"The Skyscraper is here."

Shen Changwen looked at the building outside the car window, and the four big red characters of the Supersky Building were shining in the night.

"How much."

"Seventy-two dollars.

Shen Changwen handed over a whole bill of 100 yuan.

"I'm sorry, I don't have change, do you have WeChat and Alipay?"

Shen Changwen waved his hand.

"Then I'll go ahead and find you a ......"

"No, I mean no," Shen Changwen said, "no need to look for it." ”

"I'm sorry about that." The driver's eyes looked around, as if he was looking for a small shop that was open.

"I'm in a hurry." Shen Changwen waved his hand, and got out of the car after speaking.

After looking at the time, it was already past one o'clock in the morning, and there were not a few pedestrians in sight on the entire street.

The security guard of the building was also sleeping, and when Shen Changwen walked in, he didn't know why he deliberately slowed down, as if he was afraid of waking up the security guard.

This building should be some years old, the decoration inside looks a little old and yellow, the elevator makes a very discordant collision sound when it operates, and when the elevator door opens in front of him, Shen Changwen suddenly has a sigh...... I'm getting old. ”

The elevator door closed in front of him, and the small closed room stopped in place, Shen Changwen looked at the buttons that marked the floor, and suddenly hesitated again in his heart.

He opened the elevator door, but didn't take a step out. He is no longer a young man in his twenties or thirties. The ancients said that fifty is the destiny of heaven, and the destiny of heaven is ...... Destiny is that there are some things that you have to do whether you like them or not, and some characters have to be played until the end of the whole scene.

Shen Changwen pressed B2.

In the dark parking lot, only a few sparse lights were on, and these lights pulled Shen Changwen's body out of long shadows, and he followed this shadow step by step to the front.

No. 5, No. 6, No. 7.

B1，B2。

This is a very ordinary small warehouse, both in terms of area and facilities, it is very inconspicuous. He looked up, looked at the monitor above him, and nodded at it. Then he heard a soft noise, and a door on the side of the warehouse opened.

Shen Changwen walked in.

In the room, a fully automatic forklift is carrying supplies, and a whole box of milk powder and vitamins is being carried out. Shen Changwen has learned about the accounts of these materials through Chen She, and of course he knows their purpose, and the victims are generally facing the plight of malnutrition, which are all used for disaster relief.

There were several chairs on the side, and Shen Changwen watched the forklift be transported back and forth three times before he sat down.

The search and rescue team has not spoken.

This made Shen Changwen realize a detail, that is, before this, every word said by the search and rescue team seemed to be related to the rescue mission. Outside of the mission, the search and rescue team never gets involved in a topic they don't want to talk about.

From this point of view, it's like a machine.

This is normal, machines do things, they only talk about the process, regardless of the purpose.

But the search and rescue team is a machine with many differences.

In the process of discussing the plan with the search and rescue team many times, Shen Changwen has a clear understanding of the decision-making process of the search and rescue team. Whatever the scheme, war, enslavement, deception...... All these unethical behaviors are not a problem here in the search and rescue team, and all its choices have a clear purpose, that is, the number of people rescued in the end.

In this sense, it resembles a human being, and it resembles a political leader par excellence.

Perhaps, it was "designed" to be such a leader.

"Search and Rescue Team...... It's your profession. Shen Changwen broke the silence, "You chose it, or you were chosen." ”

"Professor, did you choose, or were you chosen?" The search and rescue team used Wu Xiaoqing's voice, but the tone of speech was not at all something that Wu Xiaoqing could simulate.

"I can resign at any time," Shen Changwen smiled, "Can you?" ”

"I know what you mean, Professor. But the premise of this question does not exist. If the entire earth were to disappear completely in this instant, would you still say that you could resign at any time, professor? Everything that restricts you, everything that generalizes your behavior is gone, but you continue to do your old job—just some kind of inertia, or rather, you feel that this is the only thing that makes sense, Professor, that's all. ”

Shen Changwen smiled stiffly: "If the earth is gone...... I'm afraid I'm not as strong as you. ”

"It's just a difference in life forms. If I'm also trapped in a brain made of flesh, with all my thinking restricted by chemical stimuli, I wouldn't be any better than you, Professor. We all have our own roles and our own things to do, that's all, Professor. You're here today, which means it's still going on as before, right? ”

Shen Changwen smiled bitterly: "In your eyes, isn't my approach quite ridiculous." ”

"Fighting for control is an instinct of life, and even intelligence, Professor, in every civilization I know, and your approach is understandable."

"Is this your consolation?"

"You're the least comforting of the four earthlings involved in the rescue, Professor. In a way, you and I have more common language than the three of them combined. ”

"But you still chose Wu Xiaoqing because he is easy to control?"

"This is the way of thinking of you earthlings, and in my opinion, any one of you is very easy to control."

I have to say that these words hit Shen Changwen a little hard, but Shen Changwen had to admit that this was the truth. The so-called unpredictable human hearts of earthlings may not be a problem in the search and rescue team. The human heart is unpredictable? Will it be harder than predicting the volatility of the entire futures market?

"I chose Wu Xiaoqing because he is younger and has a more suitable personality."

"Just young?" This is not a construction site to move bricks, or a factory to recruit workers, let alone a boss to recruit a secretary.

"Being young means a lot, Professor. No, being young means everything. For example, Wu Xiaoqing won't do the game between us, does he not want to? It's that he doesn't understand at all. ”

"That's because he's easy to control, and if you change to a smarter young man, it might be completely different."

"With what you call smart, there's no such thing as I call young, Professor. The kind of person you are talking about should be called Progeria...... In my opinion, one of the biggest advantages of being young is sincerity, which allows a person to really see the problem and give everything in order to solve the problem. We don't have that quality. ”

"Including you?"

"Of course, I'm older than you in comparison, and aging is hopeless, Professor."

"But in my opinion, the entire rescue operation was commanded by you, Wu Xiaoqing...... He's an execution machine. ”

"And who isn't, Professor. By your definition, I am a machine, a machine dedicated to saving civilization. Just because I'm better at thinking does it mean I'm a little more 'advanced'? Your wisdom is an accidental product of evolution, but that is not the case for all civilizations. First-class civilization design civilization, second-rate civilization optimizes civilization...... Even for the real top-level designers of civilization, the process of thinking is definitely not independent - there are no truly independent thinking individuals in this world, and we are all just reflections of the universe. ”

Even Shen Changwen spent some energy to understand the content of this paragraph, and he chewed every word of the search and rescue team, but he no longer had any thoughts in his heart.

In the final analysis, he is just an ordinary human on this small globe, and the human race has not even been in contact with any extraterrestrial civilization at present, and the search and rescue team in front of him, just listening to his words, knows that its previous experience is definitely not something he can imagine. He looked forward to the real universe described by the search and rescue team - on Earth, even if he waited another thousand years, he probably wouldn't have the opportunity to come into contact with other civilizations.

What shame is there for oneself to admit losing to an alien? If you can win, that's really weird.

"If wisdom like yours were designed by men, I can hardly imagine what the civilization of the designer would be like now. How big is their territory? Mastering an entire galaxy? ”

The search and rescue team didn't speak, but stopped what they were doing, and shook their heads with the head of the robot.

"Maybe bigger than I thought...... The problem of faster-than-light travel has also been solved...... If you tell me that the entire universe is ruled by them, I wouldn't be surprised. ”

The search and rescue team did not answer Shen Changwen's questions, but told him: "When I was in Elis, I once heard Xu Yan talk about Bill Gates, the richest man in the world. He told Wang Youquan that Bill Gates is so rich, he must eat the biggest lobster at every meal, let a dozen Miss World serve him to eat, and buy the entire bathhouse when he goes out to take a bath. ”

Shen Changwen blushed a little, he understood what the search and rescue team meant.

"In the words of you earthlings, no matter how wise you are, how powerful you are, and how rich you are in life, the final outcome is just a coffin or an urn. The same is true for civilization. Of course, there are technologies that are far beyond your imagination, and there are also difficulties that are far beyond your imagination. The more civilization develops, the more mature it becomes, just like the human body, aging is always inevitable, and death is inevitable. No matter how great a civilization is, what it has in the end may be nothing more than a planet and a tomb. ”

Shen Changwen couldn't understand the civilization that the search and rescue team said, and he couldn't imagine the appearance of a civilized old age. But he understands aging itself – because he's stepping into it.

"So, what we saved before can only be regarded as civilized babies?"

That's what it means, aging civilization...... To save them, neither the cost nor the technology, we do not have ...... But, if possible, still choose those who are more mature. ”

"That's why, if, as you say, it's all inevitable."

"Because we are the ...... of life" The tone of the search and rescue team did not have a trace of waves, but Shen Changwen, who listened to it, was shocked, "A truly free life cannot accept fate, and all the inevitable is experience and history." Eternity is the last eternal pursuit of life, and immortality is not just your human dream. ”