"Foley, wait a minute. We have to get back to the problem. ”

"I want you to live, live well, one way or another, maybe I wouldn't have said that before last night, but now, Foley, I almost died once."

"I know."

"You know?"

"I've been nervous since last night, before Bellus died, before Samel committed suicide, I had the same nervousness, as if I had been choked by death."

"Yes, I feel like I'm inhaling the scent of the heavenly grasslands." Efia recalled the scent of flowers wafting into her bedroom last night. She couldn't tell which flowers and plants were made of the scent. It doesn't seem to be a plant in this city.

"Listen to me, Ephia, I'm sure you're in danger, this feeling is not a fantasy, I don't have any mental problems, no matter how Freudian psychoanalysts don't want to find a childhood shadow or a second personality in me, I just really feel death.

Before you even opened the door, I was sure that everything was irreparable, that your body was cold, and that the time of death might be between an hour and two hours away from my house. ”

"But I don't know why I survived."

"Something is stopping this from happening. But to me your death is a history that has happened, and now it is a rebirth, and I see you alive and beautiful, more beautiful than ever. ”

Efia lowered her head, she had waited for years for such words, thinking that she would never hear them in her life.

"I don't understand what's going on, Foley."

"I think I understand, and I understand."

"What the hell is going on?"

"I can't tell you that by next week, if, as I thought, we'll all be safe until at least next week."

"I still don't get it."

"It's good that you understand John's problem, the only thing I'm worried about now is him, my father will come to Los Angeles this weekend to help take care of John, but I can't rest assured, I'm sorry it's my family business, but I think if you're willing to help."

"Of course, John was also a student of mine, and he was very talented, with a talent for drawing, especially overlay graphics and perspective."

"It's definitely not inherited from me." The two looked at each other and smiled, both a little embarrassed.

"Since my mother died, I rarely see my father, and he barely reaches out to me, isn't it?" Representative Foley swallows a sip of coffee and reclines back into the sofa chair, while Ephia sits across from her, looking like a couple chatting about the elderly and children at home.

Efia sat on the couch in horror with her coffee cup in her hand. "I've always felt like there's something wrong with this." Efia said softly: "Especially today, you see I haven't slept for so many years, never, because I started working in college, and I always get up early." ”

"What was special last night?"

"There's... But I can't say it, I thought about something that Belus told him before I went to bed. She quickly glanced in the direction of the door, then turned to look at the carpet. There's something, the word is really uncomfortable. I don't like to doubt myself that I have hallucinations. ”

"It's alright, Ephia, I don't think that's your hallucination."

"It's even more terrifying if it's not a hallucination."

"Also, Foley, there's a scent that I vaguely smelled from the wind blowing into your room when I was in your house."

"My neighbors like to plant trees in their yards, you know, everybody here loves to plant trees."

"Okay." Efya knew what Forlì was deliberately hiding and didn't continue to ask.

"Since we don't have to work today, do you want to go out for a walk?"

"Nice proposal." Ephia felt both happy and lost, she couldn't tell what it was, but she was always happier anyway.

"To the library or to the bookstore?"

"Why don't you go on a virtual adventure?"

"What?" Foley was surprised to hear that these words came from Ephia's mouth, and looked at her with wide eyes.

"Haha, just kidding, reading is a real virtual adventure, anytime, anywhere, for you to open another world of characters."

"Efia, you haven't changed at all."

"It's changed a little." Efia replied reluctantly.

Representative Foley drove south from Highway 110, he didn't notice if there was anything following him outside the window, in fact the driverless cars made him feel uneasy, but only a slight straw in his heart, for the first time in a long time, Foley felt relaxed, and the world seemed to return to its former order.

If this is what Mussel Lingmei said that the invasion has arrived, he smiled and shook his head, which period in the history of mankind is not the history of invasion? Industrial Revolution, War, Artificial Intelligence. It is through the mutual invasion of life in the world around us that human beings have developed to this day.

Perhaps the end is not too far away, and science fiction since the 90s has always felt gloomy about the future, even if Asimov has asked what the future of artificial intelligence and humanity will be like all his life.

When this future really comes, it may make him uneasy in heaven, but maybe pessimism is just an emotion that human beings have in order to protect the survival of their species.

It keeps us from being content with pleasure and trusting others, even ourselves.

Regardless of the period, people are invading and being invaded, culture, religion, war, virtual experiences, drug dependence, only products change social habits.

From the body to the nervous system, no one is spared; From individuals to countries, without exception.

And does all this complicated happen overnight as if we were soberly looking at a photo?

The answer is obvious.

Human beings are afraid of the unknown and move forward with the unknown, groping, unswerving in confusion, sometimes the pace is accelerated, sometimes the pace is slowed down, everything is out of free will or the will of the group, no one of the same kind can say clearly. Maybe we'll have to wait for a robot to tell us one day.

But, so what. When he goes out on the road, it dawns on him that we don't know everything, we don't understand extraterrestrial civilizations, we don't understand social changes, we don't understand war, we don't understand the laws of nature.

Whether carbon dioxide is really responsible for air pollution, under the orange sun of California, the layers of fog that have been cloudy for decades are what is the cause.

We don't know anything, we don't know how the brain works, we can't do anything with the smallest neurons, and all the clarity is just a stage of self-deception.

The only thing that is true and reliable is that we know nothing, but it has flourished to this day.

"Can you know when you're yourself and when you're not?"

"I can't." Efia replied without hesitation.

"Why?"

"Remember those masters?"

"Slug?"

"Yes."

"Of course, I think of them every time I see an alien."

"You really know how to relate to it." Ephia laughed, no sarcasm.

"I want to say that Heinlein's description is that the old man's son knows that it has a master, that it controls itself, that it knows that part is not his own consciousness, and this is what I have always been curious about, if we can really know clearly, is it a higher mind or can we know that there is something else in our consciousness?"