Chapter 26 Chapter two

(fade in) That was almost two hundred standard years ago. Sad King Billy's five seed ships rotated above the all-too-familiar blue sky, like golden dandelions.We landed like conquerors and swaggered back and forth; more than two thousand visual artists, writers, sculptors, poets, fundamentalists, video makers, hologram directors, assemblers, disassemblers, and who the hell knows and five times as many extras: managers, technicians, ecologists, overseers, court servants, professional sycophants, not to mention the royal family of fools, as well as these Guys have ten times as many robots serving them as they are happy to till the land, tend the reactors, feed the whole city, carry the pain, carry the burdens...hell, you get the point.

The world we land on has been seeded by some poor bastards who became indigenous two centuries ago and who, whenever they can, use gestures instead of mouths to speak and sticks instead of brains to think.Naturally, the noble scions of these brave forerunners welcomed us as gods, especially after some of our security personnel melted some of their aggressive leaders into a heap of slag, and we accepted theirs as well. Worship like that's our due, and put them to work next door to our blue-skinned friends, to till the lands of the South and build our glorious cities on the hills. It was indeed once a glorious city upon a mountain.It's in ruins now, and you can't see much of it.The desert had been colonized three centuries earlier; the aqueducts leading down from the mountains had collapsed and been smashed to pieces; the city itself was nothing but bones.However, in its day, the city of poets was indeed very beautiful, with a little taste of Athens in the age of Socrates, a feeling of spiritual excitement in Renaissance Venice, and the art of Paris in the period of Impressionists. Enthusiasm, and the genuine democracy of Orbital City's first decade, and, yes, the endless sense of the future at the center of Whale.

In the end, though, those things were all gone.It was only the deep and horrible mead-hall of King Huluthgar, and the monster waited outside in the darkness.Of course we have our own Grendel.If one glances at the languid profile of Sad King Billy, we even have King Hulusga.But we lack only our "King Yate"; our great, broad-shouldered, small-headed Peowolf, with his band of jolly psychos.In the absence of heroes, we are accustomed to the role of victims, we write sonnets, rehearse ballets, and open scrolls, while our thorny and steely Grendel terrorizes the night and harvests thighs bone and cartilage.

It was at that time, I was still a lust emperor, I could see my lust from the bones of my body, I was stubborn and persistent, after five sad centuries, I was only one step away from completing my "Psalms", that is The work of my life. (fade to black) It occurred to me that this "Grendel Story" of mine was immature.The actor has not yet appeared on stage.Although irrelevant plots and fragmented articles all have their own fans, not to mention my works.But in the end, my friend, what is it that determines whether a work is immortalized in the parchment or is lost in the pan?is the role.Haven't you ever conceived the secret idea that at this very moment Huck and Jim are somewhere hauling their raft down some far-off river, and yet, compared to what was given to us in long-forgotten days? The shoe store clerk we tried on the shoes came, didn't they come more realistically?Anyway, if you're going to tell this fucking story from beginning to end, you're supposed to know who the characters are.So, as much as it hurts me, I'm going back to the beginning of the story and starting over.

At first there were words.Words were then programmed in the classical binary language.Then the words said, "Let there be life!" And just like that, on the night of the full moon, the egg was ripened, and somewhere in the cellar of the technical core of my old mother's estate, the quick-frozen sperm of my long-dead father was thawed , into levitation, wriggling like a vanilla bud long ago, injected into a device that was part water gun, part fake thing, and, with an insanely fantastic blow of the trigger, fired into the Inside my mom. Of course, mothers don't have to use this uncivilized way to conceive.She could choose to conceive ectopically, have sex with a lover who has her father's DNA implanted, or call it a cloned surrogate, genetically spliced ​​virginity, whatever you want to call it... But, as my mother told me later, she Stretch away from tradition.My guess is she prefers the traditional way.

In short, I was born. I was born on Earth...on the Old Earth...damn it, Lamia, if you don't believe me, get the hell out of here.We lived on my mother's estate, on a small island not far from the North American reserve. A sketch of the Old Earth House: Beyond the southwestern expanse of meadows, crepe-paper tree silhouettes above which the fleeting morning light faded from violet to mauve, then purple.The sky is like exquisite transparent porcelain, without a trace of cloud or condensation.The first rays of sunlight are like the silence before a symphony; the subsequent sunrise is like the sudden strike of cymbals.Orange and russet burst into golden light, and that long cold light fell from the sky and sprinkled on the green: leaf shadow, tree shade, tendrils of cypress and weeping willow, and the smooth green lawn in the glade.

Mother's estate, our homestead, was a thousand acres in the midst of a million acres of wilderness.On the grassland, which is as big as a small grassland, the green grass grows gratifyingly, making people want to lie down and take a rest on the soft green grass.The majestic shade-trees are like sundials, majestic rows of shade; now converging, shrinking, marching toward noon, they will at last extend eastward, heralding the end of the day.Majestic Oak.Huge elms.Cottonwoods, cypresses, redwoods, and bonsai.Banyan trees hang down their young trunks like smooth pillars in a temple topped by the sky.The willow trees are neatly lined up on both sides of the canal, along the banks of streams that pop up occasionally, and the hanging branches are facing the wind, singing ancient dirges.

Our estate sits on a low hill where, in winter, the curve of the tan grass looks like the smooth flank of some female beast, a place full of thigh muscles that signify speed.The estate flaunts centuries-old mansions: a green jade pagoda in the east courtyard, which catches the first rays of sunlight at dawn, and a row of gables on the south wing, which casts a shadow over the crystal greenhouse at teatime. The triangular shadows, while along the porch to the east, several balconies, and the labyrinth of stairs outside the manor, play an Escher game with the afternoon shadows. At that time, the "big mistake" had happened, but the earth was still habitable.Most of the time we lived on this estate was what we quaintly called "the Détente."That damn little black hole in the Kyiv group is eating away at the core of the Earth bit by bit, waiting for its next dinner.Sometimes the whole planet goes into convulsions, but between each convulsion there are quiet months of ten to eighteen months, known as "detente periods."We happened to be on vacation at Uncle Kowa's during the "dreadful period".That place is beyond the Moon, an asteroid that was lured there before the Ousters migrated, and received terraforming.

As you probably already know, I was born with a silver spoon up my ass, a complete snob.I will not argue with that.After three thousand years of playing with democracy, the families left over from the old land gradually understand that the only way to get rid of such social dregs is to prohibit them from having children.Or, to fund the Seeding Fleet; or the Spinship Expedition, the Teleporter New Settlers...all the panics and emergencies of the Exodus...as long as they breed off-Earth and keep the Old Lands quiet.But in fact, the hometown has become a sick old bitch, with little ability, and the desire of the social dregs of the interstellar expedition has not been negatively affected at all.They are not fools.

Like the Buddha, I didn't learn what poverty was until I was almost an adult.I was sixteen years old in standard years, and I was in the middle of a traveling year when I was traveling through India with a backpack and met a beggar: old Indian families keep them with them for religious reasons, Yet all I knew back then was this man in rags and ribs protruding, holding up a wicker basket containing an ancient touch display, begging for a touch of my universal card.My mates thought this behavior was hysterical.I threw up.That happened in Benares. My childhood was privileged but not obnoxious.I have pleasant memories, such as the famous party of the Dame Siebel (she was my aunt).I remember one time she held a three-day party in the Manhattan Islands. Guests from Orbital City and European Ecological Architecture landed on the venue in a landing craft.I remember the Empire State Building towering over the sea, its light reflected in the lagoon and the fern-grown ditches; Cooking fires blazed on the island-like mounds formed by the buildings.

In those days, the North American reserve was our private playground.It is said that about 8,000 people still live on that mysterious land, but half of them are forest rangers.Others include renegade foundationalists (whose job is to bring ancient dead North American plants and animals back to life), eco-engineers, and empowered hominids (such as Ojalala Su or Hell's Angels) Yes), and also occasional visitors.I have a cousin who is said to have backpacked back and forth between the two viewing zones of the preserve, but he did do it in the Midwest where the zones are relatively close together and the dinosaur populations Also rarer.