Chapter 21 Chapter Nineteen

If the old man and I had gone to the National Zoo instead of sitting on a park bench, I might not have had to go to Kansas City.We entrusted to the zookeeper the ten Titans captured at the joint session of Congress, together with the two on the following day.They would be placed on the shoulders of less fortunate apes, including chimpanzees and great apes, but not gorillas. The administrators locked the monkeys in the same veterinary hospital as the animals.A pair of chimpanzees named Abelard and Heloise were kept together. They have always been lovers and there is no reason to separate them.Perhaps this explains our psychological difficulty dealing with the Titans, even those who transplanted slugs into apes, they still treat them as apes, not Titans.

Next to the cage that holds the pair of chimpanzees is a family of gibbons with tuberculosis.Due to illness, they were not used as odd masters, and the cages were not communicated with each other, separated by well-sealed slide plates, and each cage was air-conditioned.I remember that the condition of a hospital I stayed in was not as good as this one. The next morning, the partition was opened, and the gibbons and chimpanzees mingled together.Abelard, and possibly Heloise, already knew how to pick locks.This kind of lock was originally designed to prevent monkeys from opening it, but it couldn't prevent apes and Titans, and the person who designed the lock couldn't be blamed.

Originally, there were only a pair of chimpanzees, a pair of Titans, and five gibbons—but the next morning, it was discovered that all seven apes had been possessed, and the number of Titans became seven. This was discovered two hours before I left Kansas City, but the old man was not informed.Had he known the situation, he would have understood immediately: Kansas City's Titans were saturated.Even if it were me, I could deduce this conclusion from the increase in the number of Titans on the apes.If the old man knew about the situation of the gibbon, the anti-impact plan would never have been implemented.

The Countershock program was the worst squib failure in military history.The deployment was so well organized that the paratroopers arrived simultaneously at midnight five zone time at 9,600 communications agencies—newspaper offices, block consoles, relay stations, and so on.These paratroopers are the cream of our airborne force, mostly field-hardened non-commissioned officers, and with them the technicians will bring every communication mechanism back into operation. At that point, every local station will broadcast the President's speech and images, and Project Naked Back will go into effect in all invaded territories, and the war will be over, leaving only trivial mopping ups.

Have you ever seen a bird hit a glass window and get injured?Birds aren't stupid, they just don't know what's going on. By 12:25 midnight, reports continued to come in that an institution had been captured.Calls for reinforcements came later from other agencies.By one o'clock in the morning, all reserves had been deployed.The military operation apparently went so well that even the troop commander landed and reported back from the ground. Unexpectedly, this became their last voice, and there has been no news since then. The red zone engulfed the military force of the operation.completely annihilated.11,000 military aircraft, 160,000 fighters and technicians, and 71 battle group commanders.There is no need to go on.It was the worst military defeat the United States has ever suffered.

Just to be clear, I'm not blaming Martinez, Rexton, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the poor guy who made this air raid happen.The entire operation was carefully deployed and based on seemingly real intelligence, and the situation also required us to concentrate our superior forces and act quickly.Rexton would have been court-martialed if he hadn't fielded his best generals.The United States was at stake, and he realized it. But he didn't know what happened to the seven apes. Before dawn, I already understood that the news of the great victory we had received was actually all fake. Our people had already been possessed, possessed, and then pretended to be normal.But Martinez and Rexton refused to believe it.By the time I finished my report, it was already more than an hour late, and it was too late to stop the air strike.The old man also did his best to prevent them from sending more troops, but they were excited by the victory and were eager to wipe out the enemy.

The old man asked the president to verify what happened with his own eyes, but the command and control of this operation were all relayed through the Alpha space station, and the space station did not have enough channels to broadcast sound and images at the same time.Rexton said: "Don't worry, the troops know what they're up against. As soon as we regain control of the local radio, our lads will rewire the ground relay, and then you can get all you want intuitive evidence." By then, the old man pointed out, it would probably be too late. At this point Rexton yelled, "Damn! Dude, I can't stop a soldier from fighting to take a bare-back photo. Do you want thousands of lads thrown away just to calm the panic in your heart?" life?"

As a result, the president adopted his opinion. It was not until the next morning that they got the visual evidence.The stereo in the center of the epidemic was full of clichés such as "Get up at the same time as the sun to start the day" and "Breakfast with the Browns."None of the stations aired the president's speech, nor acknowledged what had happened.There were fewer and fewer military telegrams, and the telegrams stopped sending around four o'clock, no matter how frantically Rexton called, no one answered.The Force ceased to exist, vanished without a trace.

These things were not learned from the old man, but Mary told me.As the president's personal bodyguard.She is in the best observation position as she follows the president in and out all day. I didn't go to see the old man until nearly eleven o'clock the next morning.He listened to my report without making any comments or scolding me, which was even worse. He was about to send me away when I interrupted: "What happened to the man I captured? Didn't he confirm my conclusion?" "Uh, you mean him? The latest report says he is still in a coma. Don't expect He'll come alive. The analyst won't get anything out of him."

"I want to see him." "Do what you know how to do." "What, do you have anything else you want me to do?" "Not yet. I think you'd better—no, here it is: go to the National Zoo, and there you'll find something, maybe some light, to help with Kansas City's problems." "what?" "Go and visit Dr. Horace, Deputy Director of the Zoo, and tell him I sent you." So I went to Animal Creole.I would have liked to go with Mary, but she was bound by business. Hollus was a nice, small man, somewhat like his baboons.He introduced me to a doctor named Vargas, an expert on extraterrestrial life, who had participated in the second expedition to Venus.He told me what had happened, and I corrected my misunderstanding as I watched the gibbons.

"I watched the President's telecast," he said blandly, "are you the one, I mean, you're not the—" "Yes, I am 'the one'." I answered briefly. "Then you can tell us a great deal about this phenomenon. Your experience is unique." "Maybe I should be able to do it," I admitted slowly, "but I can't." "You mean you—er, I mean you didn't divide when you were their prisoner, did you?" "That's right." I thought about it, and then said, "At least I think so." "Don't you know? As far as I know, uh, victims remember exactly what happened to them." "Oh, they remember, and they don't remember." I tried to explain this strange and detached mental state of being a master's servant. "I think it's possible for fission to happen while you're asleep." "Maybe. Besides, I can't remember a few times. It also happened when the union was held." "Meeting?" I explained.His eyes lit up. "Oh, you mean 'joint pair'." "No, I said 'joint meeting.'" "We're talking about the same thing. Don't you understand? Pairing and fission -- whenever they want, and with or without enough hosts, they can reproduce as much as they want. It's likely that every contact will produce One fission, given the chance, fission. Perhaps in less than hours there will be two fully grown female daughter parasites." I thought about it carefully.Looking at these gibbons, I can't doubt it.If that's true, then why should "we" depend on the Constitution Club to carry the slugs?Maybe that's not the case?In fact, I don't know either, I just acted according to the master's intention, and what I saw was only what was happening in front of me.But why didn't "we" take over New Brooklyn the way we infiltrated Kansas City?Too late? The process of infiltrating and taking Kansas City is already clear.With enough "cargo" in hand, a spaceship carried mobile cells extracted from the Titans, and based on this cell body, they rapidly multiplied, making the number match that of human beings. I'm not a biologist, nor an expert on extraterrestrial life, but I can do simple calculations.Suppose a spaceship lands near Kansas City with a thousand slugs.If they have the means to reproduce every twenty-four hours, then— Day 1: 1,000 slugs; Day 2: 2,000 slugs; Day 3: 4,000 slugs; One week later: 128,000 slugs; Two weeks later: more than 16 million slugs. And we don't know if they can only reproduce one generation a day, and it can be confirmed from gibbons that they reproduce faster. We also don't know if a flying saucer can only hold a thousand cell bodies, maybe 10,000 slugs.If we assume that 10,000 slug mothers reproduce one generation every twelve hours, then after two weeks it will be - more than 2.5 trillion! This number is too large to be practical, because there are not so many people on the earth, even including apes. The prospect that we'll be deep in the world of slugs soon bothers me more than Kansas City. Vargas introduced me to Dr. McKilvin of the Smithsonian.McIlvin is a comparative psychologist, and Vargas told me he is the author of Mars, Venus, and Earth: A Study of Motivators.Vargas seemed to want me to remember this book, but I haven't read it.Before we humans could climb down from the tree, the Martians were already extinct.In this case, how can we talk about studying their motivations? The two of them began to exchange ideas, speaking jargon that outsiders could not understand.I continued to observe the gibbons.At this point McIlwain asked me, "Mr. Nivens, how long is the joint meeting?" "Joint pairs," Vargas corrected him. "Joint meeting," McIlwain repeated. "Focus on more important things." "But, doctor," insisted Vargas, "there is a similar situation in terrestrial life. In primitive reproduction. Pairing is the medium of gene exchange, whereby the whole body is mutated—" "You're using human experience to explain everything in the universe, doctor. You don't even know if this alien creature is genetically based." Vargas blushed, and he said stubbornly, "Can you please temporarily accept the gene as a prerequisite?" "Why should I accept it? I repeat, man, you're reasoning by analogy, but there's no reason to assume that there's that analogy. All biological forms have one and only one thing in common, and that's the drive to survive." "And fecundity," Vargas insisted. "What if organisms are immortal and don't need to reproduce?" "But—" Vargas shrugged, "Your question is inappropriate, we know very well that they reproduce." He pointed to the apes and said. "I'm saying," McKilvin returned to the previous topic, "that this is not reproduction, but an expansion of a single biological organism to control more space. It is equivalent to a person wiring his house. A side room. No, Doctor, I don't mean to offend you, but one can be too confined within the frame of a fertilized egg and gamete to forget that there are other modes possible." Vargas spoke: "But the whole system, from beginning to end—" McIlwain interrupted: "Anthropocentric, Earth-centric, solar-system-centric, these are narrow minds. These creatures may have come from beyond the solar system." I said, "Uh, no!" Suddenly a picture of Titans flashed in my mind, and I felt a breathless excitement. Neither of them noticed me. McIlwain continued: "If you must compare it to the 'Aleba' amoeba. It was an earlier, more primitive form of life that was more successful than us." The motivational psychology of the Miba' amoeba—" I've lost my mind, I think freedom of speech gives people the right to talk about the "psychology" of the amoeba, but I don't have to listen.They never changed the subject and came back to ask me how long a joint meeting was; otherwise, I would have told them: There is no time limit for such joint meetings. They did do some direct experiments, which made my impression of them a little better. Vargas ordered a baboon riding a slug to be brought in and put in the same cage as the gibbon and chimpanzee.Until then, the gibbons had been grooming each other like normal ones.The only difference is that they appear too calm.Also, sharp eyes have been watching our every move.But once new members are put in, they immediately form a circle, face outward, into a direct slug-to-slug meeting.McIlvin pointed at them excitedly: "See? See? The meeting is not for reproduction, but for exchanging memories. This organism was temporarily separated, and now it has reconfirmed its identity." I could have said the same thing without their obscure ambiguity: Masters who have lost touch with their kind always go to a direct meeting immediately after rediscovering their kind. "Hypothesis!" said Vargas contemptuously. "It's purely a hypothesis. They just don't have a chance to reproduce now. George!" He called to the person in charge to bring another ape. "Bring little Ah'er in?" the person in charge asked. "No, I want a monkey that's free of parasites. I think it's the old red-haired gibbon." The person in charge glanced at the gibbons, quickly looked away, and said, "Ah, doctor, I think you'd better not choose the old red-haired gibbon." "It won't hurt it." "Why don't you bring Satan in? He's a disobedient nuisance." "Okay, okay! But come on, you're keeping Dr. McIlvin waiting." So they brought in Satan, a chimpanzee black as coal.It might be presumptuous elsewhere, but not here.They stuffed him into the cage, and he looked around, huddled with his back against the door, and started whining. I couldn't bear to watch it anymore, it was like witnessing an execution and being unable to stop watching.I controlled my emotions. A man should be able to adapt to any environment. In order to survive, he has to do dirty and tiring work.But monkey hysteria was so contagious that I really wanted to run away. At first, the slug-possessed apes did nothing but stare at it like a jury for quite a while.Satan's wail became a low whimper, and he covered his face with his hands.Just then, Vargas said, "Doctor! Look!" "where?" "Lucy—the old monkey monkey, there," he pointed. She is the matriarch of this family of gibbons infected with tuberculosis.Her back was facing us, and I saw the slug on her back try to arch, and a rainbow-colored line appeared in the center of her body. The slug starts to split in two like an egg.In a few moments, the fission was complete, and a new slug settled in the center of her spine; another slid down her back.She was squatting, her hips almost touching the ground, and the slug slid off her body, pattering softly onto the concrete floor. It slowly crawled towards Satan.The monkey must have seen it through its fingers, and screaming hoarsely, it climbed to the top of the cage. Jesus, they sent a gang of goons to get him.These are four of the largest monkeys, including two gibbons, a chimpanzee and a baboon.They nearly tore it apart, yanked it off, and pinned it face down to the floor. The slug slid closer to it. Within two feet of it, the slug first slowly sprouted a pseudopod, a slimy stalk that dangled around like a cobra.Then it was thrown out quickly.It hit Satan's foot - the other apes let it go immediately, but Satan did not escape. The titan seems to be pulling the whole body through the attachment points on the satan's feet, first attaching to its feet, then climbing up, when reaching the base of the spine.The monkey woke up.As soon as it settled down on its back, Satan sat up.Shaking himself, he joined the other apes, pausing to look at us. Vargas and McIlvin chatted excitedly, apparently unaffected.I really want to smash something, for me, for Satan, and for the whole ape family. Vargas insists that this proves nothing, but McIlvin argues that what we are witnessing is something new that changes our preconceived notions.This is a highly intelligent creature formed in a certain way, with permanence and continuity in individual or group characteristics.The more they argued, the more confused they became.Regardless, McIlvin's theory is that the creature continues to remember all of its experiences, not only from the moment it splits, but all the way back to the origin of the species.He described the slug as a complex of a single biological organization and a four-dimensional space-time combination, and the conversation became obscure and dizzying at this time. As for me, I neither know nor care about any of this.Admittedly, all of this is very interesting, but all I care about is how to get rid of the slugs.I want to kill as many of them as possible, as fast as possible. All I can say about the continuous "species memory" theory is that being able to recall exactly what you did on the second Wednesday in March a million years ago is a bit of a hassle. .