Chapter 16 Chapter Sixteen

What else is there to say?Troppel and Ala had to slip back into the big pond of collective consciousness with painful regret.Now, at this juncture of life and death, all passionate sons and daughters have to despise life, give up their freedom of thought, personal protection and freedom to dress casually, and join the ranks of fighting. How can they be an exception?All hands have started to work, all kinds of key switches are clicked, and the huge army of wires, 12 generators, 100 sets of microphones and electronic eyes all over the symmetrical star has started to move.The first simulation display system quickly provided a global map of sensitive areas for eight people.The black box spy robot placed in the equatorial region reported that eight pyramids were being assembled on the imaginary line of the equator and arranged at equal distances from each other along this great circle.It is remarkable that they are located in some of the most desolate and unkempt areas on the entire planet's surface.Then he further reported that two long lines of unknown purpose protruded from the left and right sides of the top of each pyramid, and connected with each other to form a huge octagon.

Just as this was being reported, the black box spy droid died suddenly and burst out with a powerful electric current.The current was transmitted to the curing tank along the cable connecting the eight bodies, almost killing the eight bodies. Fortunately, the cable near the equator melted and gasified in an instant, cutting off the current in time. A few minutes later, a second simulation showed the system up and running.This time for partial display, the result is more accurate.Eight people "see" the pyramids are connected by dazzling long lines, slowly moving south.When traveling through airless areas, their movements are almost impossible to observe because the signal is too weak.They glow a fiery blue color before circling the stellar surface and finally emerging at the south pole.Each monitor sent information to the Eight about the long line connecting the pyramids before being destroyed.The octagon was originally nothing more than a few pounds of heavy hydrogen, which had been disintegrated into a plasma of naked electrons and heavy hydrogen nuclei at temperatures unattainable in any form of matter, solid, liquid, or gas.It is this plasma region, under the action of the magnetic field formed by the pyramid itself, that forms a bunch of pencil-thick flat plasma clusters.This substance has a temperature of up to 100 million degrees and a pressure of up to 20 million pounds per square inch.

Under this high temperature and high pressure, the particles escaping everywhere are absorbed by the magnetic field, the momentum is reduced, and they are docilely dissociated in a corner of the magnetic field tube, unable to escape, and only part of the energy is radiated out.At a high temperature of 100 million degrees, the nuclear fusion in the plasma cluster can continue to proceed, and at the same time release as huge energy as the sun.In the process of this magical octagonal planetary belt moving southward slowly, all the iron and steel substances passing through the area were immediately melted and lost; The remote electronic eye only blinked a few times, and it was over.Apparently, the purge of the pyramids has begun.In order to keep the northern hemisphere, they had to clean up the southern hemisphere.

Obviously, in the southern hemisphere, all the things that the pyramid can recognize will be destroyed and cannot continue to exist, including wires, relays, generators, electron tubes, transistors, thermistors, space charge tubes, transformers, and all electrical appliances and their assemblies .The connection between the eight human bodies and the outside world was interrupted, and the communication system failed.The life forms recognized by the pyramids - including the intelligent parts and the eight human bodies - are also about to become extinct, and only the life forms they cannot recognize will continue to survive.

Roger Germin baked sourdough cakes over a small fire with a homemade burner.Put alcohol in a lubricating oil tank, twist the insulation fiber removed from the insulation pipe into a thick thread, and it becomes a wick. In this way, a burning appliance is completed.Alcohol is abundant, but no one dares to drink it anymore.They used to drink a lot of alcohol, but because no one could tell whether the colorless liquid was ethanol or methanol, they would only know after three days, because if it was methanol, the drinker would be blind and die after three days.This indistinguishability between benign edible alcohol and its highly toxic counterpart has cost the lives of a dozen unwary men and women.At present, a group of people has been greatly reduced, and nearly half of them have been lost.Several heroes like Muhandash Dutta have died one after another, and the rest are old, weak, sick, and imbecile.Among these people, some could not walk without food and water for five days; Some may fall down and be electrocuted to death; some may die of grief because they miss the old gourmet wife and the magnificent sunset.

Jermyn was too busy to grieve, so he was still alive.He doesn't daydream, doesn't use his brain much, he only takes pride in fighting bravely and fiercely, and takes pleasure in enjoying the body of healthy women.When there is really nothing to do, just lie on a comfortable bed for a few minutes, chatting to pass the time, and don't think too much about it.The bed was made of a piece of polyurethane foam that he had snatched as a shock pad for a miner.He considered himself the number three figure in this group of people, second only to Handel and Inison, and he often pointed fingers and gave orders.Although no one sealed him, everyone recognized him.

The chief, Handel, was walking towards the fire with a small bucket in his hand.The bucket was heated and dimpled from thermoplastic waste, and contained some colorless liquid.The fire is getting smaller and smaller.Instinctively, as usual, Jermyn put his hand into the bucket, dipped his thumb and forefinger in some liquid, twisted it, felt it, put it under his nose to smell it, and finally put it on his tongue to taste it. He skillfully completed this series of procedures necessary for survival in an instant.The reaction is subconscious: this thing is right, it won't put out the fire, and it won't splash in the face when it explodes.

He nodded to Handel.Handel then carefully poured the liquid into the oil tank, a blue flame shot up from the white wick, and the yeast cake slapped by his hands made a hissing sound on the spit again.After the yeast is baked, Germin is naturally qualified to eat one with him. "Maybe it's the last bit of alcohol," Handel said. "What's the matter?" "I unscrewed the joint of a pipe, and just filled a bucket of alcohol, a maintenance robot came over and tightened the joint again." "I've never seen them do that." "I've never seen it before. Immediately afterwards, the robot's engine stopped suddenly, and the robot stopped moving and died. Then the alcohol stopped, and there was no alcohol in the pipe."

The symmetrical planet is not a quiet place. Within earshot, heavy machines are working day and night, making rumbling noises.But as they sat and ate their sourdough cakes, the hum of the machine suddenly intensified.They were a little panicked, but they didn't jump up, they didn't say anything, they were still chewing on the cake.After months of suffering from life and death, those who survived have learned how to reduce the body's calorie consumption in order to survive, so that they will not easily waste their energy in vain.The small yeast culture room was crowded with more than 300 people who survived, and they were doing their own work, hardly noticing the sudden change just now.Some of the people were eating cakes, some were sleeping, some were collecting yeast, some were beating yeast into cakes, some were making fires, and some were making simple tools from thermoplastic waste or broken parts.

The fluorescent lamps by which the yeasts photosynthesize suddenly went out.People screamed as their eyes slowly adjusted to the faint fluorescence from the luminous ceiling. Then a heat wave hit.The north wall of the house began to heat up until it was red hot and continued to heat up.The color of the wall gradually changed from dark red to more dazzling orange red, lemon yellow, blue, blue and white.At the same time, a long live wire appeared in the house, crossing from east to west, and slowly moving south at a walking speed, passing over people's heads.When the wire-shaped plasma cluster disappeared on the opposite south wall, the south wall was also burned and turned into a radiant blue-white.Then, the surroundings quickly quieted down, only the rumble of the machine gradually faded away in the south.Soon, everything fell silent.

The luminous ceiling still glowed faintly, illuminating the burnt yeast culture trays, the scorched plastic that had melted and dripped on the ground, and the more than 300 people prostrate on the ground.They were still in shock, not even daring to breathe out.After a long time, the crowd began to commotion. Everyone carefully raised their heads and looked around, sighing.Some people's eyes couldn't adjust for a while, and they couldn't see anything; all of them were red, hot, swollen, and highly scalded; fortunately, no one suffered from radiation sickness.The high temperature generated by nuclear fusion kills all harmful bacteria.Everyone dazedly supported the yeast culture plate and stood up, checking the degree of their burns.Then, one by one, the people turned their backs to the south where the rumbling sound disappeared, and walked towards the north with heavy steps.The north is not chosen because there is hope there, but because the southern hemisphere is now starving, foodless, and unable to survive, so it has to go north.They escaped the Purge of the Pyramids because they were life forms that the Pyramids did not recognize.And the eight human beings are doomed. Eight people retreated.It has an escape passage leading to the surface, and now it is carried on a giant crawler trailer, crawling towards the surface along this inclined passage.So far it is still the heart of a huge group of machinery and equipment, commanding and dispatching various machinery and equipment including armor, maintenance fluid, circulation pumps, power units, remote sensors, and robotic arms.In terms of volume, eight human beings are as big as a pyramid, but they cannot move on their own like a pyramid.After it came to the ground, it bypassed the waste pile, avoided the large chasm, and continued to slowly advance south.Its two nerve trunks remained: one leading to the north, connected to the monitors there, monitoring the southward movement of the pyramid cleaning line-the octagonal planetary belt; the other leading to the south, connected to the South Pole Library The mechanical arms were connected, and the mechanical arms kept flipping the crystal pages, and sent back the contents of the pages for eight people to read. While retreating, the eight human bodies stepped up their efforts to decipher and interpret the crystal book.The pages of the crystal book were crumbling here and there and piled up in a mess, which brought great difficulties to the reading work.If you can still be emotional, Eight Humans will definitely curse those "green children with tentacles" for their sloppyness and carelessness.Although the eight human beings have no emotions, they have extraordinary understanding ability.It realizes that because the green man has the ability to foresight beyond the senses, whichever book the hand reaches out to, it must be the one that is needed.That being the case, why do you need to build a card bibliography for indexing?Eight human beings thought that animals stronger than humans must be omniscient and omnipotent.While this view may irritate theologians, the eight bodies are right about it. Suddenly, Eight Humans found some books that were of great significance to clarifying the pyramids. The mechanical arm flipped the pages rapidly, and the electronic scanner kept scanning. "On Strategies for Using Non-Intelligent Components."strategy!Eight people read the book in just five minutes.This strategy has resulted in the emergence and use of a new type of tool.The original generation was reserved for disabled green people who had lost their psychic abilities through accident or disease, roughly equivalent in nature to a walking stick for the blind or a guide dog.The book expounds theories on the risks of using new tools, crackdown and containment after an accident occurs.These theories are relatively recent in the field of rehabilitation tools for the disabled. After reading the book, it was thrown into the corner by the robotic arm, and then the second book was dug out. Mathematical Beauty in Elementary Egg Cult.It only took five minutes to read this book.There are some graphic symbols based on the number "7" in the book, which have been used in various ceremonies for a long time.The book also mentions: "We also inevitably carry the polar tendencies that humans have, and have transplanted them into our machines..." "Human-machine integration as an art form". (This combination is not as inseparable as the combination of time and space, electricity and magnetism, but it does not only add a kind of prophetic ability to the green man-of course this is only in terms of the combination form.) "Part Planetary Pre-machine Culture".Ridiculous little beggar-like green man.What makes the green man envious and jealous is that although the green man at that time seemed simple and backward, it also lacked all the troubles brought by the machine. "Polarity Is Conscious? ".Yes, polarity is of course conscious - the very formulation that requires an either/or answer is itself a manifestation of polarity. The original universe is different from the universe reflected in the human mind.In the original universe, polarity did not exist.However, the original development of the universe itself has evolved a human polar brain with "on or off" nerve cells and eyes that can provide information.The human eye is always polarized when observing an object, and the observation conclusion of the object is either one or the other: either bright or dark; rather than accurately counting the number of photons to determine the brightness of the object.Thus, guided by the idea of ​​duality with definite duality, the universe is distortedly reflected as some metaphysical abstraction.In the metalanguage 1—the metalanguage is almost incomprehensible, and the understanding of the metalanguage of the metalanguage is quite impossible. 【①Also known as pure language.Refers to a language or a set of symbols used to analyze and describe another language, the object language. ——Translator's Note. 】 The Abode of the Green Man and the Universal Cone.It is written in the book: In this golden age full of leisure and creativity (actually the "Palladium Age", green people like the hard, black, shiny texture of element 46 palladium, and do not like the creamy feeling of gold. )...renew and challenge...the traditional egg-worshipping aesthetics based on "7" either give way to the new admiration for the universal machine, or become one with it, and there is no other way out...the universal cone, The masterpiece of the green man's mechanical genius... Unlimited widening of the road to prevent traffic jams... Each pair of man-machine combination is located at the feeding station and storage of the universal cone... It is hoped that the layout of the man-machine symbiosis residence will be elegant and reasonable, so as to integrate people The possible accident rate of machine symbiosis is reduced to the minimum. Human-machine symbiosis is the inevitable result of technological progress so far... "Universal Cone Safety Manual".The book argues that despite their amazing talents, universal cones are irrational.The resolution of the Seventh Congress on the safety of universal cones pointed out: If the reality of the irrationality of universal cones cannot be recognized and dealt with correctly, it may lead to a great increase in the accident rate and lead to catastrophe.For this reason, it is suggested that appropriate modifications be made to the procedure of the high-level egg worship ceremony, and measures to prevent the accident of the universal cone are added, so as to emphasize the seriousness of the problem and arouse everyone's vigilance. "The Controversy Over the Thinking Structure of the Universal Cone."Argument in favor: Universal cones have a unique polar behavior that allows them to proceed in unchanging steps for any job: first define the scope, map out the beginning and end of the workflow, and then complete each step in between one by one. program.This is true when designing a filling station, as it is when building a road expander.Arguments from the Opposition: Polar behavior is just a mechanical result of the binary thinking on which the Universal Cone is built, and is not reliable (the arguments of the two factions are too detailed to be exhaustive). Just to conclude: Since no one can answer whether the polar behavior of the universal cone is related to polar thinking, or is simply an instinctive reaction, this debate will be temporarily adjourned.The debate about the reliability of the universal cone thinking structure is also settled. The Rise and Fall of the Universal Cone Trend.The most reliable historical source on the Universal Cone - the Pyramid!Read it in ten minutes.The content is roughly as follows: the universal cone is widely used because of its many advantages of simplicity and practicality, and it quickly replaces the electronic tube that is fragile and generates a lot of heat during work, and it is gradually made bigger and better.This dream robot, a collection of semiconductors, is becoming more and more powerful!Running factories, feeding themselves, repairing themselves, taking care of children—boys and girls, and more—they can do it all!They did a lot of work in place of the green men, and we had time to make bigger and better all-purpose cones for each green man.With the universal cone, we can travel, dig farmland, mine more germanium and cesium ore, and build bigger and better universal cones.We green men have never been so successful. Although the universal cone has caused accidents and disasters, it is only the price of technological progress, and it is worth it.There is evidence that, in order to deter us from doing something about the cones, green men who have been injured by cone accidents are even content to have the accidents happen to them rather than endanger other greens. But then the Green Man (whose quaint name is spelled with an asterisk, a teapot spout, a pineapple, and an "H") proved that those so-called "accidents" weren't really Not an accident, but a murder.At first, all the green men thought he was talking crazy, until three universal cones suddenly jumped over the wall of his residence, visited his home and killed him, and the green people believed what he said was true.The green men did not allow the awl to do evil. They did not hesitate to sacrifice their own convenience and even food and clothing, and quickly took decisive measures around the world to block the activities of the awl.All the Cone feeding stations were completely destroyed, and one by one the mighty Cones became sluggish, and finally came to a complete stop, finished, and the wreckage was dismantled by the Green Men.All but eight of the Magnum Cones on record have been wiped out.Those eight universal cones were specially designed and manufactured for interstellar exploration a long, long time ago. After they were released into space, they did not return for many years. It is generally believed that they had already crashed into the sun and were burned.Afterwards, the world returned to peace, and the green man supported himself with hardworking hands. Although life was full of hardships, it was also peaceful and peaceful. The only thing not mentioned in the history recorded in this book is the later return of the eight special universal cones.The green man didn't know this, but the eight human beings knew it clearly. The last unwritten chapter of this optimistic historical document is the return of the universal cone.When the eight universal cones returned from space and landed on the ground, they suddenly discovered that the feeding station was gone, and there was no one of the same kind left on the planet.Just like a wild beast encounters a similar situation, the omnipotent cones instinctively realize that they have been attacked by some kind of attack, and their counterattack begins.They used electron beams, plasma particles, and high pressure to wipe out the green men on the entire planet, and then spent a lot of time building their own feeding stations, and then they built equipment to serve the feeding stations, and equipment to serve the equipment, and finally connected to the earth. The people on board are also wired into the machine and become one of the parts of the machine.Like human beings, they are never complacent about the status quo, and are always tossing and tossing endlessly; just like human beings, they always keep a treasure land of geomantic omen, which is a paradise, a paradise, with luck, order and everything they yearn for, that is, the North Pole; at the same time, they also abandon An ominous place, where is hell, filled with darkness, danger and terror, that is, the Antarctic.Dangerous places are dangerous enough, there is no place in Antarctica to feed the universal cone. Now these giant triangular pyramids lined up in the equatorial region are the culprits of destroying the planet.Their bodies are covered with many pipelines for feeding materials, thrusters for moving planets, spaceship fleets for updating the sun and their accompanying equipment, planning and programming systems, and intelligent components responsible for evaluating and allocating power resources and other various resources. Remote monitors sent north by the eight reported that the octagonal shape of the pyramids was suddenly interrupted for a moment, and then replaced by an irregular heptagonal shape—a pyramid to be fed.What would be the consequence of this momentary interruption in the cleansing of the pyramids?In fact, it was this split-second interruption that had dire consequences for the pyramids.An eight-person metal spider detector was carelessly waiting there, and when it saw the arrival of the plasma cluster, it immediately ran south.At this moment, the pyramid changed its formation, and the blue line of fire suddenly appeared and went out for a moment, failing to block the way of the metal spider in time.The metal spider immediately pounced on a nearby cable, inserted the plug, and unleashed its own electromagnetic memory.The urgent message it sends is: Humans have escaped the catastrophe. I have personally seen them survive the high-temperature washing and turn to the north. Upon hearing this news, the compound brain of the eight human beings instantly disintegrated. "Who is leaving?" Jaango Tembo asked immediately. "It's me," Troppel replied. "Most of the survivors are mine, the former Princeton team. Time to let them get the plane and the bomb. Call me the surgeon." Saying these words is tantamount to asking an ordinary person to pull the trigger of a pistol and shoot an opponent under the crosshairs, or make him jump off a cliff. It takes a lot of courage.One-seventh of the brain (not including Willy) of eight human beings is about to be separated, but no one disputes with Troppel. Here came the surgical robot, the very same robot that had joined them together as part of a large machine.It was covered with shining metal mechanical arms, one of which took out a needle, pierced Troppel's spinal cord, and injected a special anesthetic gas to relieve his pain during the operation.Before he fell asleep under anesthesia, he reluctantly murmured goodbye to everyone.This sleep was the first time he had fallen asleep since he woke up six months ago.Since then, he has been busy day and night. Now, only seven of the eight people remained.Willie said, "I can't do much, but I can keep you in touch with him until—" "We are very grateful to you," said the seven bodies, "don't be too hard on yourself for our affairs." The brain of the tentacled green man was thinking hard. "You're just a bunch of interesting savages," it complained, "but for that wish..." "We can understand."