Chapter 7 Section VII

April 1, 2204 What an unusual day.As soon as I got up in the morning, I announced to the whole family: to devote the whole day to the memory of Eleanor of Aquitaine.According to historians' calculations, she died exactly a thousand years ago today.To my delight the whole family was in favor of my proposal and Richard and Michael offered to help prepare for the celebration.Michael, no longer interested in art history, had turned his attention to cooking and suggested that we prepare a lunch in the Queen's honor.Richard and the robot TB went to another room to prepare for the show, and Richard whispered to us that TB would play Henry II.

I gave Simone a brief history lesson, introducing her to Eleanor and the Middle Ages.Simone was surprisingly attentive, and even Katie, a child who could never sit still for five minutes, was able to cooperate well enough not to disturb us.Katie played quietly with her toys all morning.In the end Simone asked why Queen Eleanor died, and I told her that the queen was aging and died of old age. My three-year-old daughter immediately asked me whether Queen Eleanor had "went to heaven". "How did you get that idea?" I asked Simone. "Uncle Michael told me," she answered, "that good people go to heaven when they die and bad people go to hell."

"Some people do believe in heaven;" I said after a moment's contemplation, "and there are others who believe in reincarnation, that is, when a person dies and become another person or another animal; there are others who believe that our existence is a finite miracle, Birth and death are arranged, and life ends with a unique and unique death for each of us." I smiled and brushed Simone's hair. "What do you believe, mother?" asked the daughter. I didn't know how to answer her question, and the poem "Guiding you into a world of ignorance" suddenly flashed into my mind.At this moment the robot TB came in wearing a medieval knight costume.

"Hello, ladies," said TB.It tells Simone that it is Henry II, King of England and husband of Eleanor.Both Simone and Katie smiled happily. "The queen and I have built a great empire," TB said while gesticulating, "this empire includes England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and now half of France." TB recited the prepared speech with great interest, putting on an air Gestures and blinks made Simone and Katie laugh out loud. TB pulled out tiny knives and forks from his pocket and claimed to have introduced them to "savage England". "Why did you put Empress Irina in prison?" Simone asked after TB's performance.

I couldn't help laughing, Simone really listened to my history lesson very carefully. TB turned his head to Simone and was about to say something when Richard put a finger up at us for a time-out and rushed out of the aisle with TB. In less than a minute, TB's Henry II came back again, and he went straight to Simone and said to her: "I fell in love with another woman, Queen Eleanor is very angry. How dare she be angry with me, And ordered my son to oppose me..." At this time, there were screams in the distance, and the five of us quickly came to the top. Looking up at the sky, we saw a lone Aiyun bird flying in the sky several hundred meters high.We came to the parapet by the seaside of the column to observe the iyun bird carefully: it circled and flew over the island, making a long howl every time it flew around.Richard kept waving his arms in the air, but the iyun bird didn't seem to see it at all.

After an hour the kids were sleepy and Michael took them back while Richard and I stayed and watched to see if we could find a way to communicate with it.The bird flew in the same direction and I asked Richard "is it looking for something". "I don't know." Richard waved his arms at it again and yelled when the iyun bird came very close to us.This time it seemed to have finally noticed us, changed its course, drew a graceful arc in the air and descended very close to us.We saw the gray down on its underbelly and two shiny cherry red collars around its neck. "It's our friend." I whispered to Richard, remembering four years ago when the Aiyun bird helped us fly over the Sea of ​​Columns, and this one is the leader.

This iyun bird does not look very healthy, very emaciated, and its fluff is dirty.It flew to a place 20 meters away from us and stopped. "It's sick," said Richard. Aiyunniao cooed in a low voice, looking around nervously, as if looking for its companion.Richard took a step closer to it, and the Aiyun bird flapped its wings and retreated a few meters. "Do we have anything to eat? Managua or something synthetic?" Richard said softly to me. I shake my head. "Nothing but leftover chicken from last night. Wait, we have some green drinks that the kids love, sort of like managua juice."

Richard ran away before I could finish my sentence.The bird and I looked at each other silently, and I tried to look friendly, trying to express my kindness through the eyes.Once I seemed to see its expression change, but I didn't know what the expressions meant. Richard returned 10 minutes later with a black bowl full of the green drink in his hand.He put the bowl in front of us, pointed at Ai Yunniao, and stepped back another six or seven meters. Ai Yunniao put his mouth into the bowl, took a sip of the liquid and then swallowed it up.Apparently the drink was to his liking, and he drank all the juice in the bowl in less than a minute.

After drinking the juice, Ai Yunniao took two steps forward, fully spread its wings, and turned around in a graceful arc. "We should say 'Welcome' to it." Richard and I held out our hands, circled around like him, said "goodbye", "thank you", and bowed to it. We thought the bird was happy, but later readily admitted that was just our guesswork. The gray fluffy Aiyun bird spread its wings and soared into the sky, soaring above our heads. "Where did it go?" I asked Richard. "It's dying," said Richard softly, "and it's going to take a last look at its world."

January 6, 2205 Today is my 41st birthday.Yesterday I had a fairly vivid dream: I was completely old, all white and wrinkled, living with my two grown daughters in a chateau near the Loire, not far from Beauvais.In the dream my daughter looked neither like Simone nor Katie nor Genevieve.The boys in the dream are strong and strong, but they all have psychological defects, all of them are clumsy and mentally retarded.I tried to explain to them how heme carries oxygen from the lungs to the tissues of the body, but none of the children could listen to me. I was very sad when I woke up from the dream. It was the middle of the night and everyone in the family was still sleeping.As usual I went to the nursery to check on the children.Simone slept peacefully at night, while Katie had kicked off the blankets as usual.I pulled the blanket over Katie and sat down in a chair.

I wondered what was it that kept bothering me, why did I keep having dreams about children, grandchildren?I joked with Richard one day last week that I might have a third child and Richard jumped up.I think Richard was still apprehensive about my unsolicited idea of ​​being pregnant with Katie, so he cut the subject right away, not wanting to invite unnecessary tirades. Do I really want a baby under these circumstances?In our current situation, what is the point of having children, leaving aside my personal desires, just maintaining an endless life is a strong physiological requirement.Everything about us is preordained now, and the best guesses about our destiny can only be that we will never have any connection with the rest of the human race.If we are really the last members on this lifeline.Then we should rationally consider the basic tenet of human evolution and reproduction, that is, in an unclear environment, the more genetic mutations, the greater the possibility of survival. After waking up from the dream, I thought further: If Rama really doesn't know where he is going or it will take a long time to get somewhere, will we spend the rest of our lives in this situation?Obviously Simone and Katie have outlived us, and they will eventually forget us entirely.What will happen after this?I kept to myself.Unless we somehow preserve the sperm of Richard and Michael, our daughters will not be able to reproduce, and what a dire biological and sociological problem!Maybe our daughters will end up in a Paradise, a new world, but they will die, and with them their genes. I went on to speculate that if I had a son, the two daughters would have male companions of their own age, and the family would continue. At this moment a wild and bold idea crossed my mind.As a medical student I majored in genetics and studied genetic defects.I still remember our case analysis of "inferior blood" produced by inbreeding of European royal families in the 15th to 18th centuries.My son Richard and I have the same genetics and blood as Simone and Katie, so there is a great possibility that our son will have a child with any of our daughters, that is, our grandson.On the other hand, the son Michael and I had had only half the same genes as my daughter, and that boy was much less likely to have the defect with Simone and Katie's offspring. I dismissed the shameful, immoral thought at once, but it could not be erased from my mind.I couldn't sleep that night as the same thoughts flooded my mind again.What if Richard and I conceive another girl?I'm 41 years old, and I don't have much time to bear children. According to Richard and my data, we don't have any signs of having a son; Michael's three children are all sons, and he has the greatest possibility of having a son. . I thought a lot, and the easiest way is artificial insemination.Impossible under our present conditions.Can you guarantee the sex and health of the fetus?Even if the hospitals on the earth follow all the procedures, there is no 100% guarantee of success. Another option would be with Michael... I immediately dropped the idea. To my surprise (six hours later) the two men prepared a special dinner and Michael was almost a master chef.The dinner dish looked like creamed spinach and tasted like beef Wellington.Richard and Michael also prepared some red liquid and labeled it as wine, which looked really good.I tasted a little, and it still contained alcohol, and I felt a little dizzy. We were all a little drunk by the end of dinner, and the two kids, Simone in particular, looked at us in bewilderment.Michael told me that "41" was a "pretty special number" over coconut dessert, explaining that "41 is the largest prime number in a long series of quadratic equations that produces other prime numbers. I asked him what a quadratic equation is, and he laughed He wrote 40 base numbers: 41, 43, 47, 53, 61, 71, 83, 97, 113... 1601. He said that these 40 base numbers are all prime numbers, and then blinked and said: "41 must be a very magical number. numbers. I laughed, and Richard looked at the numbers and typed something on his computer, and we had a discussion about the quadratic equation, explaining it to us clearly. Michael and I looked at him adoringly , Richard is such a genius. March 13, 2205 Today is Katie's second birthday and everyone is in a good mood, especially Richard.He really liked his little girl, though Katie sometimes made him do it and that.For Katie's birthday, he took her to the mouth of the octospider's burrow, rattling the iron bars.Neither Michael nor I approve of it, but Richard smiles and winks at Katie.At dinner, Simone played a little piece of piano music that Michael had taught her, and Richard brought out a bottle of fine wine and a plate of poached "salmon". I was happy, but nervous about the upcoming conversation with Richard.Richard is happily busy with his two major research projects during this time.I'm going to tell him how I want to have a son with Michael.I think Richard would appreciate the logic and science in my proposal and would appreciate it.But I don't expect him to be very enthusiastic about it.I haven't mentioned this to Michael yet.He probably figured something serious was going on when I told him this afternoon that I was going up with Richard to talk about something and ask him to babysit the kids. Maybe my worries are unfounded.In the present circumstances, this is clearly the best way without reproach.Richard is in a good mood these days, but he is very sensitive, and he will look at me sharply at any time during the conversation.But I bet he'll go with my idea eventually.