Chapter 37 Chapter Thirty-Seven

The ensuing pain in his leg woke him from his deathly slumber.The convulsive pain met his heartbeat, playing a cheerful beat. Perry had no idea what was going on in professional medical terms, nor did he know anything about the scourge that lurked beneath the surface of the skin on his left leg.Little did he know that his Achilles tendon had been turned into two pieces of scrap meat, completely severed by the sharp pincers on the triangular tail. But he knew he was in pain, very much.The throbbing ached, intensified, intensified--increased.He had to eat something to suppress the feeling, so he groaned and sat up on the sofa, carefully sliding his legs off the edge of the sofa, putting his feet on the floor.Although his body was still aching, his head felt much better.But how much better would he feel when the dead thing was still writhing and growing and wandering around inside him?They were killing him, no doubt - but why?what do they want

Where did these creatures come from?Perry had never heard of a parasite that could talk to him inside his brain, possessing...intelligence.Man, this is definitely a new species.Maybe it's a government study, or maybe it's been treated like a guinea pig for a nefarious plot.His mind was filled with all kinds of thoughts.He wants to find out. "Hey!" Perry hissed softly. "Hey, you idiots." "We are here" "What do you want from me?" There was a moment's pause, and then... There was a harsh scratching sound in his head, which sounded a bit like an electrical disturbance.He struggled to concentrate—it reminded him of suddenly turning on an FM radio and the jamming of the waves, the music and the voices all mixed together, loud and indistinct.

Messy and hurried voices. Perry waited for their answer, wondering what their purpose was. "What do you mean" The voice had no inflection and was concise.Without any ups and downs in tone, a series of syllables burst out so quickly that it was hard to understand.This makes them sound comical, like the voices of aliens in some low-budget sci-fi movie—they spout corny lines like “Resistance is futile” and “You humans suck,” Or some shit like that. "You know what I mean." Perry felt a little frustrated.Not only were the creatures deeply rooted in him, they were now playing deaf and dumb again.Another pause, louder scraping, more noise.

"What do you mean" Perhaps he was being too generous when he said they were "intelligent."Maybe they're not playing dumb, maybe they're just stupid. "I said, what are you doing in my body now?" He put his hands on the armrests of the sofa, trying to stand up.There was another pause, another burst of chaotic and rapid sounds. "we do not know" Perry slumped back on the sofa, his head drooping limply, his golden hair hanging in front of his eyes.His legs began to ache again, his skull buzzed, and then the pain went away. "How come you bastards don't know?" Perry said.

silence. Messy and hurried voices. They're a bunch of shit!This is the only explanation.They invaded his body - and then grew evil mushrooms or something out of him - they must be in him for a reason, didn't they? As he waited for an answer, he tried to hear the jabber of voices.He concentrated and caught a few words, but the speed was so fast that he couldn't decipher them at all.It's like trying to see a few small rocks on the shoulder of a highway while driving at 65 mph—you probably only get a glimpse, but even if you can't identify them, you at least know what they are.They seem to be looking for the right words.Searching their limited vocabulary, perhaps, they are searching...

"we do not know" ……search…… 'We don't know why we are here' ...to search his brain. They're not just inside him, they're inside his brain, collecting data like a computer. "Is that what I am to you?" Perry screamed. "Am I just a library?" He spattered as he said it, his bulky body shaking with rage. silence. Messy and hurried voices. He was immersed in boundless depression, and he felt helpless while the triangles searched for answers. He didn't have the heart to do anything. He screamed violently: "What the hell are you doing in my head?"

"We're trying our best to find words to talk to you" With a sudden sharp pain in his ankle, he refocused on the strange leg injury.Looks like he'll have to take some more painkillers.He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and jumped toward the kitchen. With each jump, his uninjured foot thumped hard on the ground, but the movement made his badly injured leg ache from the vibrations.A new wave of pain soon hit, making his whole body tremble. Grit your teeth and stick to it!The pain was excruciating, but he knew now what was coming and he could manage it.He's prepared, he can take it, he can stop it!He is strong.He hopped a few more times to the kitchen counter, gnashing his teeth until the muscles in his jaw began to ache.

He concentrated, took a deep breath, and looked down at his muscular thighs—the jeans had been ripped into two long strips of denim that dangled from side to side, dried blood clots had flaked from the skin, golden leg hair was hanging Clumps of blood, like red dandruff.He made a mess, but what does it matter?In any case, he was already dying. He grabbed the painkiller bottle that had fallen on the microwave and poured out six pills, then grabbed a handful of tap water from the sink and gulped down the pills.He jumped back to the sofa with one foot and sat down cautiously, the pain made him grin his teeth.

It occurred to him that he still hadn't called the office.He has been absent from work for several days.He didn't even know how long he had been asleep. He was suddenly hit by a thought.Where did he get the triangle from?He may have contracted it at the office, he deduced, since apparently Triangle had mild symptoms to begin with.Perhaps the disease is airborne or, like malaria, by insect bites. Or maybe he's right about guinea pigs, and someone is working on it.If it's a study, maybe the entire apartment complex is a guinea pig.It also sounds logical.Maybe the people in the apartment are stuck in their own homes, wondering about the new parasites that have grown out of their bodies.

The creature must have come from somewhere.They landed on him, or an insect—or even something man-made—carried them over. Does that mean that these creatures are tailor-made for humans?It doesn't seem necessarily a coincidence that they fit seamlessly into his body.His body didn't resist them, that's for sure.No, it was certainly not pure chance.Either a lot of people in the building were infected with the same disease, or he was someone's single-chosen test subject. Perry is indulging in a whole host of possible speculations.He tried to push the thought away, because he didn't want to think about it, didn't want to think about his doom.

As the painkillers kicked in, the pain in his leg eased slightly.He was cold, so he hopped back into his room, pulled on a University of Michigan sweatshirt, and hopped back into the living room to sit on the couch.He wasn't sleepy or hungry - he needed a distraction from thinking about those damn triangles.He picked up the remote and turned on the TV.The program preview channel shows the time is 10:23 am. He scrolled through the TV programs, but there was nothing he wanted to watch.With the NFL pregame coming up in a few moments, he could stare intently at the TV, the only way he would forget about the pain.After the pregame show, the game officially begins, followed by hour after hour of pro football.But right now, it's total garbage time.When he was about to give up, he suddenly tuned to a channel: a Detective Columbo movie was playing. He had seen the movie, but that didn't matter.Colombo—with his beagle at his heels—sloshed through an apartment complex, wearing a grimy, wrinkled army overcoat as if it had just come from a freight train full of homeless people. Jump off the train.He tried to climb down from the balcony but got stuck in a nearby tree (the murderer used this tree to climb in and out of the bedroom).The beagle waited quietly under the tree, and Colombo fell awkwardly to the ground.As he struggled to his feet, Mandetra's rich man approached and accosted him with the lines so familiar, "Are you crazy, Mr. Colombo?" "Who's there" Perry nearly jumped out of his chair when the triangles spoke. "What?" he said, looking around the room, his eyes darting to every corner of the room. "Who's there" Perry was terrified.Is someone here to perform experiments, maybe kill him or dissect him?or take him away?Does Triangle know something he doesn't? "What are you talking about?" Perry said. "I don't see anyone. There's no one here." "New Voices New Voices New Voices" Colombo's thick nasal voice sounded on the TV, "I'm sorry to disturb you again, ma'am." The actor Peter Falk said to the Mandetre rich man, "But I don't know if I can ask you a few more questions. " It's Colombo.They are also listening to TV.This surprised him, and the smile faded from Perry's lips.Triangle doesn't know what TV is. Maybe... maybe they don't know what reality is.More precisely, they do not know the difference between fantasy and reality.They can't see, but they can hear.They can't tell the difference between real people's voices and those on TV. "That's Colombo," Perry said quietly, trying to find a way to deal with this little contingency.He wondered if it would work in his favor.The situation didn't save his life, but his subconscious told him not to give away the secrets about television.Perry decided to trust his instincts and turned off the TV. "Who is who in Colombo" "He's a policeman." Perry felt the familiar pause and the jabber of voices, and it was starting to get too loud for him, and he frowned.Triangle used his brain as a big dictionary, searching desperately for the meaning of "policeman". In a way, the search was worse than the pain, even worse than him seeing the growth under the skin, the pincers on his bones, or the growth sucking nutrients from his blood.They scoured his mind, treating him like wetware, like he was their PC. The thought overwhelmed him.If they could search his brain, through some chemical storage process that locked memories, they were pretty advanced.Maybe they don't know the definition of television, but what they see shows that these creatures have transcended current scientific theories and... "Don't cops don't cops don't cops no no don't tell him we're here no no no no" Triangle spoke suddenly, interrupting Perry's thoughts, and a wave of fear swept through his brain, tearing him apart like a sudden gust of wind on a cold November day.He felt the adrenaline rush of the threat, though he knew it wasn't his fear, it was theirs, the fear of the triangles.The Colombo police scare the shit out of them. "No, no, no, don't come and get us" The sense of fear is so strong, extremely aggressive, and almost right in front of his eyes, like a shiny black snake falling into the mouth of a ferocious bird of prey, struggling and twisting vigorously. "Relax!" The strange emotions of this foreign object spread in his mind and body, which felt very strange.Perry frowned, "Okay, he's gone, it's all right." Perry thought, if he told them that it was a TV and that there were no police in the apartment, it might be easy to drive away their fear— "Come get us" — but instinct told him to keep that trump card, he might need it later. "The police are gone, the police are gone no no no" "He's gone! Calm down now, shut up!" Perry unconsciously put his hands on his forehead and hugged his head, trying to resist the noisy commotion inside and the anxious atmosphere spreading around.This fear is contagious!Perry felt a tightness in his chest. "Fucking he's gone! Now relax! Quiet in my head for a while!" "Come get us" They sound different, not because of fear, but because they speak with a little tone now.Some were imperceptible, but he heard them draw a certain word, which sounded familiar. "He's coming to get us" He could feel their fear.Now they didn't speak in the emotionless monotone he'd first heard—they spoke faster, or they were out of control. "Don't tell him we're here" "I won't tell him, okay?" Perry lowered his voice, trying to relax himself, hoping it would relax them at the same time. "It's okay, he's gone, you just need to relax." The claustrophobic feeling subsided instantly, as if someone had suddenly turned on the light in the dark room he was in. "Thank you thank you thank you" "Why on earth do the police scare you so much?" "Come and get us" Why are they so afraid of the police?It doesn't make sense at all.Perry thinks this could mean he's not alone, that someone is looking for the triangles and wants to destroy them.But why didn't he hear the wind at all?Of course, the police cannot keep such a huge secret in front of the media.But how did Triangle immediately perceive the threat from the police?They have stayed in his apartment since their birth—they have no connection to the outside world.Do they have preprogrammed memories of potential threats? They don't immediately realize what the word "cop" or "cop" means - they have to search really, really hard, and then get scared the shit out of what the word means.But they found something in Perry's unabridged brain lexicon, something they already knew.At least, they think they know. "What does he mean by coming for you? Does anyone know you're here?" Perry felt the triangle in his head, in his memory, searching for the right words.The longer they searched, the more he got used to it, the way eyes get used to a faint light in the dark. "Humans are looking for us to kill us" ah?Perry was stuck with the word.They use the word "ah", and they use it together with the word "kill".Why are they talking in such an odd way all of a sudden?The monotonous tone disappeared, and the voice began to fluctuate.Their speech seems to be more slow and more tactful, and it is almost possible to feel that the "five tiger generals" are starting to speak in a drawling tone. But it's not their new way of speaking that matters, it's their crazy fear of the police.Is this an instinctive reaction?They don't even know how they got into his body, but why are they so afraid of the police?Or were they lying to him?What good do they gain if everything is told as it is?Anyway, he sensed their fear of the police.Maybe... maybe it wasn't the police they were afraid of, but the uniforms they wore. It occurred to Perry that whenever he thought of the police, images of the Michigan State Mounted Police came to mind.Those guys are always tall and mighty, dressed in sharp uniforms, dignified and polite, and have a very conspicuous gun pinned to their bodies. This must be what the triangle is reading, because it's the image he immediately thinks of when he hears the word "police."And his mental image of the Mounted Police—with their sharp uniforms, their dignified expressions, and their pistols—isn't really a cop, but a... a... Soldier. Are triangles afraid of soldiers?Two possibilities flashed through Perry's mind.Either the triangles know what a soldier is through experience or instinct, or they hide from Perry a broader knowledge of the world around them.In any case, some of the things they knew, Perry didn't know. A glimmer of hope suddenly rose in his chest.Triangles are afraid of soldiers, does that mean some people know about these triangles?If so, Perry isn't alone in suffering from the horrific creature. "Why do you think they're going to get you?" silence. Messy and hurried voices. "They want to kill us kill kill kill" "How do you know? You don't even know where you are from, so how can you know they are going to kill you?" A longer silence. "talk to friends" friend?Are there other triangles?Anyone else infected with this damn thing?Maybe he wasn't the only one—maybe he was far from alone. "What did your friends say?" The pause was brief. "Feed us hungry" "Are your friends hungry too?" "Hungry, let's go, hello, hello" "Oh, are you hungry?" "Hey hey hey hey" "Don't even think about eating!" Perry went on. "Tell me about your friends. Where are they?" "feed now" The order sounded like a cannonball exploded in his head instantly.He closed his eyes tightly and gritted his teeth in pain. "feed now" There was a small moan in Perry's throat, he couldn't think now, couldn't help himself to do what he needed to do. "Hey now now now now now now now now" "Shut up!" Perry yelled with all his might, full of pain and anger, "Let's eat! We'll eat now! Don't scream in my head!" "Okay now feed us okay now feed us now now" The arrow has left the string, and his brain has returned to normal.A tear slid down his cheek.They shouted so loudly that he could not move or utter a word. "now now now" Perry heard the shouting grow louder in his head, jumped to his feet in panic, and limped into the kitchen without thinking.His body was terrified of that pain, and the triangle took over him completely. He was jumping around like a soldier on orders, thinking nothing of it, just burying himself in the instructions of his superiors, like a diehard Nazi carrying out the final plan.Yes, Commander, I will kill all the Jews, Gypsies and Czechs, I will have no objection, because I will carry out the order.He becomes a robot, a remote-controlled servant.It humiliated him and robbed him of his dignity as a man.Men should be able to control their own destiny, instead of being trampled under the iron hoof of others like a slave. He tried to salvage some of his eroded dignity, trying to convince himself that he was hungry and had to eat anyway—and not because the Triangle ordered him to.But this is completely self-deceiving nonsense.Now, he feels like a puppet on a string, and every time the "five tiger generals" pull one of the nerves, he will dance rhythmically.Worse than a puppet - he felt like he was 10 again, jumping up in terror every time his father spoke. All that was left was the tomato bolognese.He took it out of the refrigerator and a box of instant rice from the cabinet.He is almost out of food and needs to go shopping right away.What an irony!A dying man infected with a strange parasite pushes a shopping cart at Krogers and carefully selects his last meal, then cooks it for himself.What a democratic death row prison this is! When he put the box of instant rice back in the cabinet, he suddenly had a cooking inspiration, so he grabbed the half bag of rice.There are no noodles, but the deliciousness of the tomato bolognese is too good to pass up.He took out a measuring cup from the cabinet, filled the pot with water and put it on the fire. "now now now" The order circled in his head, threatening. "Be patient. Dinner will be ready in about 20 minutes." "now now now" "Not yet," Perry explained, pleading in his tone.He randomly found a pot, poured the tomato meat sauce into it, and started to stew. "I said, you just need to wait a few more minutes." A muffled voice stabbed his brain. "What a 1 minute son of a bitch" "1 minute is 60 seconds." This is obviously difficult to explain.It's strange that these triangles have no concept of time. "Do you know how long a second is? What is time?" "I don't know the seconds, I know the time" This time they answered quickly, with only a few indistinct murmurs.They knew what time was, but he had to explain to them how long a second was.He stared at the clocks on the stove—it would be easier to explain if they were visible. "You can't..." He felt a chill go down his spine for a moment, and he froze.Suddenly he didn't know if he still wanted to know the answer, "You can't... see... can you? See through my eyes?" He didn't really think about what these little bastards could do.They could "read" his thoughts word for word, so could they also glean and read some visual responses from the brain?Take a visual snippet from it? "No we can't see" This answer made him heave a sigh of relief, but it was only so short, and the unfinished answer made him almost hold his breath. "Not yet" Not yet. They were still growing, and maybe they were trying to invade his mind, driving Perry out of consciousness one step at a time.Perhaps they were slowly killing his brain, like a long, tough weed in the garden, robbing the roses of all its nourishment by all means.Roses may be delicate, dazzling, and soft, but weeds...weeds are the ultimate winners, they grow in poor soil, survive in rock crevices, fight bad weather, dare to contend with harsh environments, lack of sunlight The nurturing is still growing luxuriantly. Perry suddenly realized what was happening—the triangle was growing in his body, occupying his body and his mind step by step, leaving only a shell in the end, but people in the outside world knew nothing about the changes in his body known.Aliens invading the human body, this is a classic Hollywood plot.isn't it?That's it, since you have the ability to slowly replace the human race, why bother to send a large number of combat troops to raze the earth to the ground?right!More economical and efficient.clever!Well done!There is no need to litter the field with corpses, and the level of sophistication is even better than the neutron bomb known as the "God of War".That infamous neutron bomb would just kill everyone and leave buildings standing tall. Before long they eat away at his eyes.and then?his nose?hell!Maybe they smell the rice cooking on the stove by now.Or the next target is his mouth - they might grab his voice to talk to him.what's next?his body?His actions?his thoughts?Just how efficient are these little guys? How long will they remain in this small form?Perhaps they are not scattered, and each individual has a different mission.Each individual is a piece of the whole puzzle, and they are planning to go to a bar called "Perry's Shack" to meet up, to go on a date with the single triangles, and to complete the grand jigsaw plan. Another voice flooded into his mind, interrupting his pessimistic and desperate thoughts. "How long is 1 second and how long is 1 minute" Perry tried desperately to avoid the screams in his head, the endless demands of the triangle grinding away at his brain. "Okay, let's figure this out," Perry said quickly, not wanting to cause any commotion. "Look, 1 minute is 60 seconds, and a second is a very short period of time." The vague noise seemed to have turned into a high-pitched buzzing sound at this moment--as he talked, they kept searching the database to find Figure out the meaning of every word he says. "And a second, like, so long... Now, I'll count to five seconds. Notice how long each one counts, and that's one second. One...two...three...four...five." Childhood A memory flashed in front of his eyes, and he remembered the jazz soundtrack number song in the TV series "Electronics Inc" (one-two-three-four, five, six-seven-eight-nine-ten, Eleven twelve twenty two——). "That's five seconds, see?" The search grew louder, but then Perry heard an extremely short, low hum, and the triangle answered very quickly this time. "Seconds are short 1 minute is 60 seconds 1 hour is 60 minutes correct" There was no cadence in the voice of "Five Tiger Generals".He could just make out that the word "correct" at the end was a question, because the sentence echoing in his head didn't sound like it had any rhythm.Whatever the reason for "Train Derailed," they reverted to emotionless monophony. "Correct," Perry replied.He never mentioned the concept of "hours", but they still separated the concept from his mind based on the connection between minutes and seconds.They're getting better at searching the brain—he doesn't know how long his thoughts can stay in them without getting corrupted. Very suddenly, an idea popped up - that people are complex machines.The feeling of the truth being revealed made him tremble all over.They are indistinguishable from computers, the brain is just a control center and storage device.When you need to remember something, the brain sends signals to recall previously stored data, just like opening a file with a program.As soon as the command is issued, a certain area of ​​the computer starts to "There are 24 hours in a day" Find some coded data that matches this command, find it, and send the information to the central processing unit for identification, and finally display it on the screen.The brain works in exactly the same way.Memories are stored in the brain and then chemically processed in the cerebrum or cerebellum or other areas of the cerebral cortex.Through specific channels, people can easily read stored memories, just like reading information on a computer hard drive or reading information in books.Like hard disks and books, the brain is nothing more than a medium for storing simple pieces of information, and these pieces of information can be "There are 7 days in a week" Composition of some more complex and larger amount of information.But like the way physical bodies are made up (protons and electrons make up atoms, atoms make up elements, and elements make up compounds), anything can be broken down into ever smaller parts. It seemed that the triangles were trying to read smaller and smaller constituents... They even tried to reach out to the memories that Perry had been storing in his brain since he was still in the womb.Triangle "1 month has 4 weeks" Sophisticated abilities are scary!And they learn fast, and the time they spend searching shrinks at an astonishing rate.They are not only learning to retrieve a certain memory fragment of him, familiar with a certain word, but also learning to connect all the things they have learned.For the time being, they can only be learned using his long-term memory: the concept of time, vocabulary, the image a word forms. these creatures "There are 12 months in a year" able to read his brain information like a floppy disk file, but they have no concept of basic things like "1 year has 10 years" Time, or television technology, or sound can be synthesized, not real. In the mystery of Triangle's extraordinary ability, it seems that something is missing, or some originally suitable abilities are slightly misplaced.But he still didn't know what the triangles were, where they came from, and how long it was before they fully took over his body. But maybe he can stop them.Maybe...if he got help. The imaginary soldiers must be somewhere, they know, they know Triangle exists, they want to kill Triangle.Fuck the "Five Tigers", pack up and get out!But the key question, dude Perry, the $20,000 prize is -- who are these "soldiers"? This is not Hollywood.There is no man in black with a handsome smile and quick-witted words to save you from danger.No agent from The X-Files to help you break down doors and find your way out.There's no superhero from another planet with a special pistol blasting the hell out of him.He didn't know who to turn to or where to go, but he was convinced that someone must be waiting for his call for help. "There are 100 years in a century" Perry froze suddenly again.If they could search his brain, how soon would they be able to read the thoughts that were going on in his head?How would they react once they read his current thoughts, once they knew he wanted to contact those soldiers?They would scream in his brain, make his brains overflow, spray like snot out of his ears and nose. Maybe they are listening now. He couldn't think about it any more.But how could he ask for help if he stopped thinking about it?He couldn't even conceive of killing the triangles—they'd instantly wreak havoc inside and kill him, and they'd cook his brains like a microwaved potato.But he can't stop thinking about it, can't he?If he doesn't think about it, if there is no idea of ​​trying to live in his mind, then he is really dead. He felt the pressure build up inside him like smoke from a collapsing brick wall in a bombed-out building. The beeping of the stove seemed to loudly announce that the rice was done.In an instant, his brain seemed to grab a life-saving straw, and he focused all his thoughts on this exciting dinner, as if a drowning person finally hugged a lifebuoy. Perry didn't realize that this was just a brief escape from reality, and he didn't realize that his mind was crumbling under the weight, the cracks were widening.He couldn't bear the unbelievable situation in front of him, and the unbearable changes in his body.The flood is slowly rising.Inevitable, restless, irresistible - the horizon will soon be overwhelmed by waves.