At first, when he was baptized, his mother gave him a long and impressive name: Carlos Corrales Carvajal Santiago Mondragon. When he was a little older, his father said to him, "Maozi, you are not a big man, but you have a big name. When you grow up, you can do well, and don't waste your name." The Carlos family lives in a small mountain village called "Golden Horn" in the mountains of Chihuahua, Mexico.The mountain village is located in a remote area, far away from the city.Ciudad Juárez, a smoky city in the northeast, faces the United States across the river. It is the closest city to here, but it is still hundreds of kilometers away.This place is called the "Golden Horn", but it is actually very poor.The gold in the mountains was wiped out two hundred years ago, and now there are only barren mountains and ridges left.Barren land does not grow crops, only rocks.

Little Carlos always felt that with such a big name, he was going to make a big business one day.For this reason, he wholeheartedly longed for it. Finally one day, the opportunity came.He had heard strange stories about space. The man's name was Ignacio Morelos.He is a foreigner from his village, and he has been working outside all year round. He has been to the United States in the north, and he has experienced the noisy and bustling world there.Whenever I go back to my hometown to visit relatives during the holidays, I always bring back some fashionable gifts and a lot of strange stories to my parents and villagers.To the locals, those stories sound like fantasy and sensational.He said that in White Sands, there are many "magic birds" that can fly around in the universe.They carried human beings, soared into the sky with a roar, left the earth, and flew into the vast universe, never to return. ——The "divine bird" mentioned by Ignacio, no one has ever seen it, can't imagine it, and thought it was really a magical bird.In fact, it was not a bird at all, but an advanced faster-than-light quantum spacecraft.

One year, little Carlos actually got a gift from Ignacio, a postcard.There is a huge spider-like metal monster on the postcard, with wide crawlers on several long mechanical legs.Under the dark night sky, on the bright rock, the big monster climbed awkwardly forward. "Lunar landing vehicle!" Little Carlos exclaimed excitedly in the local Spanish dialect. "It's very kind of you, Mr. Ignacio." He was so excited that he didn't know what to do, bowed respectfully, and said, "When I grow up, I will definitely learn to catch that 'magic bird', start The lander, go play on the moon."

"My darling, it's up to you? How is that possible!" Ignacio shrugged his thin shoulders, and shot out a mouthful of saliva stained brown by tobacco in the street, "It's just whimsical, just make your daydream Bar! "Is it possible for you country bumpkins to go to the moon? Do you want to go there to drive horses and herd sheep? You have to have courage and knowledge. In short, you have to have great ability to go there. Let's talk about the lander. Well, even I only get a chance to touch its computer equipment if it's infected with a virus, or has other problems that need to be fixed. One pair, computer, have you heard of that thing? It's a landing vehicle The head is the important thing." Little Carlos listened with a humble face and was amazed.He secretly made up his mind that he must find an opportunity to learn the skills of an astronaut, and one day he will become a famous astronaut himself.

In the elementary school in the village, little Carlos studied very hard and worked hard on all subjects.Later, when Ignacio returned to his hometown, Carlos Jr. heard from him about an even faster "magic bird".The speed of this divine bird was faster than thunder and lightning, and it flew into the distant starry sky with only a flash, and disappeared without a trace.Ignacio also talked about the "Space Seeding Operation" plan.It is said that according to this plan, human beings will build 100 quantum spaceships, and all of them are capable and extraordinary.Then, they will carry human beings, fly across space, fly across the vast universe beyond the reach of space telescopes, reach planets that have never been touched by human observation and imagination, and settle and colonize there, live and multiply, and so on.Hearing these news, little Carlos was shocked again, and he studied harder.

Today, the "Space Seeding Operation" has begun, and several "divine birds" have already carried several groups of "lucky voters" from the earth, leaving the world and the troubled home of the earth, flying towards space and the ideal unknown paradise. went. When the "divine bird" flew up, thunder roared, lightning flashed, the sky and earth turned pale, everything shuddered, the listener was deaf, and the viewer was blind. It was like a chariot from the kingdom of heaven. "So, what do humans know about that unknown space island—or, paradise—?" Carlos Jr. ventured to ask.

"I don't know anything." Ignacio shook his shriveled head and said, "Due to the constraints of the mysterious laws of the universe, returning is impossible, so don't ever expect them to come back and bring back any news .However, this does not deter volunteers from the "Operation Space Seed" after another, waiting, ready to fly fearlessly into space at any time. Similarly, the advocates of "Operation Space Seed" can always encourage Their eloquent tongues have raised sufficient funds for their adventures, and continue to support the huge expenditure of building quantum spacecraft."

"So, among the stars in the vast universe, are there really people like us?" Little Carlos wondered countless times.He is a shepherd boy, and his daily task is to help his father herd the goats.How many winter evenings, when the night fell, the ferocious coyotes howled, and Carlos Jr. and his flock crawled coweringly on the hillside.At that time, he always looked up at the sky full of reverence and fear, and couldn't stop thinking: "Everyone in the sky must be an angel, right? No, maybe they are all devils, waiting to catch helpless creatures from the fire of hell." .”

He also heard Reverend Francisco preach.Whenever the pastor talked about how human souls were punished by God and moaned and screamed in endless pain, little Carlos was always trembling with fright.However, he and his mother still knelt devoutly among the crowd doing mass, full of hope, and prayed countless times to God to help him escape the loess, mud and poverty of this "Golden Horn", let him fly to the distant starry sky, to the The kingdom of abundance. In the young Carlos' mind, the "Space Seeding Operation" was extremely sacred, and it was comparable to the feat of Jesus descending to save mankind from fire and water, bringing him infinite hope.He firmly believes that the "Space Seeding Operation" will surely save him, just as his mother and pastor believe that his soul will ascend to the Paradise of Paradise in the next life.However, not everyone is as obsessed and convinced as he is. There is an organization called "Equilibrium", and its extremist members do everything possible to make trouble and sabotage the implementation of the operation.In the eyes of little Carlos, their behavior is tantamount to blasphemy, which makes him sad and angry.

"Why did they do this?" No need to ask, Ignacio has already seen his confusion and incomprehension in Carlos' eyes. "That's hysterical paranoia!" Ignacio replied angrily.Before he finished speaking, a mouthful of tobacco spit shot out of his mouth again, hitting a fly accurately and drowning it.Then, he said: "The paranoid people take it for granted that the stars in the sky are the abodes of the angels, and the intrusion of the earthlings will disturb and endanger the gods in the sky. So they blame the astronauts who participated in the 'Space Seeding Operation' For the devil in heaven, and conspired to destroy the spaceship used in the operation, creating many obstacles for the implementation of the operation."

Are there really angels and fairies in the sky?Little Carlos couldn't figure it out, and felt uneasy, so he went to the church to seek answers.In the confessional, he waited to tell the pastor his longing and yearning for the unknown heaven. "Man can enter heaven only after death. However, in the Garden of Eden in heaven, is God willing to prepare a home for the living? If so, it would be great." Little Carlos asked the pastor in this way, "Can people on the earth Can we enter heaven without experiencing the torment of death? Can it be like what my mother expected, so that we can not only escape the suffering on earth, enjoy the joy of heaven with the gods, but also plant new fields in God’s Garden of Eden, plant plow and weave, and live as if on the ground?" "The Sacred Heart should not be presumptuous. My Lord knows all things in the world and has his own opinions. God's questions should be left to God to answer. As for you, my child, if you can explain the scriptures and clarify the meaning, you will be considered as doing your duty. Already." The pastor instructed him like this. Little Carlos had no choice but to turn to his mother for these confusions.When the mother heard this, she became anxious, worried that those blasphemous thoughts would poison her son's soul.Therefore, she pleaded with her son, whether it is the "God Bird" who set up people, or the troubles caused by the "Equilibrium Society", they are all the conspiracy of the devil and Satan, and they must be forgotten from their minds.He also warned him that mortals should be optimistic about their fate and not to think about it. At that time, Carlos Jr.'s father had left his hometown, crossed the Rio Grande, and went north to find work in the United States.In order to learn some skills and be able to go north with his father when he grows up, little Carlos has been studying hard.In his elementary school, he was the most outstanding student.Whenever I have time, learn English with friends who are proficient in English.He also found books on mathematics and natural science from the pile of waste books that Ignacio had used, and read them eagerly.Later, Ignacio gave him a discarded computer, and he found the relevant instruction books by himself, studied and repaired it, and managed to fiddle with it. In this way, the computer became his best friend.This robot friend uses a concise language with only two words: 1 and 0.Although the vocabulary is very small, the meaning is very precise, causing neither doubt nor ambiguity.Slowly, little Carlos fell in love with this language because it is so pure and beautiful.The computer opened little Carlos' vision, showed him an infinitely vast world, and sent him on a long journey to space.Father also sent money back.The mother promised little Carlos that he would go to college. However, it didn't take long before my father disappeared and the money stopped coming.For little Carlos, this is too unfortunate. "Alas—" the mother sighed, "My son, it seems that your father is going to leave me. I am afraid, and I am also worried about your future. How can your lofty ambition be realized!" When Ignacio was home for the holidays, the mother and son went to find out.After hearing the difficulties of the mother and son, Ignacio sighed with emotion, pointed at an ant, and sighed: Those who are greedy for money and profit will eventually be punished.It is this word of warning that Pastor Francisco also warned Carlos Jr. back then.However, the cruel father finally abandoned the mother and son.Later, my mother suffered from a heart attack and was unable to treat her. She was bedridden and had nowhere to turn for help.Even during those days, Carlos Jr. did not receive any alms from his father. He is desperate.Later, thanks to his aunt who was far away in Hermosillo, he came to help him take care of his mother.At the same time, Ignacio also rekindled his hope of exploring the mysteries of the starry sky.Instead of going north, Ignacio opened a computer company in the city of Chihuahua in the state and hired Carlos to work for him. At the same time, he also guaranteed that Carlos would have time to study computer science at a nearby university. .In Ignacio's company, Carlos couldn't do much work in the first year. He could only do chores such as mopping the floor and opening boxes, or helping to receive customers when the boss was busy.But by the second year, Carlos was already a computer expert.He can not only find general mechanical failures of the computer, but also determine whether the computer has a chip defect or is infected with a virus, and can try to eliminate it in time. When Carlos was about to graduate from college, Pastor Francisco called suddenly and told him to go home quickly.It turned out that his aunt, who had taken care of his mother, had fallen ill herself and had gone back to her own home in Hermosillo, leaving her very ill in bed alone, unattended.Her thousands of prayers and endless tears failed to call back her heartless husband.In her last days, Carlos took good care of her food and daily life, lighting a small candle for her in the small church in the country. Mother died.When she was dying, she was still praying and blessing her son, and left all her hoards to him.The money was dollars that Carlos' father had sent back before, and she couldn't bear to spend any of it. It was all in a glass jar and buried deep under the floor.With a firm belief in the gods of the sky and a yearning for exploring the mysteries of the starry sky, Carlos left the hometown of "Golden Horn" where he was born and raised without hesitation, and embarked on the road to the north. The Rio Grande lies between the United States and Mexico. Various advanced electronic surveillance equipment has been installed on the river, making it very difficult to smuggle people across the border.After spending half of the money on his body, Carlos got all the documents required for entry and crossed the bridge from Ciudad Juárez to enter the United States.Then, head north and walk all the way.Over a few mountains, came to Las Cruces.There, Carlos hitched a ride with an engineering team member and came to his dream place - White Sands Space Center, the launch base of "Space Seeding Operation".The place is surrounded by high steel mesh walls, yellow danger warning signs are hung everywhere on the walls, and a line of large characters is written on the dome of the gate at the entrance: "We spread human fire across space" This is the place earlier called the "death tour" by Spanish explorers (the vast southwestern territory of the United States, including this place, belonged to Mexico in history. From 1846 to 1848, the United States launched a war against Mexico and captured Texas, New Mexico and California, occupying half of Mexico's territory.--Translator's Note), and now it has become a completely bare desert.Looking up, the desert is covered with piles of black burnt wood stumps everywhere.The engineering team member who carried Carlos told him that this place used to be a bush forest. Due to the multiple launches of the quantum spacecraft, the fire ejected from the tail of the rocket completely burned the bush forest.Carlos asked where the quantum spacecraft was, and the man pointed to the distance, and saw a place more than ten kilometers away from the steel mesh wall, under the gray sky, stood a slender silver pagoda, shaped like a bullet, with its head held high. sky. "That's Quantum Spaceship No. 99," said the engineering team, "it's going to be launched tonight." The car drove to the entrance and stopped.Carlos was stopped by guards as he was not wearing the special badge that allowed him to pass.The engineering team left Carlos outside the gate and drove in by themselves. Carlos looked around and saw a large flag hanging low outside the gate, and a group of protesters gathered under the flag.It turned out that they were all extremists of the "Equal Branch".Most of these people are young people, like Carlos, they have obviously come from afar, all of them are dusty, full of fatigue and fatigue from the journey.In their hands, they held all kinds of tattered slogan cards with slogans such as "protect the rights of aliens", "save the planet in the universe", and "one earth is enough". After the engineering team member's car passed through the gate, a waste recycling truck came.Then, another taxi came with a woman and two children, a man and a woman, in the car.When the taxi reached Carlos, it stopped.Carlos, who was standing on the side of the road, caught a glimpse of the woman in the car and was stunned for a moment. Ah!What a beautiful beauty!Blonde, fair-skinned, youthful and gorgeous, Carlos was breathless in shock with his breathtaking beauty.The little girl next to the beauty looked very well-behaved, and Carlos smiled at her flatteringly, but they didn't notice him at all. Who are they?Carlos thought to himself.For a moment, he was filled with jealousy.He was jealous of anyone who might win the beauty's favor, be it a rich man, a scholar, or a bureaucrat.Ignacio had warned him that the experts and scholars who studied the quantum spacecraft were all excellent scientists, and they should be humbled and compensated more.Although they are all very smart and kind and friendly, they are usually conceited and arrogant. They never pay attention to unknown people like Carlos, and must regard them as peanuts, soaked chickens, and ridicule them in every possible way.Maybe that beauty is some great expert, how can I, Carlos, have a place in her heart?Carlos thought as he watched the taxi pass through the gate and drive away. Accompanied by the arrival of those cars, the extremists of the "Equilibrium Society" shook the signs in their hands and protested for a while.Now that the car drove away, they lost their target, dropped the sign again, and retreated into their makeshift camp.They also invited Carlos to rest in their tent and share a simple lunch with them.The so-called lunch was nothing more than a few pieces of stale bread and some melted chocolate.As Carlos ate, he listened to them talking about how the "Equal Branch" persisted in the long-term struggle, protesting against the "Space Seeding Operation", and how time and time again prevented or delayed the launch of the quantum spacecraft.Carlos thanked the other party for their warm hospitality, but he also expressed his incomprehension about their protest: Why shouldn't the quantum spacecraft go into space? "Look back carefully, my friend." A man with a dirty mustache said to him with a straight face, "We humans are very concerned about our own earth, the forests, rivers, and peoples on this planet. What kind of crimes have they and their cultures committed? What right do we have to pollute more space planets?" Carlos told the other party cautiously that he came here out of curiosity and wanted to see the magic of the quantum spaceship with his own eyes. "If that's the case, you're already late." Someone laughed loudly.It turned out that it was a girl whose face was covered with blisters from the sun.She turned around, pouted her lips at the towering silver pagoda in the distance, and said proudly: "Operation 'Space Seeding' is completely finished. Their dream of launching another 100 quantum spacecraft has been suppressed by us. Shattered, we thwarted one of the 100 originally planned. Look, that's the ninety-ninth, the last one, there's no way there's going to be another one, but it's going to launch tonight, you just wanna I can’t keep up with the visit.” Carlos was upset. "Is it still possible—? Is it possible I'm still—rushing—to board this ship?" he stammered.His English was stilted because he was still thinking in his native Spanish. "You mean, sneak in?" "Is this possible?" The girl laughed and kept shaking her head.At this time, a man in overalls turned around and looked at Carlos carefully. "How can it be impossible?" The man squinted his eyes, looked at the girl and said, "Big man, as long as you dare to think, you might as well try it. As long as you have enough courage and luck, plus a little money." Courage and luck?I have God given me.As for banknotes, what do I care?Carlos rummaged through his pockets, poured out all the remaining dollars, and handed them to the man.The man counted the number of people and nodded for the girl to follow him out.Soon, they came back to the camp and told Carlos that the money was almost enough. "I've been working there, looking for opportunities to sabotage their 'Space Seeding Operation' plan." The man glanced at the entrance of the space center, and said in a low voice, "I'm a loader, and my specific job is to work for Quantum Ninety-Nine. The ship is loaded with supplies—that is, pushing the dolly and loading cargo onto the ship. I did this job until they fired me. If you want my pass, I can give it to you. Why don't we How about a deal?" What Carlos needed was a passport, what the other party needed was his dollars, and just like that, the deal was done.In addition to the passport, the man also generously gave Carlos his overalls, and drew him a sketch of the interior passage of the spaceship, and even marked the place where he could hide. "If you're questioned, it's the cleaners," the man continued. "The cleaners wear this kind of overalls. The sanitation supervisor's name is O'Hara. He's a tough guy. You'd better avoid him. After getting on the spacecraft, immediately take the elevator to the floor of the fitness center, find the hiding place according to the map as soon as possible, and hide. Then, you wait to hear the countdown to the launch. Only God knows what will happen after the launch of the spacecraft. Feeling weightless means you're not dead yet, so you're lucky that nothing happened. Take care of yourself, my friend." "We'll try to get you on the recycling truck and get in there, don't worry." The girl made a face towards the spaceship in the distance, and said to Carlos, "However, if you want to be safe and sound, you'd better pray, Let them find you and throw you off the ship before it's even in the air."