Short story "Countdown" (II)
Eight
Yang Yuan didn't expect that he would survive the last turmoil that swept the world, so many big people didn't survive the last day, and he, a small astronomy graduate student, actually saved his life. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. biquge。 info
He still stood on the familiar lawn, but the tall and white antenna in his memory was now reduced to a pile of charred ruins, and the steel frame was strangely twisted to look like a sculpture by some postmodernist artist.
The old man stood beside him on crutches, with white hair, the old academician seemed to have aged ten years in just one month, but the old man was already eighty years old, which made Yang Yuan very worried about his physical condition.
"It's okay, it's okay...... I can hold this old bone. The old man shook his head and refused Yang Yuan's support, "Xiaoyuan...... Are you okay at home? ”
"The house is collapsing." Yang Yuan whispered, "But people are fine." ”
The impact of the remote mountain village is not as serious as Yang Yuan imagined, the villagers are accustomed to the regular life of sunrise and sunset, this ancient routine has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, and the wildfire-like madness of the outside world has not burned here, for the villagers, the so-called countdown on the moon and the end of the world are just one more thing to worry about in addition to the wheat and cotton harvest next year.
Enough of their worries.
"It's okay...... It's okay. The old man smiled, his eyes still bright, "Now it's all gone." ”
"yes...... It's all gone. Yang Yuan nodded, he had never thought that human madness would be so terrifying. Eventually, the government collapsed, desperate people blamed their anger and resentment on the government, people went out of their homes to form huge armies, huge crowds broke through the gates of all government institutions, and people's anger burned almost everything.
The National Astronomical Observatory, as the relevant department, bore the brunt of the incident, the director evacuated all the researchers, and sat alone in the operation control hall to face the people who had lost their minds.
I don't know who was the first to throw the stone in his hand, but the luck and fanaticism of the people made the crowd start throwing their debris at the innocent people sitting in the middle of the hall, and when the director fell in a pool of blood, a thunderous explosion sounded outside the door.
They blew up the telescope.
Humanity and morality are completely degraded, the whole world is back to before the Ten Commandments overnight, and people amuse themselves in self-destruction.
At midnight that night, the countdown on the lunar surface went to zero.
The whole world stopped and looked up at the moon.
The huge numbers slowly disappeared, the huge plates slowly moved and closed, and the moon once again revealed its familiar face to humanity.
00:01
Everyone is waiting for the destruction of the world, no one knows what will happen next, the moon may explode violently as some say, and the debris will destroy all life on earth. The Moon may open a huge concave mirror and collect sunlight on the Earth to evaporate all the water, or simply slow down its revolution and crash into the Earth, both of which will be destroyed...... Either way, humanity is not immune.
But nothing happened, the moon did not explode, there was no concave mirror, it was still in orbit at a speed of 1.02 km / s.
Nothing really happened.
People watched as the moon streaked across the sky and set below the horizon until the sun rose in the east, turning white.
Unkempt and ordeal people suddenly realized this in the bright morning light.
A new day begins.
God inserted a small easter egg in the historical drama of human development, and now that the easter egg is over, the plot is back on track, and compared with tens of thousands of years of human history, it is almost negligible in just one month.
Later, it was said that history played a joke and scared half of human civilization to death.
"The ancients had a saying, called ...... You cannot live if you have done your own iniquity. The old academician stepped forward and stroked the collapsed bracket of the telescope and sighed faintly, "It's really self-inflicted......
"Teacher Ouyang." Yang Yuan called out to stop the old man, "What should we do now?" ”
"No matter what happens, the earth still revolves around the sun, and the moon still revolves around the earth." The old man said slowly, "People still have to live, because the sun will rise tomorrow morning." ”
The moon climbed up the branches, and the jade disk was bright and bright at night, and there were no more numbers.
Yang Yue bowed his head silently, it was amazing that the ant nest under the dogtail grass was still there, the ants were busy moving in and out to carry soil and food, these small creatures never seemed to realize that the world had experienced a devastating major crisis, the so-called world destruction, for them was just the disappearance of the shade provided by the original behemoth, and they still survived according to the consistent way of survival for thousands of years.
Yang Yuan decided to go home every Mid-Autumn Festival in the future.
Nine
The Ombudsman let out a sigh of relief and lowered the observation terminal in his hand.
"It's incredible." He shook his head, "But I don't like this." ”
"I should have filmed your fascinated look just now." The tester smiled.
"You're using another civilization as a test subject." The Ombudsman looked serious, "This is against my moral and moral code. ”
"But it doesn't violate my moral and personality code." The tester began to carefully sort out the paper materials in his hands, and in the current situation, any wood pulp and paper is an extremely scarce resource.
"I probably won't do that until the Archon promulgates the Ordinance for the Protection of Illusory Civilizations." The tester shrugged, "You know, it's a lot of work for me to observe a civilization of sixty-five billion individuals in real time from a distance of 2.54 light-years...... I could have designed a virtual civilization on a central computer, and then manipulated and observed it all the way, and it was just a few codes away from me. ”
The Ombudsman was silent, and since last year, the man-made virtual civilization has begun to be officially protected, and the consul has even built a host on the second satellite to accommodate the 300 billion virtual civilizations.
"Mr. Ombudsman...... You need to realize that any morality is an extravagant idea that can only be talked about if the safety of the individual or civilization itself is not threatened in any way. "In the universe, morality, like mercy, is a luxury that God is qualified to give to others...... For our own sake, I have no choice. ”
"But every civilization has the right to live." The Ombudsman said, "Aren't you afraid of ruining No. 2689 by doing this?" ”
"Mr. Overseer, it's clear that you're a cosmic republican...... I'm certainly not opposed to that kind of radical thinking, and if the tester next door was here, he'd probably debate with you for three days and three nights. The tester finished sorting out the information, and lowered his voice to lean closer to the inspector, "He's a member of the Dark Night Theory Party through and through...... My answer to your question is that I designed the countdown to be 30 2689 Civilization Days...... Actually, it's not a big deal to destroy it, and many people in the universe are doing it. ”
"Does that mean anything?"
"If I wanted to destroy 2689, I would design it for 365 2689 Civilization Days." "Every individual and civilization has a hidden tendency to self-destruction, but it is not normally aroused, like the shadows in our genes...... To motivate these demons buried in people's hearts, conditions are needed. ”
"On what terms?"
"Despair." The tester coldly spat out a single word, "In the long process of waiting for death, this psychology will spread like a contagion, and the individual's fear of a doomed and tragic end will prompt the individual to take the initiative to end himself in order to avoid inner torment." ”
"It's the same with civilization." The tester said, "I just have to give them despair...... It's the numbers -- for a civilization of this level, it's better to put it in layman's terms. When warnings are within their comprehension but far beyond their capabilities, they cause fear, and the accumulation of this emotion eventually crushes civilization itself...... That's the warning effect, and that's why I carved numbers on that satellite. ”
"How the hell did you do that?" The ombudsman asked, "Even I feel incredible. ”
"Little trick...... "I used three rigid particle chains to make a directional cut under the rock layer of that satellite, and the rock layer would collapse under its own gravity to produce a number...... That's a lot of computation, and I can't do it, so it takes up 1/3.2 billion of the central brain. ”
"It's also a helpless move." The tester sighed, "I would have had a more concise warning, but Civilization 2689 can't understand it, if I let their stellar sunspots line up in numbers, those creatures will probably think it's an astronomical wonder, right?" ”
"What's the difference between 30 and 365?"
"365 2689 civilization days is the time it takes for that planet to make one revolution, just as 562 days is the time it takes us to make one revolution around the main star." The tester replied, "This will give them plenty of time to self-destruct, and the warning of 30 2689 days of civility will end before they have time to completely destroy themselves." ”
The Ombudsman was silent for a long time in the face of the full face of the face.
"I have to admit that your work is meaningful...... But I still hold my own opinion, and I don't like what you do. ”
"Mr. Ombudsman...... You are a stubborn person. The tester said in a relaxed tone, "That's why you've been sent here, all the civilizations in the universe are testing each other, and we're just doing what we're supposed to do." ”
The Ombudsman was silent, his head down at the screen in front of him, the numbers in front of him suddenly jumping.
The prosecutor was stunned, the number had not changed in many years. "What does detector No. 45 do?"
"Oh...... It's a cosmic microwave background radiation detector. "The tester is preoccupied with the next target.
"I remember that the cosmic microwave background radiation is about 2.725 units of intensity?" The Ombudsman's voice was shaking, and he could already see the numbers on the screen beating wildly.
"Yes."
"So...... You'll have to take a look at this. ”
The tester didn't want to waste time, he didn't know if the head was worth it, but he raised it anyway.
The Ombudsman sat in a swivel chair, the screen in front of him flashing with glare numbers that never moved.
562。
(That's it for the short story, I'll get back to business tomorrow.) )