Chapter 13 Chapter Thirteen Establishment of Large Plant Company

The next morning, all the newspapers published reports of the space traveler's arrival in the lunar city of Squeeze.The most prominent place on the front page is a photo of Quan Shi in a spacesuit.There are photos of Quan Shi when he was getting out of the car, photos when he was already out of the car, and photos after he entered the hotel. What aroused the most interest was the photo of Quan Wuzhi holding the billboard of the "Dawn" candy factory and promoting the gingerbread produced by the factory to the moon residents.Confectioners sold more gingerbread that day than they had sold in an entire month.The stores sold out the oldest stock, too, because no one wanted to eat anything but gingerbread.The confectionery owner multiplied gingerbread production several times and made a fortune.

The newspaper also published a photo of the doctor's syringe, which he had taken during his physical examination for Omniscient.Printed below the photo is not only the syringe doctor's name, but also his address.As a result, all patients who were still strong enough to walk on their own ran to him, and those who could not go out called him to see him.Everyone only wants to see a syringe doctor.A line as long as the entire Cholera Street was lined up next to his house.Syringe doctors refused to see anyone, but immediately raised the cost of consultations.The banknotes flowed toward him like a river.

Such is the temper of the moon dwellers!No man in the moon would buy candy, gingerbread, bread, sausage, or ice cream from a factory that didn't advertise it in a newspaper; , the moon dwarf will not go to him for medical treatment.The Lunarians always only buy what is described in the newspapers, and if they see a cleverly worded ad on a wall somewhere, they may buy something they don't even need. These days, Crush City is buzzing like a bombed-out hive.Every resident grabs the newspaper as soon as he wakes up in the morning, so that he can get the latest news about the ignorance as early as possible.Many people came to the "Emerald" Hotel and walked up and down there all day, hoping to catch even a glimpse of the little dwarf from the depths of the universe out of the corner of their eyes.People from other cities would only stay at the "Emerald" hotel, because here they might run into the cosmonaut and get a close look at him.Mr. Catch's income doubled immediately, so he immediately raised the room rate, but there was still an endless stream of people coming to stay.

Little Wink and Big Liar also benefited from it: they threatened Mr. Snatcher that they were going to move to another hotel with Don't Know, after which Mr. Snatcher allowed them to stay in the hotel completely free of charge. Many lunar people sit in front of their TVs from morning to night, watching all the programs and performances, afraid to miss the programs about ignorance.To their surprise, there has been no such program.This is because Little Blink and the big liar disagreed with letting people watch for nothing, and although the TV station boss did not refuse to spend money, the money they paid was pitifully small, and Little Blink got angry.He said that the boss of the TV station obviously regarded them as idiots. In fact, they are completely sane. With such a small amount of money, not only will they not agree to let people see visitors from the universe on TV, even a poodle will not agree. show.

Later, furious TV viewers started calling the station owners, threatening to stop paying the TV royalties.The threat worked, and the boss had to agree to the conditions proposed by Little Blink. Because of the smooth conclusion of the negotiations, a program called the Cosmic Conference was televised.Representatives of well-known newspapers and magazines, as well as many scientists, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, astronomers, and lunar scientists participated in the meeting.They were all assembled in one hall of the TV station, and in front of them was a table on a raised platform, behind which sat Omniscient, Little Blink, Kid Goat, and Great Liar.

At the beginning of the meeting, Omniscience told the attendees everything he knew about rockets for space travel, how the rocket was constructed and how it was operated, and then scientists and journalists asked him questions. The reporter is mainly interested in what they ate, drank, dreamed, and whether they liked to squeeze the residents of the city.The scientists' questions were of a slightly different nature, and they were mainly about: what did the unknown see during space travel, what was observed on the surface of the moon, and what the planet Earth looks like. As you know, lunar astronomers call our planet Big Earth to distinguish them from their own, called Little Earth.Of great interest to lunar astronomers is the question of whether there is a crust around the big Earth.I don't know that there is no hard shell around our earth, that is to say, the inhabitants of the earth live in the open universe.Hearing this, lunar astronomers were extremely surprised.

The Cosmic Conference ended rather late, and on the second day a show was organized in which the ignorant talked to two scientists, an astronomer named Alpha and a lunar physicist named McMecca.Alpha and McMecca posed various questions to the Omniscient. They asked what the lunar sky looked like from the Earth; what individual stars, constellations and planets could be seen in the lunar sky; What is it like. After listening to the ignorant answers, Alpha and McMecca made a formal statement to the television audience that the information provided by ignorance would be of great benefit to lunar astronomy and science in general.

Knowing nothing, he also asked Alpha and McMecca, since lunar scientists have never seen the big earth and other planets, have never seen the sun and stars, how do they know that these exist. Alpha replied that although they had seen neither the sun nor the great earth, they could guess their existence by observing various phenomena.The ebb and flow of tides in the oceans of the little Earth is indisputable proof of the existence of some massive and thick body at some distance outside the surface of the Moon.The sea water is attracted by the sun and the big earth, and according to the degree of attraction, the size of these objects can be calculated, and even their distance to the moon.In addition, there are extremely sensitive instruments capable of detecting the gravitational pull of such distant planets as Mercury, Venus, Mars, and even Saturn, making it possible to determine with considerable accuracy their position in the universe.Of course, that's not all.Astronomers have radio telescopes, gravitational telescopes and neutrino receivers that are not interfered by the moon's shell and can receive signals not only from the sun and planets, but also from distant stars, allowing lunar astronomers to Draw a fairly detailed and accurate map of the sky.

There is another question that interests Omniscience.This is why there is an alternation of day and night on the moon, or rather on the small earth.The moon's crust blocks the sun's rays, if that's the case.Then there should always be darkness on the little Earth.Lunar scientist McMega explained to Omniscience that the sun emits a large amount of invisible light in addition to visible light, and they have strong penetrating power.This invisible light penetrates the thick moon's crust and makes its inner surface glow, that is, make the inner layer of the crust emit light and heat that create life.Of course, this luminous phenomenon can only be seen on the side of the moon facing the sun.Therefore, only half of the sphere on the small Earth is bright.At the same time the other half of the sphere is black, in short, night.The alternation of day and night is because the little earth is not standing still in the outer shell, but is constantly rotating.

"Of course, the lunar inhabitants are very lucky, because the material of the lunar crust has the ability to glow under the action of sunlight. Otherwise, the small Earth will always be shrouded in darkness, and it would be inconceivable that dwarfs could exist on it," McMaison said. Finally, I don't know why lunar astronomers and lunar geologists haven't created an aircraft that can reach the outer shell of the moon.McMega said it would cost a lot of money to build such a vehicle, and lunar scientists don't have the money.Only the rich are rich, and no rich man is willing to spend money on things that do not make a lot of money.

"The rich men on the moon are not interested in the stars," Alpha said. "Rich people are like pigs. They don't like to look up. All they are interested in are banknotes!" "Yes, yes!" continued McMega. "The rich say: 'The stars are not money, you can't put them in your pockets, and you can't cook with them.' You see, how ignorant! For them, only what they can eat and what they can hide in their pockets is important." Valuable. Come on, let's not talk about them!" The entire talk, as mentioned earlier, was broadcast on television.Television viewers were very satisfied because they not only saw the visitor from the universe, but also learned a lot of things that were of interest to them. In addition to their television contracts, Blink and Liar also signed contracts with film studios to film the arrival of the astronauts.They put Omniscient in a spacesuit again, lifted him into the air in a small helicopter, and dropped him down.Cinematographers captured footage of him descending by parachute.Then patted Little Blink and Big Liar to run to Quan Zhi who had descended, helped him stand up, put him in a car, and took him to the hotel.Nobody knows how to get to the hotel, how the residents of Crunch City welcome him, how the syringe doctor examines him—these scenes have all been shot before, so all the cinematographer needs to shoot is that Nobody knows how to take off the spacesuit and how to use his own The original face, that is, the shot that appeared in front of the lunar audience in ordinary clothes. As a result of all these shots, a whole movie ended up being shown in many theaters and on television. In those days the newspapers began to carry short articles about the large vegetables, fruits, berries, and fruits of all kinds that grew on the great earth.Most of these essays are accompanied by attractive illustrations; sometimes there are pictures of dwarfs pulling huge turnips, beets, or carrots out of the field; Scary melons, pumpkins, watermelons, each as big as a two-story building.There is an illustration of the fruit being harvested, every apricot, peach, plum, and fig barely crammed into a truck.Little Blink and Big Liar surprise readers with short essays and illustrations like this.Immediately afterwards, they published a report saying that the interstellar spacecraft left on the surface of the moon contained seeds of large plants, and if it was possible to get the seeds from there, they could be put to good use.At this time there was a news that a joint-stock company had been established to build aircraft to fly to the outer shell of the moon to transport large plant seeds to the small earth.The address of the office where the shares could be bought was printed at the end of the message: "Office 373, 3 Fielding Street." It should be said that why Fielding Street is called this name is no longer clear.Some of the residents of Squeeze City believed that a little man named Fielding once lived in this street, and that the street was named after him.Others explained the origin of the name of the street, that the street used to be inhabited only by rich little men, who had a lot of fieldings, a lot of money in short.Of course, by the time Omnik came to the moon, the rich men had left this street, for before then they had all moved to the best parts of the city, where there was more light and fresh air.Tall buildings had been erected on Fielding Street, rooms in which were let to various business offices.The owners of these offices were so-called industrial runts, whose whole business was to squeeze Fielding out of the pockets of other runts.Since all the offices were doing was to extract Fielding's business, the name of the street was apt. The office rented by Little Blink and Big Liar is located on the third floor of an eighteen-story building with two rooms.In the first room, there is a large writing desk with a surface polished as smooth as a mirror, several leather upholstered chairs, and a similar leather sofa. Above the sofa is hung a picture in a luxurious gold-plated mirror frame, depicting some inexplicable things. Squiggly lines.In one corner of the room stood a cabinet with a transparent glass door, in which the spacesuits of the unknown were stored.Everyone who comes to the office can walk to the cabinet without hindrance and appreciate this space suit that has completed an unprecedented space travel. The second room is slightly smaller than the first.There were five large safes and one large safe for banknotes.The safes contained the company's shares—five million Fieldings in total, that is to say, one million shares in each safe. Immediately after all the stocks were brought from the printing house and put in the safe, Little Blink and Big Liar held the company's first meeting.At this meeting, Little Blink proposed to sell 2 million shares, and everyone would share the rest.In this way, the three of them will each get exactly one million shares.After the large plant seeds arrive, they will divide the seeds into five equal parts.Two were given to the little guys who bought the stock, and the other three were divided equally between No Knows, Little Blink, and Big Liar. "Why do we need seeds?" asked Omniscient. "Let's sell it," said Little Blink. "We should make some money doing this. The money is no hindrance to you." I don't know, but if he can get seeds for the moon runt, and rescue the buns left on the surface of the moon, he will be completely satisfied. "Well, since you don't want money, we will," said the great liar. So they decided, and the division of labor followed.By unanimous agreement, Quan Zhi was appointed as the accountant, Xiao Bingba as the treasurer, and Big Liar as the manager.The role of the accountant is to sit in the office and sell stocks, the job of the treasurer is to keep the money from the sale of stocks, and the job of the manager is to call meetings to solve urgent problems. After all these problems were solved, he thought of the little goat. He said that it would be better to assign a job to the little goat.Little Blink said that the little goat could be appointed as the gatekeeper.But the great liar objected to this opinion, saying that it is not necessary to have a gatekeeper in the office, and that it is better to appoint a kid as a messenger.Little Blink disagreed, saying that the messenger had nothing to do in the office, because there was nowhere to send him a letter, while the porter was necessary for the sake of prestige, that is, for the sake of appearing more impressive: to make people feel at once It was seen that this office was very reliable, and it was not going to deceive anyone.The big liar said that for the sake of prestige, the messenger is also necessary, and besides, someone may call the office and ask for the stock to be delivered to the house. Even if no one calls, the kid can be sent to fetch the newspaper and buy lemons Soda or something. The debate intensified.The big liar beat his fist on the table and shouted that he was the manager and everyone should take his opinion into account; while the little wink shouted that he was the treasurer and he didn't want to waste money on a position that he didn't need. Opinion, he quit the joint-stock company, withdrew his shares.Quan Zhi tried to calm them down, but to no avail.The joint-stock company was threatened with disintegration.If it weren't for the little goat to mediate, I really don't know what would have happened. "Brothers," said he, "don't quarrel about me! Let's do it this way: I'll be both messenger and porter." In this way, the argument stopped.Everyone quickly reached an agreement, and the first meeting of the joint stock company ended here.