Chapter 17 Chapter Seventeen

For a long time, there have been many, many speculations and debates about what happened to the so-called "lost matter" in the universe.In the entire Milky Way, the scientific academies of all the major universities are constantly buying more and more advanced equipment to investigate and detect the cores of the distant galaxies, and then aim at the center and edge of the entire universe, but when everyone finally finds it, they are It turned out to be something that was used to pad the box when the instrument was packed. In Langdon's box, there were a lot of white balls formed by lost matter, soft and round, and Langdon threw them away casually.After this generation of scientists discovers forgotten things, future generations of physicists can rediscover and discover them.

She picked up the featureless black disk from among countless small balls of lost matter.She put it on a rock beside her, and sifted through all the lost material for another day, looking for something else, a manual or a few accessories, but found nothing.Only the black saucer. She shines a flashlight on it. As the light shone, cracks appeared on the disc's otherwise seemingly pitch-black surface.Langdon stepped back nervously, but quickly saw that whatever it was, it was just doing stretching gymnastics. It was a beautiful process.It is exquisitely refined, yet simple and elegant at the same time.It is like a piece of origami that opens itself, or a rosebud that blooms in seconds.

A moment ago it was a black disc with clean lines, but now it has turned into a bird, a bird, hanging in the air. Langdon continued to back away, wary and defensive. It looks a bit like a pica, only much smaller.That is to say, it is actually bigger, or more precisely, exactly the same as the Picca, or at least not twice its size, and at the same time it is much bluer and redder than the Picca. Many, and it has always been pure black. There was something very odd about it, but Langdon couldn't see it just yet. It's kind of like a pica in one way, they all have that "I'm looking at something you can't see" look.

Right away, it's gone. Then everything went dark, as suddenly as before.Langdon immediately got down on the ground and reached into his pocket again for the specially polished stone.But the darkness receded quickly, and it curled up into a ball, then quickly became the bird again.It hung in the air in front of her, flapping its wings slowly, watching her. "Excuse me," it said suddenly, "I just need to proofread. Can you hear me when I say it?" "When did you say that?" Langdon asked. "Very well," said the bird, "can you hear me now?" His voice was much higher this time.

"Yes, of course I can hear you," Langdon said. "So can you hear me now?" This time it was crematorium-like. "can." A short silence followed. "No, obviously not," said the bird after a few seconds. "Well, then, your hearing range is apparently between 20 Hz and 16,000 Hz. Is that pleasant to hear?" male voice, "Aren't there any harsh overtones in the upper register that bother you? Apparently not. Fine, I can use these as data channels. Alright, how many of me can you see?" Suddenly, the air is filled with interconnected birds.

Langdon was used to spending time in virtual worlds, but this was weirder than anything she'd encountered in the past.It is as if the geometric system of the entire space has been redefined by the seamlessly connected birds. Langdon gasped, and quickly covered his face with his arms, her arms passing through the bird's space. "Well, apparently that's too much," said Bird. "Now what?" It folds into a tunnel made of countless birds, just like a bird reflected in a parallel mirror, sending its figure infinitely far away. "What are you?" Langdon called.

"We'll get to that soon," said the bird. "Tell me how many, please?" "Well, you're like..." Langdon gestured helplessly into the distance. "Got it, still infinite in length, but at least we've reached the correct space matrix. Well, no, the answer is one orange and two lemons." "lemon?" "If I have three lemons and three oranges, and I lose two oranges and one lemon, what am I left with?" "what?" "OK, so you think time flows like this, huh? Interesting. Am I still infinite?" It bulged like this in space, "Is it still infinite now? How yellow am I?"

Every second, its shape, length and width are undergoing exhausting transformations. "I can't tell..." Langdon was puzzled. "You don't have to answer, now I just need to see your expression to understand. Well, am I your mother? Is it a rock? I look big, flat, and messed up? No? Now? Am I walking backwards?" From the beginning to the present, it was the first time that it was firmly on the ground without moving. "No," Langdon said. "Well actually I'm going backwards, I'm going backwards in time. Well I think we've got it all figured out. If you want to know, I can tell you that in your universe you move freely in what you call three dimensions of working space. You also do linear motion in the fourth dimension, which you call time, and are also grounded in the fifth dimension, which is the first fundamental principle of possibility. After that there is a bit of It’s complicated, and besides, you definitely don’t want to know about the things from the thirteenth to the twenty-second dimension. What you really need right now is that the universe is much more complicated than you imagined, even if you think this place is already It's fucking complicated. I'm perfectly fine with not saying 'fuck' if that offends you."

"You can say whatever the hell you want." "I will." "What the hell are you?" Langdon asked. "I am. I'm your guide in your universe. I actually live in a place that in jargon is known as the Chowder, which means... Well, let me show you." Turning in mid-air, it swooped out of the cave, and then it landed on a rock, its body just under the ledge, dodging the rain that had just regrouped. "Come," it said, "come and see." Langdon didn't like having a bird tell him what to do, but he followed it to the hole, though one hand was still fiddling with the stone in his pocket.

"Rain," said the bird, "see? It's just rain." "I know what rain is." The thing was sweeping across the night in patches, with moonlight sifting through them. "Then what is it?" "What do you mean? What is it? I said, who are you? What are you doing in that box? Why did I run all night in the forest with crazy squirrels only to ask me what rain is? Rain is nothing but Water falling from the damn air and that's it. What else do you want to know? Or can we head home now?" Bird was silent for a long time before replying, "Do you want to go home?"

"I don't have a home!" Langdon almost startled himself, how loudly she yelled. "Look into the rain," said the guide bird. "I'm looking into the rain! What else to see but that?" "What did you see?" "What do you mean, you silly bird? I just see piles of rain. That's water, falling from the sky." "What shapes do you see in the water?" "Shape? How can there be any shape? It's just, just..." "It's just a mishmash," said the guide bird. "right……" "What do you see now?" Langdon could barely make out the presence of a faint light coming from the guidebird's eyes.Where there are rocks, the air is dry and nothing seems to be happening.Then the light stretched out and was pierced by the falling raindrops, where a flat sheet of light appeared, bright and vivid as if solid. "Oh, awesome. A laser show," Langdon said gruffly. "Never seen one in my life, except, of course, at about five million rock concerts." "Tell me what you saw!" "Just a flat light! Silly bird." "It didn't add anything there that wasn't there before. I just used the light to draw your attention to a few drops of rain. Now what can you see?" The light went out. "Nothing." "I did exactly the same thing as before, only this time with ultraviolet light. You can't see it." "So what the hell does it mean to show me something I can't see?" "It means to understand that just because you see something doesn't mean it exists; and even if you don't see something, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist; Notice something." "Boring," Langdon said, and she gasped. There was a huge vivid three-dimensional image in the rain, and her father seemed to be stunned by something. About two miles behind Langdon, her father, struggling to make his way through the woods, froze in place.What stunned him was an image of himself staring blankly at something in the rain two miles away.About two miles, slightly to the right from where he was going. He was completely lost, convinced he was going to die of cold, damp, and exhausted, and wished he'd just let it go.And just now a squirrel brought him a copy of "Golf" magazine, and his head was already chattering, laughing and crying. Seeing a giant image of himself in the sky told him a fact. In general, laughing and crying was probably the right choice; He took a deep breath, turned around and walked towards the unknown light show. "Well, so what does that mean?" Langdon asked.She was actually startled by the sight of her father, not by the image.She has been looking at holograms since she was two months old, and they often put her in them to play with.Besides, didn't she just see the hologram just half an hour ago, and it was still playing "Anga-Kutai Interstellar Guardian March". "I just want to explain that it doesn't exist more or less than the light just now." The guide bird said, "It's just that the water in the sky is moving in one direction, and the light frequency relationship you can perceive is moving in another direction. It just happened to interact. It creates a picture in your mind that seems real. But these are really just pictures from a mish-mash of the whole thing. Here, I'll give you another one." "My mother!" Langdon said. "No." Bird said. "I know my own mother!" On the screen is a large gray building that looks like a hangar, and a spaceship is parked inside. A woman is getting out of the spaceship, and the team of tall, thin men escorting her has purple-green skin.There was no doubt that it was Langdon's mother.Well, a few without a doubt.It's just that Trillian doesn't walk around in low gravity so unconfidently, and she doesn't look at a boring old-fashioned life support environment with such disbelief, or walk around with such a strange old camera . "Who the hell is this?" Langdon asked. "She is part of your mother's extension on the probability axis," said the guide bird. "I don't understand at all what you're talking about." "Space, time and probability all have axes along which they can move." "Still don't get it. But I think... no. Explain it to me." "I thought you wanted to go home." "Say it." "Want to see your home?" "Look? It's all blown up!" "It breaks off on the axis of probability. Look!" Something very odd and strange slipped into Langdon's line of sight, and out of the rain came a gigantic sphere, some blue, some green, foggyly reflected against a black background of starry clouds. Turn, quite imposing. "Now you see it," said the guide bird, "and now you can't." Arthur Dent was not two miles away from them.He stopped, he couldn't believe his eyes.The thing floating in mid-air, although covered by rain, is still bright and dazzling under the night sky, vivid and real-that is the earth.His breath stopped at the sight of it.Then, just as he was holding his breath, it disappeared again.Then it appears again.And then—by now he had finally given up trying and started sticking straws in his hair—it had become a sausage. Langdon was also taken aback by the sight of the large, blue-green, watery, misty sausage hanging above his head.Now it's a bunch of sausages again, or more accurately, a bunch of sausages missing in the middle.The whole string of brightly lit sausages flips through the air in a mesmerizing dance, then gradually slows down, becomes ethereal, and finally disappears into the shimmering night. "What's that?" Langdon asked in a low voice. "A possible object with a break in the probability axis." "Oh." "Most objects mutate and change along their own probability axis, but your home star is slightly different. You can think of it as lying on a fault line of the probability plane, that is to say, on many probability coordinates, it simply It just doesn't exist at all. It has an inherent instability, a kind of area that people usually call a complex area, and it's very common for any object in there. Understand?" "No." "Want to see for yourself?" "To...Earth?" "right." "is it possible?" The guide bird didn't answer right away.It spread its wings and flew into the rain that had subsided again, with deliberate grace. It soars into the sky in a rapture, light flickers around it, space quiveres behind its tail.It swooped, turned, rolled, turned again, and finally stopped right in front of Langdon, flapping its wings slowly and softly, only two feet away from her face. It spoke to her again. "For you, your universe is extremely vast, both in time and in space. The reason lies in the perception you use to perceive and filter information. But people did not add any filters when they created me, which is It means that I can perceive the total potpourri of all possible universes, and know that it - the total potpourri itself - has no size. For me, everything is possible. I am omniscient Yes, extremely conceited, and most importantly, self-moving and easy to carry. You have to judge for yourself how much of the above is true.” A slow smile spread across Langdon's face. "You bastard, you've been playing tricks on me." "Like I said earlier, anything is possible." Langdon laughed. "Okay," she said, "let's just try to go to Earth. Let's go and find it on that, uh, that..." "Probability curve?" "Yeah, go where it didn't get blown up, okay. So you're showing the way. How do we get a ride?" "Reverse manipulation." "what?" "Reverse manipulation. To me, the flow of time doesn't matter. You decide what you want, and I just have to make sure it happened." "Are you kidding me?" "Everything is possible." Langdon frowned. "You're kidding, right?" "Let me put it another way," said Bird. "Reverse control allows us to take a shortcut and cancel out the long wait. Only a few poor ships pass by your sector every year or so, and they are very happy." Willing to give you a ride is still a problem. But now, you want a ride, so a spaceship comes to give you a ride. The guy who drives the spaceship may think he has a reason to stop and pick you up for a while, but the real reason is me determine his actions." "That's the part of you that's so egotistical, isn't it, little one?" The guide bird remained silent. "Okay," Langdon said, "I want a ship to take me to Earth." "Are you satisfied with this ship?" It flew so quietly that Langdon didn't see it until it was almost overhead. Arthur saw it too.Right now, he was a mile away from them, and was getting closer.No sooner had the glistening sausage show ended than he noticed some faint lights appearing on the clouds again.At first he thought it was another lighting effect. It took him a second or two to realize that it was a real spaceship, and it took him a second or two to realize that it was heading straight down to where he assumed his daughter was.At this moment, he suddenly ran with all his strength, whether it was raining, whether his legs hurt or not, whether it was dark or not, all these things he could not care about. Almost immediately he fell, slipped, hit a rock and hurt his knee badly.He got up crookedly and tried to keep running.He had a terrible premonition that he was about to lose Langdon forever.He cursed and staggered and ran.He didn't know what was in that box, but the name on it was Ford Sheriff, and that was the name he'd cursed all the way. That ship was one of the sexiest, most beautiful ships Langdon had ever seen. It is really shocking, gorgeous silver, rounded lines, it is beyond words. If she hadn't been so informed, she would have said it was an RW6, and it landed beside her without a sound, and she realized it was indeed an RW6, and she was breathless with excitement. RW6, if you want to take a look at it, basically the only way is to look through magazines that are designed to provoke public dissatisfaction. At the same time she was extremely nervous.The manner and timing of its arrival is truly disturbing.It was either the strangest coincidence, or something very, very troublesome.She waited stiffly for the hatch to open.Her guide—which she now considered her own—was floating on her left shoulder, barely flapping its wings. The hatch opened.A little bit of dim light leaked out.A few seconds passed, and a figure appeared.He stood at the hatch door for a second or two, apparently trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness outside, before he spotted Langdon, seemingly surprised.He started walking towards her, then suddenly yelled in surprise and ran towards her quickly. Langdon's nerves had been tested a bit tonight, and she should never have tried to run for her life in this state.From the moment she saw the spaceship fall, she subconsciously fiddled with the stone in her pocket. Arthur was still running, twisting, rushing, hitting trees, but finally he knew he was running out of time.The spaceship was on the ground for about three minutes, and now it rose quietly and gracefully to the treetops, the storm had subsided into drizzle, and it made a smooth turn in the raindrops, climbed, climbed, raised its nose, and Rush to the sky with ease. gone.And Langdon was inside.It was impossible for Arthur to know whether she was in it, but he still decided that she was in it regardless.He finished his parent's share and couldn't believe how badly he did, he tried to keep running but his feet dragged on the ground, his knees ached like fire and he knew he was a step too late . He thought he had reached the apex of misery and unhappiness, but he was wrong. He finally limped to the cave where Langdon had sheltered from the rain and unpacked.On the ground outside the cave there were traces of the landing of the spacecraft - just minutes ago - but Langdon was nowhere to be seen.Unhappy, he wanders into the cave and finds empty boxes and lost matter all over the floor.He was a little angry.He has always wanted to teach her to pack her own things by herself.Getting mad at her for such things lessened the depression over her leaving.He knew he would never find her. He inadvertently kicked something.He stooped to pick it up, only to be dumbfounded.That was his old book.How did it appear in the cave?He never went back to where the ship crashed to find it.He didn't want to go back to that place, and he didn't want the Guidebook anymore.He thought he was going to stay in Ramla, making sandwiches for the rest of his life.How did it come to the cave?And it's still open.The words "Don't Panic" on the cover flashed and flashed at him. Arthur came back from the cave into the dark, damp moonlight.He sat down on a rock, flipped through his old "Guide", and realized that it wasn't a rock under his butt, it was a person.