Chapter 20 Chapter nine

The black fabric of the black tent was above him, but he still couldn't see the sky through it, the darker daytime blue, bright but dark at the same time, because he could see beyond the calm blue that it was darker than inside the tent. The blackness of the body, the scattered sun burning in the dark night, like little fireflies in the cold, dark night desert. Dark masses of stars reached out to him, and picked him up in huge fingers like delicate ripe fruit.In that immensity that surrounds him, he feels insanely sane, and realizes for a moment—any moment, with the most trivial effort—that he may understand everything, but doesn't want to.He felt as if there were some amazing galactic vibrating machinery, always hidden beneath the surface of the galaxy, somehow connected to him, transmitting energy to him.

He sat in the tent with his legs crossed and his eyes closed.He used to sit like this for days on end.He was wearing a loose robe, just like a normal person, and the uniform was neatly folded one meter behind him.His hair was short; stubble sprouted from his face, and his skin glistened with sweat.He sometimes feels like he's out of his body, looking back at his own body, sitting on a cushion under the black fabric roof.His face was darker because the black hair pierced the skin, but also brighter because the sweat glistened in the light from the oil lamps and the smoke holes in the roof.The symbiotic relationship of confrontation, where competition creates confrontation, amuses him; he'll reunite with his body, or travel to farther frontiers, feeling solid(?) at the core of things.

The tent was very dark, filled with a thick, heavy atmosphere, which immediately appeared thick and fragrant, full of perfume and incense smoke.Everything felt sweet, rich, and highly decorated; the tapestries were thick and woven of multicolored, precious metal threads, the rugs were stacked like ears of golden rice, and the plump, scented cushions were tiredly thick. The mantle forms a striking landscape under the long black roof.Small censers smoking languidly; little night-warmers stood, unlit, and dream-leaf holders and crystal goblets, bejeweled boxes and fastened books, spilled over the undulating fabric terrain like The shimmering temples of the plain.

lie.The tent was empty, and he sat on a sack stuffed with straw. The girl watched him move.It's a hypnotic movement, barely noticeable at first, but once you see it and your eyes get used to it, it's very noticeable and quite interesting.He moved his waist, neither fast nor slow, and drew horizontal circles on his head.That reminded the girl beside that sometimes the smoke swirled as it rose near the hole in the tent roof.The man's eyes seemed to counteract this tiny, never-ending movement, moving little behind brown-pink eyelids. The tent was just big enough for the girl to stand up.The one is at a crossroads in the desert, two roads cross the sand like the sea.It might have been a town long ago, or even a city, but the nearest water source would be a three-day ride.The tent has been here for four days, maybe two or three more days, it all depends on how long the man stays in the dreamleaf sleep.She took the jug from a small saucer and poured a glass of water.She walked up to the man, put the cup against his mouth, grabbed his cheek with one hand, and carefully poured the water into it.

The man drank the water and was still moving.He drank half of the water in the glass and turned his head away.She took a piece of clothing and patted his face lightly, wiping away a little sweat. The Chosen One, he told himself.The Chosen One, the Chosen One, the Chosen One.A long journey into a strange land.He led the Chosen through the scorched dust and mad hordes of the rugged lands, to the green meadows and the gleaming pinnacles of the Perfume Palace on the cliffs.Now he's getting a small paycheck. Nestled between trade routes, the outside of the tent rolled inward for the season, and inside sat a man, a soldier, through countless battles, scarred, branded, broken bones, healed, broken bones and then Healed again, and returned to normal after being repaired...and the first time he had no worries, let go of his guard, and devoted himself to wild, high-impact drugs, while his body was cared for and protected by a young girl.

The girl whose name he didn't know brought water to his mouth and wiped his eyebrows with a cool cloth.He remembered the fever he had more than a hundred years ago, more than a thousand light-years away from here, and it was taken care of by another girl's hand, which was cold and gentle, soothing and soothing.He heard birds in the meadow wailing outside the great house on a bend in the broad river on an estate; that was a U-shaped ox-yoke in the vivid image of his memory. Like a heavy hypnosis, the drug flowed through his body, twisting and unwinding, a surge of indeterminate order. (He remembered the stony beach on the river bank, where the inexhaustible water would sweep silt, sand, gravel, pebbles, pebbles, boulders, in a line in order of size and weight—through the weight of the stable liquid state of the water— The various elements form a curve, like the distribution of some kind of graph.)

The girls watched and waited, marveling at how calm strangers were taking their medicines as if they were one of their own, and how calm they were under the influence.She hoped that, as he seemed to be, this remarkable man was anything but average, and it suggested that their fellow nomads were not as strong as they thought they were. She was afraid that the potion would be too strong for him, that it would shatter him like a fiery cooking pot dropped into water, just as she had heard what happened to other strangers and thought the dreamleaf was just another self-indulgence Molesting.But he did not resist; with a rare insight for those who are used to fighting as a soldier, he dropped his weapon without resistance and took the medicine as directed.She admired this in strangers.She wondered if the conquerors were ever so strong as to obey.Even a few of their own youngsters—usually the most impressive in every other respect—couldn't accept the overwhelming gift of the dreamleaf, shouting and gibbering in shortened nightmares Nonsense, sobbing and demanding mother's breasts, shitting and pissing, crying and screaming the most shameful shame into the desert wind.The drug is seldom fatal, but used in supervised doses in ceremonies, it is still potent; and more than one brave young man chose to drive the blade into his stomach, knowing that a leaf was stronger than he.

So, she thought, what a pity this man wasn't one of them; he would have been a good husband, with strong sons and nimble daughters.Many marriages were made in the Dreamfoil Tent, and when she was asked to watch over a stranger through the Dreamfoil's days, she at first thought it an insult, but later believed it was an honor, for he had stood for their people As a great help, she will also be allowed to choose one of the Horde's young apprentices when the day of testing comes. And when he inhaled the dreamfoil, he insisted on the spot to take the amount they usually reserved for veterans and rulers, not the amount for children; she watched him turn, loosen his waist, as if trying to stir something in his head. thing.

Roads and rows of crossing signs, eroded by buying and selling, trade, and imparted knowledge; slender traces in the dust, pale marks of desert-brown pages.The tent is set up in summer mode, with the white side facing out and the black side facing in.Wait until winter and the outside will turn in. He imagined he could feel the brain spinning in his skull. There is a tent that is both white and black at the same time, standing at the crossroads of the desert, the ephemerality of white/black is like a leaf that falls before being blown away by the wind, rolling down on the calm waves in the breeze, which is actually The surrounding rocky mountains are covered with ice and snow, like foam condensed in the thin high-altitude air.

He flew away from the tent and let it fall beneath him, a speck next to a long thin trail in the desert; mountains passing, white and khaki, summer hungry snows scaled claws on rocks, dented Angles, covering the field of vision, turned the planet below into colorful boulders, stones, pebbles, small grains of gravel, and fine particles of silt, and then disappeared into the dust disturbed on the huge rotating mirror.It was home to all of them, and the planet itself was reduced to a speck in the membrane surrounding nothingness, intermingling with lonely siblings on a plane that was only the slightest difference from the connected nothingness.

More small points.All gone.Darkness returned. He is still here. There was more to it than all that, people told him.Sima said that what you should do is to think in seven-dimensional space, and regard the entire universe as a line on a torus, starting from a single point and becoming a circle of birth, and then on the torus The inside expands and moves up, over the top to the outside, then collapses and retracts.Other universes have come before, and others have come after (in four dimensions, larger/smaller spheres outside/inside their own universe).Different measures of time exist inside and outside the donut; some universes expand for a lifetime, while others live for less than the blink of an eye. But that's too much.Those meanings are too numerous to matter.He has to focus on what he knows, who he is and what he has become, at least for now. He found a sun among all that existed, and a planet, and flew towards it, knowing that it was the place, the fountain of his dreams and memories. He searches for meaning, but finds only ashes.will that hurtWell, it's actually here.A dilapidated summer house, smashed and burned.There was no sign of a chair. Sometimes, like now, the banality of it all takes his breath away.He pauses to check if that's the drug's effect; leaving you breathless.He is still breathing.Perhaps his body had ensured that, but civilization—bless it twice in the name of chaos—had built a longer-term plan into his body for certainty.It's cheating as far as most people perceive it (he sees the girl in front of him, pays attention to her with eyes that are closed most of the time, and then closes them again), but it's too bad to say so; he's doing them a favour, though They hardly really knew, and now they could do something for him. But Sma once said that the throne is the highest symbol in many cultures.Being able to sit on it prominently represents the connection with the supremacy of power.The rest followed; bowing, usually bowing, often receding, sometimes prostrating (although, according to the great statistics of civilization, this is always a bad sign), and sitting, a posture made more redundant by evolution Lack of animality, ability to use things only after being signaled. Some of the smaller civilizations—Sma once said hardly more than tribes—would sleep on special couches because they believed that lying down meant death (didn't they always find out that dead people lay down? ). Zarqawi (is that really his name? It suddenly sounded strange and strange in his memory), Zarqawi, Sma said, I visited a place (how did they mention this? He How could any part of this be mentioned? Was he drunk? His guard down? Maybe trying to seduce Sma and then going back under the table), they would put people in chairs to kill them.No torture--that's common enough; the bed and the chair are such a pair that can keep people trapped, isolated, inflicting pain on them--but it will literally kill them when they sit on it.They -- like this -- either poison them or pass a very strong electric current.A pellet would fall into a container under a chair, like some kind of obscene console that let out a deadly gas, or a hood over the head, hands soaked in some kind of conductive fluid to cook their heads. You want to know what's funny?Yeah, Smart, tell us to laugh.That same country has laws--I quote--prohibiting "cruel and unusual executions"!Do you believe? From so far away, he orbits the planet. Then he fell towards it, through the air close to the ground. He found the remains of the mansion, like a forgotten head; he found the ruined summer house, like a smashed skull; he found the stone ship, like the image of an abandoned skull.That's fake.It never floated. He saw another ship; a large ship, hundreds of thousands of tons of destructive power, sitting in the dry reflection of its own disuse, its tiers of weapons pointing outward.Main guns, secondary guns, 3rd class guns, anti-aircraft guns, and small... He circles around, then tries to get closer, aiming... But there were too many weapons, and they knocked him back. He was thrown out again, forced to circle the planet one more time, and as he did so he saw the chair, and saw the chairmaker—not who he thought he was; the other chairmaker, the real one. The one, the one he had been avoiding to recall throughout his memory—was unfolding before him in his ghostly splendor. But some things are too much. Some things are just too much to bear. People die.Everyone else dies.Let the rest of the people die. Back to the girl. (Why does it have to be someone else?) Yes, she was still very inexperienced as a channeler, but when strangers were handed her it was because they thought she was the best of the untried.But she will show them.Maybe after this time, they'll consider making her the ruler. She will lead them one day.She can feel so in the bones of her body.The same bone she felt pained when she saw the child fall; the same pain, in the child's bone that was made into the cup, resurfaced when she saw someone slump to the ground.This skeleton will be her guide through tribal politics and suffering.She will be invincible, just like the man in front of her, but in a different way.She also has inner strength.She will lead the people, as sure as a child growing within.She will drive her people against conquerors; she will show them how short their supremacy is, whose fate is like a fork in the desert path, and beyond the plains, those who dwell in corrupt palaces on the cliffs, will fall at their feet .The strength and thought of women, and the strength and courage of men—the thorns of the desert—will crush those who stand like decadent flowers on the cliffs.The sand will be theirs again.The temple will be engraved with her name. lie.The girl was too young to have any idea of ​​the tribe's thoughts or destiny.She was a useless thing that had been thrown to him to alleviate the dream of death they imagined he would experience.The fate of her conquered brethren mattered little to her; they traded that ancient heritage for considerations of fame and baubles. Let her dream.He relaxes on the drug of calming ecstasy. Lost memories met time-rays from another place at the core of a chain, and he was still not sure he had escaped it. He tried to take another look at the big house, but it was obscured by smoke and star-shaped shell casings.He looked at the huge battleship, stuck in the dry land dock, but it didn't get any bigger.It was a capital ship, no more, no less, and he still couldn't uncover the depths of what it really meant to him. All he could do was to lead the chosen one across the wasteland to the palace.Why should they be chosen to go to court?That seemed ridiculous.Civilization does not believe in supernatural things and nonsense superstitions.But civilization required him to ensure that the Chosen reached the court, no matter how many vile things stood in the way. To keep a corrupt bloodline immortal.Perpetuate a stupid reign. Well, they have their reasons.You take the money and run away.It's just that there is no money at all.What else can a boy do? belief.Although they despise belief.Do, act, even though they are nervous about doing it.He finds out he's their Lasher Boy.A borrowed hero.They think a few of these little heroes are enough to boost their self-belief. Come with us and do something you'll enjoy doing anyway, just not where you'd rather be, and we'll give you what you never had anywhere else or at any other time; you'll get real proof , to prove that you are doing the right thing, not only for the great pleasure, but also for the universal good.So enjoy it. And he did, and he enjoyed it, even if he wasn't always sure for the right reasons.But that doesn't matter to them now. Send the chosen one to the palace. He turned away from his own life and was not ashamed.All he did was because there was something to be done.You use those weapons, whatever they are; given a target, or imagined a target, you aim at it, no matter what is between you and the destination.Even civilization knows that.They will communicate what can be done within a certain time and technical ability level, but they know that it is all relative, everything has room for flexibility... He tries, and suddenly—hopefully unexpectedly—flashes and rushes toward mansions riddled with war casings, burnt-out summerhouses, and flooded stone boats...but the memory can't bear the weight, and he's thrown again Tossed, twirled, tossed into nothingness, handed over to the gates of oblivion of minds that deliberately don't think. Tents stand where desert paths intersect.White on the outside, black on the inside, it seemed to reflect the intersection he imagined. Hey, hey, it was just a dream. Except it wasn't a dream, and he was in total control, and if he opened his eyes, he'd see the girl sitting across from him, looking at him, thinking, with no doubts about who was where and when, and somehow That's the worst part about drugs; it lets you go anywhere, anytime -- although many drugs do -- but it still lets you connect back to reality, wherever you really want to go. How cruel, he thought. Civilization might be right in the end; capable of producing any drug, or mixture, suddenly less indulgent and decadent than he used to imagine. That girl, for one frightening moment, he saw that the other person could do great things.She would be famous and important, and the tribes around her would do great—and scary—things, and that would be in vain, because no matter what train of fate he was on, taking the chosen one to the palace, None of the Horde will survive; they will die.The tracks they left in the desert have long since been blurred, covered by sand, bit by bit... He's already helped drag them out, and it doesn't matter if they haven't figured it out yet.They will when he leaves.Civilization would take him out of here, put him somewhere else, and the adventure would collapse into meaninglessness with all the rest, and there would be little left, and he would go on doing roughly the same thing elsewhere. As a matter of fact, he could have killed the Chosen one with pleasure, for the boy was a fool, and he had never had such a fool as a companion.The young man was a dwarf without even knowing he was. He couldn't think of a more disastrous combination. He orbits back to the planet he once abandoned. Came this far and got pushed away.He tried again, but with no real confidence. I was rejected.Well, he didn't expect more than that. The chair maker wasn't the one who made that chair, he thought, his thoughts cleared in an instant.That's him and it's not him.We are told that God does not exist, so I must find my own salvation. His eyes were already closed, but he closed them again. He goes around in circles, unconsciously. A lie; he cried and screamed, and fell at the girl's mocking feet. Lies; he continues to circle. A lie; he landed on the girl, reaching out, trying to catch a mother who wasn't there. lie. lie. A lie; he went on round, seeking his own private symbols from the crown and tent on his head, through the air between the smoke holes of the daylight. He sank into the planet again, but the girl sitting in the black/white tent wiped his brow with her hand, and that slight movement seemed to erase him as well... (lie.) ...It wasn't until a long time later that he discovered that the reason for bringing the Chosen One to the palace was that the kid had to be the last man on the throne.Not only was he stupid, but he was also impotent; the Chosen One failed to produce strong sons and bright daughters (as civilization has long known), and the intractable desert tribes would attack ten years later led by a ruler, Commanded most of the warriors by immersion in the dreamleaf, and had witnessed a stranger stronger than any of them, able to experience the effects of the dreamleaf unscathed and still not satisfied.Through this rare experience, she knew that, compared with the myths and the speculations of her nomadic tribe elders, there was indeed a vast sky beyond the existence of the desert.