Chapter 3 Chapter 2 New Stone

In the middle of the night, Mochizuki woke up suddenly. He sat up in the stinky dark cave, trying to hear clearly the noises in the night outside, and fear gradually arose in his mind.Never in his lifetime had he lived to twice the age most of his kind could expect to live to have heard anything like it.Tigers and leopards approached quietly, only the occasional mud slipping or tree branches breaking would reveal them.And this is a continuous rolling sound, which is getting louder and louder. It sounded like some kind of gigantic back swimming at night, not trying to hide, not heeding any obstacles.Mochizuki also clearly heard the sound of a bush being uprooted. Giant elephants often do this, but other than that, like tigers and leopards, giant elephants move quietly.

Then came a voice that Mochizuki could not make out, for it had never been heard before in the history of this world.That was the crash of metal on stone. When Mochizuki led his group of orangutans down to the river at dawn, they happened to meet Xinshi opposite.As nothing happened after the first noise, Mochizuki had almost forgotten the horrors of the night, and so did not associate the novelty with danger or fear. This novelty was a rectangular plate, three times as long as the moon was expected to be, but only as thick as the arms of his hands; it was made of a completely transparent substance; Reflected flashes are not easily seen.

Since Mochizuki had never encountered ice, nor even clear water, he could think of no natural substance to compare this monster.It's certainly quite attractive, though Mochizuki is wary of most new things.But for this monster, he didn't hesitate for a long time and got together.Since there was no movement, he reached out and touched its cold and hard surface. After a few minutes of concentrated thought, he came up with a clever explanation.It must have been a rock, must have grown overnight.Many plants grow out of this way, like pebbles, white pulpy things, which seem to have been drilled out of the soil for several hours in the dark.

In just three or four minutes, Mochizuki, propelled by this truly remarkable abstraction, came to a conclusion and immediately put it into practice.Those white pulpy plants are delicious (although some of them cause severe ailments), and maybe this tall thing too? After a few licks and gnaws, he soon sobered up.It was inedible; so, being a sensible ape, he went on to the river, screaming at the apes as usual, forgetting all about the crystal stone. At dusk, while being wary of the wild beasts that came out for food in advance, they drank water in a hurry by the stream and began to climb back to the cave.They were about a hundred yards from the new stone when they began to hear voices.

The voice was just audible, but it made them all stop in their tracks. Everyone stopped in a daze halfway, their jaws drooping and their mouths drooping from ear to ear.It was a maddeningly monotonous, repeating trill, intermittently emanating from the transparent object, which could be heard without loss of consciousness.For the first and last time in three million years the sound of the drum was heard on the African continent. The vibrato grew louder and faster.Immediately the apes began to move forward like sleepwalkers, towards the obligatory source of the sound.The rhythm of the drums, which their descendants would not create until generations later, had now resonated with their pulses, and made them dance now and then.They circled the boulder, utterly fascinated, forgetting everything: the fatigue of the day, the peril of nightfall, the famine in their stomachs.

The drums grew louder and the night darker.The shadows lengthened, the light in the sky faded, and the crystal began to glow. The crystal gradually became less transparent, soaked in a faint milky cold light.Unattainable, elusive shapes swim on its surface and in its depths. The images converged into beams of light and shadows, which crossed again to form spokes, scattered in all directions, and began to rotate. The faster the light wheel turned, the faster the rhythm of the drums.For a moment the apes were completely fascinated, watching this pyrotechnic display with jaw-dropping jaws.Forgetting the instincts handed down by their predecessors and the lessons of their own life; under normal circumstances, none of them would have left the cave so far at this late in the day, because when they stopped all activities to see what would happen However, the surrounding bushes are full of motionless figures and pairs of wide-open eyes.

It never occurred to them that their minds were being explored, their bodies being measured, their responses being studied, their potentials being measured.At the beginning, this group of apes half bent their bodies, like a group of clay sculptures, motionless.Then, the orangutan closest to the plate suddenly woke up. The orangutan didn't move its position, but his body got rid of the sluggish state and began to move, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings.The head swayed from side to side, the mouth opened and closed; the hands were slightly tightened and then released.Then he stooped and picked up a long blade of grass, trying to make a knot with his clumsy fingers.

He is like a manipulated thing.Struggling to get rid of a certain elf and devil holding his body.He was out of breath.His eyes were full of fear, while he forced his hand to do complex movements that he had never done before. In spite of all his efforts, in the end he just crushed the grass. As the shredded grass fell to the ground, the force that controlled him was released, and he froze again and remained motionless. The other ape moved and did the same.He was younger and more adaptable; where the older failed, he succeeded.So on the planet Earth, the first primitive grass knot appeared

When it was Mochizuki's turn, he didn't feel much fear.His main feeling was a vague dissatisfaction with the twitching of his muscles, the shifting of his limbs.Not entirely according to his own will. Unknowingly, he bent down, picked up a small stone, straightened his waist, and saw a new image appear in the crystal plate. The grid and moving and jumping figures have disappeared, and become a set of concentric circles, all surrounding a small black disc. Following the silent command in his head, he lifted the small stone over his head and threw it awkwardly.The stone missed the target by several feet.

Try again, the command said.He looked around and found another piece of gravel.This time it hit the plate, and a bell rang.Still far from the target, but the aiming has improved. On the fourth attempt, I was within inches of the bull's-eye.An indescribable pleasure, as intense as sexual excitement, came to his mind.Then the control loosened; he no longer felt any urge to just stand and wait. One by one, entire tribes of apes were briefly at the mercy of each other.Some are successful, but most fail to complete their assigned tasks, and all are rewarded with pleasure or punished with pain accordingly.

At this time, the orangutans shook their heads as if waking up from a big dream, and then began to return to the cave along the path.None of them looked back, nor marveled at the strange light that shone on their way home.