Chapter 42 Section 40

On this day, Wilder sat on his plastic tricycle, rode it around a row of houses, turned right into a cul-de-sac, and pedaled creakingly toward the end of the cul-de-sac.He first pushed the tricycle around the guardrail, and then rode along the sidewalk.The sidewalk meanders through an overgrown clearing to a series of twenty concrete steps.The plastic wheels rumbled and squeaked.Here, our story of "reorganization" has to be narrated by two terrified, elderly women.They were looking down from the back porch on the second floor of a tall house in the woods.He pushed the tricycle down the steps, holding the tricycle tightly with one hand, but let it bump and bump all the way without caring, as if it was just a weird little guy, and there was no need to cherish it.He got in the car again and rode across the street, across the sidewalk, and out onto the sloping grass next to the highway.At this moment, the old women began to shout.Hey, hey, they said.At first they were a little tentative, not yet ready to accept the danger involved in what was happening before them.The boy rode the bike downhill diagonally, cleverly reduced the downhill angle, and then stopped at the bottom of the slope, aiming his tricycle at the nearest point on the opposite side.Hey boy, don't do this.They waved their arms, emotionally looking for some strong passerby to appear here and now.At the same time, Wilder ignored their cries, or couldn't hear them at all amidst the whine of trucks and passenger cars passing by, and he held his strength in a mysterious way. Start stepping on the car to cross the road.The two old women just stared, dumbfounded, each with an arm dangling in the air, begging for a reversal of the scene and the little boy stomping on his faded blue and yellow toy like a morning TV cartoon The car returned to its original place.Motorists did not fully understand what was going on.They look out from their belted seats and know that the sight has nothing to do with the highway rampage in their consciousness, not part of the broad ribbon of modern traffic.Speed ​​makes sense.This is true in symbols, in patterns, in moments of life.What does this little rolling blob mean?Has one of the world's forces gone awry?They turned the steering wheel, downshifted, and honked the horn, which sounded through the long afternoon like the whine of a wild animal.The kid didn't even look at them, and just pedaled the car toward a long strip of light green grass in the middle of the road.He pumped himself out triumphantly, his arms looking as fast as his legs, and his round head bobbing back and forth like a fool.If he wants to go to the raised central lawn, he must first slow down, stand on the ground with both feet and put the front wheel on it, and follow the plan that he has planned in advance. His movements are extremely skillful; many cars whizzing by beside him, the sound of horns can be heard endlessly, Drivers' eyes were on the rearview mirror.He pushed the small tricycle across the grass.The two old women watched him get back on his bike steadily.Stay, they shouted.don't go away.no no.They speak like foreigners, with only a few simple words left.Cars kept coming and galloping into the straight section—an endless stream of speeding traffic.He started traversing the last three lanes, rolling off the middle grass of the highway like a bouncing ball, one front wheel, two rear wheels.Then, shaking his head, he rushed to the opposite side of the road.Cars dodged, veered, veered over curbs, and petrified people stuck their heads out of their windows.The boy pedaling furiously on the little tricycle couldn't possibly have known how slowly he was moving, looking down from the perspective of the old women in the upstairs verandah.The old women were silent now; they were suddenly weary from being excluded from events.How slowly he advances!How wrong he was to think he was going briskly along!All this wears them down.Car horns sounded continuously, and the sound waves converged and subsided in the air, and then sounded and shouted from behind the disappearing car.He finally reached the opposite side of the road and rode parallel to the traffic for a short while before appearing to lose his balance and fall off the tricycle, doing several somersaults and rolling off the embankment.When he reappeared a moment later, he was sitting in a ditch, which was a stretch of creek along the road.First he was taken aback, and then he decided to cry aloud.He cried for a while, his body was covered in mud and water, and the small tricycle was left by the stream.The old women shouted again, and each raised an arm and waved away the accident.The boy fell into the water!they said.behold!help!People are going to drown!He sat down in the creek, wailing, hearing them now for the first time, and looked over the embankment of mounds and up to the bushes beyond the highway.This frightened them even more.They shouted and waved their arms, and just as they were about to enter the early stage of uncontrollable terror, suddenly a passing "motorcyclist" - as these people are usually called - braked vigilantly, got out of the car, slid down the embankment, and threw the boy again. Pulled out of the dark shallow ditch, held high so that the screaming old women could see him.

We often go to the overpass.Babette, Wilder, and I, we packed a thermos full of iced tea, parked the car, and headed off to watch the sunset.Dark clouds are out of the way.Dark clouds heighten the drama, they obscure the light and also give it shape.Thick cloud cover had no effect.The light pierced through the clouds, only to see searchlights and arcs in the smoke.Overcast skies enhance the atmosphere.We could hardly find anything to say to each other.More cars arrive, parked in a line that stretches into the residential area.People came up the slope of the bridge to the overpass with fruit, nuts and refreshing drinks in their hands - mostly middle-aged and elderly people, some with net beach chairs, and put them Standing on the sidewalk; but there are also young couples standing arm in arm on the railing and gazing westward.The sky has content and emotion, and presents a school of vitality that speaks with high emotion.Multicolored lights rise high, sometimes as if to disperse and revert to their constituent parts.There are turret-shaped clouds in the sky, small clusters of rain and snow, and gently falling electron streams.It's hard to see how we should feel about this.Some are petrified by such a sunset, others are determined to get excited, but most of us feel it somehow and are ready to take either attitude.Rain never gets in the way.The rain presents various and wonderfully changing colors.More and more cars arrived, and people staggered up the slope of the bridge.It is hard to describe the spirit that permeated these warm evenings.There was an anticipation in the air, but it wasn't the midsummer hustle and bustle, a sand race that the casually dressed masses expected - there was consistent precedent, a history guaranteed to resonate.This anticipation is withdrawn, restless, almost regressive and shy, tending towards silence.What else do we feel?Of course there was awe, utter awe, beyond any kind of awe that had come before.But we don't know whether we're looking with wonder or horror; we don't know what we're looking at, or what it says; Will gradually adapt, our doubts will finally be dispelled in it, or it is just some kind of short-lived mysterious atmosphere.The folding chairs were creakingly opened and erected, and the old people sat down.What else can I tell?Even if the setting sun does not go, we will linger and forget to return.The sky is shrouded in magic, powerful and full of wonderful stories.Occasionally, a car actually drives across the overpass, proceeding slowly and respectfully.People kept coming up the bridge, some of them had to sit in wheelchairs because of their disabilities, and the people who took care of them bent down and pushed the wheelchairs up the slope.I didn't know how many old, sick, and sick people were in the city until those warm nights drew so many people to the overpass.Cars coming from the west, from the high light, they sped past us; we looked at them as if looking for a sign, as if their polished Gloss or thin dust that reveals the secret.No one turned on the radio or spoke loudly.Something golden fell from the sky, and a softness spilled into the air.Someone is walking a dog; a child is riding a bicycle; a man is holding a long-lens camera, waiting for the perfect moment to snap.Once darkness fell and insects hissed in the hot air, we slowly began to disperse, timidly and politely, car after car, reverting to our formerly separated, guarded selves.

Men in Milex suits remained in the immediate area, wearing yellow face masks, aiming their infrared detection devices at the ground and sky, collecting dire data. Dr. Chakravarty wanted to talk to me, but I made up my mind to avoid him.He was eager to know how my death was going—perhaps it was an interesting case.He wanted to send me back into the imager, where there were charged particles crashing and strong winds blowing.But I was afraid of the imager, its magnetic field, its computerized nuclear pulses, and what it knew about me. I don't answer the phone. Supermarket shelves have been rearranged.This happened on a certain day without prior notice.Restlessness and panic permeated the aisles, with dismay and consternation visible on the faces of elderly patrons.They walked in a trance, sometimes stopped and sometimes moved forward; a small group of well-dressed people dazed in the aisle, trying to figure out the pattern of the shelves, figure out the logic, and try to recall where they saw cheese.They see little reason to rearrange the shelves, and they don't see any point in it.Scrubbing sponges are now kept with hand soap, and condiments are scattered here and there.The older men and women, the more particular about dress and grooming.The men wore Sansabelt slacks and bright knit shirts.The women's faces were powdered, they looked fussy and bewildered, as if they were preparing for something worrying to happen.They strayed down the aisle, looked along the shelves, and sometimes stopped suddenly, only to be hit by other shopping carts.Only ordinary food is still in the old place, and the name of the product is simply marked on the white box.Men check shopping lists, women don't.Now, there is a sense of wandering, aimlessness and trance, and good-natured people are driven to the limit.They read the small print on the box carefully, lest something inside might trick them.Men look at the stamped date, women look at the ingredients of the food.Many people can't read the words clearly.Ink smears, printed content blurred.They were already in the midst of visibly and relentlessly aging, and now amidst the rearranging of the shelves and the loud noise around them, they struggled to find their way through the chaos.But what they saw, or what they thought they saw, was in the end irrelevant.The payment terminals are equipped with holographic scanners that decipher the binary codes of each shipment without error.This is the language of waves and radiation, or the way the dead speak to the living.This is where we, regardless of age, wait to pay together, our shopping carts filled with brightly colored goods.The slow movement of the line satisfies us, giving us time to peek at the tabloids on the racks.Everything we need, if not food or love, is here in the tabloids on the shelves.Supernatural and alien stories.Miracle vitamins, cancer cures, weight loss remedies.Superstition and worship of famous people and the dead.