Chapter 16 third quarter

The breakfast was quite rich, and the family asked the chef for many exquisite dishes.The designers of the apartment provide them with various stoves and refrigerators, so that they can cook for themselves.Yet their alien (or robot) chef is so good that the Nicole family doesn't even have to cook for themselves.Everything is so easy, just press a button. "I want pancakes this morning," Katie yelled from the kitchen. "Me too, me too," echoed Katie's follower, Patrick. "What kind of crepes do you want?" asked the monotonous voice. "We have four kinds of crepes, soba crepes, butter milk crepes..."

"Just buttermilk pancakes," Katie said impatiently. "Three." She glanced at her little brother and added, "Four would be better." "Made with butter and maple sugar," cried Patrick. "Four buttery maple sugar pancakes," the voice repeated. "Any more?" "Another bottle of apple juice and another bottle of orange juice," Katie said after discussing with Patrick for a while. "Please wait six minutes and eighteen seconds," said the voice. After the food is prepared, the family sits around the kitchen round table.Ellie reports to mum what the kids have been up to in her absence; Patrick relishes his personal 50-meter sprint record in the gym; Come on and applaud.While washing the dishes after breakfast, the doorbell rang.

The three adults looked at each other, and Richard went to the console and turned on the video monitor: Hawkman was standing outside their door. "Hopefully we're not being tested this time," Patrick blurted out. "No, I don't think so." Nicole said, walking towards the door. "Maybe he's here to tell us the results of the last test." Nicole took a deep breath and opened the door.Although she had dealt with Hawkman many times, his presence made her nervous.Why?Is it his vast knowledge, or his superhuman abilities, or his appearance? With what Nicole thought was a smile, Hawkman greeted her. "May I come in?" he said cheerfully. "I want to talk to you, your husband, and Mr. O'Toole."

As always, Nicole stared at him (or "it") curiously and wondered: he was tall, maybe 2.25 meters, humanlike from the neck down; The fur is creamy white; except for the hands, his arms and body are densely covered with charcoal-gray fine fluff; the body below the waist is flesh-colored.However, no resemblance to real human skin can be found in his glossy appearance.He had no hair below the waist, no joints or genitals; his feet had no toes.When Yingman walks, his knees are full of wrinkles; when his legs are straight, nothing can be seen. Hawkman's face always seemed to be half asleep, with a pair of large dark blue eyes above a protruding gray beak; when he opened his beak, he spoke in very standard English, but his voice was strange, Appears to emanate from an electronic sound box in the throat; the snow-white fur on the top of the head contrasts sharply with the dark gray hair on the face, neck, and back; the hair on the face is sparse and unevenly distributed.

Nicole stared at Hawkman and stood there dumbfounded. "May I come in?" Hawkman repeated politely. "When... of course." Nicole replied, making way for the Hawkman, "I'm sorry... I really haven't seen you for a long time." Hawkman strode into the living room and greeted others as he walked: "Good morning, Mr. Walkerfield. Good morning, Mr. O'Toole. Hi, hello, children." Patrick and Ben backed away from Hawkman.Of the children, only Katie and little Ellie seemed unafraid. "Good morning," Richard replied, "Can I be of service to you today?" It was well known that Hawkman never came here for purely social purposes.

"I told your wife just now at the door," Eagle replied, "I need to speak to you three adults, just for an hour. Can Simone look after the children?" Nicole beckoned the children to play in the playroom, but Hawkman stopped her, saying, "No, let them stay here. Let's go to the conference room down the hall." "It's...it's so big here...we've never left the kids alone in the apartment before." Nichol felt something was wrong in his heart, and suddenly worried about the safety of the children, "Excuse me, Hawkman, the children stay Will it be okay here? I mean there won't be any unexpected visitors or…"

"No, Mrs. Walkerfield," said Eagle earnestly, "we assure you that nothing will disturb your child." They walked into the transition hall and were about to change into their space suits, when the Hawkman stopped them and said, "No need, we checked this area last night. I have sealed off this hall before meeting with you, and the entire area has been adjusted to a similar level to Earth's space." Air, no need to change clothes here." After sitting down in the conference room, Hawkman began to speak: "Since we first met, you have been asking me what you are doing here, and I have never answered you directly. Now we have finished sleeping with you." The final test of - I can say was successfully completed. I am hereby authorized to inform you of the next steps for you."

"With permission, I can tell you part of the situation related to me. As you guessed, I am not a living creature-at least I am not according to your understanding." Speaking of this, Yingman smiled, "Gao I was created by the intelligent Nord rulers, and I was tasked with contacting you on some sensitive matters. We communicated with you through ghostly voices early on, and observed that you were reluctant. Do you know, Mr. Walkerfield? That time you Unauthorized visits to the management area almost caused serious chaos in this area. The rulers here have long planned to create me or other similar objects to be your family messengers. I appeared immediately that day and prevented your further actions. "

After hesitating for a moment, Hawkman continued: "You have now entered the most important period of your presence here. Your spaceship called 'Rama' is in Hanga, ready to be overhauled and redesigned. Now we need you humans to participate in the investigation of Rama. Rama’s redesign, some of you will return to your source place—the solar system with Rama.” Hearing this, both Richard and Nicole wanted to interject. "Wait till I finish," said the Hawkman, "we have carefully prepared all questions concerning you." The Hawkman glanced at the three people sitting around the table, and continued in a slow tone: "Please note that I did not say that you will return to Earth. If this plan is successful, those of you Those who return to the solar system will have the opportunity to communicate with other humans in the solar system. You cannot return to Earth except when it is necessary to deviate from the original plan."

"Please note that only some of you can return." Eagle Man said directly to Nicole: "Mrs. Walkerfield, there is no doubt that you will travel with Rama. This is a prerequisite for us to carry out this plan .You can discuss with your family who will go with you, or you can choose to go alone and let everyone else stay in Nord; you can also take others. But in any case, you can't take everyone. Must stay to breed A man and a woman of the descendants are in Nord, only in this way can we complete the required information in our encyclopedia and prevent the failure of the return plan.

"Nord's main purpose is to catalog living species in the galaxy. We have taken special care to gather exhaustive data on every type of spacefarer we encounter. To accomplish this task we have used It took hundreds of years to develop a method of collecting this data--to get as much important data as possible without disrupting the evolutionary patterns of space-faring creatures. "Our basic method is to launch observation spacecraft, and in this way capture space tourists in order to characterize them. To this end, we also launch a number of spacecraft to interact with other species in order to capture representatives of the species. In this way we Long-term, detailed observations can be made in our chosen environment." Hawkman paused for a moment.Nicole's heart was beating wildly, and she had too many questions on her mind. "Why was I the only one chosen to return to the Solar System? Will I ever see Genevieve again? What does Hawkman mean by 'capture'? Does he know that word is usually hostile? Why?  …" "I think I understand most of what you said," Richard finally couldn't help but said, "You omitted some important information, why on earth are you collecting information on space tourists?" Yingman smiled: "Our data structure is divided into three levels. Entering each level depends on a series of established judging criteria. I have just stated to you that as representatives of human beings, you appear in the second level of information. You Your intelligence is commendable, but answering this question of yours is third-level information." "You're trying to say you're not going to tell us the answer, are you?" Richard smiled nervously. Hawkman nodded. "Can you tell me why I have to make this trip?" Nicole asked impatiently. "There are many reasons," Hawkman replied. "First, we believe that your body is the most suitable for this trip. Our profile also shows that you have excellent communication skills, which will come in handy after we complete the capture mission. Also There are other reasons, but these are the two most important." "When are we leaving?" Richard asked. "Not sure yet, some of the schedule is entirely up to you. We will inform you when the departure date is confirmed, but it can be said with certainty that it will not be within four months." "We'll be leaving soon," thought Nicole. "At least two people must stay here. Who will we keep? . . . " "Any fertile couple can stay in Nord, right?" Michael asked.His problem was the same as Nicole's—who to keep? "That's pretty much it, Mr. O'Toole," Hawkman replied. "The youngest girl, Ellie, can't stay. We can't guarantee that you'll be alive or fertile until she reaches maturity. Any combination other than her will do." .We must guarantee the success of producing healthy offspring." "But why?" Nicole asked. "There is a very small possibility of failure in the mission you perform, but failure exists. If it fails, the pair of people who remain in Nord will become the only human beings we observe. We are particularly interested in you because although you The evolutionary time is not long, and it is not easy to reach such a stage without the usual outside help." The conversation went on endlessly like this, and after asking a few more questions, Hawkman suddenly stood up and announced the end of the conversation.He urged the humans to resolve the "assignment" problem as soon as possible, because he couldn't wait to work with the returning members.Their job was to help him design the "Earth Patterns in Ramane", for which Hawkman left without further explanation. The three adults agreed that the important details of their meeting with Hawkman should not be told to the children on the first day until he had thought it over and discussed it.That night, when the children were asleep, Nicole, Richard and Michael were talking quietly in the living room of the apartment. Nicole, who opened the conversation first, felt furious and powerless.Although Hawkman had been talking to them in a very friendly manner, he was, on the whole, ordering them to take part in this return.What if they refuse to cooperate?The answer is obvious: there is no threat, and there is no need to threaten it.They can only obey the command of the eagle, because the whole family is completely dependent on the eagle or the intelligent machine he represents.In this case, what else can they do? Who in this family should stay in Nord?Nicole was at a loss as to what to do.Michael said that it was necessary to keep a grown-up in Nord, which is indeed very convincing.In this case, any two children, including Simone and Patrick, still need the help of adult experience and wisdom to be happy in life.Michael voluntarily offered to stay in Nord, saying that he would most likely not survive the return journey. They all believed that the Nord rulers intended to put them to sleep on the way back.Otherwise, what are all these sleep-related tests for?Nicole was very reluctant to leave the children during an important formative period.She suggested that she return alone, leaving the rest of the family in Nord, on the grounds that after the return trip, the children were likely to find life on Earth "not quite normal". "If we understand Hawkman correctly," she said, "any returnee will end up somewhere in the galaxy as a passenger of Rama." "We're not sure about that," Richard said. "On the other hand, those who stay here will be doomed not to see any human beings other than our own family." Richard went on to say that he was going to make the return trip anyway, partly to be with Nicole and partly to experience the life of adventure. The three hadn't agreed on the children's arrangements the night before, but the adults' arrangements had been clarified: Michael remained in Nord, Richard and Nicole were ready to travel back. After the discussion, Nicole lay on the bed unable to fall asleep, with various options jumping in her mind.She was sure that Simone was a better mother than Katie.Plus, Simone is close to her Uncle Michael, and Katie is reluctant to be separated from her dad, Richard.But who is Simone's mate?Ben?He was madly in love with his sister, but the child had never been able to articulate his thoughts. Nicole tossed and turned for a long time unable to fall asleep.In fact, she hated either choice.She is distressed, but the problem has to be solved.She again faces being separated from at least some of her beloved family.It may be a brief or permanent separation.Late at night, she was lying on the bed, and the ghost and pain of being separated from her loved ones before her eyes reappeared vividly.Thinking of being separated from her loved ones again in a few months, Nicole felt a heart-wrenching pain.The images of mother, father, and Geno Viève captured her eyes and tugged at her heartstrings. "This is life—the never-ending, painful separation," she thought sadly.