Chapter 3 sun dance

During the day, you dealt with more than 50,000 gluttons in Area A, and now I feel very uncomfortable.Early in the morning, you and Hutton flew east in a helicopter, dropping nerve poison pills along the Fork River in the golden-green dawn, covering an area of ​​​​a thousand hectares.Then you turn to the other side of the Fork River - the intended place of the first colonies, where the gluttons have been cleaned up.You lie down on the thick and soft straw mat to enjoy lunch, and Hutton picked a few honeydew flowers, and the two of them enjoyed the mild hallucination for half an hour.Then, when you were walking back to the helicopter and preparing to start the afternoon task, Hutton suddenly said for no reason: "Tom! Think about it, if these old gluttons are not vermin, but a family of aliens with language, etiquette classics, history...how would you feel?"

You immediately think of your people. "Come on! They're not at all!" you answer him. "I mean what if, if, these gourmets..." "No, no, can we talk about something else?" Hutton is such a mean guy, and only this kind of person would think of such a question.He likes to pick on other people's pain points!His casual words linger in your mind all night.If Lao Tao is an alien...if Lao Tao...if...in case... You fell asleep for a while without knowing it, and had a dream that you were swimming in a river of blood.What a fool!How could this be?You know exactly how important it is to get all the gluttons out as quickly as possible, before the first settlers arrive.Lao Tao is just a kind of alien "animal", and it cannot be regarded as a beneficial animal. They are the chief culprit of destroying the ecology, desperately consuming the oxygen-releasing plants on this planet.Humans simply cannot take root here if they are not removed.Of course, at least some living specimens must be preserved for the study of zoologists-everything else must be killed.This is a convention, and it is a human tradition to eradicate "bad" creatures.But, you say to yourself, don't let this conscience get in the way of your work, and stop dreaming of rivers of blood, will you?

What's more, there is no blood in Lao Tao's body, so it is impossible for blood to flow like a river.They rely on a body fluid similar to lymph, which penetrates the tissues of the body to transport nutrients; and excrement is also discharged from the body by osmosis.This osmotic transmission function can be said to be similar to the human body's circulatory system, except that they do not have any blood vessel network, nor do they have pumps like the heart.Everything is oozing, like an amoeba, a sponge, or some other lower animal.However, in other respects—such as the nervous system, digestive system, limb structure, etc., they are 100% higher animals.Absolutely!You think so.Aliens are just different, you tell yourself, it's no surprise, and it's not the first time.

What you and your colleagues appreciate most about gluttons is that their anatomy does you a huge favor by allowing you to clean them up. You fly over the prairie where gluttons are swarming, and you drop a lot of poison pills.They immediately scrambled to devour them.Within an hour, the poison would spread throughout Lao Tao's body, Lao Tao died, and then the cell tissue quickly collapsed—once there was no longer any nutrient supply, Lao Tao's body would decompose into individual cells.The lymph-like body fluid turned into a strong acid in Lao Tao's body, which could dissolve the body in a short while.Muscle, cartilage, and even bone.After two hours, what was once a living gluttonous animal will be nothing but a puddle of mucus on the ground; and after another two hours, there will be nothing left.Think about it, you have to deal with millions of gluttons. If their bodies don't know how to love themselves, wouldn't this planet be full of wilds?

If Lao Tao is a family of aliens... It's all that damn Hutton's fault, and you feel like your memory has been normalized once.In fact, if you are brave enough, you should take the initiative to ask to scrape this idea.If you dare, if you dare to try. He still couldn't muster the courage the next morning.He was terrified at the thought of memory norms, so he decided to take matters into his own hands, to find his own way out of this newfound guilt.He began to try to convince himself that glutton, this mindless herbivore, was another unfortunate victim of human expansionism. Even so, it is really not worth sympathizing with them emotionally. Their elimination is not a tragedy, it can only be said to be a disaster.If humans decide to settle on this planet, of course the gluttons will have to step aside.He said to himself that this cannot be compared with the tragedy of the natives of the North American plains and the buffalo in the nineteenth century.Whenever he thought of it, he felt sorry for the mass slaughter of herds; he felt sorry for the millions of noble shaggy bison.But for what happened to his ancestors, the Sioux, he was not just sad, but filled with righteous indignation.But the current situation is completely different, he reminded himself again, save your feelings and save them until the right time to use them!

He stepped out of his airbag and walked slowly to the center of the camp.The gravel road is very slippery, and the water-soluble morning mist has not completely dissipated. Every tree is bent due to being full of dew, and the long leaves with jagged edges are also covered with water droplets.He stopped suddenly, squatting down to watch a spider-like creature weaving an asymmetrical web.Just as he was fascinated, a small amphibious reptile, a dull blue-green in appearance, was gliding cautiously across the mossy ground.No?It still didn't seem to be careful enough, because he still found it.He gently picked up the little animal and placed it on the back of his hand. The little reptile was trembling with fright, and its two gills kept flapping with difficulty.After a while, its color shrewdly changed to bronze, which was exactly the tone of his skin, a perfect deception.He felt that enough was enough, so he put his hand down, and the little reptile jumped into the puddle in a flash.He went on.

He was forty years old and shorter than most members of the expedition, but his broad shoulders and thick chest, combined with his shiny black hair and blunt broad nose, still made him look very good.He was a biologist on this expedition, his third career.Before that, he had worked unsuccessfully as an anthropologist and as a real estate broker.His name was Tom of Two Ribbons, and he had been married twice, but had no children.His great-grandfather died of alcoholism; his grandfather was addicted to LSD; and his father had to do memory discipline from time to time.Tom knows well that he will not be able to escape the family's bad luck in the end, but so far, he has not found a way to self-destruct.

Entering the large tent in the center of the camp, he met Hutton, Julia, Irene, Schwartz, Lao Zhang, Michelson and Nicholas. They were all having breakfast, and the other team members had already gone to work . When Erin saw him come in, she immediately got up and walked over to give him a kiss, her short, soft blond hair scratching his cheek. "I love you!" she murmured. "I love you!" Tom replied, patting her chest lightly.Then he turned to Michelson, who nodded and blew him a kiss, and he knew he was right, Erin slept in Michelson's airbag last night.It doesn't matter, we're good friends anyway, Tom thought.

"Whose pill is it today?" he asked. "Michelson and Zhang," Julia said, "are in Block C." Schwartz went on to say: "In another eleven days, we will be able to clear the entire peninsula, and then we can march inland." "If we don't have a shortage of pills." Lao Zhang echoed. "Did you sleep well last night, Tom?" was Hutton's question. "No!" replied Tom gruffly.He took a seat, took out a breakfast magnet Ka, found that the thick fog on the west mountain has gradually evaporated. He had been on this planet for nine weeks, experiencing the annual change of seasons here—from the dry season to the foggy season.The current foggy season will last for a few more months. Before the next dry season, all the gluttons will have been resolved, and the immigrants have already arrived.He stared at the mist in a daze, and suddenly realized that breakfast had slid down the conveyor chute.He began to eat, and Eileen, who was almost half his age, sat next to him.This was her first alien expedition, and she was in charge of paperwork, but she was also a trained mnemonic.

"You seem troubled," Eileen said to him. "Is there anything I can do to help you?" "Nothing, thanks." "I don't like seeing your frustrated face." "This is the melancholic temperament unique to our tribe, there is no way." "I doubt your theory." "Okay! To be honest, maybe my reconstructed personality is about to be polished, and my past trauma is about to surface again. I'm just walking around! Are you satisfied?" Erin giggled, she was only wearing a swimsuit, and her skin was still very damp, because she just went swimming with Maxson and hadn't been back long.Tom felt a sudden impulse to propose to her, and to marry her as soon as the business was over.He has been single ever since his real estate business collapsed.The reason for the divorce at the beginning was also because of the advice of a psychologist as part of personality reconstruction.He also sometimes wondered, where is his ex-wife now?With whom?

Then Eileen said, "Don't be funny, Tom, Do I feel that you are quite stable? " "Thank you!" She was still young and didn't understand these thoughts. "If it's just sudden, inexplicable depression, I can make it go away with a click." "Thank you for your kindness," he replied, "don't bother." "I forgot! Sorry, you don't like this kind of..." "My father..." "What's wrong?" "His memory has been chipped during the past fifty years..." Tom replied, "he has scraped out his memory of his ancestors, then his religion, his wife and children, and finally his own name. Then He can finally sit in the corner of the room and laugh all day long...I'm done with it, thank you! I will never touch that thing!" Erin quickly changed the subject and said, "Where do you work today?" "In the reserved area, do a few experiments." "Do you want me to keep you company? I'm fine this morning." "Thanks, no need!" He immediately refused.Maybe because she answered so quickly, she looked a little sad.Tom took her arm and said softly, "Maybe this afternoon, okay? I want to talk to you too, okay?" "Okay!" She laughed again, and blew him a kiss. After breakfast, he walked to the reserved area alone.This reserved area occupies a total of 1,000 hectares to the east of the base. On its border, nerve field emitters are set up every 80 meters, so that 200 gluttons in the area can be surrounded.These gluttons are left for research purposes, so they will be the only lucky ones left on the planet.In the southwest corner of the reserve is an experimental air pocket, where Tom conducts experiments—experiments on metabolism, physiology, psychology, ecology, and so on. The reserved area is crossed by a small slope, and there is a not-so-high green hillside on the east side. Five dense miscellaneous forests are cut from it by dense grasslands. Oxygen-releasing plants grow under the shade of grasses, except for photosynthesis. The functional spikes protrude about three to four meters high, and the rest are covered by grass; the respiration branches are light yellow and grow to about chest height, emitting bursts of sweet and intoxicating aromas. aroma. The gourmets are in groups of twos and threes on the grassland, chewing the branches of oxygen-releasing plants one bite at a time.Tom first watched the gourmets from behind the creek, and then approached them slowly.As a result, he accidentally tripped over an oxygen-releasing plant hidden in the grass, but he quickly regained his balance lightly.He grabbed the branch of the plant and took a deep breath into the wrinkled breathing holes, and the frustration disappeared instantly. He gradually approached a group of gluttons, their bodies were round, bulky and bulky, covered with thick fur.Above the narrow, elastic lips protrude a pair of large saucer-shaped eyes.Lao Tao's legs are thin and long, and covered with scales, a bit like chicken feet magnified many times, and his two thick and short arms are close to the body.These old gourmets looked at Tom with gentle eyes, showing no strange curiosity at all. "Good morning, brothers!" He even greeted them in this way today, even he was a little baffled. I noticed something was wrong today, maybe it was because I inhaled too much pure oxygen on the grassland just now; or did I really believe Hutton's words?Or maybe my inherited masochism popped up.Anyway, when I observed the gluttons in these protected areas, it was the first time that I felt that they were acting as if they were intelligent, as if they were holding some kind of ceremony. I followed them for three hours, during which time they found six oxygen-releasing plants out in the grass.Every time before they eat, they will perform some formal actions: — forming a sparse circle around the plant - look up to the sun ——Look at the left and right neighbors in the circle - issued a series of indistinct hissing (must be after completing the aforementioned process) —Looking up at the sun again — Approached the plant and started munching If this is not a prayer of thanksgiving, what is it?And if the gluttons really know how to pray and give thanks, it means that they have evolved spiritually, so aren't we committing a massacre?Do chimpanzees do this?God!We have never killed chimpanzees like this!Of course, chimpanzees will not destroy human crops, so it is possible to achieve a certain degree of peaceful coexistence with humans.But gluttons are different, they are absolutely incompatible with human crops. However, there is a moral problem here: the theoretical basis for our extermination is to assume that the intelligence of the glutton is about the same as that of the oyster, and at most it can only be compared with the sheep.We think we have a clear conscience because the poison pills we use are quick and painless.Moreover, the old glutton was completely decomposed after death, saving us the work of cremating millions of dollars.But what if they were actually praying? I don't want to mention this to other people yet, I want to collect more evidence, solid and objective evidence, such as audio, video or stereo hologram.If I can prove that we are exterminating a species of intelligent life, it will be a treat!After all, my family has some idea of ​​genocide, which happened centuries ago.I doubt I can stop what's going on here, but at least I can pull myself away.Go back to Earth to announce the truth and arouse many people to join the ranks of protest. I hope this is all just my imagination...... But it was all no fantasy, they formed a circle, they looked up at the sun, and neighed in prayer.They look like jelly with chicken feet, but they know how to pray before eating.The big eyes of the gluttons are staring at me now, as if they are asking questions. This group of tamed gluttons knows everything that is going on-we are falling from the sky and are going to kill all of their kind, only a few of them survived.These gourmets can't fight back, can't even protest us, but they do know!So must hate us. God!Since the day we came here, we have killed no less than two million gluttons.The old saying is that my hands are covered with blood, what should I do?What can I do? I have to act very carefully, otherwise my end will be either drug control or memory regulation.I can't act out of the ordinary, and I can't stand up and criticize publicly.I had to find some mates first, and Hutton was the first one—of course he knew the truth, because he was the one who reminded me in the first place, the day we went to the poison pill together.At the beginning, I thought he was playing that mean game again. I'm going to talk to him tonight. He said, "I've been thinking about what you mentioned, I mean about gluttons. Maybe we haven't done a good job of studying the psychology of gluttons, I mean, if they're really intelligent... ..." Hutton blinked. He was tall, with glossy black hair, a thick beard and prominent cheekbones. "Who said that, Tom?" he answered. "You said it yourself, last time we flew across the Fork River, you said..." "That's just my random guess, just find a topic!" "No! I believe it's more than that. You really believe it yourself." Hutton looked a little annoyed. "Tom, I don't know what medicine you sell in your gourd, but please stop talking. If I really believe that I am slaughtering intelligent beings, I will go to the memory normalizer at supersonic speed." "But that day, why did you ask me that?" asked Tom. "Let's talk casually!" "You provoke other people's guilt just to amuse yourself? You bastard, Hutton, I'm not kidding you!" "Calm down, Tom! If I had known earlier, you would have taken my conjecture so seriously..." Hutton shook his head, and continued: "It's an obvious fact that gluttons are not intelligent creatures. Otherwise we wouldn't have Ordered to exterminate them." "Yes! Obviously..." Tom replied. Eileen said, "No! I don't know what Tom wants to do. But I'm sure he needs to rest for a while. He just had a personality reconstruction a year and a half ago, and before that, his personality had a severe breakdown. " Michelson checked the chart and said, "He's turned down three missions in a row, saying his research is at a critical juncture. Damn! Of course I could replace him, but his evasion of responsibility makes me Very difficult." "What kind of research is he doing?" Nikolai asked. "It's not biological research anyway," Julia said. "He's been hanging out with the gluttons in the reserve, but I haven't seen him do any experiments. He just keeps staring at the gluttons." "Still talking to them." Lao Zhang added. "That's right, he still talks to the gluttons." Julia echoed. "What are you talking about?" Nikolai asked again. "who knows!" Everyone looked at Erin in unison. "You're the closest to him," Michelson said. "Can you persuade him?" "I've got to figure out what the hell he's doing first," Eileen said. "He's keeping everything secret from me right now." You know you have to be careful because there are so many of them, they care about your mental state, and they already know you're having trouble.Erin is also starting to spy on you, wondering where your troubles come from.When you were lying in her arms last night, she took the opportunity to ask you skillfully, but you understood what she wanted to ask.When the moon was out, she suggested that the two of them go to the reservation together and take a walk among the sleeping gluttons.You refuse, but she has already seen the unusual relationship between you and the glutton. You're probing yourself -- hopefully subtly.You know that you can't save the old glutton at all, and the irreparable crime has happened again!Back in AD 1876, it was bison; it was the Sioux, and both had to be wiped out because the railroads were coming.If you talk about your findings here and now, friends will try to reassure you, calm you down, and help you with memory norms, because none of them saw what you witnessed.If you go back to Earth and make the incident public, you will only get cynicism, and others will suggest that you do another personality reconstruction.You can't do anything, you can't do anything! You can't save the glutton, but maybe you can record the glutton. Go to the prairie, live with the gluttons, make friends with them, and learn their way of life.Then record all this and make a complete record of the gluttonous culture, so that at least something can be left for them.You have studied field anthropology, as anthropologists used to do to your people, and now you can do the same to gluttons. He found Michelson and asked him, "Can you let me go for a few weeks?" "Leave you alone? Tom, what do you mean by that?" "I'm going to do some field research, and I want to leave the base and go find some old gourmets in the wild." "Is there anything wrong with the ones in the reserved area?" "This will be my last chance to observe the wild gluttons, Mike, I must go." "Are you going alone, or with Irene?" "I go by my own." Michelson nodded slowly and said, "Well, Tom! If you want to go, go! I won't keep you here." I dance in the golden-green sun of the prairie, and the gluttons gather around me.I was stripped and naked, my skin glistening with sweat and my heart pounding.I talked to the gluttons through dance steps, and they all understood. They can understand. Lao Tao's language is a soft whisper.They also have a God, and they know how to love, fear and rejoice.They have ceremonies, they each have names, they have their histories, I totally believe in that. I dance on the thick grass. How do I communicate with the gluttons?With my feet, my hands, my roar, my sweat?I was dancing with hundreds, thousands of gourmets gathered around me.I could never stop, they sang their songs around me.I am the fuse of a strange power, great-grandfather should come and see me now!He was sitting in front of his house in Wyoming, holding the fire wine in his hand, and his brain was corroded bit by bit-now, grandpa, look at me!Check out Double Ribbon's Tom Dance!I use dance steps to talk to these alien friends, under a sun of different colors, I'm dancing, I'm dancing... "Listen to me," I said to the glutton, "I am your friend, and only I, and I am the only one you can trust. Believe me, answer me, teach me, let me keep everything for you, your doom It's coming!" As I dance, the golden-green sun slowly rises, and the gourmets begin to murmur. Their leader was there, and I danced toward him, forward, backward, forward.I bent down, looked up at the sun again, and imagined the creatures living in that fireball.I imitate the voice of the glutton, I kneel, stand up again, and still dance--Two-ribbon Tom dances for you. I summoned the dance skills that my ancestors had forgotten, and felt a surge of power flow through my body.The ancestors danced in the time of the buffalo, and I dance here and now, beyond the Fork. I continued to dance, and now the gluttons joined in.Slowly, with some hesitation, they gradually approached me. They shifted their weight, raised their feet in turn, and swayed from side to side. "Yeah! Just like that!" I yelled, "Dance with me!" We dance together until the sun is overhead. Now their eyes are no longer intriguing, all I can see is warmth and brotherhood.I'm their brother, their red brother, and I dance with them now.They are no longer clumsy in my eyes, and there is a kind of solemn elegance in their demeanor.They're dancing, they're dancing!They leap up beside me, getting closer, closer, closer! We danced to a holy frenzy. They were singing too, a vague carol of joy.They send their arms forward, open their little paws, and then move their center of gravity neatly - left foot lifted, right foot lifted, left foot, right foot, left, right, left, right... let's dance wildly ,Bros!Dance with me, dance with me, dance with me!They squeezed toward me, and I could see their muscles quivering and smell their sweet breath.They gently crowd me across the prairie to a lush, untrodden meadow. We continued dancing and found several clumps of oxygen plants in this meadow.After they prayed, they used their clumsy hands to lift the food and separated the respiratory branches from the photosynthetic spikes. The plants were in pain and desperately released oxygen. I felt dizzy, laughed and sang loudly.The gourmets began to chew on the pale yellow and porous fruit balls, and the stems were also included.They also asked me to share, and I know this is a religious ceremony, which represents the sharing of flesh and blood—join us, share the blessings, share the troubles; share, share; share, share.I bent down and put the light yellow fruit ball into my mouth. I didn't take a big bite, but chewed like they did.I tore the skin of the fruit ball with my teeth, and the juice splashed into my mouth, while pure oxygen was pumped from my nostrils to my heart and lungs. The gluttons are singing hymns, I should paint my whole body with the paintings passed down from my ancestors, put on feathers, and then join the religion of gluttons in the lingering circle.Blessings are shared, and difficulties are shared!The sap of oxygen-releasing plants flowed through my veins, and I hugged my brother, and I sang, and the song left my lips in an arc that shone like steel.When I lowered the pitch of my singing, the arc's light instantly turned to a dull silver.The gluttons huddled together, their breath was full of fiery red, and their soft roars turned into a puff of smoke.The sun is warm now, and the light it emits is a jagged, wrinkled crackling sound that almost reaches the limit of my hearing.Jingle Bell!Jingle Bell!Jingle Bell!At the same time, the thick grass hummed to me, it was a deep singing. The wind in the prairie brought a little spark, and I swallowed another fruit ball, and then another.The brothers laughed and told me stories about the gods, gods of warmth, gods of food, gods of joy, gods of death, gods of holiness, gods of evil, and so on.They also recited to me the names of the emperors of all ages, with a voice like bits of green mold in the clear sky, and they taught me the sacred rituals.I've got to keep that in mind, I tell myself, because it's about to disappear forever. I started dancing again, and they started too, and the color of the hills became rougher and rougher, like gaseous emery.Blessings are shared, difficulties are shared, let's dance together!How gentle they are! Suddenly, I heard the drone of a helicopter! The helicopter was circling in the distance, and I couldn't see who was piloting it. "No!" I yelled. "Don't come here, don't deal with them! Listen to me, it's me, Tom of Two Ribbons! Can't you hear me? I'm doing fieldwork here! You have no right to..." My voice made red sparks appear around the edges of the blue mold flying around, and they drifted slowly towards the sky, and were finally swept away by a gust of wind. I went on yelling again, yelling loudly.While dancing wildly, while waving my fist.From the helicopter's wing, the mechanical arm that delivered the poison pill opened, and the shiny nozzle began to spin and expand.Then the nerve poison pills fell like a rainstorm, each one leaving a bright trail in the sky.The noise of the helicopter became a carpet of animal hair spreading out on the horizon, absorbing all my shrill roars. The old gluttons immediately dispersed from me, rushed to the place where the poison pill fell, and used their claws to poke the grass to search carefully.I hurriedly jumped among them, knocked down the poisonous pills in each paw; threw the poisonous pills into the creek; crushed the poisonous pills into pieces.The glutton growled disapprovingly at me and rushed off to find other poison pills.The helicopter flew away, leaving only a sound with thick oil stains.And my brothers, are gobbling up—those poison pills. I can't stop them at all! After taking the poison pill, the old glutton was so excited that he fell down on the ground and did not move. Only his limbs would twitch occasionally, and even this movement stopped after a while.Then they immediately began to decompose, and the bodies of thousands of gluttons dissolved on the prairie.Their globular bodies gradually melted away, dripping to the grass.Molecules in the body can no longer stick to the tissue structure, and the protoplasm begins to destroy, causing them to disintegrate entirely and disappear.I ran for hours across the savannah, and now I'm on pure oxygen and eating pale yellow fruit balls.In a heavy tone, the sun sets; the black cloud in the east blows out the melody of brass pipes, and the tightening wind is like swirling black bristles.The sky and the earth are finally silent, the night falls, and I start to dance wildly again...   The helicopter is back and has found you.When they push you into the helicopter, you don't fight because you're past the point of pain.You calmly explain your actions, everything you've learned, and why eliminating them was a huge mistake.You describe to others the plant you just ate, and its various effects on the senses.When you talk about those wonderful "synesthesias" - the texture of the wind, the sound of the clouds, and the timbre of the sun.They nod, smile and tell you not to worry, it will be all right soon.Then you feel a chill in your arm, so cold it's almost in the ultraviolet range, so you can't see at all.The humming sound filled the ears, the antidote penetrated into the blood vessels, and the absent-minded excitement quickly faded away, leaving only infinite fatigue and sorrow. He said: "We never learned a lesson, did we? We brought the horrors of the earth to every planet. Wipe out the Armenians, wipe out the Jews, wipe out the Tasmanians, wipe out the Indians Man, whoever stands in the way dies! Then we come here and continue this brutal massacre. You didn't go there with me, you didn't have the experience of dancing with them, you don't know how rich and detailed the culture of gluttony is .Let me tell you, their tribal structure is extremely complex: first, there is a seven-fold marriage relationship, and then there is the factor of interracial marriage..." Erin said softly, "Tom, dear, no one wants to hurt the glutton." "And their religion," he went on self-consciously, "there are nine gods in all, each with a special function. They worship gods of both the holy and the wicked, and they have hymns, prayers, and Theology. And we, the messengers of the evil god..." "Who said we were going to get rid of them?" Michelson said. "Don't you get it, Tom? It's all your own imagination, you're under the influence of the drug, and now we've got you out of it. Soon you'll be fully recovered and can return to work." "My fantasy?" He said fiercely: "dreams caused by drugs? I stood on the grassland and saw you inject poison pills with my own eyes, and then watched the old gluttons melt after death. These are not my dreams. !" "What do we need to do to make you believe it?" Lao Zhang asked solemnly, "Do you want us to fly you over the area where the gluttons gather, so that you can see the millions of gluttons there with your own eyes?" "But we've killed millions!" he retorted. Everyone still insisted that he was wrong.Erin emphasized to him again that no one wanted to hurt Lao Tao. "We're on a scientific expedition, Tom, and we're here just to study them. It's against all our purposes to harm intelligent beings." "So you admit that they are wise?" "Of course! No one ever doubted that." "Then why do we need poison pills?" he continued. "Why massacres?" "Tom, these things have never happened!" Irene held his feverish hands in her cold palms, and said earnestly, "Trust us, you must trust us!" But he replied coldly: "If you want me to believe, why don't you do it more simply and use the memory standardizer to deal with me. Just talking about it like this will never shake the facts I have seen with my own eyes." "You're under the influence of the drug all the time," Michelson said. "I've never taken any psychedelics, except for the fruit balls I ate while dancing on the prairie - but before that, I've seen weeks of carnage in action. Would you call it 'regression delusion' ?” "No, Tom!" Schwartz said, "You have always had this kind of delusion, and this is actually part of the treatment—you came here, it is a process of personality reconstruction." "Impossible!" He said roared. Irene kissed his hot forehead and said, "You know what? This is to fit you into the crowd. You have always hated the migration of your people in the nineteenth century. You can't forgive industrial society. The fact that the Sioux were dispersed, so the heart is full of hatred. Your attending physician believes that if you can participate in a simulated genocide operation, if you can see the necessity of this, it is possible to clear the hatred in your heart , and return to society..." He suddenly pushed her away. "Don't open your eyes and talk nonsense! If you know a little bit of personality reconstruction therapy, you should know that there is no such thing as your nonsense. No! Don't touch me! Go away, go away!" He refuses to believe that all this is just a drug-induced dream.This is no fantasy; and it is by no means a therapeutic process, he told himself.He stood up and walked out, and the others did not follow him.He got into the helicopter and was going to find his brother. I started dancing again, the sun is very hot today, and there are too many gluttons.Today I painted, today I also wore feathers, my sweat glistened in the sun.他们也跟我一起舞蹈，表现出我从未见过的狂热。我们用脚猛踩着伤痕累累的草地，我们用手捕捉太阳，我们歌唱，我们吼叫，我们哭泣，我们将一直狂舞到倒下为止。 这不是幻想，他们是真真实实的。他们有智慧，却注定要毁灭，我知道！ 我们继续舞蹈，纵然恶运当头，我们继续舞蹈。 现在曾祖父也来加入了，他也是真实的。他的鼻子尖如鹰钩，不像我的这样钝。他戴着很大的头饰，棕色皮肤下的肌肉如绳索般结实。他在歌唱，他在吼叫，他在哭泣。 我的家族其他成员也加入了我们。 我们共同享用释氧植物，我们拥抱着老饕，我们都知道被捕猎的滋味。 云层响起了音乐；微风展现了纹理；而太阳的温暖也显出色彩。 我们共舞，我们狂舞，我们都不知道什麽叫疲倦。 太阳渐渐地胀大，遮盖了整个天空，我现在看不见老饕，眼中只有我的族人——数个世纪以来的先人，数千个闪闪发光的胴体，数千个钩鼻。我们一？吃着果球，将植物的尖刺扎进肌肉，甜美的鲜血流出来，在太阳的烈下逐渐凝结。我们继续狂舞，不停地舞。有些人已经累得倒下，其他人继续下去，大草原上数千个头饰上下舞动，舞出了一片羽毛的海洋。而我们仍在舞，我的心跳成了雷鸣，我的汗水变做河流，太阳的火已将我吞噬。我在舞中跌倒，又再挣扎起舞，最後我终於倒下，终於倒下，终於倒下…… 他们又找到了你，又将你带回来。他们将冰冷的金属管放在你的手臂上，将释氧植物的成份从血液中吸走。然後为你注射了一针，让你能好好休息。你乖乖地躺着，心情很平静。爱琳亲吻着你，你则轻抚着她柔嫩的肌肤。然後其他的人也都来了，都对你说些安慰的话，但是你听不进去，因为你想找出事实的真相。这并不是一件容易的事，就好像陷在迷宫里面，要找出唯一的一条活路。 在这个星球上所发生的每一件事，都是你的治疗过程，是为了要使你这个可怜原住民，学习面对白人入侵的事实，在这里并没有任何生物真正被消灭——你这样告诉自己。 随即你否定了这个想法，转而想到其实是那些朋友在接受治疗。他们承载了数个世纪所累积的罪恶感，必须来到此地卸下这个心理重担。你来这里是为了要帮助他们，以你的宽恕与他们的原罪互相交换。 然後你又放弃了这个念头，现在你看到老饕只是一种低等动物，威胁了这个星球的生态，所以一定要清除。那些文化，都只不过是你自己从古老的记忆中滋生的幻想。於是，你决定不再反对这个必要之恶。 然而你突然又改变主意了，这回发现连消灭老饕的行动也只是幻想，源自你对於祖先所受的欺压无法释怀的怨怼。你站了起来，想要向那些朋友道歉，因为你将这些清白的科学家当成了刽子手。 可是这时你又再度改变了心意……