Chapter 12 Section 12

April 13, 2209 Today is an unusual day.After lunch I sat next to Richard for his routine medical checkup, and Katie asked me if I could play Prince Henry and Falstaff the robots, to which I said yes without thinking.I think those two tiny robots are broken, I actually want Katie to leave the room so I can use another method on Richard to wake him from his coma. I've never seen a coma as deep as Richard's.His eyes are open most of the time, occasionally resting his gaze on an object.Other than that, he showed no other signs of life.His muscles were numb.I tried various mechanical and chemical stimulations to try to wake him from his coma, but my efforts were in vain.Faced with all this, I felt helpless and helpless.

A little over ten minutes after Katie left I heard a strange, mixed sound coming from the nursery.I left Richard and walked towards the nursery, and the odd voice rhythmically said, "Hi, we're safe, this is your man".The sound seemed to come from the bottom of a very deep well. It was the voice of Prince Henry, who was standing in the middle of the nursery.Katie looked especially excited as the children sat around it. I glanced quizzically at Katie, and she explained, "I was playing with these buttons and it suddenly moved." The robot Prince Henry didn't move when he spoke.Oddly enough, Richard prided himself on the way his robot spoke and moved in unison.I sit down next to the children.

"Hi, we are safe, this is your man," said Prince Henry after a few seconds' pause. I suddenly felt a wave of terror. The kids were still laughing, but they stopped laughing when they noticed the strange look on my face.Ben crawled towards me and grabbed my hand. We were all sitting on the floor with our backs to the door, and I suddenly felt someone standing behind me.I turned and saw: Richard was standing in the doorway.I jumped up in shock, but Richard fell down with a thud and lost consciousness again. The children screamed and cried.I looked at Richard and tried to reassure the children not to cry.Michael had gone for a walk in New York in the afternoon and hadn't come back, so I sat down on the floor outside the nursery and watched over Richard.Sitting next to him, I observed carefully for more than an hour. His condition was exactly the same as when I left the bedroom. There was no sign that he had awakened for a few tens of seconds.

We carried Richard back to the bedroom when Michael came back.We spent more than an hour talking about why Richard suddenly woke up.I repeatedly checked the chapters on coma in medical books and believed that Richard's coma was caused by a combination of physical and psychological causes.I think that strange sound stimulated his nerves and revived him, but what made him relapse and fell into a coma again?It was a difficult question to answer, and perhaps the walk in the aisles had drained the last of his energy.Right now we know nothing and cannot explain what happened today. Katie kept asking me, "Who's safe?"

I was speechless for my daughter's question. May 1, 2209 Let us remember this day forever! Richard Colin Walkerfield utters his first words after coma and finally recognizes his family again. In the past week, he has been trying to make himself active: first he uses his eyes to identify things, and then he opens his mouth as if to speak.This morning, he smiled at me and almost said my name. Katie hugged Richard excitedly, in return Richard said the first word - "Katie". There was joy and peace in the whole family, especially the girls, celebrating their father's recovery.I have told my children countless times that Richard's recovery has been a long and painful process and that he should be given more rest.The children are too young to understand my words.

What a happy woman I am now!Before dinner, Richard leaned into my ear and softly called my name.I couldn't hold it any longer and tears welled up in my eyes.Even though I know my husband is not quite back to normal yet, I am confident that one day he will be completely fine.My heart is full of joy and hope. August 18, 2209 Richard was slowly, slowly recovering, getting better and better.Now he only sleeps 12 hours a day, and he can walk a mile incessantly, occasionally focusing on something interesting, but he has not yet started using the keyboard, screen and Rama people communicate.He took Prince Henry to check what was making the strange noise in the nursery, but found nothing.

Richard was the first to admit that he wasn't the old Richard.Talking about this, he said that he seemed to be in a smoky dream, and everything was blurred.It's been three months since he regained consciousness, and he still can't remember what happened since he left us.He said for sure that he was in a coma last year, but it was just his vague feeling, not the real thing. Richard insists that he lived in the Aiyun Bird Cave for several months and witnessed a spectacular cremation, but can't recall the exact details.On two occasions Richard endeavored to convince us that he had explored to the south of the Sea of ​​Columns, and found the principal colony of the octopus near the South Cape.However, Richard's memory is erratic, fluctuating from day to day, making it hard for us to trust his words.

I gave Richard two physical exams and took detailed notes.Except for some abnormalities in his mental activity and body temperature, everything else is normal.His daily brainwaves are indescribable, sometimes hyperactive, and other times seemingly blank.The results of his gunshot examination through electronic medical measurement methods are also very special. The hippocampus of his brain is almost in a dormant state.That's why Richard's memory is erratic. Richard's body temperature is also a bit strange. For two months, his body temperature has been stable at 37.8°C, which is 0.8°C higher than ordinary people.I checked all his pre-flight records.While on Earth his body temperature stabilized at 36.9°C.

I can't explain why he has such a persistent low-grade fever. Richard's listless appearance disappointed the children.He used to be full of energy, but now he is just a shadow of the past.Katie remembers laughing and playing with her dad when she was two, and now she is angry that Richard spends so little time with her.I explained to her that "Dad is still sick", but she was still not satisfied. The first day after finding Richard, Michael moved all my stuff from him back to my room.Michael is a very considerate man.For weeks on end he plunged himself into religious fervor again, and I think he was asking God to forgive his sins.In order to share my work load, he finds time to help me babysit and get along with the children very happily.

Simone was like a little mother, surprisingly patient with Ben.Ben adored her.There were a few times when Simone said "Ben's kind of dumb," and Michael and I explained to her that Ben had Whitingham syndrome.We haven't told Katie about Ben because she's having a hard time.Patrick followed her around like a pet dog all day and couldn't cheer her up. Everyone in our family knows we are being watched, and so do the kids.As if playing a game, we scoured the walls of the nursery and found some irregularities on the walls.We figured that was the cameras and used tools to remove them from the wall.But we're still not sure we've found the monitor, it's probably so tiny it's only visible under a microscope.As Richard likes to say: These aliens have magically developed technology.

Katie was particularly annoyed by the monitors the octospiders had installed in our house.She speaks openly and angrily about their invasion of her "private life," and perhaps she has more secrets than we do.Simone told her sister it didn't matter because "God is watching us all the time".In this way, we had our first discussion on religious issues.Katie responded to her sister with the word "shit" that a six-year-old should not use.Her performance reminded me that I should pay more attention to my words in front of children. One day last month I took Richard to the Evan Bird Cave to see if there was anything there that would jog his memory.We went down the vertical passage, and when we reached the mouth of the tunnel he looked frightened and murmured, "Darkness, darkness, I can't see anything in the dark, but they can see everything." When he got to the sink he stopped I couldn't move forward, so I had to take him back to our cave. Richard knew that Ben and Patrick were Michael's sons.He suspected that during his absence Michael and I had lived as a couple, but he never commented on that.Both Michael and I were going to ask Richard for forgiveness and explain to him our relationship during the two years he had been away, but Richard didn't seem to have the slightest interest in the subject. One night, the old Richard reappeared.It was like entering heaven to experience the passion and joy that had been buried for a long time and exploded again. Richard's interest in our conjugal life lasted three days, just as quietly as it had come, and then faded away.Disappointed at first, I later understood that this was a stage in his healing process. Last night Richard started measuring our speed again for the first time since he came back to us.Michael and I are very excited. "We're still orbiting in the same direction," Richard announced loudly to us, "and now we're three light-years away from Sirius!" January 6, 2210 I am 46 years old!The hair on the sides and forehead is almost gray.On Earth I might have dyed my hair, but it doesn't matter here. I am too old to have children.How I want to tell the little girl who is growing in my stomach how surprised I am by her appearance.I have another child of Richard inside me, another member of our family wandering aimlessly through space. This is my tenth birthday on Rama.How unbelievable that I have already spent 1/5 of my life on this giant cylindrical extraterrestrial ship.Have I really lived on Earth, a planet with a large area of ​​ocean hundreds of millions of kilometers away?Do I really know any other humans besides Richard Walkerfield and Michael O'Toole?Is my father really the famous historical science fiction author Pierre de Jardin?Did I really live in secret with Henry, Prince of Wales and give birth to my first daughter, Genene Viève? It all seems unbelievable now, at least not on my 46th birthday today.Richard and Michael had asked me who Genevieve's father was, but I didn't tell them.It's ridiculous, isn't it a little too much?What difference does this have on Rama?It was my eternal secret from the moment I became pregnant with Geno Viève (I only told my father).She is my daughter, and I brought her into this world and raised her.It doesn't matter to me who her biological father is. Looking back, I became a young mother in my twenties.I did everything successfully, and my ambition was to announce to the world that I could play by the rules and win, just as I could do the triple jump at the Olympics.Isn't it amazing that an unwed mother was chosen to be an astronaut?I was young and confident then.Lucky me, lucky Genevieve. Every time I look at Geno Viève, I see Henri in her.She looks exactly like him from lip to chin, and I don't mean to deny genetics.Being a great mother, a great woman means a lot to me, even if I can't be a queen. My complexion is too dark for me to be Queen Nicole of England.How long will it take for humans to get rid of discrimination against skin color? 500 years? 1000 years?Neither legislation nor education can eliminate this racial discrimination. Ten years ago when I fell to the bottom of the pit, I thought I was going to die.I asked myself then, what would I choose to live if I had the chance to survive?I think about the time I spent with Henry.To this day I still yearn to live with my prince and experience that pure bliss again, if only for a few minutes, a few hours.When people face death and the betrayal of their companions, the most important thing is the momentary joy.That joy is so great that it transcends the earth we live on. When I hit the bottom, I was a little ashamed that I remembered Henry as much as I remembered my parents and my daughter.I guess I'm not the only one who cherishes this experience.Everyone holds something special in their memory. The night before the launch of the Newton, Genevieve and I stayed with our only college friend, Gabrielle Moreau.We haven't seen each other for seven years, and we all talked about our relationship experiences that night.Gabrielle is very happy. She has a handsome, considerate and successful husband, three healthy and lively children and a luxurious manor.In the middle of the night, Gabrielle told me with a girlish, shy smile that her best and most memorable moments had happened before she met her husband.A movie star she had a crush on happened to be in her hometown on vacation, and she managed to meet him in a hotel room and have a private conversation with him for nearly an hour.She kissed him on the lips before leaving.This is her most precious memory. Oh my prince, I saw you for the last time ten years ago yesterday. are you happy now Are you a good king? Have you ever wondered about that dark-skinned Olympic champion and her first love who offered herself to you? On the ski slope that day, you asked me a question tactfully, who is the father of my daughter?My refusal to answer, without realizing it at the time, indicated that I had not fully forgiven you.My prince, if you ask me today, I will happily tell you the truth.Yes, Henry Rikers, King of England, you are indeed the father of Genevieve de Jardin!Go find her, be acquainted with her, love her children!I can't do all of these, I'm in a distant place 50,000,000,000,000 kilometers away from you.