Die on Mars

eight

Yang Yuan did not expect that he could actually survive the last turmoil that swept the world. So many big names failed to survive the last day, but he, a little astronomy graduate student, actually saved his life.

He was still standing on the familiar lawn, but the originally tall and white antenna in his memory had now been reduced to a pile of charred ruins. The steel frame was twisted in grotesque shapes, looking like a sculpture by a post-modernist artist.

The old man stood beside him with a cane and a head of white hair. In just one month, the old academician seemed to have aged ten years, 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, my old bones can still hold on." The old man shook his head and refused Yang Yuan's support, "Xiao Yuan... Is everything okay at home?"

"The house collapsed." Yang Yuan whispered, "But everyone is fine."

The impact on the remote mountain village was not as serious as Yang Yuan imagined. The villagers were accustomed to living a regular life of sunrise and sunset. This ancient routine has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. The outside world was like wildfire. The madness did not end here. For the villagers, the so-called countdown on the moon and the end of the world were just one more thing to worry about next year's wheat and cotton harvest.

They had enough to worry about.

"As long as it's okay, it's okay." The old man smiled, his eyes still bright, "It's all over now."

"Yeah, it's all over." Yang Yuan nodded. He never thought that human madness could be so terrifying. The government finally collapsed. Desperate people blamed the government for their anger and resentment. People walked out of their homes to form a mighty army. The huge flow of people broke through the doors of all government agencies. People's anger almost burned everything.

The National Astronomical Observatory was the first to bear the brunt. The director evacuated all researchers and sat alone in the operation control hall facing irrational people. The usually well-dressed, polite and highly educated upper class people were now dealing with beggars and homeless people. In the same position, with disheveled hair and unscrupulous words.

I don’t know who was the first to throw the stone in his hand. The fluke mentality and fanaticism caused the crowd to start throwing the debris in their hands at the innocent person sitting in the middle of the hall. When the stage director fell in a pool of blood There was a thunderous explosion outside the door.

They blew up the telescope.

Human nature and morality have declined, and the entire world has returned to before the Ten Commandments overnight, with people amusing themselves in self-destruction.

At midnight that night, the countdown on the moon returned to zero.

The world stopped and looked up at the moon.

The huge numbers slowly disappeared, those huge plates slowly moved and closed, and the moon once again showed its familiar face to humans.

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 people say, and the debris will destroy all living things on the earth.

The moon may open a huge concave mirror and focus sunlight on the earth to evaporate all the water, or it may simply slow down its revolution and crash into the earth, both of which will die together. It would be too easy for the moon to destroy the earth, no matter which way it is, It is impossible for humans to escape.

But nothing happened. The moon did not explode, had no concave mirror, and was still orbiting at a speed of 1.02 kilometers/second.

Nothing really happened.

People watch as the moon moves across the sky and sets below the horizon until the pale sun rises in the east.

The disheveled people who had gone through hardships suddenly realized this when facing the bright morning light.

A new day has begun.

God has inserted a small easter egg in the historical drama of human development. Now that the easter egg is over, the plot is back on track. Compared with tens of thousands of years of human history, just one month is almost negligible.

Later, some people said that history had made a joke and scared half of human civilization to death.

"The ancients have a saying, it is your own fault that you will never live." The old academician stepped forward and touched the collapsed bracket of the telescope and sighed quietly, "You really brought your own fault..."

"Teacher Ouyang." Yang Yuan called out to the old man, "What should we do now?"

"No matter what we do, 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 still rise tomorrow morning."

The moon climbed up the branches, and the jade plate was smooth and bright under the night, without any numbers anymore.

Yang Yue lowered his head silently. Surprisingly, the ant nest under the foxtail grass was still there. The ants were busy moving in and out carrying soil and food. These tiny creatures seemed to have never realized that the world had experienced a devastating event. The major crisis, the so-called destruction of the world, to them is nothing more than the disappearance of the shade provided by the original behemoth, and they still survive in the same way they have for millions of years.

Yang Yuan decided to go home every Mid-Autumn Festival from now on.

Nine

The inspector took a deep breath and put down the observation terminal in his hand.

"It's incredible." He shook his head, "But I don't like this."

"I should really take a picture of your entranced expression just now." The test officer smiled.

"You used another civilization as a test subject." The inspector looked serious. "This violates my moral and personality standards."

"But this does not violate my moral and personality standards." The test officer began to carefully sort out the paper materials in his hand. In the current situation, any wood pulp paper is an extremely scarce resource.

"Before the Archon promulgated the "Electronic Civilization Protection Regulations," I probably wouldn't have done this." The test officer shrugged, "You have to know that a planet with 6.5 billion individuals can be observed in all directions and in real time from a distance of 2.54 light-years. Civilization is very laborious for me personally... I can design a virtual civilization in the central computer, and then control and observe the whole process, and the distance between it and me is only a few lines of code."

The Ombudsman remained silent. Starting last year, man-made virtual civilizations began to be officially protected. The Archon even specially built a host on Satellite 2 to accommodate the 300 billion virtual civilizations.

"Mr. Inspector, you have to realize that any morality is a luxury thought that can only be discussed when the safety of the individual or civilization itself is not threatened." The test officer placed the file in the safe, "In the universe, Morality, like mercy, are luxuries that only God is qualified to give to others. For our own sake, I have no choice."

"But every civilization has the right to survive." The inspector said, "Aren't you afraid of destroying No. 2689 by doing this?"

"Mr. Ombudsman, it is obvious that you are a cosmic communitarian. Of course I am not opposed to that kind of radical thought. If the tester next door were here, he would probably debate with you for three days and three nights." Tester After sorting out the information, he lowered his voice and approached the inspector, "He is a complete member of the Dark Night Theory Party... Regarding your question just now, my answer is that the countdown I designed is 30 2689 Civilization Days."

"Does this have any special significance?"

"If I wanted to destroy 2689, I would design 365 civilization days of 2689." The test officer said, "Every individual and civilization has a hidden self-destructive tendency, but it is not usually triggered, just like the tendency in our genetic genes. Just like the secrets... To inspire these devils buried in people's hearts, conditions are needed."

"What conditions?"

"Despair." The test officer spat out a word coldly, "During the long process of waiting for death, this kind of psychology will spread like an infectious disease. The individual's fear of the destined tragic ending will prompt the individual to take the initiative to end himself, so as not to worry about his inner self. The suffering.”

"It's the same with civilization," the test officer said. "I just need to give them despair, those numbers - for this level of civilization, it's better to express it in a more popular way. When the warning is within their understanding but far beyond When their capabilities fall within the scope of their capabilities, they will arouse fear, and the accumulation of this emotion will eventually defeat civilization itself. This is the warning effect, and it is also why I engraved numbers on that satellite."

"How on earth did you do it?" the inspector asked, "even I find it incredible."

"It's a little trick..." The test officer was a little proud, "I used three rigid particle chains to cut directionally under the rock layer of the satellite, and the rock layer will collapse under its own gravity to generate numbers - this is huge I can’t do the amount of calculations, so it takes up one 3.2 billionth of the computing process of the central brain.”

"This is also a helpless move." The test officer sighed, "I originally had a more concise warning method, but the 2689 civilization cannot understand it. If I arrange their star sunspots into numbers, those creatures will probably think it is an astronomical wonder. ?”

"What's the difference between 30 and 365?"

"365 2689 civilization days is the time it takes for the planet to orbit once, just like 562 days is the time it takes for us to orbit the main star." The test officer replied, "This will leave them enough time to self-destruct. 30 2689 civilizations The warning will end before they have time to completely destroy themselves."

The inspector remained silent for a long time in front of the instruments in his eyes.

"I have to admit that your work is meaningful, but I still insist on my own opinion and I don't like what you do."

"Mr. Inspector, you are a stubborn person." The test officer said in a relaxed tone, "That's why you were sent here."

The inspector remained silent and noncommittal. He lowered his head and stared at the screen in front of him. The numbers in front of him suddenly jumped.

The prosecutor was stunned. This number had not changed for many years. "What does detector number 45 do?"

"Oh... that's the cosmic microwave background radiation detector." The test officer was concentrating on looking for the next target.

"I remember that the cosmic microwave background radiation has an intensity of about 2.725 units?" The inspector's voice was trembling, and he could already see the numbers on the screen jumping crazily.

"Yes."

"Then you have to come see this."

The tester didn't want to waste time. He didn't know if it was worth raising his head, but he raised it anyway.

The inspector sat on a swivel chair, with dazzling numbers flashing on the screen in front of him that never changed.

562.

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