When there was only one person left on earth, there was a knock on the door.

Excerpt from "The World's Shortest Novel"

July 19, 2119, 12 p.m.

At the space exploration station in the desert in the western part of country M, the huge circular screen of the Milky Way Surveillance Hall suddenly lit up with a "drip", and an incandescent bright spot dragged a long white tail, sweeping from east to west at an alarming speed, shuttling through the stars.

In the galactic surveillance hall, the long semi-curved table facing the screen, the swivel chair behind it was empty, and the atomic clock in the corner of the screen was changing rapidly.

The rectangular surveillance hall is large.

Country music and the smell of coffee wafted through the kitchen. What else can he do with a lonely man here?

After 10 seconds, the screen dimmed, and the blue track hung there, flashing three lines of English letters under the screen: average speed, same track, falling point, Yunnan, Z country, stored.

In an old-fashioned house on the outskirts of New York in Country M, a man is on the phone, and the monitor next to him is covered in gray and flashes the same content. He only said one thing:

"Visiting"

He stood up and pushed open the blinds on the second floor, and no wind blew in, and the curly dog slept in the shade of the trees outside the window. It was hot at noon, and he wiped his sweat with the back of his hand.

Department of Defense Space Strategy of Country Z (Operations Department of the Southern Military Region). At midnight (noon in country M), the staff officer on duty in a short-sleeved camouflage uniform was calling:

"Yes, Minister, nothing has been found, yes, continue the search."

The huge screen in the war department, the stars twinkled, three bright spots, in a triangular formation, silently skimmed, below was the primeval forest scanned by the infrared thermal imager, Hesse, the green eyes of various nocturnal animals occasionally flashed. The primeval forest is well protected, with lush branches and hanging vines, spreading everywhere

There are no anomalies

He knew the place all too well, swamps, decaying plants, miasma, dim light, elephants, pythons, monkeys, large spider webs, all kinds of birds, the occasional rustling sound.

It seems that the ground troops have to be sent to search at dawn, and only the ground troops can find the broken branches, the grass that has been trampled, and the footprints by the stream.

Now I can't notify the local **, what to tell them, all kinds of UFO legends have made them anxious, now the people's right to know is getting bigger and bigger, the thirst for the truth is getting stronger and stronger, and all kinds of things published on the Internet are faster than **, and now ** is difficult.

It's just that if you suffer those soldiers, you have to pretend to be ordinary people, and the appearance of a large number of soldiers will cause panic

He also wiped the sweat from his forehead, and he has been on duty for ten years, saying that he is listening to the sound of the universe, whether we are listening to them or they are listening to us.

The three bright spots on the screen continue to skim and search, these stealth fighters that are as long as cockroaches, adapted to forests, canyons, and caves, but have a nice name, "Dragonfly", how can they take this name? It is probably from "the little lotus shows its sharp corners, and the dragonfly has already stood on its head", and the wisdom is that the prophet is prescient, preemptive, dominant, and looking at the world. These scientists don't know what to think. Those typhoons that are very harmful, all have some nice names, what, Feiyan, Maria, Alice, Barbara, Butterfly, it's really confusing.

How could nothing have been discovered? The staff officer on duty smiled bitterly and said to himself, human science and technology are really pediatric in front of nature, and it costs so much money.

The next morning, Yunnan in country Z.

A petite woman stood on a mountain peak, she looked around, as if to discern the direction, she wore a hat on her head, held an umbrella in her hand, her clothes fluttered in the mountain wind, here, on the mountain peak a high flat rock, no one saw how she went up, let alone see her standing on it. In the direction she looked, the snow-capped peaks shimmered with silver, and they burst out of the clouds and rose and fell unceasingly towards the distant sky.

At the foot of the mountain, a small plain in the valley, paddy fields, floating wisps of morning mist, and then past is a small lake, sparkling, high cliffs on the edge of the lake, melted snow water pours down, into the lake, forming a white waterfall, a little bird shadow flying against the surface of the lake; On the other side of the lake, there is an old town, with black tiles and cornices exposed in the trees, and you can see the entrance to the other side of the town, and there is a small stone pagoda on the hillside next to it, on which five colorful prayer flags are displayed, this may be a Tibetan area, these prayer flags exude the auspiciousness of solidifying the years.

She turned to look behind her, but was startled.

On the high hillside opposite, a line of words was built with huge stones.

Welcome to Yunnan!

How did they know I was coming.

In fact, she was scared of herself, which was an advertisement made by the local ** in order to improve the economy, so that people who came to travel by plane came to see it.

Contrary to these is a modern, white, concrete building next to the lake, surrounded by a wall of rocks more than one person high. Those antennas of all kinds, circular, fan-shaped, pot-bottom-shaped, and needle-shaped, stood high on the flat roof, pointing to the deep sky, and a metal plaque was nailed to the stone pillar next to the gate of the wall, on which was neatly written:

United Nations Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Southern Yunnan

People in the neighborhood call it "Agricultural Science Institute"

The town was quiet in the morning light, there was no one on the street, as if no one lived, and the young people had gone to work in the big city.

These pictures formed by small towns, small lakes, paddy fields, cliffs, waterfalls, and water birds have long been imprinted in her mind, but there is no line of "Yunnan welcomes you".

She straightened her hat, pulled her clothes, took her umbrella, and went down the mountain like a normal person, and in a short time, her figure floated in the paddy fields, silently.

She walked on the asphalt road above the paddy fields, this road is designed according to modern standards, one of the white lines, on both sides of the fast lane, slow lane, on both sides of the road are willows, street lights, this road is not built by the "Institute of Agricultural Sciences", it is built by the poverty alleviation economy, how can the United Nations pay for this.

She walked forward with each step on the center line as if she was playful, she wondered like a baby, why did she make the road like this, she did look like a baby, she had only walked out of the health cabin for more than ten hours. The baby's face, the baby's eyes, the hands and feet are all like a baby, how did she know that this planet needs wheels for any means of transportation except for boats, very primitive, to be honest, take it apart and see that it is full of gears.

She walked not far away, several hundred meters away from the "Agricultural Science Institute", when she heard a voice on the side of the road, down the slope on the other side of the road. It was the voice of an organic being, another kind of intelligent being, who could analyze, judge, generalize, reason, and rise to theory what they sensed with their senses, and it was the sound of interworking information—a language, and although she had a thousand of these creatures in her head, and had long since put the language she heard now at the top of the program in her head, it was the first time she heard it with her ears, not the repetition in her head, and she walked to the side of the road and looked down.

The small lake she saw on the mountain, two children stood by the lake, the eldest was seven or eight years old, bare-chested, bald, tanned, shiny with a little water droplets, a pair of shorts thrown at her feet, and no shoes, obviously just came up from the lake, the younger one was three or four years old, surrounded by an embroidered red belly pocket, revealing a round little bare cheek, she really didn't care about it, she thought it was funny, this was the first time she saw a real creature after a long interstellar journey, it was physical, not a variety of virtual images in the brain.

Next to the big boy stood a young woman, dressed in green and red pants, and old sneakers, and she counted the big boy in a row:

"Are you dead, your father has only been dead for a few days, and he came to fish early in the morning, where did the fish come from, there is not even a ghost here!"

"Mom, it's late, and the fish won't take the bait when they're full."

"Ahh Yes! You're pretty studded little devil. ”

"I've been watching it for the past few days!"

"Oh——, no wonder I got up early in the morning these days, with a book in my hand, I thought you had changed sex, but you didn't calculate it, I won't look for you everywhere without breakfast?"

"I'll find out later."

"Ha——, I will know in the future, you really don't know, you are still dumb, what should I do if I fall into the water, he can't swim, and he can't shout, you want to kill your brother!"

"No, he's obedient."

The little boy's clear eyes looked up at his mother and nodded.

Hey, the uninvited guest on the road stared at his beautiful eyes and felt very surprised, he couldn't speak but could hear?

The mother put her arms around the little boy:

"If you are as obedient as a dumb child, I should be more worry-free, and take him out to fish, and all the fish will die."

"Yes, there are two rows of serrations on the back and tail."

The little boy looked up at his mother and nodded, in affirmation of what his brother said. In fact, this well-behaved little boy was picked up by his mother by the lake.

The three patrons talked, not even noticing that there were pairs of eyes staring at them on the road, and a camera in the white building in the distance was staring at them.

"There's a ghost," the angry mother snatched the fishing rod from the little boy's hand, a thin green bamboo pole a little more than a meter long, and threw it back. The white nylon silk tied to the pole was suddenly pulled up from the water, and the falling water droplets flashed in the morning light, and the end of the nylon silk was tied to a small toad, which followed the fish wire through a beautiful arc, but what appeared was not beautiful, a dark green fish, following the toad jumped out of the whole body.

A crocodile! The dark green water on the body is also colorful in the sun.

The mother was stunned.

It's a fish, but a crocodile! Amphibians and reptiles, of course she knows after going to college!

This is a small crocodile of twenty or thirty centimeters, who hatched it, what about the big crocodile, where is the mother, where is the nest.

The mother hurriedly looked around, and the bushes and grass on the shore were rustling in the wind.

Nothing came out.

The mother was not relieved, her face was nervous, and soon she had an answer, and a huge ripple appeared on the surface of the water, which slowly spread in all directions, and the water surface with floating aquatic plants and lotus flowers first revealed two bulging eyes, then the head and back, green thick skin bumps, and a long tail with two rows of serrated teeth, slowly swinging. It was a female crocodile more than five meters long, and it was already lurking at the water's edge, and from its staring eyes, it was ready to attack. The white swaying legs and bare feet were within its attack range, and those tender legs and hands were completely vulnerable in front of its big mouth.

On the highway, the petite woman who was holding a willow tree probe and peeping was also taken aback, and soon searched for this long-tailed animal in her brain, and all kinds of animal images flew by in her mind like light and shadow, from the Cambrian period when life exploded 500 million years ago on this planet, what Devonian, Carbon, Triassic, Jurassic to the Cretaceous 100 million years ago, until hundreds of thousands of years ago when human beings created civilization to the present, ancient, modern, modern, all kinds of strange animals flew by, and after a while, Frozen on an animal: a crocodile, the voice in his head whispered: amphibian, cold-blooded, apex predator, contemporaneous with dinosaurs, almost no evolution, the food it eats has been constantly changing for the long 200 million years, and it has become its food after the emergence of humans, the female crocodile in the incubation period is particularly ferocious, and the crocodile is called a living fossil by humans.

Before the mother could be shocked, there were another circle of ripples on the surface of the lake, and more crocodiles were swimming, perhaps already staying at the lake's edge, where the children often appeared.

The woman held the willow tree motionless, waiting for what would happen below.

The person behind the camera smiled darkly, looking at this picture, glancing at the woman behind the willow tree from time to time, as if he was waiting for a good show to be staged.