Gradually, most of the metal spider scouts have been abandoned, because the eight bodies have their own electronic eyes and signal converters that can directly obtain information.In addition, it has diverted enough curing fluid and stored it in armored tanks for emergencies; it has seized and stored generators in case any power outage can immediately restore power to its own system: to itself He installed protective armor made of steel, iron, lead, cadmium and other materials to resist any mechanical, electromagnetic wave and radiation attacks; he installed crawlers for himself and his entire huge supply facility; and so on.

In the crystal palace in the arctic region, there are still some metal spider scouts, continuing to serve the eight bodies.The equipment there prevents the eight-person monitor from sneaking into the area, but if the eight-person cable extends along the pipeline in the food area, it will not hinder the passing pyramids, and laying the cable at the right time is also one of the purposes of the input smart components.Obviously, installing any number of monitors on the symmetrical star will not cause trouble, but the signal transmission of the monitors must have a control system like the traffic lights on the road, so as not to conflict with the active environment of the pyramids and not disturb them work—is that called work?The Pyramids conducted endless rounds of experiments on the tentacled monster in the Crystal Palace.Experiments are slow and dignified.Pyramids also behave much slower than walking around a factory building or operating relays, damping rods, or pinching electromagnetic fields with electron beams.

The most fascinating part of a symmetrical star is the North Pole, while the South Pole is lifeless, without any attraction.Despite the planetary importance of the South Pole, the South Pole of the Symmetrical Star is filled with the rubbish of dynasties and nothing else.After repeated thinking and calculation, the eight people came to the conclusion that the best benefits can be obtained by using the two regions of the Arctic and Antarctic at the same time.Because the symmetric star itself is rotating, a strong symmetric star magnetic field like the earth's magnetic field is generated, and its energy can be transported to the zero magnetic force area for use through the cable network.

The Eight Humans then decided: "Since we can think of this, other intelligent components must also think of it, although they don't have it yet. Therefore, the potential of Antarctica is not what it seems on the surface, it is promising." Starting from the area at 12 degrees south latitude where they are located, the eight bodies began to lay a special cable southward.The cable is filled with inert gas and has a powerful coaxial nerve trunk.This trunk can receive and transmit the most complex signals.It can be imagined that in the depths of the tunnel extending in all directions on the symmetrical star, a crawler trailer groped forward and pulled out a long cable behind the vehicle.Newly laid cables stretched out like Teflon noses, into and around the noxious chamber.The cables avoided the red-lighted areas of the tunnel and chose low-lying, dark places carved into the bedrock.Those places are where the pyramids are going to store things. They are not crowded with pipes and wires yet, and maintenance robots don't pass by often.Where the cable is laid, all kinds of intelligent advance machinery equipment connect the power cord to the cable, roll forward, and wait for their respective tasks with the patience unique to the machine.Among them, one group is the excavation group, which is composed of jib cranes, universal bulldozers, excavators and other machines.The second echelon next to the excavation group is the instrument group, which is composed of various information collection and transmission equipment.These devices are man-made sensors, which are highly sophisticated and intelligent, and report the obtained information in the form of coordinate curves, scale pointers, counter readings, and carrier modulation.Behind the instrument cluster, there is also a self-driven color orthographic camera tube.It's just a TV monitor that only shows images of the surface, not the internal structure of an object like an X-ray can.

The ex-sheep, Jermyn, was roaring in a terrifyingly loud voice. "Go away! Don't get close to this faucet. You clearly saw that I came first, but you came after me. What's the reason?" He howled to Muhandash Dutta from Boban. Muhandash Dutta, the main member of the former Rice Worship Sect, has recently practiced the doctrine of penance, and has approached the realm of a master.He replied: "I have important things to do, so I can't take care of you and other idlers. Tell you, I came here first, you fat belly!" It was a stupid nickname, too, because Muhandash Dutta's own belly was quite shriveled, not as bloated as Jermin's. "Skinny monkey!" Jermyn retorted, retorting, "starving to death! Big mouth! Long-legged thief!"

All the common nicknames on campus are used.Look at these two people, they are facing each other, the blood is rushing, the veins are swollen, the fists are clenched and rattling, and the eyes are so bulging that they are about to pop out.Between the two of them, precious glucose juice trickled noiselessly from the tap, slimy, over the slightly sloping floor and into the eight-inch-deep gutter.Iron, iodine, sulphur, phosphorus, potassium—all essential nutrients for the human body—drove the floor in viscous sap; glutamate—without it, ammonia would be deposited in the brain , kills brain cells - also flows on the floor; D-ribose, D-2 deoxyribose, adenine, guanine, uracil, cytosine, thymine and 5-methylcytosine - without these substances, high None of the animals that have ever had trilobites can pass their genes on to the next generation - the same trickle down the floor.Facing the life juice flowing away in vain, the two of them didn't realize it, they just stared at each other, completely forgetting that there are so many faucets on the left and right that can be used.This one is mine, mine!Fucking rationality, fucking kindness, all other leaders go to hell, I don't want it!I just want this one.This is mine!

Here comes the wolf.A person walked over slowly, and saw that his eyes were bloodshot, but what filled them was no longer wild desire, but fatigue and embarrassment.In order to quell all kinds of disputes between the group of people and maintain the stability and peace of the group, he kept running and working hard.He is Handel. "It's over," he said.Muhandash Dutta was grabbing a dagger-shaped milling tool, and when he heard the sound, he hurriedly inserted it into his waistcloth①.Such loincloths are now the most respectable attire of the refined gentleman.Handel turned around, turned his back to him, leaned over the gurgling tap, and drank gulps.Suddenly there was a commotion behind him.Handel lazily straightened up and turned around.I saw that Dutta had drawn out his knife and was about to stab Jeremin.Just as he was about to thrust, Jermyn grabbed his wrist.The two were entangled together, without saying a word, fighting desperately.Handel jerked the knife out of Dutta's hand, and threw it to the ground with a clang.The deadlock was broken.

[①A cover for men in tropical countries. ——Translator's Note. 】 The two let go, panting heavily, and glared at each other.Dutta kept rubbing his sore wrist. "Everyone is under a lot of pressure, their nerves are tense, and they are on the verge of collapse," Handel said to the crowd, "but this cannot be a reason to do whatever we want. In any case, we must live decently and talk about style , otherwise our group of people will fall into the pitiful situation of killing each other. Dutta, Germin, you two have the right to regard me as a wise elder, and accept my suggestion once. That good leader over there It's yours, Dutta. Here's another good tap for you, Germin, and you can use it as soon as the Russians are over. Well, now you two listen to me, go to your respective Go to the faucet and drink your fill."

"Fat Belly!" Dutta was still laughing at Germin.But after all, he obeyed Handel's words, and looked back at his opponent while walking, his anger still lingering. "Skinny monkey!" Jermyn didn't show weakness, he was still cursing as he walked, and walked towards his faucet without looking back. Just as the two bent down to have a full meal, the faucet suddenly stopped.The last drop of juice hangs from the mouth of the faucet, and no more juice will flow out. There was a sudden commotion in the factory building, shouts and screams rang out.People stumbled around and looked at the empty dragon heads, some crying, some howling.The guard posts and their replacements who were in charge of monitoring the pyramids also left their jobs and came.Some also licked the quick-drying puddles of sticky residue on the floor with their tongues.They had to be quick, the glycerin was going to spray out and wash the floor in a few moments.Some lucky ones squeezed a way out, rushed to the side of the gutter, stretched their arms into the ditch as long as possible, wiped and wiped, wiped all the sticky things on the ditch wall on their hands and arms, and then Raise your hand and lick it clean like a kitten. Just a few minutes ago, Handel, who was fighting for the former sheep and teaching them to be decent and considerate, was also anxious at this time.Standing away from the exploding crowd, he said to Innesson beside him: "The next step is to cut off the water. The next step, we will have to leave this place and run for our lives. I think, everyone Most people have a dead end." They came to the black cone that was both a speaker and a microphone.There used to be a sentry here to monitor the movement of the cone, but now the on-duty staff ran away, and the black cone buzzed alone, indicating that it was ready to listen at the moment.But Handel drew back, took Inison aside, and said to him: "I will never beg him for mercy, never tell him that we will be obedient mice. Never!" The vast phalanx of machines at the end of the coaxial cable had reached the south pole of the symmetrical star.The boxes on various tracked transport vehicles split along the central axis, and the lids of the boxes were raised like clam shells and opened to both sides, revealing various machinery inside.Some poke out of the front of a rotating crane and push out counterweights from the back; others poke out like a flower with the tungsten carbide head of an excavator, or the tungsten carbide shovel of a bulldozer.Each mechanical arm either pried lightly or thumped heavily, and launched an attack on the ancient garbage dump.They dug holes and rusted pipes, removed convective fins from tangled ancient heat exchangers, pierced lead radiation shields and thorium storage tanks of abandoned thorium reactors, and toppled broken small fusion reactors. Reactor, clearing of collapsed concrete bricks that were once the reactor housing.In this way, the phalanx moved forward through all obstacles. At last they came to a vaulted wall, crushed under layers of rubble.The oxyhydrogen torch burns a round hole in the wall, and the excavator sends explosives into the round hole and tamps it. Carry out such a blast without damaging what's on the inside of the wall.Sonar measurements showed that the impact of the explosion on the inner wall was equivalent to the shock wave of a dozen high explosives.The dynamite exploded, and the wall was blown apart for a short while, releasing some rubble and gravel.The bulldozers came and pushed them aside with big shovels.Then, it was filled with medicine, exploded, and cleaned again, and it was repeated 11 times. Finally, it was carefully drilled with a machine, and finally broke through the wall and entered inside.It turns out that this is another Crystal Palace, exactly the same as the one at the North Pole, except that there are no green men with tentacles here, and there are books instead.Crystal Book!Words in gold, pages in crystal.The pages are round, not bound, just stacked haphazardly on top of each other.Because the text is slightly protruding, the pages of the book are not densely stacked, and there are certain gaps between pages.On the bookshelf, on the table, on the floor, standing or falling, such crystal pages are piled up everywhere.The orthographic electronic eye shoots everything it sees, sends it back through the coaxial cable, and then displays it in front of the 16 eyes of the eight human beings through a circular display.Eight people witnessed this amazing discovery. The eight human beings watched this scene while making objective judgments. Some hands had already turned the buttons, sending commands to the machine phalanx far away at a concentric angle of 60 degrees.According to the instruction, the robot's manipulator unfolded the crystal pages.The largest set of books was unfolded first, and the beautiful and peculiar characters were written uninterrupted from the edge of the circular page to the center of the page like a spiral.This writing method is the same as the ancient Niu Geng-style Zhuanxing writing method①.The Niu Geng style of writing is always written from left to right first, and then from right to left.But somehow, this writing method was later lost and replaced by the modern broken line writing method, which requires the eyes to pause at the end of the line and jump to the left end of the new line when reading.Eight human beings also paid special attention to the characteristics of "ink" and "paper" in the crystal book, which is not accidental.It turns out that the selection of the two is extremely elegant, and the strongest contrast effect is deliberately pursued.The first is the contrast of colors. The crystal plate used for the pages of the book is transparent, while the words on the gold seal are opaque. [①A kind of ancient writing method, from right to left, and then from left to right. This writing method was used in ancient Egyptian and ancient Greek. ——Translator's Note. 】 The second is the contrast of texture. The crystal plate is smooth, but the surface of the gold text is rough and granular, without polishing.The third is the contrast of conductivity. The crystal plate is an insulator, but the characters and symbols made of gold are good conductors.Thus, the information left in Antarctica was designed so that it could be read by any eye and any hand, even by a monster without eyes and hands. There must be a code to decipher the Crystal Book.Yes, I found it, on the largest set of crystal books. The laborious and often guesswork of interpretation begins.The people on earth finally understood many contents on the largest crystal chip.The book begins with arithmetic—binary arithmetic, of course. One point is 1, one point plus space means 2, two points means 3; zero is the true sense of 0—nothing, a small break point appears in the flowing text line here; one curls with elegant lines A completed eye symbol represents a plus sign; negative numbers are represented by an asterisk instead of a dot; and so on.And that's just the arithmetic part.Then, the eight human beings carefully studied and interpreted the branches of mathematics such as elementary geometry and conic sections.The mathematics explained in this book is somewhat vague, and the definitions and concepts are primitive and ancient, not very clear, and have long been outdated.Despite this, Eight Humans still found that there are many conceptual symbols involved in the book, such as the "vertex" symbol, the "because" symbol, the "big", "greater than", "contains", "logical implication" and other symbols.Read on until you reach the first anthology reader, the second largest set in the Crystal Books.The theme of this set of books is about those who have green tentacles, their food, clothing, shelter, and crawling (called "walking" in the book). The green tentacles (called "people" in the book) watch stars.The magnificent sun rises, warming "people".Sperm-producing "humans" inseminate ("love"?) egg-producing "humans"—you might call them "women", since they are females, after all.After 166 days of laying eggs - it seems to be "offering", the baby will come out of the shell.Then began the second stage of "support" for the baby, and at the same time assigned a small monster to the baby.During this stage, parents lick their babies with their mouths—an act of petting, of course.The baby eats "meal" under the supervision of parents and little monsters - a kind of good nourishment; the baby sleeps a lot, and the little monsters sometimes go to wake up its parents, and they get up and mess with the baby for a while - what exactly do they do Eight human beings couldn't figure it out for a while, but it was caressing or something.Gradually, children grow up and start to learn skills such as counting and literacy.The little monster helped it do these things, but it didn't caress it like it used to.Still later, the child walked, ran in the sun, and even rode on little monsters.At this time, the little monster also grew up, because it grew up with the child.When the child is half-grown, the third stage of "support" begins.At this time, the child began to study "1218 first essentials". After reading this pile of books, the original half-grown child has grown up and is no longer a child but an "adult", a "man" or a "man" woman".Its little monsters have grown too.The newly grown monster is still a very useful tool for the newly grown tentacled green man, and it can be used for everything, but its caress for the tentacled green man is further reduced, and it may even cause damage to it. threaten.When the tentacled green man is dealing with (that is, "touching", that is, "operating") the grown monster, once he is absent-minded, a little distraction will invite fatal disaster... When they read the content about "absence of mind will lead to fatal disaster", the eight people in the maintenance tank couldn't help trembling with fright.Pyramids, the grown monsters that serve the servants on the left and right, originally originated in ancient times.Then they killed the master who made them, destroyed the planet that the master regarded as a paradise, and turned it into a desolate garbage dump, an environment suitable for the existence of machines rather than life.