Chapter 47 Section five

Richard has no concept of time.He had been in that alien mesh lair for days, maybe weeks, changing positions a few times.The net also helped him undress when he went to bed the first night.Now Richard was lying on his back on the net, tangled in filaments. He no longer worries about his survival.As soon as he feels hungry or thirsty, his needs are met immediately; his waste is disposed of in just a few minutes.The living net was tightly wrapped around him, but his breathing was not affected in any way. Richard spent a great deal of time studying the creature that clung to him.The web around him vibrated slightly, slowly changing shape.At one point, the thin lines formed a triangle in front of his head.

The net worked out a cyclical pattern for Richard: strap him in for 15-20 hours, then release him completely and let him rest for a few hours.Once the net is unwrapped, Richard sleeps without dreams.Richard occasionally woke up with his body let go, feeling immediately sluggish.As soon as the thread was wrapped around him, he was suddenly full of energy. He would have fairly lucid dreams when this alien web enveloped him.Richard, who had never had so many dreams before, used to laugh at Nicole for being too focused on the study of dreams.Now, when his own dreams had become strange and inexplicable, he understood why Nicole cared so much about dreams.

At times, the image of Nicole became vivid in Richard's memory.Richard was surprised to find that as long as he was concentrating, he could recall all the conversations he had with Nicole, including details such as her expression and demeanor when she spoke.Trapped in the net, he often felt lonely, and the clear memories evoked his infinite thoughts of his beloved wife. The memory of the children is also very strong.He misses them, especially Katie.He still remembers the last conversation he had with this special daughter.It was a few days before Ellie's wedding, and Katie went home to get her clothes, disheartened and helpless.She needed encouragement, she needed support, and Richard couldn't help.In his memory, Katie is no longer the 10-year-old girl running back and forth in the New York square, but has become a sexy young woman.The intertwining of these two images of Katie produced a strong sense of loss in Richard. "I haven't had a good time with her since she woke up from her long sleep." He sighed and sighed, "I'd rather have my little girl."

Thinking of Nicole and Katie brought something special to Richard's memory.He can't seem to control his mind, and some memories are quite painful, especially his childhood.He remembered sitting on a stool at the dining table in his living room when he was eight years old, and the air in the room was tense.His father was drunk and swearing at the family sitting around the table eating quietly.Richard accidentally spilled the soup on the table, and his father slapped him hard, kicked him off the stool, and kicked him into the corner.Little Richard curled up in the corner in fear, trembling with fright.For many years, Richard didn't want to think about that sad scene.Thinking of his cursing, neurotic father and his own helpless fears as a young man brought Richard to tears.

One day Richard suddenly began to recall events that had occurred during his coma in Rama 2.Enduring the severe pain, he saw himself lying in a strange room, surrounded by three or four octopus spiders, and many instruments and equipment were connected to his brain, as if he was doing some tests. "Stop, stop!" Richard yelled, interrupting his recollection. "My head hurts like hell." Miraculously, his headache disappeared immediately, and he regained his memory of the octospider. Day after day Richard thought of the tiny, moving creatures digging deep into his body. Richard was shocked to find that he had many new memories that had never existed before.He thought excitedly, "I already remember something about the octospiders: they talk to each other through the colors on their heads. They're basically friendly, but want to know everything about me, and they...

The memory faded again, and the headache returned to Richard.The thread came loose, and Richard, exhausted, fell asleep. With the passage of time, memories flashed one scene after another, and the dream suddenly no longer appeared.Finally, his memory was no longer under the control of any external force; the filaments were no longer entwined around him. Richard survived another week unharmed.In the second week, a denser and larger, rarely seen net-like ball formed twenty centimeters away from his head.The ball got bigger and bigger, as big as a basketball.Hundreds of thin wires protruded from this ball and embedded themselves in Richard's head. Regardless of the severe pain in his brain, he thought: "Finally, I can see what is going to happen."

Immediately he saw images that made him so dizzy that he couldn't make them out.Richard's brain was working nimbly, and he came up with a clever way of communicating with the web.When the first image came to his mind, he came to the conclusion that the web had been reading his memory these days, but could not measure the clarity of the images he received.Richard remembered seeing an ophthalmologist when he was a boy.The doctor communicated with him with gestures to see if he could see clearly, and finally determined the prescription of his glasses.Richard pointed to the shifting net, and gestured to indicate whether the image was clear or not.In this way, he quickly "seeed" what the aliens wanted to show him.

The second image that popped into his mind was that of a planet.It was a cloud-shrouded world, with two small moons, and in the distance a golden, sun-like star glowing with light and heat.This is almost certainly the planetary system in which the web resides.The next image showed Richard the scenery on that planet. This is a world shrouded in fog.Beneath the mist was a brown barren surface.On the edge of the land, lakes and oceans are rolling with waves.Only here is there any sign of life.Richard saw several ivans in the oasis, as well as an assortment of startling creatures.He could analyze this imagery for days, sure the communication with him through this net needed to serve some purpose, but the first set of images was just an introduction.

All of the images are of an Evan, a Managua, a Moomin, a net, or a combination of the four.Richard believes it all stems from "standard life" on this planet.He was puzzled to see the Managua was born in the wire mesh: "Why did Moomin lay her eggs here? For protection?" Richard came to a deep impression: this web is the master of this species.The images shown show that Moomin cats and iyun birds are completely succumbed to the web-like creatures. "Are these webs manipulating the minds of Moomin cat and Ai Yunniao? What kind of incredible symbiotic relationship is there between them?"

All the images are arranged in a row, forming a structure of hundreds of frames.After the image was repeated twice, the thin thread wrapped around Richard's body untied and retreated back to the knot. The web wove another passage, and Richard could see the door he had come in weeks before.He thought that he might have been liberated, and after a moment of excitement, he was immediately disappointed.As long as he moved, those thin threads would entangle him tightly again. "Why is this? What is the channel used for?" Richard was full of doubts.At this time, three Moomies came in through the gate, one of them broke two legs, and the last part of its body was crushed, as if it had been hit by a big truck.The two companions next to him left after posting the crippled Moomin online.The silk screen soon came to life again, enveloping the newcomer.

Richard was two meters away from the crippled Moomin, and in the middle was an open space, devoid of threads or shapes, the likes of which Richard had never seen before. "It's time for me to think again, what does this mean? Could it be that this net is the doctor of Moomin cat, just like Ai Yunniao's doctor is Moomin cat?" The silk mesh tightly wrapped the injured in a cocoon, and the central network knots around Richard immediately moved towards that cocoon. Richard dozed off, awoke to see the Nexus Knot back to him.Richard's heart raced as the cocoon unraveled and nearly disappeared, and so did Moomin. Richard hadn't had time to think about what happened in front of him, those central threads were soon wrapped around his head, and another picture was displayed in his mind.Richard saw five human soldiers camped by the river in the Ai Yunniao residential area, eating, with a row of weapons and two machine guns beside them. The second image that popped into his mind was that humans were attacking the settlement, and two of the scenes made him horrified: one was two people clapping their hands in congratulations for shooting down an aiyun bird flying in the sky; There is a huge hole, where the bodies of several Aiyun birds are abandoned, and there is a person on the left who is pushing two dead birds in a cart and walking towards this side. Richard was shocked by the pictures he saw, and he asked himself; "What do these pictures mean? Why am I seeing these now?" He quickly recalled everything he had experienced in this network, and suddenly came to a shock Conclusion: The crippled Moomin must have witnessed what was shown on the screen, and the entire web-like creature moved the picture from Moomin's mind to Richard's brain! After understanding the meaning of the picture, Richard paid more attention to every detail.He was shocked and outraged by the atrocities of aggression and robbery he saw.Finally, he also saw three human soldiers attack the brown cylinder's Aiyun bird settlement, and none survived. "These poor creatures are facing annihilation. People, do you know what you are doing..." Tears welled up in Richard's eyes, realizing that it was his own kind that was watching and slaughtering the Aiyunniao.He felt sad like never before. "No, no!" he cried silently. "Stop, stop! Aren't you so blind that you can't see what you're doing? These aiyun-birds have minds like us, and miracles have made them, and they are ours." brother!" The bird-like creature reappeared in Richard's memory. "It's them, they saved me." He thought about Ai Yunniao helping him fly across the garden pillar sea without expecting anything in return. "Where can I find someone who treats Ai Yunniao well?" he said bitterly to himself. In life, Richard never shed tears easily, but the tragic fate of Ai Yunniao and the cruelty of human beings made him cry.He thought back to the days and nights he had spent in the Aiyunniao area, especially the message that the wounded Moomin had given him. "They showed me around and then put me here...apparently they want to talk to me...what's all this for?" Tears welled up in Richard's eyes: "Because they have nowhere to go, they are begging for my help."