Chapter 15 second quarter

Family reunions are always so sweet.Ben hugged his beloved sister tightly as Simone entered the room.Katie and Patrick immediately rolled on the floor. "Look, I can still beat you," Katie said. "You don't have much of an advantage," Patrick replied. "I'm getting bigger and bigger. You better watch out." Nicole hugged Richard and Michael as little Ellie ran up and jumped into her mother's arms and proudly showed her mother that she could say "cat, dog, boy" before walking out of the hall Go back to your room and sleep. Patrick was too excited to sleep, and when he was finally exhausted, Michael put him on his back and Nicole tucked him in. "I'm so glad you're back, Mom," Patrick said. "I miss you."

"I miss you too, and I don't think I'll ever be away from you for so long again." "I hope you don't," said the six-year-old son, "I think you're here." Everyone was in bed by one o'clock in the morning, except Nicole who wasn't tired.She had just returned from a five-week long sleep, after all.After lying beside Richard for half an hour, she decided to go for a walk. The rooms they lived in had no windows, only a window in the small hall outside to see other parts of Nord.Nicole went into the small hall, changed into a space suit, and stood in front of the outer door.The door was closed, and she smiled to herself. "Maybe Katie is right, we are the prisoners here." From the first day they lived here, they found that the door was always closed.Yingman explained that it was "necessary" to lock the door in order to prevent them from seeing "incomprehensible" things.

Nicol stared out the window: an airship that looked the same as the one that had brought them to Nord thirteen months earlier was approaching the Habitat Transportation Center. "What strange creatures are there in the car?" Nicole wondered. "Are they as frightened as we were when we first arrived?" Nicole will never forget seeing Nord for the first time.The whole family thought it would not take long to get from the space station to the next destination, but they were all wrong.It was a long six hours before they parted from bright Rama, the lights from the space station flickering behind them.In the end, everyone was so sleepy that they fell asleep.

"I see, I see where we're going!" Katie woke them up triumphantly, unable to control her excitement.Nord appeared more and more clearly before their eyes.It's a bit intimidating to look at from any angle: it's an equilateral triangle with a shiny sphere at each corner.Nord was so huge that even the Nicol family, who had lived on the colossal Rama for many years, were amazed by this mysterious object of incredible engineering.The three long transportation roads leading to the sphere are 150 kilometers long, and the diameter of each sphere is 25 kilometers. People can clearly see various activities in different areas.

The spaceship changed course and flew toward one of the triangular spheres.Patrick asked anxiously, "What's going to happen?" Nicole embraced her son and said softly, "I don't know, honey, we have to wait and see what happens." Ben was petrified, staring for a long time at the huge glowing triangle in space.Simone stood by his side as usual, holding his hand.Simone felt Ben tremble as the spaceship drew closer to one of the spheres. "Take it easy, Ben, everything will be fine," said Simone firmly. The spaceship carried them into a corridor leading to the sphere and docked next to the transport center.

The family came out cautiously with their luggage and Richard's computer.The spaceship disappeared behind them with a speed that shocked all grown-ups. A minute later, they heard the ghostly voice for the first time. "Welcome." The voice was flat and expressionless, "You have arrived at the residential area. Go ahead and stop in front of the gray wall." "Where does that sound come from?" Katie asked tremblingly. "Every direction," Richard replied, "from above us, around us, even below us." Everyone carefully examined the roof and walls.

"How do they speak English?" asked Simone. "Is there anyone else here?" Richard smiled nervously. "It doesn't look like it. Maybe this place has always been connected to Rama in some way, and has a major language coding system. I really doubt..." "Move forward, please," the voice interrupted Richard. "You are in a transit center. An express train will take you to the living quarters. It is waiting for you on the lower walkway." After a few minutes they came to the gray wall.The kids had never experienced weightlessness before, and Katie and Patrick leaped off the platform and somersaulted through the air.Ben saw how much fun they had and wanted to learn their antics, unfortunately he didn't know how to use the ceiling or wall to help him bounce back to the ground.Ben was completely bewildered, disoriented.Simone put her arms around him.

When the family and all their luggage had been settled, a door opened and they entered a small room.Special tights, helmets and slippers are neatly arranged on the stool.The cold voice continued: "There is no air suitable for your kind in the Nord Transit Center and most of the public areas. You must wear these special clothes, and you don't have to wear them when you enter your room." After changing into the special clothes, a door on the opposite side of the room opened, and a group of people entered the transportation center hall.Guided by that voice, they went down two floors and walked around the periphery of the circular room to the place where the "car" was waiting for them.The fully enclosed car was bright and comfortable inside, but they couldn't see what was outside from inside.The car is driving fast on the intricate passage.After an hour and a half the car stopped and the top was opened.

A group of people got off the station on the metal ground. Another similar indifferent voice gave them instructions: "There are two more halls 400 meters ahead, take the passage on the right, and stop before the third square mark on the left, that is the door of your room." Patrick quickly ran into one of the halls. "Not this one," the voice said deadpan. "Go back to the parking lot and go to the hall to your left." They saw nothing on the way from the parking lot to the room. Over the next few months, they went to the physical training room many times and occasionally took tests in the engineering area.But all he could see was the ceiling, the walls, and the square marks by the door.

Nicole and Richard believed at first that there were other people or things in their area living in other rooms, yet had never seen them (or them), not even in the hallway. After finding the designated door according to the signs, they took off the special clothes they put on in the transition hall and put them neatly in the special wardrobe.A group of people waited for the opening of the inner door, and the children looked curiously at the other two spheres outside the window. Minutes later, they got their first glimpse of the interior of their new home. Everyone was dumbfounded. Compared with the relatively primitive conditions of Rama, everything in Nord was like paradise: every child had his own room; Michael had a suite of his own; Nicole's room was just off the hall, at the other end of the flat, and their bed was as big as a king's.This apartment has a total of four bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a children's playroom.Each room is furnished with elegance and refinement.This apartment provides them with a living space of 400 square meters.

The whole family was shocked, and the children shouted and chased excitedly. Nicole asked Richard, "How the hell did they do it all?" Richard looked around and said, "I can only guess. It's likely that everything we do in Rama is being monitored and transmitted to Nord. They must have used our database and analyzed our lives from it. way." At this point, Richard opened his mouth and smiled, "Of course, even here, they can use super-sensitive receivers to receive TV signals from the earth. Isn't it embarrassing for us to live in this way? ..." "Welcome." Richard was interrupted by another identical voice, which also seemed to be coming from the same direction, "I hope everything in your apartment is satisfactory to you. If there is any dissatisfaction, please let us know. We It's impossible to answer all of your questions in unison all the time, so we've created a simple form of communication here. You have a white button on the kitchen counter that you press to send a message to us when one person speaks .After each communication is completed, press the button again, and you can..." "I want to ask a question first," Katie interjected, rushing into the kitchen and pressing the white button. "Who are you?" A second later the voice continued: "We are the composite intelligence that rules Nord, and are here to help you, make your life more comfortable, and provide you with the necessities of life. We will also repeatedly ask you to perform missions so that we can Get to know you better..." The airship outside the window disappeared, and Nicole was still thinking about the scene when he first arrived in Nord.Soon, she was back in the present, imagining a group of strange creatures aboard the platform, a voice greeting and talking to them in their native language.They must have been surprised too.Nicole thought to himself: "The experience of miracles must have a universal significance, an experience that belongs to all sentient beings." Nicol looked around the management area and thought, "What's going on there? We unfortunate people are tossing back and forth between the residential area and the engineering area. Everything is arranged in an orderly manner, but who arranged all this? Why? Why are we beings brought into this artificial world?" Nicole has too many questions and can't find the answers.All this gave her only one strong feeling: how small she was!Nicole had a sudden impulse to go back into the room at once and hug each of her children.She laughed at herself: "It all symbolizes our place in the universe: we are so important to our children; but we are so insignificant in the grand universe. How much wisdom and wisdom are needed to reconcile these two perceptions?" Courage!"