Chapter 19 Chapter Eighteen

Quinn jumped off the spaceship, and staggered a few steps under the influence of habit.He packed a heavy backpack with a blanket, which contained enough food and water for him to eat and drink for several days.Although the spaceship door was less than one meter above the ground, his shoes slipped on the gravel, so he staggered a few steps and finally fell to the ground. He got up, patted the pebbles off his painful palms, and looked around.Here in the northern hemisphere, it's late autumn.The sun at low latitudes was still far to the south, hanging like a dark red disk in the smoky yellow sky.The wind hit his face, this was the first time he had felt the wind on earth, mixed with a strong smell of smoke, it was cool, and he couldn't help shivering.

He looked around resentfully again, looking for the green on the earth in his dream.He was very disappointed.The surrounding mountains are filled with waste left over from smelting ores in space, junk brought back from the moon, and minerals quarried from asteroids.These are the things left here after the fall of Skynet. There is not a single plant on the steep hillside, but there are some scattered traces of weeds in the valley.They are now withered and yellow, dead after the frost.The brittle grass stalks creaked slightly as his shoes stepped on them, and the dust kicked up made him sneeze constantly.

He was in a very depressed mood, partly because of the approaching winter, and partly because the prospects for mankind were indeed frightening.He took out half of the contents of the backpack and put it back in the spaceship.Even though it was lighter, he still found it inconvenient when he carried it up the mountain.Loose space junk kept slipping under his feet.Once, he stepped on a shard of metal, causing him to sit on the ground in pain.He finally stood on the mountain panting, looking back at the spaceship parked at the bottom of the valley. If he can't come back, the spaceship will be Lu Ensang's coffin.Looking from the mountains into the deep valleys, the spaceship looked so small, like a careless child who had left his beloved toy there.Although the people on the ground were blocked by the mountains and couldn't see it, the light emitted by its metal was so easy to be spotted by the sun fleet flying in the air.

And Tianyu was lying there helplessly. If he didn't come back—he dismissed the idea with a shrug, and looked toward the city.What caught the eye was still the billowing yellow smoke and the gray mountains piercing straight into the gloomy smoke.The cold wind was howling on the mountains, and he was shivering, biting the bullet and heading north in a daze. The setting sun is like blood.The mountains beneath his feet were engulfed in yellow smoke.He stumbled over gravel and metal debris when he encountered a sky-network obstacle.The obstacle was too high and there were big sharp iron nails on it. He couldn't get over it, so he had to go westward for a few kilometers.There is a gap here, the last time Skynet fell, stones fell from the sky, flattened the obstacle and buried it again.He knew that Skynet fell not long ago, because the stone on the ground was still warm and sticky when he touched it.The sun has disappeared from the horizon, and the sky is full of yellow smoke, which is thicker and heavier against the misty twilight.At this moment, he suddenly heard the sound of wheels coming from the front.

someone! He walked through a field of dry weeds to the edge of a lower cliff, leaned on the ground and looked down.A road just a few meters below me was crowded with people and vehicles.There were trucks, cars, buses, bicycles, tricycles, and other vehicles he couldn't name.There are also many cars parked on the side of the road, most of which have been burned out and scrapped.There is a hot and sour taste in the air, as if burning synthetic materials. Compared with the tide of people, vehicles are nothing.Some people ran, some staggered, some fell to the ground and struggled to get up and continued to move forward.Men, women, and children were all hissing, crying, and roaring.A small crowd sang prayers in unison, chanting the name of the Revelator incessantly.There are men struggling to walk, carrying boxes and packages, women carrying babies who cry constantly, and children who keep whimpering while holding toys.

They were hastily fleeing the impending doom of Azteca. The stream of people fleeing in fear will be another type of enemy for him.He had to go head-to-head with the Sun Corporation or Sudada Baraka when he entered the city and crossed the Canada River. He lay there, letting the biting cold wind rage.Human pain and human fear, colder than the cold wind, made him more numb.He thought a lot.He thought of Clay and Noel and Jomo, and Dolores who had taught him how to make love.They, if they were still alive, must be still waiting, waiting for him to get the new engine. He thought of Mindy, the image of her that had lived in him before he knew Benito.He also thought of Lu Ensang who was seriously injured lying in the spaceship, lying there motionless, if he couldn't find what Suo Sen had taken away, he would have to wait for death.

He moved, but he was still lying there, as if the fate of the world had left him indifferent.At last he couldn't bear the severe cold, stood up, and hurriedly walked across the dry grass toward the road below.He was immediately engulfed by the crowd on the avenue, unable to go against the current. He ventured boldly through the muddy and weed-grown ditch beside the road.The side of the gutter is crowded with abandoned vehicles, filled with dying people.Some lay in makeshift tents pitched with blankets and baffles; some sat hunched over and shivering before a small smoking fire; The man was severely burned and lay moaning.Occasionally he encountered piles of rotting corpses and had to hold his breath and quicken his pace.

He hasn't been able to strike up a conversation because almost everyone speaks Spanish.He had learned a little from Clay long ago, but not enough to get him to deal with seemingly well-intentioned inquiries about who he was and why he had come to this disaster-stricken city. The gravity of the earth wears him down.He fell many times and walked limping in the shadow of the flickering lights. He couldn't help but envy those lucky people who escaped by car. A great river blocked his way, and the black water rushed under the bridge.It was the first time he had seen running water.He stood on the bank, looked out over the river, and wondered how to get back to the road and cross the crowded bridge over the river.

"Sir!" A woman's anxious voice came, "Come back soon!" She rushed over and grabbed his hand.He understood what she meant, she mistakenly thought that he would commit suicide by jumping into the river.He saw a fire burning under the bridge, and from there a thin man was striding toward them. "Thank you!" Quinn shook his head and said with a smile, "I don't speak Spanish." "Can't speak Spanish?" The man took a few steps closer to him, looked at him carefully and asked, "Are you from the Sun Clan?" "No, sir, you're wrong." Quinn suddenly thanked God for not having the sun mark on his face.He turned to the fire, showing his face to someone who came. "But it's my first time here."

"First time?" The man looked at his backpack. "You brought provisions, didn't you?" "A little." "Can you—" the man pointed to the fire and said sheepishly, "can you share some with us?" "As long as you let me rest here for a while," Quinn whispered, "I'm too tired to walk." He followed them to the fire.The young woman who was going to rescue him looked haggard, with a deep gash on her cheek that was still bloodstained, but she could still see that she had been charming and charming in the past.The man was wearing a shabby uniform with a badge on which Quinn didn't know what words were engraved on it.There was another woman by the fire.

"She is my wife, Lucia, and this is my daughter, Carmen Cida." He said hoarsely, holding his daughter's hand. "Her husband was a policeman. He died while chasing the robbers. What's your name?" "My name is Quinn." Quinn didn't know what to say.Thankfully they didn't seem to care. "We're starving." All three eyes were on his backpack. "It's as if we've been cast into hell. Monsters have destroyed Skynet, and trash is raining down from the sky, smashing everything, everything!" Quinn shrugged helplessly. "Everything is on fire, and we can't put it out because there is no electricity, no water to pump, and no lights at night. The police—" he shook his head and looked at his daughter. Only a few like her husband died. "There was no chance of fighting the fire, not even a chance." Quinn crouched by the fire, thanked them for keeping him warm, and brought out some food.The woman lying on the ground groaned and straightened herself up. "Lucia—she has arthritis," Iker explained. "When we went back to rescue her, the whole house was on fire. We had just rescued her, and Lucia had just packed her things, and the house was on fire." collapsed." "Want some water, sir?" Carmencita poured some water for Quinn from a black canning jar by the fire in a cup. "It's clean." Her trembling hands were stained with blood. "You can drink it if you want," Iker told him, "the water she boiled, there is nothing cleaner than this boiled water." The water was a little hot, but Quinn drank it gratefully.He handed them three small bags of food. "thank you, sir!" Carmencita was careful not to let Quinn see that she was famished with hunger, so she opened a bag first for her sick mother. "There are still a lot of hooligans," Iker whispered, "we finally drove them away." He paused to wolf down his portion, and when he was done he started talking again.He said that they were farmers in this area before the Empire of the Sun chose this place as a Skynet terminal.Lucia, who was originally from Katkas, got a job at the Sun Country Club as a young man. "She is very beautiful and a very talented dancer. She refused to sell her body, so they kicked her out. She died of starvation on the street, and I rescued her." He sighed, with red eyes looking at the daughter. "We had a great time."' He said they were heading to his brother Howard's farm. "He's in Orsita, not far from Chikasha. Just took Lucia that far," he whispered hesitantly, "don't know if my brother still lives there—" Before he finished speaking, he suddenly yelled loudly: "I am very worried about him. He is a good farmer. He feeds fat and big animals and sells them to Sun Company." He yawned, looking very tired, "Now that there is no electricity, we can't grow crops, and there are so many exiles who want to trample the crops, and maybe rob his family's livestock and rob his family's grain." He stared at the fire, shook his head and sighed: "Things are hard, sir, things are hard!" "You're right." Quinn nodded, agreeing with what he said.He went on to say that he planned to cross the city to find a girl who was working in Sudada Baraka.Iker then drew a picture on the ground, instructing him how to get the closest.Walk up the river, he said, and try to get across before the fire burns down the Santos Bridge.He added that the Will Rogers Bridge was destroyed when Skynet collapsed, and several other bridges were also engulfed in flames. After Quinn took his words to heart, he got into his sleeping bag and fell into a deep sleep after a while. When he awoke, his bones were frozen.The fire had been extinguished long ago, and the dust from the cold wind covered his face and body. Iker and his wife and daughter were gone, leaving him with the refilled jug of water. Immediately after he ate some dry food, his hands and feet stiffened and he climbed onto the sidewalk.The relentless gravity of the earth made him ache all over.The people and vehicles on the sidewalk were now much sparser. He had just crossed the Santos Bridge when a policeman came over and blocked him. "stop!" The policeman was thin and haggard, with a blood-soaked bandage hanging from one hand, and a smug look on his face.He was directing the flow of people and vehicles around overturned cars on the pavement and into a narrow alley.In his half-baked English, he warned Quinn not to enter the city. "This way is not going to work." He added viciously, otherwise your life will be in danger.He is still loyal to his duty, although everyone is running frantically for their lives.He smugly waved his gun and pointed at the smoke billowing bridge, saying that although he himself was injured, he would never run away. He was interrupted by a fire truck approaching the bridge with its horn honking. "Damn it! AWOL, just running for your life." He spit on the ground angrily. He limped into the middle of the road, brandishing the gun, and the fire truck ignored him and continued on its way, honking its horn.Quinn hastily ducked aside.Right behind him, the fire truck crashed into the pile of abandoned cars in the middle of the road.He looked back to see the wounded policeman on fire, cursing the name of the Revelator. Quinn staggered on the street, which was full of scrapped vehicles, and thick smoke was billowing from the roofs on both sides of the street.Stores were looted.The window was shattered, and shards of glass rattled under his feet.In front of a building, he met a little old man with a gray beard and three dead bodies lying on the driveway behind him. "Be careful, sir!" He waved the gun in his hand and greeted Quinn. When he heard Quinn answering in English, the little old man showed a tired but relieved smile. He didn't know Spanish either, so he always wanted someone who could speak English.He said his name was Sarkis, he was an Armenian, and he dealt in oriental rugs, "all first-class handicrafts." His thin voice sounded trembling with excitement.Oriental rugs were precious things, he said, whose secret art of weaving had been lost long before the Kirwans built Skynet. "If it wasn't for the catastrophe—" he said, shrugging resignedly, "I'd burn them all." Quinn limped on and came to a bustling street filled with smoke.There are many high-rise buildings on both sides of the street, which look like hotels.There was no one in the hotel, and all the guests had already fled in a hurry.But he finally met a little girl with livid face and trembling body on the street.Next to the little girl lay a man with beards, with a handkerchief on half of his face, and the handkerchief was stained with blood. "Sir, are you a doctor?" the little girl asked out of breath. Quinn says I'm not a doctor. "Dad is asleep," she told him. "Mum has gone to see a doctor. I have been away for a long time. I thought you were a doctor." Blood had flowed to her feet. "We're from Oakland," she went on, "and Dad does business with Sun. We were staying in a hotel when the disaster struck and we had nowhere to go.Someone said the hotel was going to blow up today so we had to leave but had no car and had to walk. " Trying not to let the tears fall, she took her eyes off her dad. "A bunch of bad guys stopped us and they ripped off Dad's beard to see if there was a sun sign. Dad didn't because he never liked the Kirwans. But the bad guys shot Dad anyway. He was badly hurt serious." "If the doctor—" She couldn't hold back the tears in the end, and Quinn wrapped his blanket around the little girl. "Maybe—" he didn't know how to comfort her, "I think your mother will be back soon." He continued walking slowly west, when suddenly a plastic wall cut off the street.He had no choice but to turn south, pass through the barricades set up by numerous ruins, and come to a wide street.There are cranes and bulldozers in the streets, which were originally used to clear roadblocks, but are now neglected. He looked north, and a few kilometers away, there was a building that was in flames and smoke billowing.Something fell there when Skynet fell.Firefighters may have tried to extinguish the blaze, but the fire was so intense that they gave up their efforts. His space shoes were uncomfortable to wear on Earth, and the soles of his feet wore out quickly.Stepping on the stones and glass shards made my feet ache.His limp became worse.In order to find the way to his destination, he turned south and west several times, and finally came across two menacing men wearing red armbands and carrying long staves. "Stop! Stop! Is there a sun mark?" Quinn turned his head to show them that he had no sunmark. "No," Quinn shrugged and spread his hands, "No." "No?" The people blocking him gave each other winks, and one of them shouted, "Why not?" "I'm from New Zealand on business." They winked again and made two gestures with the staves. "Well done, brother, we are the centurions of the Saint Race, come and pray with us, and give your soul to the Revelator!" Quinn came with them to an open area.Rows of silent people knelt on the yellow weeds, with a golden statue in the middle.He recognized it as the assassinated giant. The golden statue stood on a round ball, and a group of people driving over on sleds took knives and filed fiercely at the ball, and many holes were filed in a short time.The statue wobbled a few times and fell to the ground, and people rushed to smash it to pieces. "This is the Sun Giant Park," Quinn's two companions spat on the ground and said, "Kneel down, kneel down to accept the oracle of heaven!" Quinn knelt down. A man with a black beard and a red armband stood on the base of the statue, followed by a large group of people in red clothes and red trousers. "Lord!" His voice floated from the high walls of the little park. "The prophet of mankind—" Quinn understood the main point of his grand speech.The prophecy of the revelator was verified, and in a rage, God sent monsters in space to rescue human beings from the clutches of Satan and the Sun Empire.The Revelation prophesied the fall of the Solar Empire and the victory of Santissimus. Although the rule of the Sun Empire in space has been overthrown, its evil seeds have been sown in the world.The saints decided to soak every inch of land with blood and burn every inch of land with fire.God's holy crusade must continue until the blood of the Sun people washes away the sins of the entire planet. "Kneel!" roared the bearded man in half-baked English, "give up your souls to the Trinity, open your hands to embrace the holy blade, bow your heads and be baptized in the blood of sacrifice ! Swear to use up your life to slaughter the evil spawned by Satan in space, and we will get the gift from heaven." "Kill them!" he cried. "Kill them, kill them—" He stopped his tirade and turned to look back at the dark street behind.Suddenly, a flash of lightning flashed across the eyes of everyone, and then there was a muffled sound from a high wall, billowing thick smoke came out of the window, and after a while, a fiery snake shot up into the sky, within a few minutes , The sound of explosions was also heard from nearby buildings. "God has appeared!" The man standing next to Quinn exclaimed. "Evil seed, donate your evil blood!" Quinn suddenly ran all the way like crazy. When he stopped to catch his breath, he looked back and saw several terrifying black tanks shooting at the crowd in the park.The flag of the Solar Fleet fluttered in the wind on the tank, and the flag was painted with a bright sun rising from the black land.Someone in a tall building nearby was using a laser gun and aimed at the park, and after a while there was a thunderous sound. Those two followers of the Revelation were scattered, and no one came up.There are flames and explosions everywhere.Enduring the pain in his feet, Quinn quickly walked through the smoky and gloomy street. He ran to a poorer neighborhood where the streets were littered with garbage and the roads were full of potholes.The buildings, dilapidated and dilapidated before the space cataclysm, are getting uglier now.The woman hid behind the glassless window and looked out, the naked children crowded around the door in groups, and the man was more like a frightened bird, hiding in the corner of the room and watching Quinn vigilantly. "Where are you going?" A young man with a sick face staggered out and blocked his way. "where are you going?" "Go to the bridge." "It's too late, sir," said the lad, spreading his hands and shrugging resignedly. "I hear the fire broke it." "What about these people? Why don't they run away? Why don't they run away when they have the chance?" "Sir, we can't escape!" He replied with a blank face. "Many people are sick. We have no cars, no food, and we have nothing. Where can we escape?" Quinn coughed from a puff of acrid smoke.He didn't stop, and still walked forward with difficulty through the stinking mire and the excrement left by the living people.At every crossroads, he encounters angry people.There was once a woman who was blocking his way, suddenly let out an inexplicable scream, and then lay straight on the ground.Crazy people rushed from the house to the street, some cursed, some prayed, some remained silent like fools, and the scene was chaotic. He fought his way out of the chaotic crowd, through the choking smoke, to the bridge.The bridge did not burn down as rumored.Countless people rushed forward, and Quinn also rushed in.The sound of guns and guns rumbled behind him, shouts, roars, and curses, and he passed the bridge smoothly amidst the flow of people. When he got to the opposite bank, he squeezed out the flow of people, climbed to a high slope on one side, looked back, and saw several black laser guns frantically shooting at the flow of people on the bridge. People slide down the bridge pier. He suddenly saw a yellow flame rising into the sky, and then thick smoke billowing up.A burning building on the other side of the bridge was pierced by stray bullets, and then the bridge was also hit, shook a few times, split into several pieces, and sank into the river. Searle was on the way to change shifts when the searchers attacked the Vermyron Observatory. After narrowly escaping the onslaught of Seekers at close quarters, he fled home and alerted the Elders. Constellation No. 1 is shaped like a small galaxy, and its core star is the residence of Patriarch Elder. It is a massive asteroid that has been formed for a long time and is rich in rare elements in the aperture.Constellation 1 is a spiral with mirror-like pucks surrounding it. As soon as Searle arrived at the residence, he learned that the news had already arrived, and the searcher was flying much faster than him.Elder ships have captured footage of it devouring the nearby Nucleus. Searle asked what action the prime minister had taken. "No action has been taken," replied the Prime Minister, "and the Newlyn family proposes that we should fix the matter on the agenda as soon as possible." "Discussion? We should act now." "What action do you think should be taken?" "I don't know," Al said, getting more and more unsure, his voice getting lower and lower, "I saw the Seeker with my own eyes. I saw it injure a Newlyn who got too close to her. I saw her destroy our monitoring station. I propose that we should take immediate action." "It is up to Chief Elder to decide whether to take action." Searle asked the Prime Minister to take him to see the Elder patriarch. "Not much hope," said the Prime Minister, frowning. "The Patriarch seldom sees anyone but his old friends and the elders of the Council." Unable to withstand Searle's repeated requests, the Prime Minister agreed to his request.After a while, Serge was called in.He was a little nervous at first, since it was his first time talking to Chief Elder.As he began to describe the Seekers, the Patriarch interrupted him to ask him about the destruction of the instruments and recording devices at the Vermeuron Observatory's laboratory. "Master Hui, they are all destroyed." "You should fix them up again." "Chief Hui, the searcher—" "Don't mention her," the patriarch stopped him majestically, "Your responsibility is more important, act immediately without delay, quickly repair the destroyed instruments and recording devices in the laboratory, and build a new one outside the aperture. Monitoring station, pay close attention to the movement of the black companion black hole." The Fermi paradox (named after the 20th-century physicist Enrico Fermi) refers to two diametrically opposed ideas about whether or not intelligence exists elsewhere.It is believed that there are countless planets like Earth.Cosmological principles suggest that life and brains evolved everywhere in the universe.Logically, even a super-human technological culture could expand to fill an entire galaxy in just a few million years.Yet life on Earth, despite billions of years of evolution, remains seemingly isolated from other planets.People have used this paradox in the past to support the idea that humans are isolated and unique.