Chapter 3 third chapter

Looking over the window, we saw the ship land on a raised platform in the center of a long piece of land, covered with lush grass and surrounded by clumps of shrubs and showy flowers.The wide streets that surround it are surrounded by buildings that awe me. "Uncle Paine's Tycho Memorial Hall!" Pippi lightly touched my waist, "There is an ancient monument in the capital of the United States! I saw it in Diane's video." "Ancient history," Casey shrugged, as if to say that it didn't matter. "I want to see the earth as it is today." Pippi opened the hatch.We put on our travel clothes and stepped out of the ship to get a better look around.The hatch closed by itself, and I heard it hiss behind us, and Pippi turned to look at the hatch, where the monument sits at the bottom of the rectangular area, its shadow reflected in a long, narrow pool of water.It was flanked by gigantic stone pillars gleaming silver on one side and a sphinx made of sand and rock with its nose already repaired on the other.

We stood there looking at the old American government building on the other side of the road, the British Houses of Parliament on the right side of it, and the Big Ben in London was striking the hour.Next to them was the Kremlin, its vaulted gilded roofs gleaming above its solemn red walls.The Parthenon was re-roofed and refurbished, and it was as magnificent as ever, standing on the stone mountain in the distance. Across the courtyard, I also found the splendid vaults of the Taj Mahal, and St. Peter's Basilica of Christ.On the distant heights, I recognized the Chrysler factory in New York, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Chinese pagodas and pyramids covered in smooth white marble.Farther off, I saw a gray ridge replicated in the familiar Tycho crater, on top of which the space station's domed observation room gleamed.

"We found it!" Pippi happily patted Casey on the back, "What should we do now?" "They owe us that," Casey said, turning to him with a look. "Regardless of when it happened, we brought them here. This crater should remind them how they got Earth, or With everything we've given them." "I don't know if they still care about this," Pippi turned and walked back to the spaceship, "Let's see if we can contact Uncle Paine." "The equipment has been shut down," we heard a monotonous mechanical voice from the hatch. "The application for entry has been denied. This order is authorized by the Tycho Research Institute."

"Let's go in!" Kathy yelled. "We need the gear we left on board, clothes, backpacks, and food bags. Open the door and let's retrieve it." "Access denied." He pounded on the hatch with his fists, then kissed the bruises on his knuckles. "Access denied." "Anyway, we're finally here." Pippi shrugged and stepped off the landing pad.A strange loud noise stopped him, and the sound echoed around the walls.After a while we saw a locomotive dragging a train of open cars full of passengers, belching white steam from above the Washington Monument.The train moved slowly around the rectangular area, stopping at regular intervals to let passengers descend.

The sun was too high and the light was too bright, so we covered our eyes and watched them.Everyone here was as lanky and trim as Uncle Paine, completely naked, with the same dark brown skin.Many were carrying bags and rucksacks, and a few strayed across the lawn and gardens, while most stood at the corner waiting for a signal to let them cross the street. "They're probably tourists," I surmised. "They're here to visit Uncle Paine's vintage memorial." "But I didn't see any kids," Kathy shook her head. "They should have brought kids."

"Anyway, they're always human," Pippi smiled confidently. "We'll find someone to tell us something Paine didn't mention." We climbed off the landing pad and walked quickly, skirting a clump of strangely scented flowers.A man and a woman in front of us stopped.The woman looked a bit odd, with the short fluffy yellowish hair on her head, but I thought she was just as cute as the hologram of Mona taken with Al Cheno when they first landed on the moon. of.The man was young, handsome, and imposing, much like Paine.I think they are a pair of lovers. The woman, amused by her lover and giggling, ran a little ahead and stood between the monument and the Sphinx to pose for his photo.With a bright red shawl on her shoulders, he said something to her.She quickly removed her shawl and smiled at the camera.Her delicate breasts were pale from being covered under her shawl, and he waited for the sun to restore her skin to its original color.

We watched him press the shutter the whole time.They were laughing and playing, and she ran back and put the shawl around his shoulders, and threw her arms around him.They stuck together for a long kiss.We stood a dozen yards away, and Kathy greeted them hopefully as they turned to face us. "Hello!" They stared at us blankly, and Kathy forced some smiles, fine beads of sweat oozing from the dark oriental face. "Excuse me, do you speak English? Or French, Spanish," They frowned at him, and the man uttered a string of musical vowels with a rhythm and sense of language that I could not imitate.I recognized a strange Paine-like accent, but it was nothing like our English.They get closer.The man took the camera out of his bag, clicked the shutter on Kathy a few times, and then stepped forward to film his head.The woman laughed at him, walked up to Kathy to pose, and put her golden arm around Kathy's shoulder for another shot.

"We came out of that spaceship, we came down from the moon!" Casey looked desperate. He pointed to the spaceship behind us, and then turned to point to the pale shadow of the moon over the Parthenon Temple, gesturing that we are Flew to Earth from there. "We came from the Tycho space station, if you can understand—" They smiled at him for a while longer, and walked towards the Sphinx arm in arm. "This ghostly place!" Casey stared at their figures bitterly, shaking his head constantly, "This place is simply hell!" “They don’t know we’re human too,” Pippi said with a wry smile. “They treat us like dummies, part of a tourist program.”

We followed the passage leading to the Sphinx, stopping at the side of the road to observe the busy traffic in the area.Cars, buses, vans, and the occasional truck pass by.We are reminded of the street scenes we have seen on videotape before the impact of the Earth.A yellow taxi pulled up next to us and a woman jumped out with a bow.Slender and blond, she looked almost the twin sister of the woman Kathy was photographed with. The driver, on the other hand, looked like a survivor from the primitive earth, with a burly build, dark skin, and a rough snort from his nose.He was wearing glasses and a dirty leather jacket.He lit a cigarette and got out of the car with difficulty.Staggering around to the open trunk, he handed the lady a folded tripod.He grunted a few times when she tipped him.

As he was about to get into the cab, Kathy walked up to him. "Sir!" He didn't seem to hear, Kathy raised his voice, "Sir!" He ignored it, got out of the car and walked away.Kathy turned, frowning at Pippi and me in bewilderment. "Did you see his face? It was lifeless! Like it was made of stiff plastic. Behind the glasses, his eyes couldn't see. He must be a robot. Like the ones we had on the moon. " We followed the lady with the tripod cautiously in the distance, but she ignored us and stopped to prop up the tripod to prop up a flat disc made of black material.As she stood away, a large, transparent air bubble emerged from the disc, blurry at first and then slowly turning silver.She leaned down and stared in.

We ventured closer, and I saw that bubble become a circular window into which emerged the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty, and the Sphinx.They all seemed to change strangely, made bigger, brighter, and suddenly alive, everything was shaking.The monument tilted down, crushing the Statue of Liberty, while the Sphinx remained intact, overlooking the ruins, forever smiling enigmatically. I had to get closer to see clearly.The woman turned and frowned angrily and waved me away as if I were an annoying fly.I took a few steps back and continued to observe.When she tilted the bubble again, the sky inside changed again.The sun bursts into a huge dark red sphere, giving the whole scene a pink hue.Near it is a tiny pale blue planet.Our spaceship appeared in a prominent position, its engines blazing incandescently, as if fleeing in a catastrophe. We were silent in awe as Kathy waved us away. "Artist!" Pippi whispered, "It is the artist who creates." We continued on, passed the Parthenon, and waited around the corner to cross the street.Pippi nodded to the policeman in uniform standing in the middle of the road, with a whistle in his mouth and a white baton in his hand, directing traffic. "Look, how mechanical his movements are." Most of the drivers were like that, but those who arrived in taxis and buses, or by train, looked entirely human, as real as Paine, as tourists on prehistoric Earth, eager to see the land from which A restored building from a forgotten past. They gathered on the sidewalk, climbed the stairs to the White House to photograph the sights one by one, and then wandered around the tourist area and strolled the streets.We followed them, paying little attention to Pippi and me, but sometimes stopping to look at Kathy or take pictures of him. "Holy shit!" Kathy muttered, "They think I'm a robot!" We spent the rest of the day wandering around these retro high streets, we passed banks, exchanges, shops, bars, restaurants, and the police station.A robot driver parks his van in front of a bookstore and unloads boxes of Encyclopaedia Britannica, another robot beggar rattles a tin can, and a robot policeman beats up another fleeing robot criminals.We see the slender, golden-globes poised in and out of restaurants and bars, flocking into shops, and coming out with purchases. The night has not yet fallen, our legs are sore and our stomachs are hungry.A tangy aroma led us to a line waiting under a signboard, which said: "Pan-fried raw steak, fresh and tender Angus beef, ready to order." Pi said sullenly, we have no money to go into restaurants. "We'll eat it before we tell them," Casey said. "Anyway, they're all human beings," Pippi hoped, "Humans have to eat." "I hope they're still human." We were at the back of the line and I looked at the few people at the front and listened to their chatter, hoping someone would approach us, but we were ignored at all.A few people turned and gave us puzzled looks.A man was staring at Casey, and I saw his fists clenched.Their voices sometimes have some rhythm and key, which sounds like a weird tune, but I can't understand a word. The gatekeeper robots only allow a few people in at a time.When we walked up to it, it stared behind us with lensed eyes and closed the door after finding no "people" in line. Hungry and thirsty as we staggered under the weight of gravity, we walked down the street to a high, glassy wall that sliced ​​the tourist area in half like a thin blade.Beyond the walls is an open landscape that reminds us of tropical Africa in Diane's travel videos.A line of trees marks the channel's downstream course along a low valley.Zebras and antelopes graze leisurely nearby, unaware that the sleepy-eyed black-maned lion on the hill is staring at them. "There's drinking water there," Pippi nodded toward the stream, "if we can get through this wall." We went all the way to the wall.The walls, without a single gap, were hard and smooth, too high to climb, and stretched out beyond our sight.We were too tired to go any further, so we sat on the side of the road and watched the animals moving freely outside the wall.We sat there until dusk, the chill in the air forcing us to step back for shelter, but all we could find was a stack of empty cardboard boxes behind the wholesale furniture market.We flattened some cardboard boxes to make a bed, draped the largest one over us, and tried to lull ourselves to sleep. . "You can't blame Uncle Paine," Pippi murmured as we lay shivering under the paper, "he already said it didn't belong to us."