Chapter 15 – Speech

Humans: Why don't other humans ever come to see us?

Miro: Only we were allowed through that gate.

Human: Why don't they climb over the fence?

Miro: Have any of you ever touched that fence? (The humans don't answer). It hurts a lot when you hit a fence. Jumping over the fence can feel like you've been hurt in every part of your body, all in the same moment.

Human: That's stupid. Isn't there grass on both sides?

——

Ouanda Kunhata Figoyla Machumbi, Conversation Log, 103:0:1970:1:1:5

When Mayor Bosquina climbed the stairs to reach the personal office of Bishop Riperegrino in the Cathedral, the sun was still setting in an hour.

Mr. and Mrs. Christopher were already there, their expressions serious. Bishop Peregrino, however, looked like he was enjoying himself. He always enjoyed the moment when all the political and religious leaders of the town gathered under his roof for the miracle. Although Bosquina was the one who convened the meeting, it was she who decided to hold the meeting in the cathedral, since she was the only one who had the float. Peregrino liked the feeling that he was in some sense the master of the Lusitanian colony. Well, you don't have to wait for the meeting to be over, and everyone will know that no one in this room is in control of anything.

Bosquina greeted them all. But she didn't sit down in the chair given to her. Instead, she sat down in front of the bishop's own terminal, logged in, and ran the program she had prepared. Several layers of very small blocks appear above the terminal. The highest level has only a few blocks, and most layers have much more blocks. Starting at the top, more than half of the layers are red;

"It's beautiful," said Bishop Peregrino.

Bosquina looked over to Mr. Christopher. "Do you recognize this model?"

He shook his head. "But I think I know the purpose of this meeting. ”

Ms. Christie leaned forward in her seat. "Is there any safe place for us to save the East Tibet that we want to keep?"

Bishop Peregrino's detached look disappeared from his face. "I don't know what the purpose of this meeting is. ”

Bosquina sat on a stool and turned to face him. "I was young when I was appointed governor of the newly established colony of Lusitania. It is a great honor to be selected and a great amount of trust. I have been learning about community politics and social structures since I was a child, and I have done well in my short career in Porto. The committee apparently ignores the fact that I am suspicious, hypocritical, chauvinistic. ”

"Are we here to admire your virtues? Bishop Peregrino said.

Bosquina smiled. "My chauvinism means that once the Lusitanian colony is mine, I am more loyal to Lusitania's interests than to the interests of the Great Hundred Worlds or the Galactic Council. On the contrary, my hypocrisy led me to pretend to be in front of the committee that I always put the interests of Parliament first. And my suspicion leads me to believe that the Council has no intention of giving Lusitania any reading power and equality in the world. ”

"Of course not," said Bishop Peregrino. "We are a colony. ”

"We are not a colony," Bosquina said. "We are a testing ground. I checked our charters and licences and all the council ordinances about us, and then I found that the usual ** laws did not apply to us. I found out that the committee has unrestricted access to the files stored by everyone or institution on Lusitania. ”

The bishop looked like he was starting to get angry. "You're saying the committee has access to confidential church documents?"

"Ah," Bosquina said. "A chauvinist companion. ”

"The Code of the Galaxy states that the Church has some privileges. ”

"Don't get angry at me. ”

"You never told me. ”

"If I tell you, you're going to protest, and then they're going to pretend to leave, and then there's no way I'm going to do what I've done. ”

"That's?"

"This app. It monitors all access to any documents on the Lusitania colony through Ansebo. ”

Mr. Christopher laughed heartily. "You shouldn't have done that. ”

"I know. Like I said earlier, I have a lot of undisclosed vices. But my program never found any large-scale invasions - oh, a few files were hacked every time the pigs killed one of our aliens, which was to be expected - but not on a large scale. Until four days ago. ”

"The deceased speaks of the moment when man comes," said Bishop Peregrino.

Bosquina was amused by the bishop, who apparently regarded the arrival of the speaker as a sign of the caste, so much so that such a connection was established at once.

"Three days ago," Bosquina said, "a non-sabotage scan was initiated through Ansebo. It's an interesting pattern. She turned to the terminal and changed the display image. It now shows access mainly in the advanced area and is limited to only one area in the image. "It visited everything related to the Xenomorphs and Xenobiotics of Miracle Town. It ignores all data savers like they don't exist at all. Everything they find, everything that is relevant to their personal lives. Oh, and Bishop Peregrino, I believed then and today that it must have something to do with the speaker. ”

"He certainly doesn't have a mandate from the Galactic Council. The bishop said.

Mr. Christopher nodded and revealed. "St. Angelo once wrote—in his private account, no one but the children of the Spirit had read it—"

The bishop turned to him in high spirits.

"So the children of the spirits do have the secret writings of St. Angelo!"

"It's not secret," Ms. Christie said, "but it's boring. Anyone can read them, but only we are going to bother ourselves. ”

"What he wrote," said Mr. Christoffer, "was that Andrew the Speaker was older than we know." Older than the Galactic Council, and likely to have a more powerful approach. ”

Bishop Peregrino scoffed. "He's just a boy. It is impossible to be more than forty years old. ”

"Your stupid hostile consciousness is wasting time," Bosquina said sharply. "I am convening this meeting because of an emergency. Also as a courtesy act to you, for I have acted for the benefit of Lusitania Axe. ”

The others fell silent.

Bosquina switches the terminal back to its previous frame. "My program called me the police for the second time this morning. Another systematic Ansebo visit, only this time it was not the same non-sabotage visit that had chosen the surname three days ago. This access reads every file at the speed of data transfer, which means that all of our files are being copied to computers in the outer world. Then the directory structure is rewritten, so that an Ansebo activation command can completely destroy every file in our computer memory. ”

Bosquina could see that Bishop Peregrino was surprised—and the children of the spirits were not.

"Why?" said Bishop Peregrino. "Destroy all our documents – this is a means that can only be used against those countries or the world – those who are rebelling, those you want to destroy, those that you—"

"I have discovered," Bosquina said to the children of the Spirits, "that you are also suspicious chauvinists. ”

"I'm afraid I'm much narrower than you (Note: Do you mean that you have a narrow vision or a narrow mentality...... "Mr. Christopher said. "But we also found invasions. Of course we have copied all of our records—at great expense—to the monasteries of the children of the spirits in other worlds, and they will try to restore them after our files have been erased. However, if we were to be treated as a rebel colony, I doubt that such a restoration would be permitted. So we're also making paper copies of the most important information. It's not possible to print everything, but I think we'll probably be able to print just enough. So that our work is not completely destroyed. ”

"You know this?" said the bishop. "But you won't tell me?"

"Forgive me, Bishop Peregrino, but we didn't expect you to fail to find out for yourself. ”

"And you don't believe we have any important work worth printing and preserving!"

"Enough!" said Mayor Bosquina. "The number of prints that can be preserved is at most a very small percentage - Lusitania does not have enough printers to make any real difference in the surname. We can't even maintain basic services. I don't think we'll have more than an hour before the copy is complete and they have the ability to erase our archives. Even if we started this morning, when the invasion began, we wouldn't have had time to print out one thousandth of a percent of the amount of files we access every day. Our vulnerable surname, our vulnerable surname is thorough. ”

"Then we have no hope. The bishop said.

"Nope. But I want to make it clear to you how extreme our situation is, so that you will accept the only alternative. That would be very uncomfortable for you. ”

"I have no doubt about that. Bishop Peregrino said.

"An hour ago, I was wrestling with this question to find out if there was a file level that was immune to this disposition, and I realized that there was actually one person whose file had been completely skipped through. At first I thought it was because he was a stranger, but the reason was much more subtle than that. The deceased said that none of the documents were in Lusitania's memory. ”

"None? impossible," Ms. Christie said.

"All his documents are kept through Ansebo. Outside of this world. All his records, all his financial information, everything. Every message sent to him. Do you understand?"

"And he still has access to them—" Mr. Christopher said.

"He is invisible to the Galactic Council. Even if they blocked all data transfers to and from Lusitania, his files would still be accessible, as the computer did not consider his file access to be data transfers. They're in the original storage - but they're not in Lusitania's memory. ”

"Are you suggesting," said Bishop Peregrino, "that we send our most confidential and important document as a message to that one—the unbeliever who is too evil to proclaim?"

"I'm telling you I've done it. The transfer of the most critical and sensitive political axe files is nearing completion. It was a very high priority transmission, at the speed of the local network, so it went much faster than a copy of the council. I'm giving you the opportunity to do a similar transfer with my highest privileges so that it takes precedence over all other local computer user processes. If you don't want to do that, that's fine - I'll use my priority to transfer second-class political axe files. ”

"But he'll be able to read our papers. The bishop said.

"Yes, he can. ”

Mr. Christopher shook his head. "If we ask him not to look at it, he won't look at it. ”

"You're naïve as a child," said Bishop Peregrino, "and there's not even anything to force him to give us back the data." ”

Bosquina nodded. "That's right. He will hold every thing that is important to us, and it is up to him whether he keeps it or returns it. But I believe, as much as Mr. Christopher, that he is a good man who will help us in our time of need. ”

Ms. Christie stood up.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'd like to start the transfer of the key parts right away. ”

Bosquina turned to the Bishop's terminal and logged into her own High Priority mode.

"Just enter the file category you want to send to Andrew's message queue. I'm sure you've leveled them because you're already printing them out. ”

"How long do we have?" asked Mr. Christopher.

Ms. Christie is already typing like crazy.

"The time is here, on top. Bosquina reached into the stereoscopic image and touched the countdown numbers with her fingers.

"Don't bother transmitting anything we've already printed," said Mr. Christopher. "We can re-enter those at any time. Anyway, there are very few of them. ”

Bosquina turned to the bishop. "I knew it was going to be very hard to accept. ”

The bishop let out a sneer. "It's very hard. ”

"I wish you had thought carefully before refusing-"

"No," said the bishop. "Do you think I'm a fool? I may be disgusted with the false religion of the people spoken by the deceitful deceitful, but if this is the only way God has left us to protect the vital record of the Church, I would be a servant of the Lord if I let pride prevent me from using it. Our files haven't been graded yet, and it will take a few minutes, but I'm sure the Spirit Child will give us enough time to transfer the data. ”

"How much time do you need, in your opinion?" asked Mr. Christopher.

"Not a lot. Ten minutes at most, I think. ”

Bosquina was surprised, but also delighted. She had feared that the Bishop would insist that all of his documents be copied before the Child of the Spirit could continue—another attempt to assert the bishop's authority over the monastery.

"Thank you," said Mr. Christopher, kissing Peregrino on the hand he had outstretched to him.

The bishop looked at Bosquina coldly. "You don't have to look so surprised, Mayor Bosquina. The children of the spirit deal with worldly knowledge, so they rely more on earthly machines. The mother church deals with the things of the Holy Spirit, so our use of public memory is nothing more than clerical and scruplicit. As for the Bible, we are so old that we still have dozens of papier-masked copies in the cathedral. The Galactic Council can't steal a copy of the Word from us. He smiled. With bad faith, of course. Bosquina smiled back with a rather pleasant smile.

"There's a small problem," said Mr. Christopher. "After our documents have been destroyed, and we have restored them from the documents of the speakers to the memory, how are we going to prevent the council from doing this again?

"It's hard to decide," Bosquina said, "that what we're going to do depends on what the council is trying to achieve." Maybe they don't want to really destroy our files at all. Perhaps they will restore our most important documents as soon as they demonstrate their strength. Since I have no idea why they want to punish us, how can I guess where this is going to go? If they leave us some way to remain faithful, then of course we must retain weaknesses that can be punished further. (Translation: Maybe this sentence is a bit confusing...... It is the art of political compromise. The author of the delusional YY book is absolutely safe, and the reader probably can't understand this. ）”

"But if, for some reason, they decide to dispose of us as rebels?"

"Well, if it gets bad to that point, we can copy everything back into our local memory and then — cut off Ansebo. ”

"God willing," Ms. Christie said, "then we will be completely isolated." ”

Bishop Peregrino seemed furious by this. "What a ridiculous thought, sister of sin. Or do you really think that Christ is dependent on Ansebo and that the council has the power to silence the Holy Spirit?"

Ms. Christie blushed and turned to continue her work on the terminal.

The bishop's secretary handed him a piece of paper with a list of documents on it. "You can take my personal correspondence off the list," the bishop said. "I've sent my message. We let the church decide which of my letters are worth keeping. They mean nothing to me. ”

"The bishop is ready," said Mr. Christopher. His wife immediately stood up from the terminal, and the secretary took her place.

"By the way," said Bosquina, "I think you'd be happy to hear the news." The speaker announced that tonight, in the square, he would speak of the death of Macos Maria Ribera. Bosquina looked at her watch. "Actually, it's almost there. ”

"Why," said the bishop causticly, "would you think I would care about this?"

"I thought you might want to send a representative. ”

"Thank you for telling us," said Mr. Christopher, "I think I'll go." I want to hear what this man who spoke about the death of San Angelo. He turned to the bishop. "I'll report to you what he said, if you will. ”

The bishop leaned back, squeezing out a smile. "Thank you, but I'll send someone to attend. ”

Leaving the bishop's office, Bosquina had to walk down the stairs and out of the cathedral gates. She had to go back to her room now, because whatever the council was planning, it would have to be Bosquina who would hear from them.

She didn't discuss it with the religious leaders because it was none of their business, but she knew very well, at least in a general sense, why the council did it. All provisions that allow the Council to treat Lusitania as a rebel colony are related to the rules of contact with the pigs.

Apparently the heterologist has made some kind of serious mistake. Since Bosquina was not aware of any irregularities, it must have been something large enough to show in satellite imagery, and it was the only one of the monitoring methods that was reported directly to the Committee, without Bosquina's hands.

Bosquina had already tried to guess what Miro and Oanda might have done - causing a forest fire, cutting down numbers, starting a war between the pig tribes, and everything she thought of seemed ridiculous. She wanted to call them in and ask them, but they went out, of course. Through the gates, into the forest to continue, there is no doubt that the activities that bring the possibility of destruction to the Lusitanian colony. Bosquina kept reminding herself that they were still young, maybe they were all young Meng Lang.

But they weren't that young, and they had two of the best minds in a colony of many very intelligent people. It's great that the political axe under the Galactic Code is forbidden to possess any punishment facility that could be used for torture. For the first time in her life, Bosquina felt so angry, and if she had such a facility, she would probably have used it. I don't know what you think you're doing, Miró and Oanda, I don't know what you're doing, but whatever your intentions are, the whole community will pay for it. And, in any case, if there is justice in the world, I will let you pay the price.

——————————————————————

A lot of people say they don't take part in any discourse – they're all good Catholics, aren't they? Didn't the bishop tell them that speakers speak in the voice of Satan?

However, other theories have also been circulated in private, since the arrival of the speaker. Rumors abound, but Miracletown is a small place, and rumors here are like the sauce of a boring life, and they have no value unless they are believed to be true. So rumors spread: Mako's youngest daughter, Koyula, had been silent since his death, and now she was talking so much that she was in trouble at school. And Orhado, the wild boy with terrifying metal eyes, who is said to have suddenly become cheerful and lively. Manic, perhaps. Maybe it's a demon. Rumors began to suggest that somehow the man who said it had a healing touch (note: ancient superstitions. It is believed that saints and kings can heal people by touch. He also has evil eyes, his blessings can heal, his curses can kill, and his words can charm obedience. Of course, not everyone hears this, and not everyone who hears it believes it. But in the four days that elapsed between the arrival of the speaker and the night he spoke of the death of Marcus Maria Ribeira, the members of the town of Miracles had decided, though not officially announced, that they would attend the speech and hear what the speaker had to say, whether the bishop said or not.

This is the bishop's own fault. From his point of view, to Satanize the Speaker would place him on the farthest side of himself and all good Catholics: the Speaker is our opposite. But for those who are not well-versed in theology, Satan is powerful and terrible (watering: satan=securityadministratortoolforanalyzingworks, a cybersecurity analysis tool, of course, powerful and terrible), and so is God. They understand the order of good and evil as pointed out by the bishop, but they are more concerned with the order of strength and weakness—something they have to face in their lives. And in this sequence, they are weak, and God and Satan and the bishop are strong. The bishop elevated the speaker to the position of a powerful man in his ranks. As a result, people are prone to believe in miracles implied by rumors.

Thus, despite the announcement given an hour before the words, the square was already crowded, and people had even piled up into the buildings and houses facing the square, into the grassy alleys and streets. Mayor Bosquina has — by law — provided the speaker with a simple microphone that she uses at rare public gatherings. The people looked at the platform on which he was going to stand, and they looked around to see who was coming. Everybody came. Of course the Macau family will come. Of course the mayor will come. But Mr. Christopher and Ms. Christie, as well as a number of the church's priests in robes, also came. Dr. Navio. Pippo's widow, archivist Con Saikao Sr. Lipo's widow, Bruhina, and her children. Rumor has it that the speaker is ready to talk about Pippo and Lipo's deaths one day.

Finally, just as the speaker stepped onto the stage, a message quickly spread throughout the square: Bishop Peregrino was here. Instead of wearing his robes, he wore an ordinary priest's robe. He himself had come here to hear the blasphemous words of men, and the hearts of many of the citizens of Miracle Town trembled with a wonderful expectation. Will the Episcopal Church come forward and show divine power to bring down Satan, and will there be a great battle here that no one has ever seen before except in a vision of the Apocalypse of St. John?

At this point, the speaker stood in front of the microphone, waiting for them to be quiet. He was quite tall and young, but his white skin made him look sickly compared to the thousands of brown-skinned Portuguese. Like a ghost. They fell silent, and he began to speak.

"He is known by three names. There is his first name in the official records: Marcos Maria Ribera. And his official figures. Born in 1929. Died in 1970. Work in a steel foundry. The safety record is flawless (note: I can't imagine that he is also a safety production model...... ）。 Never been arrested. One wife, six children. An exemplary citizen, because he has never done anything bad enough to go into the public record. ”

Many listeners were faintly impatient. They had expected to hear a speech. It can be said that the tone of the people is mediocre. And his language is not at all official religious preaching. Straight, simple, almost conversational. Only a few people realized that this extreme simplicity made his voice, his words, seem completely credible. He is not preaching truth with a sense of triumph. This translation is in Buddhist terms. He's telling the truth and you wouldn't think to doubt it for granted. Bishop Peregrino was one of those who realized this, and it disturbed him. This speaker would be a formidable enemy, an enemy that could not be destroyed with the flames in front of the altar.

"His second name is Macau. Grand Makaus. Because he's a big man. He didn't grow to the size of Seihito at a young age. How old was he when he reached two meters? Eleven? Certainly less than twelve. His size and strength made him valuable in the steel foundry, where a lot of the steel was so small that most of the work had to be done directly by hand, so strength was important. People's lives depend on the power of Macau. ”

In the square, men from the steel foundry nodded. They had all boasted to each other that they would never speak to that foreign atheist. Apparently one of them said it, but now they feel like it's a good thing, that the speaker can get the facts right, and he can understand the Makao they remember. Each of them wished that he was the one who told the storyteller about Makaw. What they couldn't guess was that the speaker didn't want to talk to them at all. After all these years, there are many things that Andrew Wiggin can know without asking.

"His third name is Kao. Dog. ”

Ah, by the way, the grapes thought. This is exactly what we hear of the deceased talking about. They have no respect for the dead and do not know etiquette.

"This is the name you use to call him, when you hear that his wife, Nuo Wanhua, has another dark blue eye, walks with a limp, and has several stitches on her lip. He treated her like this, what a brute. ”

How dare he say that? The man is dead! But under their anger, the Portuguese are upset for a completely different reason. Almost all of them remember saying or hearing these words. The disrespectful thing about the speakers is simply to repeat in public the words they used in the life of Macau.

"It's not that any of you like Nowanhua. The woman who never said good morning to any of you. But she was smaller than he was, and she was the mother of his children, so he should have been called Kao when he beat her. ”

They were very embarrassed, and they muttered to each other. The people who sat near Nowanhua in the grass kept glancing at her, anxious to see how she reacted, and then painfully discovered that the man who spoke was right, that they did not like her, that they were afraid of her and pity her at the same time.

"Tell me, is this the man you know? Spend more time in the bar than anyone else, and yet he never made friends, not even a single companion with whom he was drinking. You can't even tell how much he drank. He's violently grumpy before he gets drunk—no one can see the difference. You've never heard of him making friends, and none of you even like to see him walk into the room. That's you, most of you, the man you know. Test. Not a man at all. ”

Yes, they thought. That man is like that. Now the initial shock of his rudeness has faded. They had adapted to the fact that the speaker did not intend to be a tactful in his description. But they still don't feel well. For there is a sign of irony, not in his tone, but in the words themselves.

"Not a man at all," he said earlier, but Marcus (note: he. According to Chinese customs, in order to avoid confusion, the name of the person is changed. The following similar occasions will not be indicated. It was a man, of course, and they were vaguely aware that he didn't necessarily agree with what they thought of Makau, even though the speaker knew what they thought.

"The few others, the foundries from the factory district, knew he was a strong helper they could trust. They know that he never exaggerates and always does what he says. People can rely on him. So inside the fence of the foundry, he got their respect. But when you walk out the door, you treat him like everybody else—ignoring him, thinking about him hardly. ”

The irony is now on the spot. Although the speaker did not show it in his tone—or the simple, straight tone he used at the beginning—the men who worked with Marcus felt it in silence: we should not have ignored him like that. Since he deserves respect in the factory, we probably should have respected him on the outside.

"Some of you know other facts that you never talk about. You know that you gave him this nickname much earlier than he deserved it. You were ten, eleven, twelve. Little boy. He grew so tall. It makes you ashamed when you approach him. And be afraid, because he makes you feel powerless. ”

Mr. Christopher whispered to his wife, "They have come to hear the gossip, but he has given them a sense of responsibility." ”

"So you deal with him in the same way that humans usually deal with things that are stronger than them," said the speaker. "You unite. It's like trying to bring down a mastodon (note: extinct ancient creatures. Originally inhabited in North America, it resembles a mammoth. It became extinct after the arrival of humans in the Americas. Hunters. Like the matadors who want to weaken a huge bull and prepare it to kill it. Poking, provocation, mockery. Let him go on and on. He couldn't guess where the next blow would come from. Poke him with a barb that will sink into the flesh. Weaken him with pain. Drive him crazy. Because he is so big, you can drive him. You can make him scream. You can make him run. You can make him cry. See, he's still weaker than you after all. ”

Ella was furious. She had hoped that he would accuse Marcau instead of defending him. Just because he had a painful childhood doesn't give him the power to knock his mother to the ground at will.

"It's not condemnation. You were little children, and little children were cruel because they hadn't learned yet. Now you're not going to do that. But now that I've reminded you, it's not hard for you to see an answer. You called him a dog, and he became a dog. For the rest of his life. Hurting helpless people. Beat his wife. Uttering such cruel curses to his son Miro drove the child out of the house. He behaved the way you treated him, and you said he was like that, and he became like that. ”

You're an idiot, Bishop Peregrino thought. If people are simply reacting to the way others treat them, then no one is responsible for anything. If your sins are not of your own choice, then how can you possibly atone?

As if hearing the bishop's silent dissent, the speaker raised a hand and swept away his own words. But this easy-to-reach answer is incorrect. Your torment didn't make him tyrannical—it made him gloomy. And when you grow up and stop torturing him, he also grows up and hates you no more. He is not a person who carries old grudges and does not let go. His anger cooled and turned into suspicion. He knows that you despise him, and he has learned not to live by you. Calmly. ”

The speakers paused for a moment, then asked the question they were silently questioning.

"And how did he end up with the cruel man you know? Who experienced his brutality? his wife. His children. Some people beat their wives and children because they crave power, but are too weak or too stupid to gain power in the outside world. A helpless wife and children, bound to such a man by need and custom, or, more unpleasantly, loved, are the only victims of his ability to rule. ”

Yes, Ella thought, sneaking a glance at her mother. That's exactly what I wanted. That's why I asked him to talk about my father's death.

"Some men are like that," said the speaker, "but Marcos Ribera is not one of them. Think about it. Have you ever heard of any of his children he had? Yes, the people who worked with him—did he ever want to impose his will on you? Did he ever be angry when things didn't go his way? Marcau was not a weak and wicked man. He was a strong man. He doesn't want power. He wants love. Don't seek control. And loyalty. ”