Chapter 5 Chapter 5 Involuntary Volunteers

After the guests left, Dr. Schechter pressed the summon button softly and cautiously.A young technician walked in quickly. He was wearing a snow-white lab coat, and his long brown hair was carefully tied back. Dr. Schechter said, "Did Paula tell you—" "Yes, Dr. Schechter. I have observed him through the picture plate. He is undoubtedly a real volunteer, and he is definitely not an experimental subject sent through the usual channels." "Should I inform Parliament, don't you think?" "I don't know what to advise you. The council doesn't accept ordinary communications. Any beam can be intercepted, and you know that." Then, he added enthusiastically, "Let me get him out of here. I'll You can tell him that we need someone under the age of 30, and this person is at least 35 years old."

"No, no, I'd better see him." Schechter's thoughts were like a cold vortex.So far, everything has been handled sensibly, with just enough public information to give the semblance of a confession, not much at all.And now, a real volunteer came, just after Ennias' visit.Is there any connection here?On the surface of this cursed earth, great undercurrents of rivalry were beginning to rise, of which Schechter himself had only the vaguest notions.But in a sense, he also knew enough.More than enough to put him at their mercy, and definitely more than any ancient man could have imagined.

But what can he do?Now his life is under double threat. Ten minutes later, Dr. Schechter looked helplessly at the rude farmer in front of him.He clutched his hat in his hand and turned his head to one side, as if trying to avoid too close a look.His age, Schechter thought, was definitely under forty, but the hard life of wrestling with the land certainly wouldn't make people pampered.This person's cheeks were brown and rosy. Although the temperature in the room was not high, there were a few drops of sweat hanging on his hairline and near the temples on both sides, and his hands were constantly rubbing each other.

"Well, my dear sir," said Schechter kindly, "I understand your refusal to give your name." Yabin's reaction was blind stubbornness: "I heard that if you come to volunteer, you won't ask any questions." "Well, well, is there anything you want to talk about? Or do you just want to have surgery right away?" "Me? At this time, here?" He was startled suddenly, "The volunteer is not me, I never said that." "Not you? You mean, there are other volunteers?" "Of course, why would I want to..." "I understand. Is the subject, the other, with you?"

"You can say that." Yabin replied cautiously. "Okay, listen, then tell us what you want to say. We'll keep everything you say in absolute secrecy, and we'll do everything we can to help you. Agree?" The farmer suddenly lowered his head, barely a gesture of respect: "Thank you, the way it is, sir. There is a man on our farm, a distant—ah—distant relative. He helped us, you should know— —” Yabin swallowed with difficulty, while Schechter nodded solemnly. Yabin continued: "He was a very hard worker and a very good worker. We had a son once, you know, but he died, and my wonderful wife and I, you know, we needed help —she's not well, and we can barely manage without him." He felt as if the story was in a mess.

The thin physicist kept nodding: "And your relative, you just want him to undergo surgery?" "Ah, yes, I thought I said that. But please forgive me if I haven't gotten there. You know, the poor guy's head isn't—not quite right." Then he panicked. He continued in a flustered breath, "He's not sick, you understand. There's nothing wrong with him, and he won't be rejected. He just moves slowly and doesn't speak, you understand." "He can't talk?" Schechter seemed taken aback. "Oh—he will. Only he doesn't like to talk about it, and he doesn't talk about it well."

The physicist seemed hesitant: "And you want to boost his intelligence with synaptic amplifiers, huh?" Yabin nodded slowly: "If he is more sensible, sir, ah, he can do some jobs that my wife can't do, you understand." "He may die, do you understand that?" Yabin looked at each other helplessly, his ten fingers entangled with each other violently. "I need his permission," Schechter said. The farmer shook his head slowly, with a stubborn expression on his face: "He won't understand," and then, in a barely audible voice, he tried to persuade, "Oh, listen to me, sir, I'm sure you will understand, You don't look like a guy who doesn't know what a hard life is. The guy's getting old, it's not a matter of sixty, you know, but if, say, next census, they think he's mentally retarded, and— — And take him away? We don't want to lose him, that's why we brought him here.

"I'm so mysterious because maybe—maybe—" Yabin's eyes rolled around the wall involuntarily, as if trying to penetrate the wall with willpower, so as to detect the listener who might be hiding outside "Well, maybe the ancients won't like what I'm doing, and maybe trying to save a cripple will be judged against custom. But life is hard, sir...and it'll help you too, you guys Volunteers are always being sought.” "I know. Where are your relatives?" Yabin took the opportunity to quickly say: "In my two-wheeled car outside, as long as no one finds out. He won't take care of himself, in case someone..."

"Well, we hope he's okay. You and I will go outside now and drive that car into our underground parking lot. I'll make sure no one else knows about him but the two of us and my assistant." Exist. And I assure you, the Fellowship of Brotherhood will never trouble you." He stretched out an arm and pressed it kindly on Abin's shoulder.The farmer grinned, his cheeks twitching involuntarily, and to him it was like a noose around his neck had finally come loose. Schechter looked down at the fat, bald man lying on the couch.The patient was unconscious, breathing deeply and regularly.Just now, what he said was completely incomprehensible, and he himself didn't understand anything.However, no physical signs of mental retardation could be found.For an elderly person, his reflexes are quite normal.

old people!Ok. He looked up at Yabin, who was staring at the whole process intently. "Do you want us to do a bone analysis?" "No!" cried Yabin, and then, in a softer tone, "I don't want any kind of identification check." "That would help us. You know, if we knew his age, it would be safer," Schechter said. "He is fifty years old." Yabin replied immediately. The physicist shrugged that it didn't matter, and looked again at the sleeping subject.When he had just been brought in, he had seemed depressed, completely closed off, indifferent to everything, or so it seemed.Even those sleeping pills did not arouse his suspicion.When the pill was offered to him, he gave a quick, nervous smile and swallowed it in one gulp.

Technicians are pushing in the final set of components, which look rather crude, but together they form a synaptic amplifier.After pressing a button, the polarized glass windows in the operating room began to undergo molecular rearrangement, and all of them became opaque at once. The only light was the dazzling cold light on the patient's head.The patient has been moved to the operating table, and his whole body is suspended two inches above the operating table by the anti-magnetic force field with a power of hundreds of thousands of watts. Yabin was still sitting in a dark corner. He couldn't understand anything, but he just believed that as long as he was present, he could prevent any unfavorable behavior.Although he also understands that he doesn't know how to stop it at all. The physicists ignored him and carefully attached electrodes to the patient's skull.It was a tedious job. First of all, we had to use the Uster technique to carefully study the structure of the skull and figure out all the crooked and tightly fitting fissures.Schechter smiled at himself with a sullen face—although a skull fracture is not an irreplaceable way to quantitatively determine a person's age, but it is accurate enough for this operation, and this person is definitely more than five years old. ten. After a while, he stopped laughing and frowned instead.There's something wrong with the rift structures, they seem weird, not quite... For a moment, he could have sworn that the structure of the skull was primitive, showing an atavism.But... Well, this person's intelligence is already abnormal, so why not! He suddenly exclaimed: "Ah, I didn't notice! This man has hair on his face!" He turned to Abin: "Has he always had a beard?" "beard?" "It's the hair on his face! Come here! Don't you see?" "Yes, sir." Yabin quickly searched his memory. He did notice that morning, but he forgot all about it later. "He was born that way," he added, with some reservations, "if I want to." "Well, we'll remove it. You don't want him strutting around like a beast, do you?" "No, sir." The technician immediately put on gloves and carefully applied the depilatory ointment to Schwartz's face, and all the beard fell off. The technician said, "He has hair on his chest too, Dr. Schechter." "Galaxy," Schechter said, "let me see! Ah, this man is a living carpet! Never mind, you can't see it with your shirt on. I'm going to start putting electrodes in, let's go here , one here and one here." The hair-thin platinum electrode pierced in, "I also need one here and here." A total of more than a dozen electrodes penetrate the skin and penetrate the cracks. Through the tight cracks, the electrodes can feel the subtle echoes of the micro-currents between brain cells. Several people watched the ammeter carefully. When the wires connecting the electrodes were connected and pulled apart, the pointer of the ammeter made a slight jump.Tiny pinpoint recorders draw irregular peaks and troughs on graph paper, and the final figure looks like many fine spider webs. Then the figures were placed on the glowing opaline glass, and everyone bent over them, whispering to each other. Yabin only heard intermittent sentences: "...It's too regular...Look at the height of this fifth-order peak...I think it should be analyzed...It's so clear that you can see it with the naked eye..." Then, for what seemed like a long time, they set about tweaking the synaptic amplifiers.Turn many knobs while staring at the vernier adjuster, then clamp tight and record the reading.They checked the various meters again and again, and each time they had to make some adjustments. Then Schechter smiled at Yabin and said, "It will be over soon." The gigantic machine pushed toward the sleeping patient like a lumbering hungry monster.Four long wires dangled over his hands and feet; a black cushion, which appeared to be made of hard rubber, was carefully padded at the nape of his neck and secured with clips to his shoulders.Finally, a pair of electrodes that looked like a giant bird's beak opened and bit his gray, chubby skull, with the poles pointing to the temples on either side. Schechter's eyes were on the chronometer, the switch in his hand.His thumb moved suddenly, but there was no visible change. Even Yabin, who was frightened and nervous, couldn't see what happened.It seemed that several hours had passed, but in fact it was less than three minutes, when Schechter's thumb moved again. The assistant hurriedly bent down, inspected Schwartz who was still sleeping soundly, then raised his head and said triumphantly, "He's still alive." But this was just the beginning. In the next few hours, the records and reports gradually piled up like a mountain, and everyone was almost crazy with excitement.It was already dark when the hypodermic syringe pumped Schwartz's eyelids and his eyelids began to blink. Schechter stepped back, pale but cheerful.While patting his forehead with the back of his hand, he said, "You're done." He turned to Abin again, and said firmly, "He must stay here for a few days, sir." Yabin immediately shot a look of extreme panic in his eyes: "But...but..." "No, no, you must trust me." He tried to persuade Yabin, "He will be safe, I can guarantee my life, in fact, I have already bet my life. Leave him to us, no one but ourselves Will see him. If you take him now, he may not live, so what good will it do you? If he is dead, you will have to explain to the ancients where the body came from." That last sentence worked.Yabin swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and then said: "But I ask you, how do I know when to come back to pick him up? I don't want to tell you my name!" In any case, he has caved in.Schechter said, "I didn't ask your name. Come back here at ten o'clock in the evening, a week from today. I'll be waiting for you at the gate of the parking lot when we put your The door the two-wheelers come in. You've got to trust me, man, you've got nothing to fear." It was around eight or nine o'clock in the evening when Yabin drove out of Chicago.Twenty-four hours had passed since the stranger knocked on the door.During this period of time, he repeatedly broke the custom, which can be regarded as adding to the crime. Will he be safe in the future? The two-wheeled vehicle was speeding along the empty road, and he couldn't help but look back frequently.Will someone follow?Follow him all the way to his house?Has his countenance been recorded?Now, at the headquarters of the Brotherhood Fellowship in Huasheng, is there someone leisurely comparing files?There, all living earthlings and their statistics are recorded, which is mainly for the sixty-year limit. The 60th limit, all people on earth will not escape this doom in the end.It will be another quarter of a century before he faces this hurdle.However, because of Gru's relationship, he has been troubled by this matter every day.Today, this stranger poses the same problem. Would it be better if he never came back to Chicago? No!He and Luo Ya could not maintain the production volume of the three of them for a long time.Once they fail, their original crime - hiding Gru - will be discovered.Therefore, once a crime against common practice begins, it will surely snowball like a snowball. Yabin knew he would come back, no matter the danger. It didn't occur to Schechter until well after midnight that it was time to go to bed, at the insistence of a worried Paula.Even so, he didn't fall asleep.Pillows are like suffocating devices, and sheets wrapped around you can drive people crazy.He got up and sat down on the chair by the window.The whole city was dark now, but on the horizon, on the other side of the Great Lake, there was a pale blue light of death.On the surface of the earth, except for a few areas, all are shrouded in this blue light. The activities of the day, in a state of excitement, were still dancing wildly in his mind.After persuading the frightened farmer away, his first act was to video call the State Guesthouse.Ennias must have been waiting to hear from him, because it was himself who answered the phone, still in his leaden heavy clothing. "Ah, Schector, good night. Are you done with your experiments?" "My volunteers are almost done too, poor guy." Ennias looked disgusted. "When I thought I'd better not stay any longer, I was right. You scientists are almost indistinguishable from murderers, I feel that way." "He's not dead, Administrator, we might be able to bring him back, but..." He shrugged. "I suggest that you only use rats for experiments in the future, Schechter... But you look like a different person today, friend. Although you must have long been numb to this kind of thing, I can't do it." "I'm getting old, my lord," Schechter said casually. "It's a dangerous game on Earth," he replied flatly. "Go to bed, Schector." So here Schechter sits, gazing at a dark metropolis in a dying world. The Synapse Amplifier test had been going on for two years, during which time he had been a slave and a toy of the Order of the Ancients.The Order of the Ancients is the Fellowship of Brothers, which is their own name. He had already written seven or eight papers that could have been published in the Journal of Neurophysiology in the Sirius Sector, which would have given him a reputation throughout the galaxy, an honor he longed for.Now, locked and moldy in his desk, he wrote an obscure and deliberately misleading article for the Physical Review.That's the way brotherhood works, and a half-truth is better than a whole lie. But Ennias pursued it seriously.why? Does this fit with other things he knows?What he doubted, did the empire also become suspicious? In the past two hundred years, there have been three uprisings on the earth, and each time they raised the banner of the so-called ancient glory and resisted the imperial garrison by force.As a result, it failed three times, which is a matter of course.Had it not been for the liberal nature of the Empire and the statesmanship of the Galactic Council in general, Earth would have been bloodbathed and removed from the list of inhabited planets long ago. But things might be different now... really?Three quarters of what a dying lunatic says is incoherent, how much can he believe? What's the use of that?In any case, he dared not do anything, the only thing he could do was to wait.He was old, and, as Ennias said, it was a dangerous game on Earth.The sixty-year limit is approaching, and only a very small number of people can survive this inescapable catastrophe. Even on Earth, on this miserable, burning pellet of mud, he wants to keep living. Thinking of this, he lay back on the bed again, and when he was about to fall asleep, he murmured in his heart: I don't know if the phone call he made to Ennias was tapped by the ancients.At this time, he did not know that the ancients had other sources of information. The young technician didn't fully make up his mind until the next morning. He admired Schechter very much, but he knew that secretly reforming an unauthorized volunteer was against the direct orders of the Brotherhood.And that order, which had been given a legal status equivalent to custom, violated such an order and was guilty of a capital crime. He speculated over and over again, who is this person undergoing transformation?The operation of soliciting volunteers was carried out very carefully. The purpose of doing so was to reveal some information about the synaptic amplifier, so as to eliminate the potential suspicion of the imperial spies, not to really encourage volunteers to come.The Order of the Ancients has been sending their own men to be reformed, and that's enough. So, who sent this person?Was it secretly sent by the Ancients Cult?In order to test Schechter's reliability? Or, is Schechter a traitor?Earlier in the day, he had had a long private conversation with someone.The man was wearing the heavy clothes that outsiders would wear in order to protect themselves from radiation poisoning. No matter what happened, Schechter was doomed, so why should he be dragged into the coffin?He is still a young man, and he still has nearly forty years to live, why should he enter the sixty limit early? In addition, it also means that he can be promoted because of this... Anyway, Schechter is old, and the next census may remove him, so there will be no loss for him.In fact, there is no loss at all. The technician finally made a decision.He stretched out his hand to the communicator and pressed a few codes, which would directly connect him to the private room of the Master of the Earth.The position of the patriarch is second only to the emperor and administrator of the empire. He holds the power of life and death for everyone on the earth. The next night, due to a sharp pain, the foggy impressions in Schwartz's mind began to become clear.He remembered walking along the lake to a group of low buildings, and then leaned over in the back seat of the car and waited for a long time. Then, what is it?what is itHis mind tugged at his dull thoughts... Yes, they came to him and took him to a room with a lot of instruments and gauges, and two pills besides... that's all.They handed him the pills, which he happily took.What is he afraid of?Even if it is poison, he is happy with it. Then - nothing. wait!Fragments of awareness...many people bent over him...suddenly, he remembered the cold stethoscope pressed to his chest...and a girl feeding him some food. He suddenly realized what surgery he had undergone.Feeling panicked, he pulled back the covers and sat up on the bed. A girl appeared in front of him, pressed her hands to his shoulders, and firmly pressed him back on the pillow.She said something in a soothing tone, but he couldn't understand it at all.He tried to push the slender arms away, but couldn't, he had no strength. He stretched out both hands in front of him, and it seemed that there was nothing unusual.He moved his legs again, and immediately heard the rustling of the sheets. His legs were by no means amputated. He turned to the girl and asked with a tentative mood: "Can you understand me? Do you know where I am?" He could hardly distinguish his own voice. The girl smiled slightly, and suddenly spit out a series of fast words in a smooth voice.Schwartz snorted, disappointed.Then an older man walked in, the same one who had given him the pills.He talked to the girl for a while, and after a while, the girl turned to face him again, and pointed to his lips, making a small gesture of persuasion. "What?" he said. She nodded eagerly, her beautiful face beaming with joy.In the end, even Schwartz couldn't help but be pleasing to the eye and forget about everything else. "You want me to talk?" he asked. The man sat on the edge of the bed and gestured to Schwartz to open his mouth.He said, "Ah—" and then put his finger on Schwartz's Adam's apple, and Schwartz said, "Ah—" "What's going on?" Schwartz said displeased when the man let go. "Is it surprising that I can talk? What do you take me for?" A few days later, Schwartz learned some facts.The man was Dr. Schechter—it was the first time he'd known someone's name since he stepped over the doll.The girl was his daughter, named Paula.Schwartz also found that he no longer had to shave, and the beard on his face never grew back.This frightened him, had he really had a beard before? His strength quickly returned.Now they allowed him to get dressed, get out of bed and walk around for a while.In addition to thick porridge, I also started to feed him some other food. So, is his problem amnesia?Is that what they were treating him for?Had the world always been normal, natural, and the world he thought he remembered was just a fantasy produced by a mind that had lost its memory? But they never let him step out of this room, not even in the hallway.So, is he a prisoner?Did he commit any crime? No matter how terrible the experience of being lost is, it is not as terrible as being lost in one's own lonely mind-in those huge and complicated spiritual corridors, nothing can be grasped, nothing can be held.There is no one who is more helpless than a person who has lost his memory. Paula amused herself by teaching him how to speak.He learned it easily and remembered it, but he wasn't surprised at all.He remembered that his memory was very good before, at least, this memory seemed to be correct.It took him only two days to learn simple sentences, and within three days he was able to make himself understood. However, what happened on the third day did surprise him.Schechter began to teach him arithmetic and quizzed him, and Schwartz gave him the correct answer every time.Staring at the timing device, Schechter quickly took notes with his stylus.Then, Schechter explained the definition of "logarithm" to him and asked him what the logarithm of two is. Schwartz chose his words carefully, and his acquired vocabulary was still too small, so he especially used gestures to emphasize "I - don't - say, the answer - no - numbers." Schechter nodded excitedly, and then said: "Not numbers, not XX, not XX; part of XX, part of XX." Schwartz understood what Schechter meant very well, he was affirming that his statement was correct.That answer is not an integer, but a decimal.So he said again: "○? Three thousand one zero three, and - more - numbers." "enough!" Then he started to wonder, how did he know the answer?Schwartz was sure he had never learned logarithms, but when he heard the question, the answer immediately popped into his mind.As for how it was calculated, he had no idea at all.It was as if his mind was an independent entity, and he just used his body as a microphone. Or, before he lost his memory, he had been a mathematician? He began to feel the sting of life, and the feeling that he had to go out into the world and find out how to find out, was getting stronger and stronger.Being locked up like this in a room like a prisoner was nothing more than a medical experiment (he had the idea suddenly) and he would never know the truth. On the sixth day, the opportunity finally came.They had become so trusting of him that they left the door of their room open once when Schechter left.Usually, the door is locked so tightly that even the cracks in the door cannot be seen.This time, leave a quarter-inch gap. He waited a moment to make sure Schechter would not return immediately.Then, imitating their movement to open the door, he slowly pressed his hand on a small light bulb.The door slid open lightly and silently... There was no one in the corridor. So Schwartz "ran away." How could he know that during these six days, the secret agents of the Order of the Ancients had been monitoring this hospital, this room, and himself?